The Republican Party is “BROKEN”. This group would be well advised to include Michael Savage in their strategy/planning sessions.

I think this meeting is a good idea, but its a little late dont you think?

The Republicans have been in an excellent position to get their man in, McCain, was the person to do just that. And he still might prevail. He is a man of substance, Barack Obama
is an attractive empty suit. Nice guy, but all hot air. McCain is decisive, a doer, a thinker, and a person who can lead and work for both sides of the political spectrum. He is just who we need.

I think the best use of the meeting’s time would concern not just how to elect more conservatives, but to re-evaluate and look at campaign election reform. Set limits on spending.
Force the whole process to take place within a shorter period of time. Require complete accountability and transparency on behalf of the candidates from birth certificates, school records, a full resume with references, a secruity check, and all tax records including the spouses. Why not?

Then we must ask ourselves what to do about voter fraud. It will be extreme this election.
And if Obama wins I will think his election was stolen.

Transparency needs to also apply to all campaign donations. And that isnt happening is it? so a war chest can be amassed and no one can discern the sources…

And how can election be fair in this supposed democracy with a terribly biased media? it is a joke. Thus, the fact that McCain and Palin are doing well or that the election is quite close is amazing – they must be the right candidates or they would have shrunk to a state of nothingness – instead they are shining brilliantly against the media’s firm had to squash them.

And until we get the answers we need from the democratic machinery – about the associations that Obama has had and this mysterious 2003 video that the LA Times is failing to disclose – how do we know who Obama is? we dont. I am not willing to gamble on a man who wont answer the tough questions, but it would help if the mainstream had the brass balls to ask the tough questions in the first place. God help us!

It may well be that the Republican party has lost the moral conviction necessary to keep from office even an such an ideological leftist and liar as O’bama. It is the Republican departure from the belief in and practice of first principles that will take sweep it from power, this and the public propensity to believe anything, however absurd, so long as it sends a thrill up their collective leg.

It will not be Palin or McCain’s conduct good or bad that will lose this race. It is the Republican party’s betrayal of its conservative base and the first principles upon which conservatism is based. While I do not fault Bush for the waging of a just war in Iraq based on the information which then simply everyone believed to be true, I condemn his departure from principle, his contempt for the Constitution, his intrusive, and flagrant invasion of State’s right as in “No child left behind” and finally his intentional refusal to acquit himself of the first obligation of a president: to keep safe and secure American borders. He has not only breached faith with his obligation to protect American citizens, he has done so intentionally, even as he has begun the process of ceding American sovereignty to national organizations.

After all this, the Republicans, of which I am one, come to us, seek us out, and again mutter conservative platitudes in our ear, but they are thieves who have engaged in an orgy of wanton spending, as outrageous as that of any democrat since lyndon Johnson , these men and women in whom we have reposed our trust and our vote and who in the betrayal of first principles, have destroyed that trust.  And so we have come, more or less, with heavy hearts and little enthusiasm, (I except Sarah Palin a woman of virtue and principle), to vote for McCain, not that we think him sufficient because he is not, but because the alternative is simply unthinkable.

The Republican party is now a ruin; and will not recover in a decade. Perhaps, now, the Republicans should rethink virtue, and their so often made and broken pledge to conservative first principles, this in the truth, that when one betrays a trust, when he abandons principle in pursuit of power and wealth, he may gather unto himself a fleeting, transitory power, but in the end fails… because finally, he has nothing whatever to offer, nothing to pledge but words… and they are empty words, because the speaker is not worthy of belief.

And so now O’bama: For those Americans sufficiently intoxicated on the voice of the crowd in adulation, screaming the mantra of Change, there will be a terrible reckoning. They will finally come to know O’bama the hard way, through the fact of his rule as distinct from his promises either too vague or protean to comprehend or otherwise chillingly true because possible only in a police state.

Some fine words Bob well written and to the point and it’s so difficult to see the party in
a state of ruins – and clearly the GOP has much to be sad about and I agree with you …finger pointing wont help we need to look at ourselves in the mirror and fix what is broken and no time is better than now.

I agree with you a vote for Obama is unthinkable.

Go see American Patrol.com and there is a series of videos one new one on Obama and it is a spine chilling forecast of what we have to look forward to if Obama wins. It clearly defines this man with his associations and there links to terrorists, you name it…Obama might be a nice guy, but he is ignorant of the press who has created him…another Manchurian candidate in the making.

