The Right Scoop
I like Mark Levin. Here's why. He's Jewish yet a Conservative which is an unusual mix. Perhaps he can start a Jewish revolution against the persistent love of Democrats? I hope so. I believe Obama won at least 90% of the Jewish vote in '12 which, in light of his throwing Israel under a bus, astounds me. It's as if when Jewish kids are born, they get anti-Republican vaccinations. And so I congratulate Mr. Levin for his total lack of having been brainwashed into "love thy Democrat" and wish him good luck, good health and hope he becomes a permanent fixture at WABC's microphone. I also hope Benjamin Netanyahu is listening from Israel to Mark because if so, he'll learn a lot about Pres. Obama's duplicity.
HA has continually creeped left since MM got rid of it. Morrissey lets lib loons run wild on the site, destroying threads with shopworn talking points and absolute nonsense...yet quickly boots any true conservative who takes him to task.
What was once a great site has become Moderates-R-Us.
This surprises me exactly zero.
This is once again more moral relativism on the part of Morrisey. I am far from a 'Randian' purist and yet I want those programs dismantled. Philosophically speaking I want them dismantled because they undermine both the giver and the receiver from personal responsibility. Entitlements undermine society and humanity. I want them dismantled as well because they are insolvent and give a free pass and your earnings by thieving politicians. Ironically Morrisey doesn't seem to think that taking money from people and promising them something in return and going bankrupt in the process as immoral. Forcing dependence and not delivering is as about as immoral as it gets. It's not as if people were ever given a choice in the matter of entitlements. You don't get to opt in or out.
So far the only solution Republicans have for those entitlements is 'means testing' which is more immorality because it is theft. It isn't even implementable since most of the wealth in this country is accumulated through life. Most people don't start out rich so how are you going to 'means' test on that basis.
I think Scoop has it right in his commentary. We need to stop moderating our positions and start communicating our positions and do it with accuracy. Trouble is people like Morrisey make that impossible due to mixed messages. They continually muddy the waters.
We did not lose the last election being too far right. Romney’s handlers refused to fight Obama. While all the RINOs were screaming “It must be Mitt he can win, he can win.” I was saying on every editorial page I could post to, that if Romney didn’t fight Obama, attacking him as hard as he did Cain, or Bachman or Newt, then he would lose and he did. Romney didn’t fight Obama, Romney lost not Conservatism. I also said the Republicans would wander endlessly in the wilderness if they did not fight and it appears they will.
Romney did not lose because he was a conservative, the reverse is true. Romney is and was too milk toast! You cannot be a nice guy when you are taking on a bully you have to get down in the dirt with them. Conservative ideas win, whenever they are applied. The Blue Bloods had best get a hold of themselves and embrace the TEA PARTY and other conservative groups before it’s too late or they will never be in charge of the money and power again. Romney needs to demand his money back, because since Bob Dole there has never been a candidate so miss handled by the political hacks that call themselves advisors. Ha.
The only thing that makes these programs "popular" is folks believe they will get more back than they put in. If tax rates reflected the true cost of these gigantic entitlement programs, we would become a nation of Libertarians overnight. Hell, there are still those who believe real assets have been set aside for them in some account somewhere.
We need to educate the public, not abandon our principals. Why sign on to big government right before the entire house of cards is ready to fall? I would rather wait and be ready to offer solutions in the aftermath of the financial Armageddon that is coming.
We should use the upcoming political cycles as a platform to teach, knowing we might lose the actual elections. As the fiscal crisis worsens, people will see the truth in our message. Enough of this capitulation from the pundits.
Good thought - "folks believe they will get more back than they put in" - maybe instead of trying to convince folks of right & wrong, or explaining fiscal policies, etc., just start a campaign to convince everyone they are puttuing in more than they will get back. Once that lightbulb comes on, things will happen!!
