In the Let’s-Never-Let-This-Happen-Again-When-We-Win category, I try to imagine the good-natured Ronald Reagan addressing a joint session of Congress. Looking over the assembled, I wonder if he could imagine, or even allow himself to believe, that as many as a quarter of the people seated there were dedicated to the overthrow of the republican form of government we’ve come to know under the Constitution.
In truth, I doubt it.
Ronald Reagan first addressed Congress in 1982, and what he little believed could be true then actually had been true for over 70 years.
National Review, in its Dec 31 2009 issue, published a four-part article entitled “The Four Horsemen of Progressivism”. It’s a must read, the sort of thing you will want to revisit often. I asked Jonah Goldberg to make the article available on-line, and asked NR to publish it in pamphlet form, like the little Cato Institute booklet I carry around, as it’s just one of those pieces one needs to always have for reference.
It describes how progressivism found its early roots in the Church of England in America, and the High Church belief in a class of betters who could best guide government toward a more perfect society. (British Imperialism was anointed in a similar fashion.) But remove the church-God relationship, which was all too easy for the tonier elements of the Episcopal Church, and you really can find very little difference between this religio-academic approach to governance and the atheo-academic approach the Marxists and Fabians had devised. Indeed, it was a type of socialism, only with God holding up one leg of the stool instead of a tractor from Minsk. (Over time, as we’ve seen, it was easy to get rid of that god-leg, which in hindsight bares naked the shortsighted human understanding of the designers of progressivism in the first place.)
You want an answer as to why the GOP and Mitch McConnell today, George W Bush, Bill Frist, Trent Lott, yesterday, and on back to Hoover, could only chuckle, or shuffle their feet uncomfortably when assaulted by the most bodacious of accusations by the other side? Racism. Bigotry, Homophobia. Protection for the wealthy. Hatred for the poor. Parking in Handicapped Zones? It is because they cannot allow themselves to follow the logic of those accusations out to their only honest conclusion…and think the unthinkable…that we are no longer (and haven’t for the longest time) even been playing this “game” on the same field as the other side.
One of us is in a separate reality. Rush Limbaugh says it is them, “the universe of lies,” but I say that’s a sorting-out only God gets to do. Which universe we are in depends on who wins. If we win, then we can return the game to the original playing field and rule book.
A person recently asked me what I considered to be political victory in this war with the Left. It took a day to get back to him. But as I see it, “political victory” means that…
the Constitution shall once again be the centerpiece of governance in America, and that the playing field, the rules, the goals and ambitions of all political parties shall be carried out within the four corners of the constitutional promises and protections as envisioned by the Founders.
Right now, there are two things we know: 1) Progressivism is, and always has been (when considered logically) in direct opposition to the purposes of the Constitution, namely the freedom and liberty of the individual. If anyone wants to debate this, tell them to hire a hall and bring their experts and television crews, and we’ll bring ours. 2) No one, Republican, conservative, you name it, including Ronald Reagan, has fully recognized this fact, or, has simply refused to believe it.
This then, our first hurdle, getting the right people to know and admit this…if only to themselves in the mirror. Once done, they can begin asking the awkward questions themselves. Then we won’t have to hire a hall. The mainstream media will take care of the rest for us.
