Beware the False Alternative!
Thomas Moore
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Well, they went and did it, despite all the hand-wringing, threats, blogs, demonstrations, name-calling, broken windows, and general political mayhem. Congress has delivered to President Obama his so-called health care bill, although bitterly opposed by more than half the American people. In the House of Representatives, where the final battle was fought, every Republican voted against it. We have to give them credit where it’s due.
But, it seems to me they’re patting themselves on the back a little too warmly. You can almost hear the Republicans chortling with glee in the halls of Congress. Evidently they believe their vote against ObamaCare will restore a Republican majority in the next election. Maybe it will. The anger of the American people over this “law” and the corrupt way it was passed is intense. Perhaps the GOP will be able to ride the wave of outrage back into control of Congress, and possibly the White House in 2012. So we must ask ourselves — can we depend on the GOP to set things to rights if and when they return to power? Recent history offers a resounding “No!” We need to beware the false alternative of the Republican Party. The GOP is not a solution to out-of-control gangster government. In fact, having seen it up close and personal and from the inside, I have to tell you that the GOP is not fundamentally different from the Democrats.
Now, hold on there, you say. Isn’t the Republican Party the conservative party? And since most Southerners are conservative, isn’t the GOP the proper home for us?
It’s true that most Southerners are conservative-minded, by which I mean they have a predisposition or mindset that looks more or less like the following:
The Universe is governed by God or a transcendent and intelligible moral order.
An innate human need is to be rooted — in family and place, custom and tradition.
Hierarchy of talents and abilities is natural. Man is born equal only in a moral sense, and only a repressive and unjust society can enforce total equality.
The right to property is a key element of human freedom, but true freedom embraces moral duties and responsibilities as well as rights.
Because we are fallen beings, there must be some form of restraint on our passions, something we loosely define as government.
Good government includes family and religion as co-equals to civil government or the state. Civil government must be diffuse, sub-divided, and devolved to the local community. The state must be strictly limited to powers that are few and enumerated. The best government is that which governs least.
This set of propositions probably describes you, or comes close if you’re a Southerner. Let’s call it “little-c” conservatism. But I’ve got news. It doesn’t come close to describing “big-C” Conservatism; that is, today’s institutional Conservatism of the Washington Beltway — the think tanks, foundations, national publications, and especially the Neo-Conservative Establishment, which has co-opted almost all other conservative enterprises with its vast sums of money.
The character of little-c conservatism has even less relation to the Republican Party as an institution. It’s true that some individual Republicans differ on key points with the Democrats and the Left. But the difference is not enough to make a difference. The institutional link between the GOP and true conservatism is illusory, and to the extent it exists at all, it’s based on political opportunism, not conviction or principle.
Anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear knows we don’t have a two-party political system in America; we have a one-party system. That one party is the Establishment party, the party of the corporation-dominated, collectivist, centralised state. Republicans and Democrats aren’t genuine philosophical opponents. They’re simply two like-minded gangs – the Crips and the Bloods — fighting over the spoils. They contend not for principle but for control of the coercive powers of the state, through which our gangster politicians, their corporate masters, and the big money cartel enrich themselves by plundering us.
I’ll give this to the Democratic insiders; they generally make no pretense to being other than what they are (and what we know them to be): liars, thieves, charlatans, demagogues, and despots. But we’re confused about Republicans because they claim to be something better, even though in the ways that matter most, the GOP behaves almost the same as the Democrats. In fact, when it comes to looting the taxpayer on behalf of the banks and corporations, Republicans are the past masters. Let’s not forget that the bailouts of AIG and the big banks, TARP, and the greatest mass plunder in history started under George Bush and his Secretary of Wall Street, Hank Paulson. Seen in this light, Republicans actually do more harm than Democrats because they operate under the false colors of individual liberty, limited government, and fiscal responsibility, keeping us deluded and therefore trapped. If the GOP and its Conservative myrmidons observe these principles at all, it’s only when they are out of power.
Today’s Conservatives are little more than champions of the status quo. In practical political terms, this means they are half of the equation that Totalitarian Collectivists have used successfully to advance their program. This is the dialectic, the mechanism for steady revolution advocated by Karl Marx and by his most successful Western disciple, the Italian Communist Antonio Gramschi; and refined for deployment in the U.S. by President Obama’s mentor, Communist Saul Alinsky, in his famous “Rules for Radicals.”
The dialectical revolution works like this. “Progressives,” Marxist-Socialists, or Totalitarian Collectivists launch an attack on a targeted tradition, custom, or settled political idea. This aggressive revolutionary force is called the thesis, and its target is called the antithesis. These two ideas clash and interact to produce a new state of affairs called the synthesis. And note — the synthesis doesn’t always represent equal parts of the two clashing ideas that produced it. It’s an entirely new thing, and it will be more like whatever “parent” idea was most effective in the interaction. In the case of the U.S. and the West this has always meant intensifying forms of statism and collectivism.