We need to reform entitlement programs. The article says they can't be completely dismantled in today's political environment. That's right. No one is calling for dismantling it--even if that might be a good idea. Ryan called for reforming it. There's no disagreement here between anyone. Seems Morrissey created a straw man--that Republicans want to dismantle Medicare--the same thing that liberals always say about Republicans--so the only disagreement is between Morrissey and what he thinks Republicans want to do based on hearing Obama describe the Republican plan.
"Reform" is Progressive term used to extract even more taxpayer money to replace a government program that they intentionally collapsed and pilfered in the first place.
If we do not start dismantling these programs they will collapse. Good borrowed money, after bad borrowed money.
Medicaid is an entitlement Medicare is not. We all pay into Medicare - an exorbitant amount actually. Medicare benefits are worthless without buying a supplement. Everyone who has paid into medicare for 50 years has paid out 100x what the insurance premium value is worth. That cannot be fixed. The government should not be in the healthcare payer business - period.
I always thought, practical conservatism mean's things like school vouchers and lower taxes. I gauss it got a new meaning today - one that I will want to stay away form, at least until we grab the true meaning back.
If you're not prepared to advocate the abolition of all entitlements and all welfare, then what use are you to the cause of liberty? How can you stand there and on the one hand say "I advocate capitalism, a free market and individual rights" and then on the other hand say "I want to keep entitlements and welfare, but just reform them and make them better targeted" - Way to contradict yourself! Nobody's going to take you seriously. They're just going to run to the guy who isn't contradicting himself and who isn't a hypocrite, but who is unfortunately an avowed statist.
If there are ANY Republicans and Conservatives out there who truly want to defend liberty, who aren't willing to compromise with evil (ie. the Left), who are willing to stand on principle even at the expense of being unpopular, and who put the unalienable individual rights above all things... then you must fight the Ed Morrisseys of the world. You have to stand up and tell them "You're not only wrong, but you're complicit in promoting statism!" and then DEMAND that they either change their pro-statist stance, or sod off to the Left.
In the intellectual battle between capitalism and statism, there is no 50/50, there is no middle of the road, there is no compromise; it's either/or; it's win or lose; it's do or die.
Don't let anyone tell you any different.
As one of those "Randians" (even though the proper term is "Objectivist"), this particular article just proves what I've been saying about Republicans and Conservatives all along, which is that they're inconsistent defenders of liberty, all too often advocating statism as a matter of expediency, rather than opposing it on principle. Sure, entitlements are "popular", but that doesn't justify continuing them. Once upon a time slavery was "popular", but that didn't justify its continuation. No matter how "popular" a statist policy is, nothing ever justifies its existence nor continuation. Slavery had to end because it was immoral, and it was immoral because it was a violation of the unalienable individual rights. The same goes for entitlements. All violations of the unalienable individual rights should end, and if you don't advocate their end because you think it's more "expedient" to continue them, then you know what that makes you? - Complicit.
One of the major reasons why Republicans and Conservatives are so weak and so complicit in statism, is because of what Ed Morrissey indicated in his article:
"The same is true of programs such as food stamps and other programs that lift the truly needy, but which need to be better targeted so that those who can lift themselves will have to do so"
Notice that it's not "charity is not a legitimate role of the government" (as the founders thought), but that entitlements and welfare "need to be better targeted", as if statism "better targeted" somehow transmutes it into being compatible with capitalism, the free market and individual rights. As if all you need is for all statism to be run by Republicans and Conservatives, and somehow it will become good.
I think it's fair to say that you Republicans and Conservatives don't understand anything about being principled. I think you're all a bunch of political opportunists with no consistency except in your consistent inconsistency in defending liberty.
It deeply shames me to have to work with you people. You have no backbone. You have no principles. You put being pragmatic ahead of being rights-respecting, ahead of being moral, ahead of being principled, ahead of the ideas (capitalism, the free market, and individual rights) which you claim to represent.
Being pragmatic (as Ed Morrissey advocates) may benefit you in the short term, but only at the expense of long term harm to yourself. In the long term you will lose the debate over the proper role of government, and your ideas will lose all credibility because you never consistently defended them.
Ed is no conservative. He just likes to say he is.
