A Statement Of Principles

I am a huge fan of Maggie's Farm and suggest that you read it routinely in case you do not already do so. This should give you an excellent idea of what to expect there:

People ask me why we seem so predictably and boringly preoccupied with the health care and climate change issues.

There is a simple answer: Those are the two topics which are currently being exploited to the max by Leftist totalitarian-minded folks, who believe themselves to be our moral and intellectual superiors, in their endless efforts to control our lives and to chip away at our freedom and our dignity as sturdy, intelligent, competent, free-thinking adults and families in a free nation with (semi-) free markets.

In history, the battles against central powers were fought on different fronts and, in the future, they will be fought on new fronts that have not been concocted yet in the Gramscian and Alinskian laboratories. It will never end. If Stalin's holocausts didn't end it, if the fall of the Berlin Wall didn't end it, if the evidence of Cuba and North Korea didn't end it, if Pol Pot didn't end it, if the turn of China and Russia to Capitalism didn't end it, if the countless failures of centralized control economies didn't end it, if the attempts to turn Euroland back to free markets and greater freedom didn't end it, if the pathetic return of Euroland to an imperial EU doesn't end it, if the countless failures of hugely-expensive but failed yet immortal government programs didn't end it, then nothing will ever end this battle.

Power, unlike wealth, is a zero-sum game. It is in the nature of governments, which we fully accept as necessary evils, to accumulate power and funds from the citizens - and to regard citizens as children or as subjects. This seems to be something that occurs regardless of the form of government. Some people seem born to seek power over others, some wish to be security-minded subjects, and others simply seek mastery of their own lives. We prefer the latter pursuit, with God's grace, while fully aware that this mortal life we hold so dear may be often full of sound and fury, but signifying little in the end beyond our relationships with the Deity, our family, and our friends.

Without wanting to sound or to be grandiose, people like us at Maggie's and similar sites aim to be perpetual revolutionaries, freedom-fighters, Tea Party Indians, Tom Paines; the minor heirs of our heroic forefathers, attempting to stay true to their ideals of the dominion of individuals seeking their own goals without the oppressive weight of an intrusive government. At least, that is what we aspire to be in our small way.

Individual freedom in relation to the State is close to sacred to us. We pay the State dues to protect us from external enemies and from internal criminals, for justice under law, plus for just a few other minor things. Otherwise, we want to be left alone and to take care of ourselves as best we can in a culture in which every person exercises their morals, their integrity, and their concern for their neighbor by the Golden Rule.

Live and let live, but don't tread on me.

We demand that individual freedom and liberty be part of every political equation - a Constant, like Avogadro's Number. The Constitutional Amendments lX and X remain real and valid to us - delusional though we may be.

We at Maggie's do not even feel entirely comfortable with the notion of "rights." We dislike and distrust the use of the word "rights" in America. In our view, the worthy subject of discussion is that of government powers and their prescribed limits. We the people need no "rights," as the US was conceived. We are free human beings. Free to fail, free to speak, free to do stupid things, free to take risks, free to succeed in our goals - if we have any- free to do almost any damn thing we want to. Yes, maybe we are crazy idealists and maybe we are foolish rubes who produce nothing but superficial cant and pointless rant.

However unheard a voice we at Maggie's may be in the big world, we will use it to resist insidious political maneuvers and manipulations until we turn senile or die - or run out of things to say.

If the latter comes first, we'll cheerfully turn our focus purely on things like shotguns and recipes and wildlife and fishing and salt marshes and architecture and history and philosophy and art and pretty girls and boats and travelogues and God and all of the other joyful, interesting, and delightful things in life.

By the way, if you have friends who might like Maggie's, email our link around. We do not like to be cybersluts (hmm - maybe we do), but we do not want people who might enjoy our eclectic offerings to be deprived of our humble efforts. Let people know that we exist, because our readership is our only reward for our enjoyable efforts here on ye olde Farm.

Doing so would be the finest Christmas present for us.

In My E-Mail

I recently received an e-mail from Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee Chairman entitled "Voice your patriotism: Remind the Democrats who they work for...". In this smarmy e-mail Steele asks me to send a “virtual postcard” to the Democrats telling them “I won’t tolerate their socialist power grab”. Steele then reminds me “Our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Those aren't just fancy words. They are the bedrock upon which our republic was founded. Whether power hungry officials in the White House and on Capitol Hill like it or not, they are to serve the interests of the people -- not the other way around.” And “That's why you still need to show your support for the principled position of fiscal restraint, personal responsibility, and unfettered liberty as opposed to the Obama Democrats in Washington who are trying to force leftist "change" upon our country. Oh, and don’t forget to make a contribution to the Republican Party.

Here is the response I sent:

Dear Mr. Steele,

You are as breathtakingly ignorant as the Democrats. Take me off this ridiculous mailing list and never bother me with these pathetically disguised money requests again. For your information, any attempt on your part to co-opt the grass roots protest movement going on in this country will not end well for you. In case you didn't notice, Conservatives didn't wait for or accept marching orders from the GOP. You and your party are as much to blame for the current state of affairs as the Democrats.

Rest assured, when we come to Washington, we're coming for all of you!

A plague on both your houses.

