03.11.09
The Natural Antidote
to Obama’s Neo-Socialism (need it be “Neo-”? I think it may just be “Retro-”) is Libertarianism. You know: “This land is my land”? “I’ll do what I cotton-pickin’ please”? “An honest day’s wages for an honest day’s work?” Well, it is only through embracing this old friend and natural partner that the GOP will succeed in the near electoral future.
This means getting well beyond just passing muster with the so-called Evangelical base. That shit needs to stop mattering now, brothers and sisters. Every good Christian knows that it is his or her duty to render unto Caesar, as well as to God. That’s because we are political animals and because we must live with the consequences of not only our own actions but even those of people we dislike and disrespect. That is the reality of politics in human society. You will not get above it. You will not get your way on every issue and you will never convince enough women that they have no choice over their bodies and you will not change enough souls, schools, or bus stops with your proselytizing and you will never be happy until you recognize that the genius of Protestant Christianity is in its fractiousness and in its frustrations with modernity and with what they used to call “the permissive society.” Y’all need the friction! You wouldn’t know what to do with your whitebread mega-churches if it came to running the real show, so just shut up and be grateful to God for easy Sunday mornings and the ladies who always wear their finest and the good lunch to be had after the ordeal is endured.
So now that you know that your theocracy will have to wait and that Darwin’s made it through to the next round and that Baby Jesus still loves him some tax cuts even in the depths of the Second Great Depression, start thinking of ways that you can work within the new identity of the Republican Party. No one is saying to abandon your principles or to abandon God and all the good things he’s made possible for you and yours, but when them carbon taxes start eating your ass out every workweek of driving the truck and hauling the kids around and y’alls pension plans are staying thin and Junior can’t get started on the schooling he’s gonna need after high school because you’ve got nothing extra put away, then you’ll remember how you let the Socialism of others replace the Opportunity that you’ve always worked for —and have just about always had.
There’s no doubt that Barack Obama lied his way into the Presidency and that a lot of people who thought they were doing the right thing have found themselves deceived into a lifetime of new taxes and burdens. Maybe even some moderate or “progressive” Republicans felt like the paradigm needed some shifting and, so, shifted. But with this bunch of shit the Democrats have dreamed up to impose on your business and your employment and your home? Are you kidding me? This Administration is intent on breaking the back of small business because the owning class represents the final frontier against which Obama’s Socialism is threatening.
The only way to move a majority of Americans back into the Republican column is to appeal to social moderates who choose small government, limited taxation, and strong national defense (that means securing our borders, too). No more legislating morality. Find out what states’ rights are really all about and start recognizing that only in a fair free market will we get our energy policies right, keep inflation low, and have real choices in education.
Pure Libertarianism is practically unattainable and logically incoherent in human society, but certain of its principles are quintessentially American. That force can be married to a fiscally sound Republican Party if only the Evangelical community will reconceive the importance of its beliefs in pluralistic terms.
Perhaps that, above all else, is a lesson we can take away from Barack Obama’s election: demography may be destiny, but a country’s character is also its fate. Let us embrace change for the right reasons and let us deliver ourselves from the Socialist catastrophe now staring us in the face.