And it's a pity. You don't say you're a Conservative. I don't say I'm a Conservative. We aren't trying to take over conservatism. Yet we both seem to know more about Conservatism than Ed Morrisey, John McCain, Chris Christie, and a host of folks who claim to be conservative.
I don't 'get these people. Conservatives don't yell at me to shut up, or treat me like a leftist infiltrator for not being conservative. But if I sounded like ol' "Ed" there, you can bet they'd be all over me for being a traitor, and rightfully so.
If Ed Morrissey isn't a Conservative, then who is and by what standard? There is no objective standard as far as I can discern. Conservatism just seems to be that "big tent" they go on about, inclusive of statists and people sympathetic with statism; an "anything goes" movement.
As an Objectivist, I just can't empathize with any of that. When I meet other Objectivists, I don't ever worry that they'll be statists or sympathetic to statism. There's a consistency that you just don't find amongst Conservatives, or even Libertarians for that matter. I know a lot of Libertarians who are all like "Yeah man, I'm a Libertarian because I want drugs legalized", but then when I question them about the deeper philosophical stuff, they come out with statist crap and I'm like "You do realize that what you said is marxist/socialist, right?"
Well that's an optimistic outlook. Good to see it.
We clearly need our own Long March Through The Institutions.
You don't need to convince everyone. You just need to convince/dominate the intellectuals out there, because they'll go on to spread the word, and eventually it'll become the dominant thought amongst average folk. This is how the Left did it. It's a kind of "trickle down philosophy" from the intellectuals all the way down to the average Joe.
Who are most of the intellectuals today? They're mostly Liberals who teach and write Liberal thought, which regular folk are then either taught or read themselves, thus becoming Liberals and part-Liberal in the process; eventually Liberalism dominates the entire culture, and then spreads around the world.
There's something which Ayn Rand called "philosophy for Hank Rearden", which refers to a grasp of philosophy at a lower level of detail, but which is appropriate for people whose career focus is not directly philosophical. That's the kind of understanding that I think the average Joe out there could/would have, so long as the intellectuals provided the higher (along with lower) level of detail for those seeking it.
I know first hand that regular folk can grasp the fundamental principles of Objectivism, because I myself am not that intelligent (Trust me on that), but even I can grasp those principles, and even grasp some of the more complex topics like Epistemology. If you knew what I do for a living and how much I earn, you'd slap me straight into the average joe / regular folk category.
I guess I was imprecise. By "principles...do not work," I mean that too many people have made it to adulthood without any training in rigorous thinking.
Take for example Ayn Rand's irascible preference for the word "selfishness," in describing aspects of liberty. I can't tell you how many times I've just given up on explaining that to the average person. They get the notion that selfishness always and forever has only one connotation, and therefore cannot possibly be useful in any decent way of thinking. (And of course, "rational self interest" is too much of a dry mouthful for a novelist to use constantly in a great story.)
For too many people, clarity of thought is only attainable as some form of mystical ...emptiness, not the ability to rationally assign weighting to values and process them logically. How else to explain the seductive pull of totalitarianism?
Objectivism works for the philosophers. The non-philosophers (including 99% of the politicians out there) prefer "rhetoric."
That's all I meant.
And I agree with all of your points, here.
Good post, but I don't know what you mean about hard edges of Objectivism. There are some things that are tough for folks to swallow because of the dominance of bad ideas in human culture, but I'm not aware of any particular policies that "do not work". The Objectivist politics is Capitalism. Is it not the case that to say some aspect of Objectivism "does not work", is also to say that Capitalism itself "does not work"? I'm kind of confused here.
Whenever you talk about liberty, I think the objective standard always has to be the unalienable individual rights of Man. A lot of people "fight for liberty", whilst ignoring or simply not understanding those rights. It seems that the further I get from Objectivism, the less and less I hear about the unalienable individual rights... until you get to the Democrats who almost never speak of them, except to corrupt/sabotage them with their own twisted anti-concepts of "workers rights", "a right to goods/services that others must produce/provide", etc.