Celebrate Diversity . . .

except veterans, small-business owners, practicing Catholics, gun owners, talk-radio listeners, tea-party attendees, Texans, smokers, limited-government proponents, pro-lifers, taxpayers, NASCAR fans, Boy Scouts, oil-company employees, secure-border advocates, capitalists, global-warming agnostics, Cuban refugees, school-choicers . . .
-Peter Kirsanow at NRO

While You're Reaching For The Finger Bowl, The Rest Of Us Are Headed Down To The Harbor

Tea Party Conservatives vs. Dinner Party Conservatives

Sarah Palin

I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised by John McCain's pick of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska to be his running mate. Palin is exactly the type of conservative woman that will enable women to hold the highest offices in the nation. Just remember which party appointed the first female Supreme Court justice and black female Secretary of State. I also love the fact that McCain has taken the "historical" nature of Obama's candidacy off the table; now whichever ticket eventually wins will be historical.

Yes, Palin's political resume is not exactly overflowing but she has more executive experience than all of the candidates on either ticket. I know many have already said that her nomination removes Obama's inexperience as an issue. But I think the defining difference between them is obvious - Obama wants to be President. And in this season of thin resumes "An interesting angle from (Instapundit) reader Frank Martin:

Question: Which state borders the Former Soviet Union?

Hey, will you look at that?, 2 years of foreign policy experience."

The largest benefit I see from Palin running with McCain is that she is a conservative. If she follows her principles then this will be an inspiring and inspired choice by the McCain campaign.
Update: M'Lady, who only follows politics out of a sense of duty to yours truly, perhaps made the most salient point about the Palin selection when she said "Just exactly how many of these people have been president?"

When the legendary Cleveland sportscaster Casey Coleman was asked about a certain teams chances, when on paper it appeared they didn't have a pray, he said "That's why we play them on grass."

Mamet's Epiphany

Please join me in welcoming David Mamet to the conservative fold. It seems that Dave has had a "Road to Damascus" moment regarding his political belief system. He recently published an essay in The Village Voice which reads, in part:

"This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.

To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.
The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms."

Liberal Fascism, Islamism And The 21st Century

Another fine post from Wretchard at The Belmont Club republished in it's entirety:

Hugh Hewitt interviews Jonah Goldberg about his book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History Of The American Left From Mussolini To The Politics Of Meaning. Hewitt goes over the evolution of liberalism from its impeccable fascist pedigree with Goldberg, a kind of spoiler of the book. But what's really interesting was this exchange:

HH: And you know, it’s the same temptation over and over again, and it’s one abroad in the land right now, which is why I want to pause on this, which is Rousseau believed that man was good, you know, that the state came along, or that society came along and screwed things up, but that actually, that men were innately good. And that’s simply not a conservative view, Jonah Goldberg. It’s anti-conservative. It’s also anti-theology in most senses.

JG: Right. I mean, I think the fundamental difference, the difference that defines the difference between American, Anglo-American conservatives and European welfare states, leftists or liberals, is Locke versus Rousseau. Every philosophical argument boils down to John Locke versus Jacques Rousseau.

HH: Yup.

JG: Rousseau says the government is there, that our rights come from the government, that come from the collective. Locke says our rights come from God, and that we only create a government to protect our interests. The Rousseauian says you can make a religion out of society and politics, and the Lockean says no, religion is a separate sphere from politics. And that is the defining distinction between the two, and I think that distinction also runs through the human heart, that we all have a Rousseauian temptation in us. And it’s the job of conservatives to remind people that the Lockean in us needs to win.

This exchange captures the link between the 20th century struggle against Communism and Fascism and the 21st century's epic battle against radical Islamism. The key difference between those ideologies and the Lockean view is where they put God -- or if you prefer Ultimate Legitimacy -- in relation to society. Both liberal fascism and Islamic fundamentalism put God on earth; both are theocracies in the sense they believe that God actually rules temporally. In the first case the Deity takes the form of an enlightened vanguard; in the second case Allah rules through the Caliphate via Sharia law.

But the price of putting God on earth is dragging Him through the mud of politics. If one truly believes that God looks like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama one eventually comes to the view that the Almighty isn't everything He's cracked up to be. By contrast, locating God outside of politics is, to use a current buzzword, "de-weaponizing" the numinous; removing what is too great and awesome for our complete understanding from the sphere of political manipulation.

That doesn't mean the Lockeans remove God from the Universe. On the contrary they keep him there. But when God is invoked, it is always as our understanding of Him rather than as God Himself. In other words human organization can never attain to the sanctity of the Koran or the Communist Manifesto. It never becomes a divine instituion. It is only ever a government -- by the people, of the people and for the people.

And only if we keep it so shall it never perish from the earth. The words "My Kingdom is not of this world" preserves both God's Kingdom and our freedom. We may come to God, through the perils of life and danger of damnation. But we arrive before Him as free beings. Sans the muttawa and sans the scourge of political coercion.

WFB

This is a sad day. A great man has passed from the scene. We will not see his like again in this life.

William F. Buckley Jr. needs no introduction regardless of your political persuasion and his passing is a loss to all Americans. Many will pay tribute to the founder of modern American conservatism over the next few days and weeks but I thought this sentiment, posted this morning on NRO, to be just about right:

"I am saddened by the passing of William F. Buckley, but our loss is Heaven's gain, and I'm sure the Good Lord told his angels to "Bring me a dictionary, Buckley's coming."

May he rest in peace.