Stay well Bob. Thanks for the comments.

I think perhaps those who are defrauding this election feel justified due to them thinking Bush and the Republicans “stole” the election years ago and this is payback.
I also feel part of GWB’s faults is that he tried to be bipartison and allowed many of Clinton’s people to stay on. Some of them stabbed him in the back. I think GWB is a good President in most things, but he has some serious problems…immigration being one of them.
I just hope if McCain gets elected that he does not ruin his Presidency by being too bipartison and “reaching across the aisle”. Usually we get our hand bitten off when we do that. Dems never compromise. Obama will not be any exception. He will ruin this country worse than McCain would-and I’m not a big McCain fan.
I wonder if this country has considered the implications of having a Democratic dictatorship if they go that way.

Dear Republican Dog, and Marcia, thank you both for your kind words and analysis. For all that I am unhappy with Republicans, I believe still, that conservative first principles are in ascendence. For example, we may never see Roe v. Wade overuled; and yet abortions are down all over the country, and even many of those on the Left, while affirming the idea of choice, now urge a new idea: that abortions should be exceedingly rare, a consequence I think of the conservative celebration of a first principle: that all life, and by that I mean all life is sacred. Life, as it is sacred, should be preserved, by the force of the American Constitution.

There are two quotes which I believe capture the essence of conservative belief, and I mean this to include not only the sublimity of Judeo/Christian thought but as well the foundation of the European and English Enlightenments.

Shakespeare’s line to Horatio. “To thine own self be true and it follows as day the night, thou can be false to no man.”

And Sir Galahad’s line in Morte D’Arthur. “My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.”

The Enlightenment point is I think, that in moral conviction there is an enormous and spiritual strength. However, the departure from conviction, from the belief in and practice of first principles, corrupts mind and heart. We see that in the last eight years of American government, whether Democrat or Republican.

Still there exists in their millions those who are committed to the practice and in this eventually I believe will be the hope fulfilled of the American dream.

Thanks again.

I think such strategy meetings are a good thing.  There will be the neo-conservatives and paleo- and various others arguing long and hard and going home with pretty much the same ideas they came with.  But they will understand each other a little better and maybe can see some ways in which they can work together.
I suggest that the first thing that needs to be done is to define conservative.  Who are we and what is our vision of America?  And how can we sell our vision to the nation? 
In my own vision, America is defined by three words:  freedom, justice, opportunity.  Perhaps property rights should be added to the list.

This is good news and should have been done long before this.

Frank, an excellent point. I recommend Nash, History of the Conservative Movement in America which summarizes the conservative philosophy as it developed from the 1930s to the present. Also Courtney, “We Hold these truths.”

There are many definitions of Conservatism and none quite universal enough to capture its essence. I think that your thought that freedom, justice and opportunity are at the center of conservative philosophy is right on the mark. 

I think conservatism arises out of a belief in the dignity of the individual, and the need to preserve that dignity, by the creation of a civil society that is, a society, a country that is in possession of a cultural identity, that raises the rights of the individual over that of the State, and yet recognizes in the free individual the need to share a moral conviction, that acknowledges duty to others and to country, that sounds in courage and out of courage a willingness to preserve and defend culture and country, one’s self and others from the degradation or corrupt and destructive ideologies. (The most recent example being Communism which destroyed over a million lives). I believe that a conservative is one who expresses gratitude for the society in which he lives and the gifts of those living and dead who have passed on to him the legacy of Western civilization: the idea of universal truth, our mutual obligation to one another, and the power of reason to create in the mind harmony and understanding. Conservatism is an exquisite philosophy grounded upon Natural Law.

Bob,
You obviously have been doing a lot of thinking about the American dream.  Materialists think of the opportunity to get rich.  Some of us think of the ideal society on this earth. 
Your last sentence is seminal.  Conservatism is a philosophy grounded upon Natural Law.  Natural Law is defined as moral code based on reason with the caveat that it agrees with human nature.  I do think that this is nearly the same as the consensus of human conscience.  To a large extent, our founding fathers did base our social mores and our Constitution upon Natural Law. 
To get back to the key essence words of Americanism (and, therefore, of conservatism), I would like to extend the list a little: freedom, justice, opportunity, property rights, Truth (as opposed to relativism), compassion.  One could extend this list, but some entries are derivative of others.  I try to keep the list minimal and non-overlapping. 
Bob, you’re my kind of thinker and I am glad to have met you.  See you at Nightvisionbyfrank.org.