I totally agree.
Objectivists are fortunate to have, in the person of the author of the canonical form of Objectivism, a person who rigorously understood the notion of expressing a complete philosophy, and not merely dabble in some singular aspects. So consistency is easier for them. She did all the framework building, and made sure people understood the answers to arguments against it. (For example, you don't get much discussion of aesthetics or epistemology in most political movements.)
Moving up the ladder of confusion to libertarianism, you've got three or four main, modern writers who created the movement based on the Eighteenth century concept of Liberty. But owing to disagreement between those writers, a few of their followers have been fighting over libertarianism like two dogs gnawing the same bone. So the infighting will continue, alas (while the neo-libertarians try to co-opt the movement). Despite the infighting, however, basic Libertarianism is still simpler, and therefore better delineated than most other political philosophies.
On the next rung up, Conservatives have less problems regarding infighting over the earlier writers, seeming to more or less agree that Russell Kirk and Edmund Burke are the main guys there. But the inclusion of the religious factions inside conservatism (which is fine) has led to the notion of conservatism being of three separate, overlapping realms of ideas stacked atop Lockean notions of Liberty: the old fiscal + religious + defense thing. This leads to an artificial widening of the tent along ideological lines rather than philosophical. A sure indicator of trouble brewing, if you ask me.
When someone pulls in a direction of ideology rather than philosophy (ie, pragmatism vs. principles), then they have left philosophy behind for reasons repugnant to both Objectivists and Libertarians, and I would say, the more philosophically-educated Conservatives. This is what Ed Morrisey is doing. This is what the amnesty-for-illegal-alien crowd is doing, and the gay-marriage-is-fine folks, too. (I trust you to get that I'm referring to Conservatism, and not making a case for or against those things here).
Bottom line is they are elevating pragmatism (and we know what Ayn Rand thought of pragmatists).
(I'm at a station in life where I realize the hard edges of Objectivism simply do not work for the masses. It's paradoxical to me that it should be so, but there you are. So I tend to think of Objectivism more as a form of mental discipline, or maybe a framework against which one can gauge new ideas. Thus, I tend to identify as a Jeffersonian Liberal. Basically a proto-conservative, who would rather err on the side of liberty in all things, but recognizes that in application, things get fuzzy, because people—even brilliant, gifted philosophers—are fuzzy-minded.)
Entitlement programs are popular because they keep people dependent. As with all entitlement programs they are not sustainable, social security and medicare are going bankrupt. Practical conservationism is just another word for compromise.
They use the word "practical" to imply their shift towards practical conservative marxism.
It's practically imbecilic.
You said it best Scoop. How about just Conservatism. I am sick of all this hand wringing and redesigning, rewording, reformatting something as simple as Conservatism.
UG!
I can't stand that bald headed, gay loving social liberal, hence I don't frequent that site, anymore. When Michelle Malkin left, leaving the site to those two leftist turds, it instantly went to crap. Morrisey is no more a Conservative, than the homosexual singer, of the same name. Hell, Allahpundit revels in calling himself an atheist, "Chamberlainesque RINO". I'll read Malkin, but I'm done with her old site. I can gey the same crap from Democratic Underground.
I can't stand that bald headed, gay loving social liberal, hence I don't frequent that site, anymore. When Michelle Malkin left, leaving the site to those two leftist turds, it instantly went to crap. Morrisey is no more a Conservative, than the homosexual singer, of the same name. Hell, Allahpundit revels in calling himself an atheist, "Chamberlainesque RINO". I'll read Malkin, but I'm done with her old site. I can gey the same crap from Democratic Underground.
You forgot to put the prefix in there junior. Here you go, Impractical Conservatism. Don't forget the IM.
How about an alternative choice? Embrace Conservatism and tell the truth. Why are you always fighting that? You're a bunch of timid tit-mice. You fought Reagan too. For once, realize how badly you suck.
Go and suck no more.
