Conservative Monitor

I am no advocate of totalitarianism. In fact, far from it. I am a conservative who skirts the edge of Libertarianism. But I would have to say that Democracy is the Enemy of Freedom. Since my long lost college days, I have been aware of the tendency of total democracy to be converted by demagogues into a tyrannical state. This is a hard and fast rule of history that is immutable as any law of physics.

All this was brought current to me by Michael E. Newton’s book Path to Tyranny. (You can find out more about it at ThePathToTyranny.com) It should be stressed that we do not live in a democracy. The American government was originally set up as a republic. The founding fathers in their study of the ancients and Montesquieu knew that the best way to protect freedom was to have a balanced government that took into account the interests of all elements of society. When any one segment of society gains control of government it becomes corrupted by the power. There are few exceptions to this whether it be a dictator, an oligarchy, or the people themselves.

With the ”masses” in power, they will inevitably try to take advantage of the situation and vote themselves benefits…benefits which the government will ultimately find impossible to sustain. There are also demagogues who will wish to take advantage of this situation. They will use the people to put themselves in positions of power. This will ultimately do the people no good because the power politicians attain will be used for their own personal advancement. Ultimately, the tyranny put in place will simply accrete power to itself and to secure its position limit freedoms of speech, assembly, and especially property.

The trend in our country has been more and more toward pure democracy. It has become perilously close partly due the influence of polls in governmental decision-making (not to mention that polls are so easy to manipulate by those who know how). A hundred years ago we allowed the people to elect the Senate. As time went on we allowed more and more government interference in the use of property and made exceptions to the rule of law. Our freedoms have slowly been eroding even as the federal government has grown in the guise of providing for the “people”.

This trend must be stopped. Down with Democracy, Up with Republicanism.

Call me a radical if you will!

You can read my review of Michael Newton’s Path to Tyranny.

One of the dumbest things a person can say is, “I vote for the person, not the party.” If you are voting for the person, then you really are not voting for ideas. When you vote for a Democrat, any Democrat, you are voting for more government control over your life. You are voting for higher taxes. You are voting for a constrained and limited economy.

I will admit that sometimes voting for the Republican candidate can be like voting for the lesser of two evils. Even so, when voting Republican you are at least slowing down the march toward socialism.

Think of what each Democrat vote in the House of Reps means. Even a conservative Dem will be forced to vote for a liberal speaker, forced to vote for a liberal agenda proposed by the prez (or governor in the case of state houses). 

With only two major parties a vote for an independent is really a vote taken away from the party closest to your own ideology.

Logically speaking, a party line vote for the Republicans is the only intelligent option available.

A one world government is a common dream of many futurists. I think many see it as an inevitability that will some day occur along the lines of the European Union or within the confines of the United Nations. Either of these would be a poor model. The European Union is simply a socialist organization for states that allow the unscrupulous users to take from the producers. If I were the Germans I would want out of the EU on the first train ticket available.

The United Nations is even a worse model. It is a place where rogue states, Islamic fanatics, and heavy handed socialist dictators can throw their weight around and make lunatic demands on the sane part of the world cloaked in the guise of world democracy. Joseph A. Klein writes about some of this in his new book, Lethal Engagement.

So, both the current models available are bad. But is there a good model of world government we should be working toward? Would a world federal state work along the lines of the United States? Or would the huge diversity of cultures and attitudes in the world make the implementation of this form impossible?

The problem with world government really has to do with its very nature. It is so vast that there can be no check on it. Even a world democratic government could not possibly work because its unwieldy mass leaves out the possibility of individual experimentation, and ultimately individual freedom. There would be no escape in the case of tyranny. When a world government demands that some wannabe exile be executed simply because he ticked off some bureaucrat, that person’s life would be forfeit. There would be no haven where a person could utter a squeek of protest against a dictatorship.

What prompted me to think about the world government issue is a new novel by Kieth Jones called In Due Time. Its premise involves time travel and a hero attempting to help the country emerge from the despotic grip of a world government. Like Mr. Jones, most conservatives view world government as bad, and with good reason. It can only lead to the enslavement of the world and to the destruction of western society.

However, there is one way I would agree to a one world government, but it will never happen. I don’t think the world lefties would want me to be Earth’s dictator for life.

You may have guessed that I am not a full time conservative pundit. I do write a lot of reviews of conservative books. Unfortunately, it doesn’t pay enough to make a living, so I do other things, such as write books myself. There is a string of them, including a cookbook, a home improvement book, and a fairy tale. The book I just completed is a history homeschool textbook.

I wrote InDepthInfo on Modern European History because of my own difficulty finding a good history textbook for homeschoolers. I had a small class of kids and I needed something they could read and on which I could base lectures. I thought, what else would be great to have. So I included ideas for student reports, chapter quizzes, and even a final exam at the end. Best yet, the book is written from a conservative perspective. Ideas about free market capitalism and real politik are treated in a rational manner.

The book covers the period between the Renaissance and World War I. After all, what modern history class ever gets farther than that anyway? Seriously though, WWI marks the true end of an era of empire in Europe, and is a good place to wrap things up and leave room for another book covering the 100 years since then. WWII could take a hundred or two pages by itself. If this book turns out to be a success then I am sure books on Early and Ancient European history could follow.

It took about a year to write this book. Of course, not every waking moment was spent in its making. However, it did consume considerable time and research. I would encourage any parent of high school age homeschoolers to take a look and consider this book for a semester and even a year. Besides all its other advantages, it is reasonably priced at $14.99.