“… America is defined by three words:  freedom, justice, opportunity.  Perhaps property rights should be added to the list. …” – French Frank

WTF don’t you understand about Life Liberty and Property (which Franklin insisted on changing to “Pursuit of Happiness”)?

And Bob harping on “first principles” without ever defining what those might be and confusing “conservative” with “religious.”

No wonder the collectivist, altruist Marxist assholes are winning. You so-called “conservatives” (especially McQueeg) don’t even know your own minds.

The betrayal of the Right happened long ago.

http://www.mises.org/store/product.aspx?ProductID=434

Dear John Galt, a famous name.  A few points. The term First Principles is a philosophical concept intended to express those ideas which are true and from which other truths may be known by the exercise of reason. The first principle of a civil society, so writes Courtney, the scholar I earlier referred to, is civil conversation: the exercise of reason and the expression of good will, the idea that freedom encompasses not only that which the individual is free to do, or refrain from doing,  but that which he “ought” to do or refrain from doing. In the idea of freedom is “dignitatus humanae” that is, that simply because we exist, we are entitled to dignity, that all life as the pre-Christian Greeks also believed it to be, is sacred.

While, of course, this is a religious idea my thoughts are not grounded in religion nor do I confuse religion with conservatism. Ann Rand’s intellectual failing was in the belief that a society may be entirely materialist,selfish and still thrive. While the fictional John Galt thrived in an apparently democratic society, his real life character thrived in Nazi and Communist regimes. Of course, the idea of human dignity or that all life is sacred, is also a Greek idea as well as a Christian idea, developed by some of the worlds greatest intellects, e.g. St. Thomas Acquinas. That it is religious does nothing to tarnish its truth. 

Stalin’s first act upon his accession to power was the destruction of 250 orthodox churches which since the fall of communism have been rebuilt. While it is not necessary to be religious in the sense that you appear to describe it,  religious practice has always been a most powerful wedge against such totalitarian governments as we have seen in this twentieth century.  Pope PiusXII was part of a plot to see the removal of Hitler. Pope John Paul through the elegant practice of moral persuasion assisted the final collapse of Communism.

I sympathize with your feelings about Marxism. Your heart and mind are certainly in the right place in my opinion. Marxism is part of the progeny of a scientific materialism which holds in contempt the idea of human dignity or that all life is sacred. We have seen the lethal consequence of this philosophical contempt for human dignity, in the gulags of Russia, in the concentration camps of Germany, in the killing fields of Pol Pot and in the starvation and cold blooded murder of millions in the cultural revolution of China.

It is good to know your mind. I believe that you and I know our mind when it comes to Marxism.

Best Regards, Bob

“… While the fictional John Galt thrived in an apparently democratic society, his real life character thrived in Nazi and Communist regimes …”

What an astoundingly irrational non-sequeter!

“… religious practice has always been a most powerful wedge against such totalitarian governments …”

And yet another! Religion is fundamentally totalitarian: the tyrant being the “anointed representative” of some imaginary “super-natural” being.

You must have been sleeping when Hobbes’ Leviathan was being discussed in class.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(book)

“… Pope PiusXII was part of a plot to see the removal of Hitler. …”

False.

Altruism, collectivism, and statism are parasitic and cannibalistic by nature. One part of society feeds off another. The only possible end of such philosophies is envy, greed, nihilism, and death.

“… While the fictional John Galt thrived in an apparently democratic society, his real life character thrived in Nazi and Communist regimes …”

What an astoundingly irrational non-sequeter! Who is the “real life character” you refer to?

“… religious practice has always been a most powerful wedge against such totalitarian governments …”

And yet another! Religion is fundamentally totalitarian: the tyrant being the “anointed representative” of some imaginary “super-natural” being. You must have been sleeping when Hobbes’ Leviathan was being discussed in class.

“… Pope PiusXII was part of a plot to see the removal of Hitler. …”

False.

Altruism, collectivism, and statism are parasitic and cannibalistic by nature. One part of society feeds off another. The only possible end of such philosophies is envy, greed, class warfare, nihilism, and death.

