A Party Gone Clubbin'

Several months ago, after the 2008 election, and amidst the mass "THE GOP IS DEAD, HOPELESS, OMG, OMG!!1!!" hysteria, I wrote that the Republican Party had one major flaw that it needed to fix: its inability to multi-task. In the interim time period, however, I have come to realize that there was another, equally important, point, that I seem to have inadvertently overlooked.

Before doing so, let me first note, for the umpteenth time, the Republican Party's remarkable ability to eat its own. Indeed, if the last 7 months have shown us anything, it is most certainly that no organization on earth knows how to self-destruct quite like the GOP. And this leads in nicely to the real point I'm trying to make today, which I will begin with the following question: have you noticed anything about the faces participating in all of these (self-destructive) discussions about the future of the GOP?

How about the fact that they're all old - and familiar.

Think about it. Who do you see on the talk shows and writing the columns about these things? Newt Gingrich. And Karl Rove. And Colin Powell. And Dick Cheney. And, seriously, how many times have you heard some 'analyst' introduced by the phrase "former (Insert former Republican President here) appointee..."? Are these the people who we should have leading the Republican Party into the future? The same people who've been leading it for the last 20 years? Sorry, but no matter how good or bad your message is, if you keep dragging the same old chumps out on stage to present it, there's only one word that can be used to describe it: stale.

And stale is not the kind of message that a party which just lost the youth vote by a 2 to 1 margin needs to be putting out there.

Of course, if it's not just the same old folks out presenting the message, it's the relatives of these folks. And if it's not those folks, well, then it's the same old 'experts' in newspaper columns and weekly magazines who you've been reading for years. In other words, it's a bunch of self-styled experts who don't really have any actual qualifications to make them any better arbiters of 'the direction of the Republican Party' than you or me.

Simply put, the GOP has a Good ol' Boy problem.

Indeed, whether it's the self-designated 'experts', the same 'prestigious' last-names, or the same, tired old faces of yesteryear, the fact remains that this continuing argument about what is wrong with the GOP, where it needs to go, who it needs to include, (etc., etc.); is all being hashed out by what more-or-less constitutes a Good ol' Boy club. Moreover, and unsurprisingly, while these folks spend a great deal of time fighting amongst themselves on the Sunday talk shows, they all do tend to agree on each others relative level of importance.

Now, the reason all of this matters is that the very idea of a GOP Good ol' Boys club is completely and utterly antithetical to the conservatism that (supposedly) remains the bedrock of the Republican Party. You see, Conservatives believe in earning what you have and keeping what you've earned - but Good ol' Boys don't earn things, they're given them.

Most importantly, however, the Good ol' Boys contradict the fundamental conservative belief in small government. You see, conservatives don't believe in small government because of some dogma we hold. Nor is it because we hate the inefficiency and bureaucratic red tape that comes with big government (although we do dislike these things). No, conservatives believe in small government because we understand, as per the famous axiom, that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

In other words, we believe in limited government because we understand the abuses of power that are bound to happen without those limits. We believe in the inherent fallibility of man, which is why we believe it foolish to trust him with something as dangerous as power. It is from this rudimentary conception of man and government that we derive a belief in things like checks and balances, limited government, (small R) republican government, and Federalism.

The Good ol' Boy system is inherently at odds with these ideas, because a Good ol' Boy system is fundamentally about collecting and retaining power, not limiting it. Furthermore, having such a system makes it more difficult for the Republican Party to get out its limited government message; because, simply put, it's hard to take the Party's 'small government' rhetoric seriously when it both fails to stand up for small government and is represented by a group of folks whose organizational principle contradicts the fundamentals of that idea.

Here, of course, is where the Sarah Palins and Bobby Jindals of the conservative movement come in. They are the ones who will rescue the GOP - not Colin Powell, or even (much as I love him) Rush Limbaugh, for that matter. These new faces are the ones who are successfully putting conservative principles into action, instead of just squabbling about them.

It's Tim Pawlenty using a unique political maneuver to not only prevent the Minnesota state legislature from raising taxes, but also get the spending cuts he needs to balance his state's budget. It's Sarah Palin significantly reducing Alaska's operating budget in each of her first 3 years in office. Or Bobby Jindal working for ethics reform in Louisiana, of all places.

That is how the Republican Party returns to power: by looking to its young faces and returning to its bedrock principles.

Of course, if you're not in the Good ol' Boys club, you probably didn't need me to tell you that, anyways.

For Memorial Day

As has become somewhat of a tradition around here, in honor of Memorial Day I'll offer up one of my favorites, John McCrae's In Flanders Field:

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Thank you, Vets. And may God Bless those serving today.

Choosing For God

It's not often we take the time to deal with abortion here (mainly because it's not one of our big issues, but also because, in America today, being pro-life, apparently, means that you must hate condoms, birth-control, and women, and will be ready to breath Baptist Hellfire upon those who disagree; and, frankly, I just tire of dealing with that stupidity), but today will be an important exception, given this news that recently came out of the socialist paradise Sweden.

For the record, we don't support abstinence-only stuff, but rather, the comprehensive approach, while also being of the opinion that, really, it's not the government's job to teach kids that kind of stuff anyways. Furthermore, sparing you our usual discussion of how freedom is intricately linked with the responsibility to take the consequences of the choices you make with said freedom, we'll also simply note that choosing to have sex means you have to accept the consequences of sex, up to and including pregnancy. Basically, too often, abortion becomes a bailout for people who are too stupid to either control their urges or figure out how to use a condom properly; and, well, you know how we feel about bailouts....

(Before you get the impression that we're some kind of asshole robot, with no ability to perceive the true complexities of life, please note that we do believe in exceptions for rape and when the mother's life is in danger.)

Anyways, back to the Swedes. Ah, yes, those wonderful Swedes and their wonderful socialist government. Only, now, that government has gone so far as to give its citizens the genuine opportunity to play God. You see, since abortion is legal in Sweden for the first 18-weeks of the woman's pregnancy (Somewhere in the '2nd Trimester' in American legal lingo), the Swedish Courts have now ruled that women can now 'choose' to abort or not based solely on the gender of the child. Meaning that gender-based abortion, or the ability to choose the sex of the child you raise, is not only available, but has the full legal backing of Swedish Courts.

Too bad all of the Kings and Queens of yore didn't have this option, because then they wouldn't have had to bother raising all those damned daughters, they could have just killed everything until they got that coveted 1st-born son!

But hey, why should we worry? Afterall, those Europeans have all but forgotten about God - they've moved beyond that stupid idea - so why not start to take over his job?

On a more serious note, the idea that one could select the gender of one's child (for that's what they've, essentially, been given the power to do) does reek of the 'playing God' dilemma that we seem to, increasingly, run into these days. Moreover, the simple fact of the matter is that allowing people to gender-select their children is a terrible idea. Don't believe me? Just ask the Chinese, who, using a combination of abortion, infanticide, and forced sterilization, have ridden their 'one-child' policy, and the historical preference for male offspring, to a massive gender imbalance. In other words, they've been using gender-based abortion, and it got them 30 million excess dudes.

Now, maybe Sweden, progressive nation that it is, won't, as a result of this ruling, have a massive (and dangerous) gender imbalance in 20 years - but that's not the point. The point is that bad, unexpected, and unintended things happen when governments and citizens try to play the role of God and manufacture the kind of children that they want. Obviously, abortion in the United States has not gotten to such a place, yet. Nevertheless, examples like China and now Sweden are exactly why we should be trying our best to limit abortion and tighten the legal restrictions around it. That's because, simply put, when the 'choices' you get to make should really be God's, well, that's just an awfully slippery slope.