The Aspen Institute: David Brooks- On Conservative and Liberal Values

Source: The Aspen Institute– Columnist David Brooks

Source: The New Democrat

If you just arrived on Planet Earth yesterday and were an adult and two of the first things you observed were supposed to be what it means to be a Conservative and Liberal and what conservatism and liberalism are supposed to be, you would probably think Conservatives are simply bigots who hate anyone who isn’t of European especially Anglo-Saxon background, who isn’t a Christian especially a Protestant and who isn’t male. That conservatism is simply an authoritarian bigoted political philosophy that is about conserving everything in society for Europeans especially English-Europeans in America and especially Protestant males.

And that Liberals are simply statists. In some cases democratic, but in many other cases communist who believe European-Americans are all bigots, unless they come from the Northeast or West Coast and were educated there as well. Who hate European-Americans again unless they come from one of the coasts and were raised there. The Northeast and West Coast, that is and believe the role of government is to take care of non-Europeans in America and to punish Europeans for being successful.

That Liberals are supposed to be people who believe that anyone who doesn’t look at the world as they do are basically idiots who need to be babysat by government. That freedom is dangerous and it only gives people the freedom to make mistakes. That free speech is only the freedom to offend non-Europeans. That capitalism and property rights are selfish. That even education and self-inprovent are dangerous things, because it means that people would be able to obtain the power and freedom to live independently and be able to think and act for themselves.

Now, I just gave you a pretty good idea about what conservatism and liberalism aren’t. What it doesn’t mean to a Conservative and what it doesn’t mean to be a Liberal. The anti-conservative views when it comes to conservatism and the illiberal views when it comes to liberalism. Now, how about what it actually means to be a Conservative and what conservatism actually is and what it means to be a Liberal and what liberalism actually is.

I agree with David Brooks about one thing which seems to be a common theme when I hear him speak, at least about public policy and philosophy. That conservatism is about conserving tradition and a certain way of life in America. Which is different from saying that the role of government is force a way of life on the rest of the country and force everybody to basically live as straight fundamentalist Protestant Evangelicals. Which is what Christian-Conservatives who today are basically Christian-Nationalists believe, that the problem with the America is personal freedom and individualism and that Americans shouldn’t have the freedom to live their own lives and have their own lifestyles.

My personal view of what it means to be a Conservative in the political sense, comes from Mr. Conservative Senator the late Barry Goldwater. Who said that he wanted big government out of our wallets, bedrooms, boardrooms, and classrooms. He wanted big government out of our personal and economic affairs. He believed in limited government and federalism and that the role of government was to protect Americans from predators both foreign and domestic, but not try to protect Americans from themselves and punish Americans for their own personal decisions. And that a big role of government was to conserve the U.S. Constitutional and our constitutional rights. Not conserve some fundamentalist Protestant Christian way of life and to force everybody to live under the same religious and cultural values.

For me as a Liberal, defining Liberal and liberalism is very easy for me. A Liberal is someone who believes in liberal democracy what some people might call classical liberalism, but what I just call liberalism and liberal democracy. That government should be limited and there to defend our constitutional rights and civil liberties, including our property rights. That everyone in America is the same at least in the sense that no one is better simply because of their race, ethnicity, or gender and that everyone has the same civil rights and are all entitled to the same equal and constitutional rights. Liberals believe in limited government, the U.S. Constitution, civil liberties, individual rights. A safety net for people who truly need it, but not having a government big enough to manage people’s lives and to force everyone to live equally from an economic standpoint. Socialists believe in forcing equality on everyone. Liberals believes in quality opportunity for everyone, which is different.

Now, if you just watch Fox News and MSNBC, you might think Conservatives are from Mars and Liberals are from Saturn. Two completely different planets with very little if anything in common. Thousands if not millions of miles way ideologically. But if you look at the American political spectrum Conservatives are on the center-right and Liberals are on the center-left. Ideologically they’re political opponents ( not enemies ) but have the most in common ideologically of any two political factions on the American political spectrum. With the Socialists ( both democratic and communist ) and the Christian-Nationalists, having the least in common. Conservatives and Liberals both believe in the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, our federal form of limited government. But differ when it comes to government’s role in the economy and national security. But don’t live in two on two different planets ideologically. As much as Fox News and MSNBC may disagree with this.

The Aspen Institute: David Brooks- On Conservative and Liberal Values

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Crooks and Liars: Opinion: Mike Lux: Two Kinds of Meanness: The Modern Conservative Movement

Crooks and Liars: Opinion: Mike Lux: Two Kinds of Meanness: The Modern Conservative Movement

It must be snowing in San Diego right now, because I actually agree with Mike Lux on something. But he’s right about at least a couple of things about the modern Republican Party, as I would put it. Can you imagine what Barry Goldwater would’ve said had he heard Vice President Dick Cheney back in 2003, saying that deficits don’t matter? The Republican Party, still has that strong conservative libertarian wing, that I and Mike Lux I guess both respect. I for sure anyway, that is now led by Senator Rand Paul and a few others in and out of Congress.

