The "Fairness Doctrine" Defined

The bourgeoisie is many times stronger than we. To give it the weapon of freedom of the press is to ease the enemy’s cause, to help the class enemy. We do not desire to end in suicide, so we will not do this. -- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Reality

College is the place where adolescents go to enjoy all of the benefits of adulthood with none of the responsibilities. It is subsidized by the government and dominated by people whose theories of the world have no basis in reality.

Government is where you go when you graduate from college and you want to inflict your ideas on other people, without suffering any of the consequences yourself.

A Thought

You've all heard the rallying cry of the Boston Tea Party, right? "No taxation without representation." I agree. In full.

Now let's try something truly revolutionary:

"No representation without taxation." You don't pay taxes, you don't get to vote to make me pay more taxes so that the government can buy your vote with goodies Congress passes out.

Along with a host of other structural reforms that Americans would support if they had a chance, I'd like to start here.

Dissecting McCain

I’m a conservative. I’m not somebody a Republican candidate would normally have to work too hard to convince. But, McCain, unfortunately for all of us, isn’t a conservative. Not even close. McCain’s overall campaign was truly uninspiring for fiscal conservatives, for social conservatives, and libertarian-minded folks.

I just can’t bring myself to get excited about a guy who is single-handedly responsible for giving Democrats cover to prevent President Bush from appointing hyper-qualified judges to the Federal Bench. How ‘bout that “Gang of 14!” now, eh? Yeah, that looks REALLY good right now. Can you say, “Associate Justice Bill Ayers.” Or how about “Associate Justice Bill Clinton.” Or how about Justice Hillary. Just try stopping it. Neither Harry Reid nor Obama would hesitate for one second to “go nuclear” on the Senate Republicans the minute they try to filibuster an Obama appointee. Should we trust the democrats to be “honorable” and “true to their word” and to “play fair?” Yeah, tell me the one again about how “Hope” and “Change” aren’t a strategy.

I just can’t bring myself to bang the drum for a guy who is responsible for passing the very law that doomed his own candidacy, and will doom the candidacy of every Republican who follows it – McCain Feingold. Not only is that awful law a horribly unconstitutional restriction on the very founding freedoms of this country (the right to be free from having the Federal Government restrict your freedom of speech and assembly) but it shows a profound distrust of the American people, the very people he sought to represent. The answer to campaign finance is to take power AWAY from the government, so that no matter who we elect, it matters less. Less government means MORE FREEDOM. The answer is not to give government even MORE power to decide what we hear, when we hear it, and who pays for it. The Democrat media already does that! That’s the ultimate Democrat wet dream. And McCain is responsible for passing it. Fat lot of goodwill it bought him with the media, too.

Any Republican who thinks that Campaign Finance “Reform” was anything other than a Democrat cudgel to beat Republicans over the head with deserves to lose. The Democrats only pushed campaign finance reform because fundraising efforts couldn’t match Republicans. And ask yourself, why couldn’t the democrats raise enough money to compete with Republicans? Because in a free-market of ideas, their message – which is inherently anti-capitalist and un-American – can’t compete with conservative ideas. There’s simply NOTHING wrong with millions of normal people donating as much money as they please to a campaign they support. NOTHING. Americans know it in their gut, despite the media propaganda they’re constantly subjected to. Not only is it NEVER a bad idea to trust Americans to decide their own destiny, Republicans need the ability to out fundraise Democrats, because the media literally gives the Democrats millions upon billions of dollars of free propaganda every hour of every day. Want proof that campaign finance was a democrat trap from the outset? The INSTANT their fundraising started outpacing McCain, they ditched it. And if McCain thought he was going to get some traction with pointing out Obama’s flip-flop on that issue, well, let’s just say his judgment is suspect.

The Republican Party can’t even remotely hope to win an election without millions of conservatives like me getting fired up because we have a candidate who believes in us and reflects our values. Unless and until Republicans start acting like the conservatives that Reagan was and Palin is, they’ll never win. Given a chance, Americans will vote for conservatism every opportunity they can. But they can’t vote for a conservative, if there isn’t one in the race. Period.

Liberal Fascism

The Wrong Kind of Candidate

Over the last several days, I've read and heard various ideas about what "kind" of candidate the Republicans should select for the next Presidential candidate. As if it's not sufficient to be a proud conservative.

Many, many conservatives tell me they couldn't defend President Bush against charges that he was stupid, because he mangled words occasionally. So, their solution is to elect a more eloquent president.

WRONG.

Ronald Reagan was the most eloquent President this country has had in the last 75 years. Reagan was not only eloquent, he was whip-cracking smart. Smart, as in Thomas Jefferson smart. Alexander Hamilton smart. Yes, that smart. If you don't believe me, go read "Reagan in his Own Hand". The book is a collection of 670 of Reagan's essays over a period of 40 years. Written entirely by hand, by Reagan, without an editorial assistant and one intermittent research assistant. These essays reflect that Reagan was not only supremely intellectually curious, incisive, and thoroughly steeped in the Founding Father's vision for America, he was profoundly skilled at evaluating and formulating ideas. Don't guffaw. Put down your prejudice, go open your mind and read the book. Then come back here.

And yet, the media pronounced him a dangerous dunce, a cowboy. The lesson here is that, sure, conservatives could appoint a vastly qualified and extremely talented, eloquent, educated and qualified black woman Secretary of State. And get ZERO "credit" for it from the media. In fact, I'd dare say the fact that Condoleeza Rice was black made the media attack her more fiercely than they would have if we had selected Joe the Plumber for that job.