By defending the current status quo instead of timeless principles, all the GOP and Conservatives accomplish is to anchor one pole of the dialectic, ceding the initiative to our mortal enemies. And so the cycle keeps repeating itself. Yesterday’s synthesis becomes today’s antithesis. Even in the act of “winning” (as they falsely believe), Conservatives are co-opted into maintaining the last synthesis which has become the new status quo. The enemy takes up a new position even further to the left as their new thesis. The dialectic spins again, producing a new outcome – even more statism, collectivism, and secular humanism than before. Thus the Totalitarian Collectivists drag us step by step toward their utopian paradise, which turns out to be Hell on earth.
One of our greatest Southern minds, Robert L. Dabney, noted theologian and Stonewall Jackson’s chief of staff, explained it clearly and prophetically 150 years ago: “Conservatism’s history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward to perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It tends to risk nothing serious for the sake of truth.”
Well then, what do we do? When given only false alternatives, how do we choose rightly?
A good place to start is to remember that “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Above all, we have to have truth; and this takes courage and vision, for the truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear. But without truth, we remain lost in the murk and mire.
Second and like unto the first, we have to stop being fools, like the one spoken of in Proverbs 26:11: “As a dog returneth to his own vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.” Because of the abuses, outrages, crimes, and follies of the George W. Bush Administration, lovers of liberty have begun to vomit up the GOP and its false Conservatism. Let us not, despite the worse abuses, outrages, crimes, and follies of the Obama Administration, return to the lies and self-delusion we have spewed forth. Third, realize that if they can keep us asking the wrong questions, then they don’t have to worry about the answers. So let’s start asking the right questions, especially this one: what have today’s Conservatives actually conserved? Liberty? The principle of limited government? Sound money? Secure borders? Morality in government? The Constitution? Free-market health care? In John Wayne’s immortal words, “Not hardly!” What they conserve at all costs is their access to power, their perks, and their privileges — just like the Democrats. They conserve the status quo of unlimited, unaccountable government, but they have never rolled it back, nor will they ever. Fourth, accept that the power and credibility of the Bushites, Neo-Cons, GOP Establishment, and Beltway Conservatives have to be broken first, before we can attack the “deep enemy” of Totalitarian Collectivists. This is crucial because these apostles of the false alternative keep us deluded by lies and mired in the Marxist dialectic. They trap good Southern people, who ought to know better, in the service of a corrupt and lawless Regime, when by temperament and mindset these real conservatives ought to be on the side of Southern liberty.
Fifth, we need to get past the “lesser of two evils.” There’s no question that Obama and his Marxist minions are the rottenest gang to ever occupy the corridors of power in Washington. But the alternative to them has got to be something genuine. The lesser-of-two-evils argument is the false alternative in its most distilled and concentrated form. It’s a version of the proverbial frog in the pot — slowly heating the water under the frog until he’s cooked. Wouldn’t it be better to let evil reveal itself fully and with clarity, alerting us while we still have the time and strength to leap out of the fatal trap and counter-attack? No, it may be a paradox hard for some to understand, but choosing the lesser of two evils is actually the worst evil.
I’m not suggesting we should never vote for someone on the Republican ticket. After all, some of our best people are running as Republicans — Ray McBerry (GA), Judge Roy Moore (AL), Jim Holt (AR), and Rand Paul (KY). One of our own SNC Delegates from Arkansas, Loy Mauch, is running for the State legislature as a Republican. Ken Cuccinelli, a traditionalist, liberty-loving conservative, was recently elected Republican attorney general of Virginia. They are fully deserving of our support. But these folks stand out precisely because they’re exceptions, rebels against the GOP Establishment, which has tried to sabotage them.
I can’t speak for the others; but I know Ray McBerry personally, and I think it would be accurate to say that he’s running as a Republican, not because he is a Republican. This is an important distinction, one understood by all of these fine men. They’re seeking office from a sense of urgent calling and public duty, and they’ve concluded the GOP ticket is the most likely avenue to success. But they also understand the danger of the false alternative. They’ve made a pragmatic decision, but I think they also know this: as long as well-meaning, traditionalist, patriotic Southerners look to the Republican Party as the principal means of our deliverance, our People will remain snared in delusion and futility and under the boot of the Federal leviathan.
In conclusion, never automatically give a Republican the benefit of the doubt. Never assume he’s the right choice simply because he’s a Republican, or that he’s even what he claims to be. He (or she, especially if it’s Sarah Palin) should be subjected to the same rigorous scrutiny and skepticism we apply to Democrats. Make sure the person you vote for, regardless of Party, will courageously stand against tyranny and for liberty. In today’s context, that means opposing the central state, not simply offering to run it more efficiently. Don’t be fooled by the insincere “conservative” protestations of the Republican empty suits. As Shakespeare said, “The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.”
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Thomas Moore is Chairman of the SNC.
* The SNC represented States are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
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