MayerBlog: The Web Log of
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An Open Letter to the GOP
In my previous entry “R.I.P., GOP: The McCain Mutiny” (March 4), I discussed my objections to Senator John McCain, various reasons why – because of his political philosophy, his public policy positions, and his temperament – I cannot support his candidacy for president of the United States. I reported that I’m writing as someone who, until recently (the presidency of George Bush the Younger), had been a life-long Republican, and who indeed still calls myself a “Goldwater Republican” – that is, someone who supports the principles that the late Senator Barry Goldwater represented (limited government, individual freedom and responsibility, and the rule of law). Sadly, these are principles that the Republican Party no longer supports. The Party’s choice of John McCain as its presidential candidate this year is, to me, the final straw. It demonstrates that the “Grand Old Party” ain’t so grand any more – that it no longer stands for liberty, individualism, free markets, and limited government. It’s become nothing more than a pale imitation of the modern Democratic Party, with its embrace of the 20th-century regulatory/welfare state and all the ways that collectivism has undermined not only individual rights and responsibility but also the system of limited, constitutional government established by America’s Founders. (Today’s Republicans, by and large, differ from the Democrats only in the details about how to expand the “nanny state.” Even today’s self-described “conservatives” have forgotten the pro-liberty, limited-government conservative principles articulated by Goldwater: "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is `needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' `interests,' I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."
(Barry M. Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative (1964).) Although I’ll continue to support some Republican candidates individually – those Republican candidates for Congress, for state and local government offices who share my pro-individualist, limited-government principles – I’ve ceased supporting the Republican Party generally because I’ve stopped hoping that it might recover those “Goldwater Republican” principles. Indeed, I’ve updated my “open letter to the GOP,” which I often send (in postage-paid return envelopes) back to the Party in response to its fund-raising letters. “Our records show that your membership has lapsed,” those form letters typically say. “Have you given up on the Republican Party?” My answer is, emphatically, YES!!! And here are my reasons why:
An Open Letter to the GOP
I will not contribute any money to, or in any other way support, the Republican Party, nationally or at the state level. Far too much of my hard-earned wealth is being confiscated by taxes at all levels of government, and it is being used to support public policies which penalize people like me for my abilities and which rewards other people for their incompetence, laziness, and imprudence – in the name of some nonexistent entity called "the public good." I see the leadership of the Republican Party doing nothing to end this manifest injustice. I see instead the Party relying on the Democrats' tactics – the politics of fear, envy, and resentment – promising only to not confiscate quite as much of my wealth, or to not limit quite as much of my freedom, as the other party. I see, in short, a difference only in degree, not in kind. On other key political issues of the past seven years, since George W. Bush has been president, I see no significant difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties. Consider the deplorable record of President Bush’s administration and the past Republican-controlled Congress: the pork-laden farm bill, steel tariffs, ethanol mandates, and other special-interest legislation; more unconstitutional campaign-finance regulations, with the McCain-Feingold law; the “No Child Left Behind” law that expands the federal government’s unconstitutional intrusion into education; the Medicare prescription-drug legislation that expands the federal “welfare state”; Mr. Bush’s program unconstitutionally spending tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer money to combat AIDS in Africa; and most deplorably, the exploitation of the September 11, 2001 militant Islamic terrorist attacks as an excuse not only to further limit Americans’ freedoms but also to expand the federal government bureaucracy, while squandering taxpaying Americans’ dollars as well as the lives and limbs of American servicemen and servicewomen in the misguided “war” that’s really nothing more than the bloody military occupation of Iraq. (The Iraqi misadventure is just the sort of failed “police-action,” “nation-building” foreign policy, inappropriately using U.S. military forces, that Republicans rightly criticized when engaged in by the Clinton administration in such places as Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia/Kosovo in the 1990s.) Now that the Democrats have regained control of both houses of Congress, neither President Bush nor the Republican minority leaders in Congress have offered any strong, principled opposition to the agenda being pushed by the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The result has been such foolish (and harmful) legislation as the federal minimum-wage increase; an energy bill that will wreck the U.S. economy (sacrificing sound energy policy to radical environmentalist agenda, including the “global warming” myth); a so-called “economic stimulus” tax-rebate program that’s sheer gimmickry; and various appropriations bills heavily laden with “earmarks” (a fancy name for pork-barrel spending projects). In cooperating with the Democrats on these “bipartisan” programs, President Bush and the Republican Party demonstrate that they offer no real alternative to the failed welfare-state policies of the past: Democrats advocate more socialism; the Republicans, what I call “socialism light.” Neither major party supports my highest political values: freedom, capitalism, and government strictly limited to its essential (and sole legitimate) function of protecting individuals’ fundamental rights. Moreover, on those few issues where Republicans have differentiated themselves from the Democrats, they have taken worse positions than the Democrats, abandoning the Republican Party’s historic commitment to limited government, individual rights, and free markets and instead embracing “social conservative” policies that amount to nothing more than what I call “collectivism of the Right.” These issues include “pro-life” policies that deprive pregnant women of their constitutionally-protected rights to privacy and violate the constitutional principles of federalism and separation of powers (the federal ban on “late-term” abortions and