“… Ann Rand’s intellectual failing was in the belief that a society may be entirely materialist,selfish and still thrive. …”

That may be a failure in your opinion, but evidence of history indicates otherwise. See also the Austrian school of economics.

The wikipedia article on Laissez-faire is a good starting point for your edification.

Dear John Galt, You had asked for a more specific explanation of first principles. I have sought to provide it. I have also offered my proofs and authors whose opinions are consistent with what I have written.

The tenor and substance of your response demonstrates a corruption of contemporary debate: first, personal attack and second conclusory responses that resonate with anger to ideas I have suggested are supported by philosophy. Earlier I had mentioned Courtney’s reference to the need for a civil society emphasis on civil, in other words a society where people of like mind, which I believe we well my be on many ideas, may discuss their respective points of view, intending again that there be a civil meeting of the minds and a hope that each may learn from the other. This civility, this expression of good will, sadly, is a rarity.

I have not looked upon our brief discussion as anything quite so serious as a debate. However, to my point that Pope John Paul, actually by his efforts in Poland, hastened the demise of Communism I am met with a boldly stated “False” this and nothing else, hardly the substance of a civil response, or one to which I might offer further comments.

I have read some of Von Mises, and as well his student Fredrich Von Hyak’s “On the Road to Serfdom”, in which he shared a Nobel prize. Nothing I have read of Mises or Von Hyek suggests that all religions are totalitarian. Von Hyak’s work, in fact, is premised on the essential dignity of the individual,this, in his thesis that Welfare Statism, robs him of that dignity, and ultimately, remorselessly transforms him into a serf.
Von Hyak, an Austrian, wrote of Britain’s decision to adopt the Welfare State, a socialist institution, shortly after World War II. His book has also become a prophecy of the spectacle American government has become since World War II.  I think this is what you mean when you suggest that I read the Austrians.

My opinion about Ann Rand is not mine alone but is shared by a number of conservatives, William Buckley was perhaps her greatest critic, and to that opinion, I would again refer you to the conservative historian Nash who marshals such opinions in his conservative history. 

I was young when I first read Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and loved its anti-collectivist theme, but her characters were materialists who nowhere acceded to the idea of mutual responsibility, or to the idea of human dignity. In this sense the Rand character manifested the same stupendous egotism and materialist view of the world as that held by Lenin, Stalin,Hitler and Mao.

You flatly state that all religion is totalitarian. Contemporary history proves otherwise. The Tibetans did not attack the Chinese Communists. It was they who attacked the Tibetans, destroyed hundreds of their churchesa, tortured or simply executed hundreds of monks and drove the Delai Lama into exile.

That said, you make a valid point that Religion in history has at times manifested a totalitarian character. For example, the early Muslim conquests of the Mid East, that part of India. Christian popes sponsored the crusades, and for a small minority of Muslims today, radical jihad.  However, in the twentieth century, Christianity has worked against the ascendance of totalitarian governments.

Finally, Rand condemned altruism. I do not much like the word myself as it is ambiguous.  However, the American Constitution is founded on certain first principles which its founders expressed eloquently in our Declaration. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Here the Founders expressed their commitment to a first principle more fully expressed in the writings of Jefferson and in the Federalist papers by Hamilton and others, that freedom is necessary to the survival of human dignity.

In all of this I am just expressing my beliefs. While certainly I do not expect you to agree with everything that I say, or anything for that matter, though I would hope otherwise,  I offer these thoughts in support of the ideas I have put forth with civility and good will.

I wish you well.

Best Regards Bob

“… However, to my point that Pope John Paul, actually by his efforts in Poland, hastened the demise of Communism I am met with a boldly stated “False” …”

Look again—I maintain your allegation that Pious XII sought to remove Hitler was false.

“… her characters were materialists who nowhere acceded to the idea of mutual responsibility, or to the idea of human dignity …”

You’re right, I do not agree with your assessment of Rand’s characters or Objectivist philosophy. Her characters embody the dignity of individualism, self-reliance, and self-sufficiency. Her fiction is less interesting to me than her non-fiction writing.

wikipedia has a good brief description of altruism. Altruism forms the basic soil from which collectivism and marxism springs. If you’ve read Hayek, Rothbard, and von Mises, you must have recognized that.