But in Mr. Conservative Barry Goldwater’s day, the Neoconservatives and Religious-Right, were still a growing force. But the Goldwater-Reagan Republicans and their supporters still ran the party. We’ll see what 2016 looks like and how big a movement the Conservative Libertarians led by Senator Paul are. But since 1988 or so, a Republican couldn’t win the presidential nomination without having the Christian-Conservatives and Neoconservatives behind him. They also couldn’t win the presidential election without these two groups as well.

Back in the day, the Religious-Right and Neoconservatives, the Pat Robertson’s and Rick Santorum’s of the world, were seen as extremists. As dangerous to the Republican Party. Now, the Santorum’s and Mike Huckabee’s of the world are seen as major presidential contenders. But, that could change in 2016 depending on how big a movement the Paul Conservative Libertarians have become. And has the GOP returned to some form of sanity and really gotten back to their conservative libertarian routes. The Patriot Act debate in Congress the last few weeks, suggests that the GOP might be ready to get back to where they were. And move away from their big government Republicanism.

Back in the day, the GOP was the anti-big government party. Not the, “we don’t like your big government when it comes to economic policy. So we’re going to replace your big government with our big government. And stick it in the homes of every American. And show them by force what it means to be a real American.” Back in the day, deficits and debt not only did matter, but they mattered regardless if the President was a Democrat, or Republican and who was in control of Congress. Back in the day, Republicans weren’t in favor of invading countries, simply because they didn’t like the dictator who was in charge of the country. The GOP, up until the last few years, have taken the opposite positions on all of these issues.

I don’t agree with Conservative Libertarians on everything, obviously. Otherwise I would be a Conservative Libertarian, instead of a Liberal myself. But I can work and talk to Conservative Libertarians, because we tend to have similar principles. That we both believe individual freedom, both personal and economic. That we need an effective, but limited government doing for the people what we can’t do for ourselves. And then the debates and discussions become about what exactly government should be doing. How they should regulate and what services they should perform. Instead of should people have the freedom to do this or that for themselves.

American politics would be a lot more fun and interesting today for me as a Liberal Democrat, if the Republican Party didn’t have their big government neoconservative faction. And their anti-government Libertarian faction, that has almost no role for government. Which is more extreme than the Conservative Libertarians, who aren’t anti-government so much as they’re anti-big government, which is different. And whatever you think of Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, they’re not anti-government, or even in favor of big government into people’s personal lives, for the most part. Certainly for Senator Paul, on most if not all issues. And maybe we’ll see the GOP in 2016, move away from both their anti-government and big government trends and become a responsible political party again.

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CNN: U.S. Senator Rand Paul- The Right to be Left Alone is The Most Precious

Source: This piece was originally posted at The New Democrat Plus

First of all, the Patriot Act is going to expire at midnight in less than two hours from the time this piece is posted, because of Senate Leader Mitch McConnell and his Neoconservatives in his caucus. They could’ve spent the last two weeks on either the USA Freedom Act. That was passed by the House with 388 votes. A huge bipartisan majority of Conservative Republicans and Liberal Democrats in the House.

Or, McConnell could’ve brought the version of the Patriot Act that he expires to the Senate floor. Opened it up to amendments from both sides. Including from Senator Rand Paul and Senator Ron Wyden and several other civil liberty minded Senators from both parties. Mike Lee, Pat Leahy, Jon Tester, Ron Johnson, Mark Heinrich and many others. What the Leader did instead, was to bring the Patriot Act up, knowing that he didn’t have sixty votes for it. And when that became reality, he decided to bring up an extension of the Patriot Act. To buy more time for the Senate to finally pass the bill. Translation, so he could lean on his own members to vote for a long-term bill. To keep the Patriot Act in place indefinitely.

McConnell, knows that if he opens up this debate to amendments, several of them will pass with bipartisan support. Civil liberties, is now a bipartisan issue in Congress. As we saw with the passage of the USA Freedom Act in the House and now with Senate Democrats and Republicans refusing to vote on the old Patriot Act. Because it doesn’t have those civil liberty protections when it comes to warrants. Under the Patriot Act, the government doesn’t need warrants to search people they see as suspicious. They don’t even need evidence, or at least share that evidence with a third-party. Senator Paul, Conservative Libertarian Republican and Senate Wyden, Liberal Democrat, both want the government to have to get warrants before they can search suspects. Which is really what the Fourth Amendment is all about. The protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.

