Venting on Human Events
Regularly I get e-mail updates from the Human Events website. Generally it's for columns I like to read by writers with a number of disparate styles - Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan, Chuck Norris, Ted Nugent, and the Evans-Novak Report are among my favorites, even if I don't always agree with them. It's the latter which prompted the comments I'm going to revisit here.
I caught it at a time when I could have a front-page comment and steer an argument. So I wrote the following, based on quotes within the story:
"Republicans are comfortably settling into a minority position."
Well, that's problem #1 in a nutshell. And people wonder why conservatives are in a revolt?
"Indeed, some Republicans are quietly hoping Coleman will give up the fight."
When stealing an election becomes an acceptable standard, it's not just the Republican Party that's in trouble, but the Republic itself.
Both these comments take the GOP to task for the very complacent attitude that I sense. Certainly there is an argument which can be made for giving the new Congress and President a chance, but I don't really recall that same courtesy given to the last President - and he bent over backwards and forwards to exhibit his willingness to work with the other side. Remember the "new tone"?
After reading more of the reaction, I could tell that there was a group out there who agreed with what I had to say, but they needed to be channeled in the proper direction. I took it as a little bit of a challenge:
Let me add to my previous comment (#4 above). The problem with many GOP politicians is that they're afraid of losing what little they have, which to them is their seat in Congress or in the state legislature.
Well, I know in some states that's important because they're in the majority but sitting here in Maryland we have NOTHING to lose! 104 out of 141 in our House of Delegates are D's and 33 of 47 in the Maryland Senate. (At least we show sanity here on the Eastern Shore - 6 of 9 R's in the House and all 3 Senators. As you can tell though we're not much of the state in terms of population.)
At the Federal level, it's not quite so bad but the Democrats still run roughshod over us - look at the Omnibus Land Bill they just passed (on a Sunday).
So in 2010 I have to ask, exactly what do we have to lose by dropping the pale pastels of the GWB "compassionate conservatism", telling the so-called conservative media elitists inside the Beltway to shut their collective pieholes, and running on my-way-or-the-highway principles which embrace a smaller, more limited government, a strong national defense, border security, reform of the court system to put it back in its Constitutional place, educational choice, and energy independence through using our own supplies of oil, coal, and natural gas - environmentalist wackos be damned!
Someone back there brought up my name in praise of some of what I said earlier. But for everyone who reads this, I'm also tasking you with teaching those who surround you in your daily lives about exactly WHY the principles of limited government are the far better alternative than Obamanomics ever could hope to be. (This does take some study and knowledge of how conservatism works; Human Events is a good place to start and should be commended for having a fine website.)
And while I couldn't ever be a politician in the normal sense, I fight for my beliefs using the talents I have - some people consider me a fairly decent writer so I sharpen those skills as often as I can. That's why I took the time to comment today.
Those regular readers of mine just know I'm a "my-way-or-the-highway" kind of guy when it comes to political beliefs. I leave the compromise to my elected representatives, and hope by God they make the other guys blink.
While I've held a reasonably conservative set of core beliefs for most of my adult life, the vocal part truly started about four years ago when I found myself frustrated about not being able to share my beliefs and has turned into a nice little outlet that hopefully more people will find out about and tune into. I decided to quit compromising, because right is right and the more I see in my life, the more I'm convinced that things aren't being set straight and by the time my grandchildren come of age they won't recognize the Republic.
Some may call that paranoia, I call it an understanding of history. And that's why Republicans being Democrat-lite and growing government just a little bit more slowly isn't too acceptable to me. Sometimes I do have to stomach it because of decisions made by others, but I'm not going to be afraid to condemn when they're wrong either. With apologies to Ronald Reagan (not to mention state party Chair Jim Pelura and his Wicomico County counterpart John Bartkovich), I don't subscribe to the Eleventh Commandment.
There's also those out there who may say I'm not a team player, so be it. I'm not here to appease. I'm here to educate on the benefits of limited government and liberty. Perhaps the class size is smaller than I'd like, but unlike the teachers' unions I'm not opposed to making it a whole lot larger.