I agree with Kelly’s criticism of altruism, particularly the danger of state enforcement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_(ethics)

My outrage at the current situation bleeds through in perhaps too unfocused a way. Here’s the source of my outrage:

Collectivism and statism have won the argument in America, much to the detriment of Human life everywhere on this planet. The ideas that equal outcomes should be mandated and forced by government are tantamount to a Declaration of Servitude replacing the Declaration of Independence.

Both “sides,” Liberal/Conservative, Democrat/Republican have long ago agreed to this basic idea: the only thing they now argue over is which gang seizes the power to force everyone else into servitude to the state and which favored groups “needs” will be met through extortion from the disfavored groups.

This is cannibalism and tribalism in its raw form. Why is it that most people ignore and evade this fact?

The core philosophy that has won the argument is altruism: the subordination of the individual to the good of everyone but himself. Sacrifice is painted as virtue rather than as the suicide it is. Rational self-interest is demonized and charactured as evil and greedy. In short, morality and ethics have been turned on their heads.

We are witnessing an event that is the social equivalent of one of Earth’s magnetic field reversals. You want Change?

BROTHER YOU ASKED FOR IT!

John Galt,

I certainly agree with your assessment of the sad state of political affairs that have come because of both major political party’s and the way they seemed to have inverted ‘right from wrong’, morality and immorality, etc.

If anyone were to find themselves back in high school or college and were asked in a quiz , “What form of government is the United States?”

To answer, “Constitutional Republic” or even “Democracy” would be self-delusional.

I clicked on the link you provided for the book, “Betrayal of the American Right”, read the summary, and definitely will purchase it.
There’s a similar book that I just finished reading and that I highly recommend; “Conservatives Betrayed” by Richard Viguerie.

I want to thank you for providing a link a few weeks ago on an essay titled, “Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure” based on the Misesian theory of the business cycle.
From reading this essay and other information I’ve researched on the Internet about Ludwig von Mises, I can only conclude that this brilliant man was every bit as important and heroic as our Founding Fathers.
He was important in that had we followed his heeding in avoiding the formation of a central bank, with its prolonging of bank credit expansion and artificial lowering of interest rates, and to return to the gold standard, we wouldn’t be the shameful debtor nation we are today.
For all the talk I hear about the evils of laissez-fair capitalism, this country hasn’t practice it since at least the formation of the Federal Reserve!! What surprised me in the essay was that it revealed Coolidge as not being an actual practitioner of laissez-fair capitalism as we were all taught, because of massive bank credit expansion that he allowed during his administration, and which made the Great Depression inevitable, as correctly predicted by Mises during the Roaring Twenties.

He was a brave man because he held firm to his beliefs despite the tragic popularity and adherence to the Keynesian system, where a number of his disciples jumped ship in order to join.

Dear John Galt, As to the source of your outrage, your comments are as elegant and powerful as they are true. It is a myth today to suggest that there is a sharp philosophical line between democrat and republican political thought as it is expressed in government.  The parties are merely tentacles of a larger and progressively totalitarian state that has placed itself above and beyond the reach of democracy and constitutional government.

That said I do not believe that conservatism itself, as a philosophy, has fallen victim to the altruism you describe. I believe conservatives are outraged just as you are outraged at the corruption and dismantlement of constitutional government that we see today. Frankly, with a few exceptions, I do not see that conservatism has had much of an affect on government. I think its impact has been more in that part of life that is not dominated by government. This may be seen, I believe, in the sense of betrayal that so many conservatives feel,  as they have witnessed the direction of Republican government over the last eight years. Of course, the betrayal involved both parties. But it was the Republicans that sought us out and in return for our votes promised limited government, fiscal responsibility, protection of our borders and adherence to the Constitution.

Believe me when I say that I did not ask for the change we are about to experience.

I wish you the best of luck. We and all the good people of this America are going to need it. Enjoyed chatting with you.

Best Regards Bob.

I dont know much but i felt something wrong with the first Bush and the two parties are the same.I think the only answer is another revolution.What i cant understand is why would they want to do this to America?And i am dead serious

pizcaj:

Good for you. Those who count investigate.

The Austrians tend toward Libertarianism and Anarchism. As a result, I pay more attention to their economic analysis than their politics and ethics.

Marysduby

It’s about the power. The power of mob rule. The power to force everyone to live according to the mob’s whim and wish.