The USA Freedom Act, certainly not perfect, but certainly an improvement over the original Patriot Act. And the Senate, could’ve spent the past two weeks debating the bill and voting on amendments and improving it. So the U.S. Government could protect both our liberty and our security. So the innocent are protected from unreasonable searches and seizures. And government could investigate and prosecute real criminals and terrorists. Under the U.S. Constitution for one and the USA Freedom Act. But no! Thats not good enough for Leader Mitch McConnell. Give him a two-week extension of the old Patriot Act, that the House Republican Leadership has already said they won’t pass. Or give him the original Patriot Act without the new civil liberties protections. Which won’t pass the House, or Senate either.

CNN: U.S. Senator Rand Paul- The Right To Be Left Alone is The Most Precious

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National Post: Opinion: F.H. Buckley: Canadian Conservatives Shouldn’t Look South For Right-Wing Inspiration

THE NATIONAL POST: OPINION: F.H. BUCKLEY: CANADIAN CONSERVATIVES SHOULD STOP LOOKING TO THE UNITED STATES FOR RIGHT-WING INSPIRATIONFULLCOMMENT.NATIONALPOST.COM

PM Stephen Harper & PM Benjamin Netanyahu

The only thing I agree with F.H. Buckley in his piece comparing Canadian Conservatives with American Conservatives is that “Canada shouldn’t look South for right-wing inspiration”. For obvious reasons I believe, but a big one being that a Canadian Conservative is probably to the left of a American Center-Left Liberal Democrat. Canadian Conservatives look more like FDR Progressives than Goldwater Conservatives.

To risk stating the obvious Canadian conservatism even looks different from American conservatism even in the classical conservative sense like Barry Goldwater or Bill Buckley, or today with Senator Rand Paul. So so-called religious conservatism or religious conservatives who look like theocrats to most of the rest of the world would never fly politically to a Canadian country that if anything is more secular than America and if anything believes in a bigger separation of church and state than Americans as a whole outside of our Bible Belt.

Canadian Conservatives to me at least represent the best form of a right-wing movement perhaps in the Western world. Because as much as Canada gets stereotyped as a big government socialist state it really isn’t. Their Federal Government and they do have a Federal system spends less of their country’s Gross Domestic Product than we do. And they tax business less than America does. And they do believe in fiscal responsibility and fiscal conservatism more than American so-called Conservatives. At least in the sense of not taxing and spending and running up big debts and deficits annually. And take a conservative fiscal look across their Federal budget including their defense budget more than American so-called Conservatives do.

There’s really nothing wrong with the Canadian right-wing at least as I see it as an American. They have true Conservatives up there who believe in good government. But part of good government is limited government since there is a limit to the good that government can do for people especially if people aren’t willing to do everything for themselves. And Canada should simply just focus on what works in Canada. As Americans hopefully will get back to what works in America.

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Pop User: ‘Howard Phillips Welcomes Ron Paul (1997)’

Source:Pop User– U.S. Representative Ron Paul (Libertarian, Texas) on the Howard Phillips Show, in 1997.

Source:The Daily Times

“Howard Phillips, founder of the Constitution Party, welcomes Ron Paul to the Conservative Roundtable. This is a classic edition from 1997. Paul talks about his run to reclaim his seat after imposing his own belief in Congressional term limits on himself, focusing on what kind of character voters are comfortable supporting. Ron Paul of course ran for president in 2008. He also discusses the 9th and 10th amendment, honest and sound money, public housing, runaway government deficit spending, inflation, the Federal Reserve – Fed, and how the public must demand real change.”

From Pop User

What I personally respect about Ron Paul is that the Ron Paul you see back in the late 1990s (in 1997) is the same Ron Paul today and fighting and believing in the same things, in what he views as a constitutional government and that the Federal Government is grown way too big and it must be limited back to where it was pre-New Deal of the 1930s and so-forth. And that we need more individual freedom both economic and personal and eliminate prohibition all together.

What I like about Ron Paul as a Liberal myself (and not a Libertarian, in Ron Paul’s case) is the whole idea of individual freedom both economic and personal as well, as well as personal responsibility. But even though I believe the Federal Government is too big and more power needs to be sent down to the states and people themselves, we disagree about how much smaller the Federal Government should be.

But where Ron Paul was sixteen years ago is the Ron Paul that we see today and is one politician that you can count on. At least to the extent that you know what he believes and that he won’t change his politics when the politics change.

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Salon: Steve Kornacki: ‘Is Rand Paul The Next Robert Taft?’