WJR

I was on the phone with a good friend of mine today, Lee Presser. I always kid him about being a pessimist, while I am the optimist. I know something is up when he sees a positive trend. He believes the Tea Party movement, although full of people inexperienced in the world of politics, could help take us out of the realm of politics as usual. I expressed my scepticism that this could be done. But he convinced me that it is not a matter of if it can be done, it is being done now.

A lot of people are working hard to turn things around. All kinds of ideas are being thrown out to attempt to get the country back on track. There is a new book that vigorously advocates a new approach. It is Robert Thorpe’s, Reclaim Liberty: 3-Step Plan for Restoring our Constitutional Government. Ideas include proposed new constitutional ammendments, balancing the budget, income tax reforms, reform of congress, and a return to the balance of power between the states and the federal government.

The book is worth a look. Check out the Reclaim Liberty Website.

Yes, it is completely ridiculous. The government continues to grow and expand, and as it does so it sucks money out of the private sector even as it tramples on our individual freedoms. Do we need all of these people working for the government? We did not need them in the past, but with a huge nanny state that wants to dictate our every move and even control our health care they are deemed necessary.

Why and how it is all happening is described in a book by James E. McDougal, Unsustainable. Here is the short version: The public sector unions contribute money to the Democrats to ensure they get pay raises (now clearly past the private sector pay level). The Dems oblige, and grow the number of public workers because it means more voters and more campaign contributions. And round and round it goes. Meanwhile, who is footing the bill for all of this government largess on jobs that are pointless and that only serve to grow an already too large bureacracy?

This is the same problem I have been harping on for years. The growth of the “aparatchiks”. They spelled the destruction of the Soviet Union. These ramoras, leaches, and parasites, aren’t doing us much good either.

The Free Enterprise Nation has more info on the problem, and ideas on what you can do about it.

What would the world have been like if at some point in American history the nation had gone over to communism. It really is not that hard to imagine that it could happen. It seems like we were on the verge of going over to the dark side in the 1930s when FDR ran the country.

Socialism run amok. Aparatchiks making decisions on who eats and who does not, who gets health care and who does not. Aparatchiks would be the new aristocracy and the rest of us would be standing in long lines waiting to take home a crust of bread.

Interestingly, there is a book that posits the question of what the country would be like as a socialist “Utopia”. It is called USSA: The Past Is Another Country. This is a fascinating piece of literature that supposes that Russia takes over the U.S. after a proletarian revolution. In it freedom of speech, even freedom of thought is completely stifled. Literature and news is controlled from the bureaucracy, and the world is quickly becoming a sterile place.

Actually, this is the vision that many in government, especially the Democrats, have for us. They wish to stifle individualism by clamping down on free speech. They cannot face freedom, because they understand that in order for their vision of the world to exist, they must coerce the rest of us to live by their narrow-minded rules.

Liberals are pretty much a backward lot. They certainly do not understand economics, and they are invariably wrong about Israel. Talking with a retired Baptist minister the other day, Israel came up as a subject. He off-handedly said that Israelis treat other people the way they were once treated. I was about to launch on this fellow to point out that everything the Israelis have done for the last fifty years can be justified on the grounds of self-defense. If someone were sending terrorists into my cities, and launching missiles into my back yard, I certainly would want to do something about it.

The reverend’s comment seemed so out of touch. Again, he said that Israelis were treating the others, presumably meaning the Palestinians, the way they had been treated. Well, I haven’t seen any evidence of mass murder or genocide in Israel.

As I said, I was about to launch into him. But I have spoken with this gentleman before and using logic is a pointless, as well as thankless, task. In any case, it got me thinking about the U.S. relationship with Israel, and how it is at risk, with the current administration in power. The thing that the liberals fail to understand is that if our support for Jews wavers then we will be partly responsible for the destruction of possibly millions of lives in a little country in the Middle-East. It is not an unreasonable scenario to see a terrorist Iran dropping a nuke on the country in the not too distant future. A conventional attack from surrounding countries is certainly not unprecedented.

There is a light of hope, however. There are still people who see Israel as an ally with interests closely allied with those of America. I recently read and wrote a review of Patrick Robinson’s new thriller, Intercept. It depicts a close relationship between U.S. and Israel in the intelligence department. It is good for people to see an understand that in the matter of security, and in many other areas, the U.S. and Israel must stick together.

A new novel by Cliff Ball, The Usurper has an interesting premise. What if the Soviet KGB had been undermining American society for years by destroying our education system, creating environmental disasters, and corrupting our politicians?

Sounds like communist conspiracy theory? Well, it does make good fiction. It is interesting that fiction, in order to hold our interest must have a viable, tangible plot that relates well with reality. It is kind of like the old saw that a good joke must contain a grain of truth.

Cliff Ball’s premise contains a whole lot of possibility for conjecture. There is little doubt that the Soviets were actively working for years to affect U.S. politics. Perhaps they succeeded better than they knew. Exporting communist ideology has definitely had a negative effect on Western society, undermining the work ethic and destroying free markets – resulting in a decline in prosperity for the majority. It is like the Rush used to say, the best way to defeat our economic enemies is to export liberalism to them. The Soviets did that to us.

Yes, the Soviets were defeated by the U.S. economic juggernaut. However, the old Soviets may get the last laugh yet.

Ashley Stinnett’s, Grasping Appalachian Conservatism: How Not to Be Mistaken for a Latte Liberal, is a collection of columns from one of America’s most witty and sarcastic members of the right wing. Published in newspapers and magazines across America, he dispenses common sense wisdom with flair and intelligence.

Ashley Stinnett’s website reveals much about the man and his ideas. He freely admits to being born in Appalachia, which to many a liberal makes him close to a pariah. Appalachia is looked down upon and ridiculed, when, as Ashley points out, it could be the model that saves America. You can’t go wrong with a culture of self-reliance, and a strong work ethic.