Charlemagne or Akbar–or Liberty?

View 696 Thursday, October 13, 2011

We don’t hear much about the Tea Party nowadays. The Tea Party’s liberal enemies are trying to tell us that it’s dead. Some say they ran out of white hoods and had to go home to make more. They were just a bunch of racists anyway, and now they’re done. The interesting stories are now about the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. That’s growing and that’s where the action is and that’s where the news hawks will go.

It’s true that there’s not a lot of news about the Tea Party. They’re not out demonstrating because they have jobs and homes and families; and after the Tea Party victory in 2008 they’ve turned to the serious business of consolidating their gains, much to the chagrin of the Establishment Republicans, who are working hard at co-opting the new members of Congress. The activists are now out trying to take part in the nomination process. It’s clear that the Republican candidate for President will win in November 2012, so the big question is, will that be an Establishment Republican, or a conservative from outside that establishment? This is a vital contest, and the outcome will be terribly important for the republic. The Tea Party has work to do. Its first job is to get behind a candidate.

According to the mainstream news Occupy Wall Street is now more popular than the Tea Party. Eighty percent of the nation is unhappy with the way the nation is going. More and more are discouraged with the fundamental principles here. Fortunately change is coming. There is little chance that Obama will be re-elected. Of course the Republican Establishment has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory before. In 1996 they ran the only man that Clinton could beat. It is not over yet, nor need we give over the choice to the Ruling Class. The game is still afoot.

Rush Limbaugh is wondering when the split happened? That is, when he first got into the radio talk show business, all the conservative commentators were on the same side, and “our side” meant broadly “the Republican side.” Then somewhere in there the Republican establishment drifted away from the conservatives. When did it happen?

I can tell you when it happened to me. From 1980 to 1988 I had direct access to the White House, and the reports of the Council I chaired went to the National Security Advisor and the Executive Summary of each of our reports was shown to the President. Actually, President Reagan read the entire reports; he liked what we were saying. We have a number of papers on that here. See also The LE MONDE DEBATE and The COUNCIL.

That ended in January, 1989. George H. W. Bush systematically dismissed all the Reagan people from the White House, and tried to move the Republican Party over into the general Washington Establishment and ruling class. He also took us into Iraq for the first time. Long time readers will recall that I wasn’t in favor of that move. Neither were a lot of voters, and the result was Clinton, who ran as a New Democrat who would bring Hope and Change. He proved to be a normal Establishment Democrat. Newt Gingrich, a personal friend, supporter of the space programs I was advocating, and sometimes guest of the Council I had chaired in Reagan days, organized his Contract With America and took both the House and the Senate; he was elected Speaker but was never popular with the Ruling Class. He still isn’t. Newt’s personal life caused him to resign as Speaker, and the Establishment Republicans began their disastrous reign with “Big Government Conservatism”, “Compassionate Conservatism” and all the other distortions of the conservative movement that led to the big collapse. Do not misunderstand me here: although “big government conservatism” wasn’t sustainable, the real estate bubble and collapse were due to the compassionate establishment which was united in its determination to make banks grant loans that couldn’t be repaid, while letting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy up crazy bundles of mortgages and build derivatives that haven’t been straightened out to this day. It was a spree that makes drunken sailors look thrifty, and the commissions were enormous.

Came the inevitable collapse. And there appeared the Light of the World, the One we were waiting for, who would bring Hope and Change, and not at all incidentally would demonstrate to the world the end of political racism. He would bring in a new era of open and fair government, compassionate and smart.

Instead we have what we have. The Establishment Democrats took charge. The Republican Establishment wanted to spend money on TARP. The Establishment Democrats wanted to spend money on “stimulus”. And the results were always the same: Wall Street was bailed out, and the Wall Street executives used public money to save themselves from the consequences of their bad judgments, then paid themselves enormous bonuses for saving the company – and incidentally kept their huge commissions on the big real estate bubble derivatives and swaps and complex bundling schemes.

And comes now the Occupy Wall Street Movement. It’s easy enough to dismiss some of the ne’er-do-wells who come forward when there’s a media camera. Some of them are nearly caricatures, enough so as to arouse suspicion. And of course many are just old line Socialists with dirty faces, old Wobblies (including a few old friends I recognize). Some are ACORN professional agitators. But there is among them a group who have seen that there’s something wrong with an America that bails out the Wall Street institutions and watches as their executives give themselves big salaries and bloated bonuses.

So we have the OWS and the Tea Party. Quite different, but it’s worth looking at the differences. Think of the Tea Party as “small r republicans.” It’s an oversimplification but it will do from a distance; just as, from the same distance, you might see the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators as “small d democrats.” So why are the media so tolerant of the OWS while castigating the Tea Party?

One suggestion is that they are regarded differently: the Tea Party are considered adults, and thus responsible for what they do. The OWS act like children and are thus treated like children. That too is a vast oversimplification, but it has some embedded truth in it.