Sure, we could select a woman Vice-Presidential candidate who was MORE qualified to be the Vice President than Hillary Clinton was to be a Senator, because Palin got to where she did wholly on her own merits, not by riding her husband's coattails. And watch her get cruelly savaged by the media with such vile sexism that it boggles the mind. And we act surprised, and "offended" by this, which mimics the "victim mentality" that conservatives say they despise so much. If we despise it so much, why do we do it?

No, the answer is NOT to calculate how the Left might like our candidate and act accordingly, somehow hoping that picking someone with the outward physical attributes that may shield us from the lies and the venom the left vomits forth.

The answer is to nominate the strongest lower-case "c" conservative candidate we can find and to loudly and proudly proclaim the virtues of liberty, freedom, duty, and honor: limited government, federalism, constitutional process. And when the Left attacks, we have our honor and our principles to stand on, instead of the quicksand of fashionable left-wing identity politics.

The Tyranny of Moral Busybodies

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. - Clive Staples "CS" Lewis

CS Lewis is one of my favorite thinkers. From Enviro-fundamentalists to Marxists and Fascists in the identity politics game, to judges and lawyers and leftist radicals who threaten the very fabric of our democracy, I say "Go away and take your perversion with you." They are all the same threat. People who become so convinced of their own righteousness - falsely - that they believe they have not only the right, but the obligation to torment me for my own good.

Lessons for Conservatives

Ever since 1992, whenever I’m asked, I’ve always replied, “Yes, I really do believe that in America anybody can become President.” I’m right.

And because America is a nation governed by laws, not men, the fact that anybody can become president doesn’t worry me - in the long run.

But, as a note to fellow conservatives in the world, you will undoubtedly hear a lot of malarkey in the following days about how Obama ran a great campaign. In only one sense did Obama run a “great” campaign. He won. That’s it. He did not run an honorable campaign. Obama is a radical anti-American leftist. He actively hid his radicalism with the help of a grossly perverse media, and an intellectually incurious public made weary by all-pervasive, never-ending leftist propaganda. The American public will see this in the next 4 years. They will be repulsed.

Don't believe me about the pervasive influence of leftist porpaganda in every facet of American life? Here’s a quick game for you:
Name one prominent conservative in the old media (not Fox News);
Name one overtly conservative professor you had at college, or postgrad;
Name one conservative university or college: e.g., a counterpart to Cal Berkeley.

If you scored 1 out of 3, welcome to America’s smallest fraternity. Nobody scored higher, because it’s a trick question. You can’t score higher than 1/3. You *might* have had one professor who wasn’t a leftist. But answers to the first or third question don’t exist.

The lesson for conservatives from this campaign and tonight’s result:

1. If you lose the fundraising game, you lose. Public financing is for losers. Public financing was only trumpeted by Democrats as a way to hamstring Republicans when their fundraising couldn’t keep up with Republicans. Democrats couldn’t compete with the rules as they existed, so they changed the rules to their advantage. But the very minute Democrats started raising enough money to compete with Republicans, they dropped public financing.

2. The old Media is the Democrat Party. Period. Democrats know very well that Fox News isn’t going to ask Democrats softball questions designed to make Democrats look good. Guess what? Democrats boycott Fox News. They know their own media won’t hold them accountable for their hypocrisy. Lesson: Beat Democrats at the fundraising game and take the Democrats’ advantage away from them by going straight to the American people with your message. Trust the American people to hear you speak directly to them, not through a filter designed to make you look bad. It works every time it’s tried. Reagan did it. He won. Bush 41 didn’t. He lost. Dole didn’t. He lost. Bush 43 did it. He won. McCain didn’t. He lost.

3. If you don’t give the American people a chance to elect a conservative, they won’t. McCain spent the last 20 years cultivating a relationship with the old media, trying to get them to like him. He’s a self-styled “maverick,” not a conservative. The only conservative in the race was Palin. Her rallies consistently outdrew McCain, sometimes 10 to 1. She is McCain’s post convention bounce. She’s the only reason this election wasn’t a Reagan-style blowout. Lesson: Nominate a conservative, not a milquetoast accommodationist the Democrat media has falsely built up to better demoralize you.

4. If you don't work day and night defending, defining, and controlling meaning of the words used to frame the language of the debate, the Democrat media will, and it won't be to your advantage. Language does not have fixed meaning for Democrats. This should not be a surprise to anyone who has been awake for the last 20 years. In Democrat circles, "is" doesn't mean "is." Lesson: Every single winning conservative since Reagan has had to fight for the right to have words mean what normal people know they mean. Reagan’s, “There you go again…” debate comment is the classic example. If you let the Democrat media define the terms of the debate, the public assumes you agree with them. At that moment, as a conservative, you’ve lost. As an example, answer the following question, “Do you favor tax cuts for the rich?” What about, “Do you agree that the government knows how to spend your money better than you do?” It’s the same question. The first formulation is how the Democrat media wants you to think about it. The second formulation is how the American people think about it, when they are reminded about the proper role of government in our Constitutional Republic. The only problem with #4 is that you have to actually BE a conservative to avoid falling in to this trap.

5. You can tell how electable you are by how the Democrat media treats you. If they like you, if they treat you respectfully, if they occasionally throw you a bone, they know you can't win. If they treat you the way they treated Hillary Clinton during the Democrat primary against Obama, they know you can beat their candidate. If they treat you the way they treated Sarah Palin, or the way they treated Reagan, and Bush 43, then you know you're a winner. Lesson: Screw the old media. Conservatives need to wear the media's hatred of them like a badge of honor. Smile at them the way Reagan did. Don't let them beat you down the way Bush 43 did.

6. As a corollary to #5: Playing nice with Democrats is a recipe for a sell-out. Remember Bush's "New tone in Washington?" Fat lot of good that did Bush 43.