the attempted special legislation in the Terri Schiavo case); “pro-family-values” policies that deprive same-sex couples of their right to equal protection under the law (a proposed constitutional amendment imposing a federal ban on same-sex marriages) and which increase the powers of the FCC to censor so-called “indecent” speech, thereby violating First Amendment rights; and a misguided immigration policy that further curtails civil liberties (in a paranoid attempt to “crack down” on the supposed evils of “illegal” immigration), depriving both foreign workers and U.S. employers of freedom of contract and other essential economic freedoms. Such policies are contrary to the Republican Party’s foundational principles of equality under the law and freedom of contract. Such policies, moreover, show that the party of Abraham Lincoln and Barry Goldwater has become the party of religious fanatics, prudes, homophobes, and nativists (if not downright racists). The Republican Party’s all-but-certain nomination of Senator John McCain to be its presidential candidate in the 2008 election is, for me, the final straw. Selecting this “maverick” RINO (Republican in Name Only) whose policy positions on key issues mirrors those of his Senate Democrat colleagues is the final proof that today’s Republican Party has abandoned all principle and is willing to do anything merely to win elections. Unless and until the Republican Party offers me something positive to support, I will not give up one more penny of my hard-earned money to politicians who want to spend it on someone else, by expanding the 20th-century “welfare state,” and who want to deprive me of my basic freedoms, by expanding the 20th-century regulatory state. Like today’s Democrats (who misrepresent themselves as “progressives”), most Republican politicians today are not looking forward to the kind of great, free society the United States of America ought to be in the 21st century. Instead, they cling to the failed paternalistic policies of the past. Today’s Republicans have forgotten the wisdom of the most memorable line from President Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” To earn my support, the Republican Party must take a clear, unequivocal stand in favor of such things as: · a significant, permanent reduction in income tax rates across the board, coupled with genuine tax reform, aimed at phasing out altogether the federal income tax · a major reduction in all government regulations that stifle the freedom of American businesses (including repeal of federal antitrust laws and federal labor laws such as those mandating minimum wages and “family leave”) · energy policies that really do promote American energy independence, by repealing federal laws that interfere with the freedom of U.S. oil and gas companies to exploit our fossil-fuel reserves (including drilling in Alaska and offshore), instead of pandering to radical environmentalists’ anti-industrial agenda · limitation of the federal government to its legitimate powers, as enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution (which means, among other things, the repeal of all federal education laws) · a restored commitment to the principle of federalism, including a repeal of all federal laws that have unconstitutionally nationalized matters that the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution reserves to the states or to the people (and also abandoning support for a proposed federal constitutional amendment that would interfere with the freedom of the states to define marriage, allowing the states to recognize the legality of same-sex marriages) · a major reduction in the federal laws and regulations that intrude on Americans' everyday lives, ranging from the products they use in their homes (toilet tanks, washing machines, and light bulbs) to the vehicles in which they travel on the highways (in other words, an end to federal “energy-saving” mandates of all kinds – including abolition of that abomination called “Daylight Saving Time”) · abolition of most federal regulatory agencies, starting with those that most blatantly violate Americans’ constitutional rights (such as the FCC, or Federal Censorship Commission) · a commitment to the protection of Americans' property rights, and a repeal of federal "wetlands" regulations and other environmental laws that prevent landowners from using their property as they see fit · real Social Security reform, which means replacing the existing Social Security system with a privatized system that gives individual Americans the freedom to control their own pension plans · real reform of the U.S. healthcare system, which means reduction (not expansion) of the socialized parts of the system (Medicare and Medicaid), coupled with market-oriented reforms that will give individual Americans the freedom (and responsibility) to purchase their own health care, with private insurance, tax-free medical-savings accounts, etc. · no new federal gun-control measures, and a repeal of most existing gun legislation · abolition of the federal campaign finance laws · repeal of all so-called "affirmative action" programs and all other governmental acts that classify people by race or sex rather than treat them as individuals · genuine free trade, both within and outside the United States (including the repeal of all import/export restrictions, except for those inspection laws absolutely necessary for national security) · an end to the so-called "War on Drugs," by repealing all federal drug-prohibition laws (which have worsened drug-abuse problems and have wasted valuable law-enforcement and penal resources on non-violent offenders) · a strong national defense, for the legitimate purposes of defending the United States from foreign aggression but not for any U.N.-sponsored "peacekeeping" missions or any other military interventions in which the vital interests of the United States are not at stake · an immigration policy which opens U.S. borders to all self-reliant persons of ability · and (last, but certainly not least), a party that does not ask individuals to sacrifice for the sake of their country because it understands that the glory of the United States of America is the extent to which we value the individual – and that the sole legitimate function of government is to protect each individual’s natural, inherent, and inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
A Republican Party which takes a firm stand on issues such as these, on behalf of individual freedom and limited, constitutional government, would deserve my support. But until the leadership of the Party embraces these principles – and begins implementing them in Congress and in state legislatures where Republicans hold the majority – I will continue to withhold my support.
| Link to this Entry | Posted Friday, March 28, 2008 | Copyright © David N. Mayer |
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