Source:Washington Monthly– U.S. Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky)

Source:The Daily Times

“When Rand Paul was announced as the winner of the Republican presidential straw poll at CPAC over the weekend, there was no chorus of boos from the assembled conservatives, a far cry from the response when his father won the same event a few years ago. Unlike Ron Paul, whose political coalition existed as much outside the Republican Party as in it and whose numerous straw poll victories were the product of organized event-crashing that irritated party regulars, Rand has dedicated himself to becoming a force within the GOP — and CPAC ’13 represents the latest evidence that he’s succeeding.”

From Salon

The mainstreaming of Rand Paul, interesting title for an article. I saw another article in the magazine The Week with the title: “Does the rising of Rand Paul mean and end to social conservatism?” Which are the two things to focus on as well as laying out what constitutional conservatism actually is and how that differs from religious conservatism and they may sound like the same thing but they are actually different.

If you look at Rand Paul’s political background whether you want to call it Conservative or Conservative-Libertarian or just flat Libertarian, he’s always been in the mainstream in America as far as someone who believes that big government shouldn’t interfere in our economic or personal lives. Meaning that government shouldn’t try to control us or run our lives or even try to protect us from ourselves. Not that it shouldn’t tax, but not tax us to the point where we lose the freedom to control our own destiny and not be dependent on the state for our economic well-being.

Conservative-Libertarians like Senator Paul, also believe that government shouldn’t interfere into our personal lives as well. And what we do in the privacy of our own homes, what we watch on TV, who we sleep with and marry as adults, how we spend our own money, as long as we aren’t hurting innocent people with what we are doing. There’s nothing radical about this and this view of what government shouldn’t be doing is a shared viewpoint on both the Right and Left in America which is why it’s mainstream.

Constitutional-Conservatives or Conservative-Libertarians, believe in conserving the U.S. Constitution and all the individual rights that all Americans get from it. As well as conserving our limited government and preventing government (especially the Federal Government) from getting too big. Wheres Christian-Conservatives or Christian-Nationalists, believe in covering their own culture and religious values. Even if that means using big government to try to enforce their values on everyone else. Which is very different from constitutional conservatism or conservative libertarianism and very different from Senator Rand Paul.

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Hoover Institution: Uncommon Knowledge With Peter Robinson- ‘Politics With Haley Barbour’

Source:Hoover Institution– Uncommon Knowledge With Peter Robinson.

“In 2003 Haley Barbour was elected governor of Mississippi, becoming only the second Republican governor since Reconstruction. In 2007 he won reelection to a second and final term. Since June of last year, Governor Barbour has served as chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

Will the GOP recapture the House once again this year? The Senate? How many of the 37 gubernatorial races will the GOP win? Haley Barbour offers his political insights on the November elections. He further describes why he believes that Barack Obama represents “the biggest lurch to the left in American political history,” and responds to where he’d like to see the Republican Party stand on issues ranging from Obama Care and immigration to the Ground Zero mosque. Finally, he analyzes his own prospects as a presidential candidate in 2012 and the chances that he will run.”

From the Hoover Institution

Governor Haley Barbour is right for the GOP and I’m not sure he would put it this way and I don’t pretend to speak for him, but for the GOP to have any shot at winning back the White House in 2012, they are going to have to nominate a presidential nominee that at least part of their vast base has issues with. Thats the only way they are going to win the White House in 2012.

This means nominating someone who is yes an economic conservative, but someone who’s probably not a Neo-Conservative, when it comes to foreign policy and national security. And someone who’s not a Christian-Conservative (or any other Religious-Conservative) like in the case of Mitt Romney who at least at one point was pro-choice on abortion and homosexuality and introduced civil unions in Massachusetts to America back in 2003-04.

The problem with Mitt Romney is that economic conservatives don’t like him because of his health Care law that looks a lot like the Affordable Care Act of 2010. So thats why Tim Pawlenty is a viable alternative to Governor Romney because he’s an economic conservative who at least to this point hasn’t pushed a Christian-Conservative agenda in his presidential campaign.

Which is why candidates like Rick Santorum, Michele Bachman, Sarah Palin who has a laundry list of other issues, which is why she’s not a credible candidate, but why these other candidates aren’t serious contenders at this point, because they push the Christian-Conservative agenda real hard and look intolerant. And why they would never beat President Obama in 2012.

Christian-Conservatives in the GOP really belong in their own fringe Far- Right party and not in a major political Party like the GOP.

And if the Republican Party ever gets back to its Conservative-Libertarian roots of limited government and moves away from this authoritarian route they’ve been on for twenty years now, they’ll be a major player in American politics and a ruling majority party that could compete anywhere in the country, not just in the Bible Belt. And compete with the Democratic Party in all racial, ethnic, and religious groups.

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