For those with grievances who want to demonstrate: choose your side carefully. Be very careful who you support. Arab Spring in Cairo is turning into Islamist Fall. Raids on the Christian community. Armed conflict between Army enlisted troops and the police. Egyptian officers losing control of their conflict soldiers. That way lies – well, there are several paths, as those who have read their Aristotle and Cicero know full well. It may lead to Caesar. Or as Mill said

Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing … but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Of course few are fortunate enough to find an Akbar or Charlemagne. Usually they find themselves in the Hobbesian state of nature, where life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Then they seek Caesar, which leads to Tiberius and Caligula. Good luck brings them Claudius – then Nero.

So for those unhappy with what we have – and over 80% of the American people are unhappy with what we have – the caution is how to bring about the change required, and just how much change is needed. That is not done by direct mob action, but direct action may motivate the rulers to make some changes. Do we then want democrats or republicans?

I will remind those seeking a cause that sometimes the obvious is true. The good guys clean up after themselves. They don’t complain that the city didn’t give them a porta-potty. They rent their own, and use it. OWS is at bottom seeking an Akbar. The Tea Party seeks liberty and rational discussion. We can agree that the establishment has pretty well forfeited the right to rule. We need to choose its replacement with great care. I choose liberty.

In digging around in the archives I found this from June, 2005:

Iune, 2005

Thought you might like this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoconservative

John Quincy Adams <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Quincy_Adams>  avowed, "America does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

Brice Yokem

Indeed. Thanks. I see I am listed among the "paleoconservatives" and there is a biography of me there. Hmm. I suppose I was aware that such things exist, but I confess to having paid little attention to them.

Having had a look, I can’t object to being placed in the list of paleoconservatives, but that may require some explanation, so here goes:

I don’t believe I can be labeled with any accuracy. I have some claim to being a intellectual descendent of Burke, and I was a protege of Russell Kirk. In my younger days I was concerned with political philosophy and I was a "theory major" in graduate school in political science. Kenneth Cole, co-founder of Modern Age with Russell Kirk, was one of my mentors at the University of Washington.  My career though was mostly in operations research and military applications, and while I taught Constitutional Law and political philosophy ("theory") my involvement in politics was anything but theoretical: I was a political campaign manager and advisor to politicians ( I have not the temperament to run for elective office; I do not suffer fools gladly nor damned fools at all, and it shows, and that attitude is fatal for an elected official).  Of course Burke himself was a party manager and not a terribly successful politician.

In any event, I suppose I am properly put in some small corner of the paleo-conservative movement so long as it is clearly understood that I don’t agree with all they say. I was once offered publication in The American Conservative but I declined, but many of those who do publish there are friends. Once again I do not mean that I agree with all they say. I read Chronicles, and have some admiration for Fleming, but I have never met anyone of the Chronicles group. Sam Francis and I corresponded on congenial terms, and I miss his clearheaded populist view, but most of our correspondence was about our disagreements. It is fair to put me on the list of paleo-conservatives so long as it is understood that way.

Of course there was a time when Kirk was an editor of National Review and Possony a contributor; but that was some time ago, and the egregious Frum pretty well read people like me out of the National Review sympathizer list and in the name of the magazine using the editorial "we" turned his back on us publicly and finally. National Review did good work at one time but it seems to have fallen into other hands as Buckley got older. I no longer correspond with Buckley but then I haven’t since I left academia a lifetime ago, so nothing need be read into that. I doubt he remembers me in any event.

I did have some influence in matters military during the Reagan era; I was also science and technology advisor to Gingrich when he was Minority Whip during the days of what looked like a permanent Republican minority in Congress. I suppose the high point of my "influence" was Reagan’s 1983 SDI speech. The more visible result was the DC/X which General Dan Graham, Max Hunter, and I persuaded then VP and Space Council Chairman Dan Quayle to fund.

The truth is that since Newt Gingrich left being Speaker I haven’t had much involvement in Washington politics. That’s partly due to the death of General Graham, who maintained a sane presence inside the Beltway without succumbing to the Beltway Disease of assuming the nation ends ten miles outside the Capitol Beltway.

On the other hand, this place seems to be widely read, and every now and then I get messages from people I would not have assumed paid any attention, so I suppose I can still say that I have an entry, sometimes, to being persuasive in places where being persuasive might make a difference. That is all I ever promised with the Council.

And this is far too much about me. Leave it that paleo-conservative is not an entirely accurate label, but no labels are entirely accurate, and the paleo-conservative tent includes many who don’t agree with everything said on the posters outside the revival meeting…

It all remains true. I am not very active in politics, but there are still those who listen. Sometimes. I have sources from all over. Possony used to say that you either believe in rational discussion or you don’t. I still do. Someone has to…

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