I couldn't make it past Morrissey's first paragraph. Federal Charity programs don't need to be dismantled. They need to be transitioned to the sovereign states so that they are no longer used as bargaining chips in presidential elections and so that states will bear the unemployment burden of their own anti-capitalist, anti-prosperity tax policies and so that the Federal government is no longer involved in immoral and unconstitutional property confiscation and bribery under the guise of charity.
Actually, they do need to be wiped out, and abolished. They're un-Constitutional, and only the States and the People have the authority do do them. Transitions can't work, because states are different. Too different. California's, or New York's, welfate programs would be very different from Texas' or Oklahoma's.
Yep. You simply cannot "fix" something so massively wrongheaded and clusterfarked. Defund them all (slowly enough to let the bubble deflate without causing a crisis). Tell the states to let the private concerns take over.
And that's why those things not specifically designated to the Federal Gov. are left to the States. One size never really ever does fit all. Our Founders were indeed very wise men. However, today and for many decades now, the Federal Gov. confiscates the States wealth and then uses it to bribe and entice the States to do whatever the Federal Gov. demands. Easy examples: Withholding highway funding to enforce 55mph under Carter. Same for seat belt rules. Think of the big things like Medicaid expansion and ObumaNocare exchanges and you end up where we presently find ourselves.
The various sovereign states are absolutely different. Transition, by definition, would give each state control of its own programs to modify as it sees fit.
Bravo, Scoop!
Hot Gas just isn't the same since the Boss left. It should be renamed Moderates-R-Us.
Why not just "practical"??
I don't think people on the dole give a crap about "free market capitalism" if they even know what it means. Does Jerry Springer talk about it?
Welfare types do not care about making the country grow, or economic prosperity (and it doesn't matter if we think they should care).
I would talk to the poor in terms of having twice as much money as they currently get in welfare (and of course, welfare payments should also decline by some small amount each month). It seems like appealing to a specific, believable personal income would be practical... and not philosophical/ greater good/ conservatism, etc. We need to go after whatever percentage of the poor that also have a bit of ambition.
Poor people do not see themselves as producers, so why talk about it? Poor people do not think in terms of "prosperity." When I read articles like this (and Scoop's response), and speeches by (Romney) politicians, it floors me that everyone seems to talk above people. We can articulate truth very intelligently, but it never goes in one ear. It sounds like "white, rich, Republican" speak, but does not convince one single poor guy that there could be more money in working for their money.
Here's the thing about entitlements as we know it right now, they are "unsustainable", now that's a scary word we should be worried about not some stupid sequester.
How about getting back to the time when working class voters improved their lives by voting for Conservatives. That means adjectives not needed and stop all of the Conservatives must compromise on funding the Democrats' stupid policies. That's exactly how we've gotten to this dreadful point in our history.
I'm sorry but, there no reason to qualify or preface the term "conservatism." Just like the presidency of GWB, where he (or those around him) coined compassionate conservatism.
Conservatism, by its nature includes compassion and practicality.
I read the comments on HA regarding this post, what is said about social conservatives is straight out of the Leftist playbook. No wonder our side is in disarray.
Medicare,social security,and medicaid are too popular for repeal.But if they collapse we won't need to worry about repealing them will we?
True. They are slated to go bankrupt ... so, I don't understand Morrissey's point of "making them sustainable."
However, from a PR perspective, I guess candidates running for office have to espouse for their survival. If that's what Morrissey is talking about, then I understand.
The problem is,that even when somebody mentions reforming these programs,the way Paul Ryan did,then the left sends out the attack dogs and makes it appear that the repubs are trying to end them.Nobody is ever going to address the problem because of that fact,so they are virtually guaranteed to collapse.
So, as with many issues, it puts conservatives in a no-win situation. If you espouse the "Ryan method" then you are vilified as "taking away granny's healthcare." OTOH, if you espouse ending gov't involvement in social programs, you are also vilified as taking granny's healthcare AND a heartless cold person who doesn't care.
Same old song and dance. The Leftists have been successful at moving the goal posts, so much that our side barely bothered to challenge those goal posts. Now, we are stuck with the situation you just described.
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