An Equivocating Thought on Sen. Chuck Hagel That Is Bound To Become Decidedly Less So As It Is Penned

Let me begin by stating that I do not adhere to the belief that Sen. Hagel is anti-Semitic. While he is undoubtably anti-Israel, I remain convinced that one can indeed be against Israeli policies (or even Israel herself), and be absent an unabashed hatred of Jews.

- long pause, puts kettle on the stovetop - 

With that being said, Hagel's comments concerning the dual loyalty of American Jews, open complaints about a "Jewish [not merely Israel] lobby" that possesses inordinate power in Washington, as well as a series of Senate votes in favour of Hizbullah are extremely disconcerting.

 I posit that these troubling comments perhaps do not reflect a hatred of Jews, but instead reflect an historically congruent view of Jews as seen through the eyes of the Midwestern farmer, which lends itself to awkward and sometimes malevolent prejudices.

What do I mean by this? To use a Chomskyism, it is common knowledge that the agricultural community, of which Sen. Hagel's home state is a part, holds long-standing dislikes for professions perceived to be predominately Jewish in composition. In the early 20th Century, the prairie populists railed against the power of banks and New York industry in language that accentuated the supposed Jewish nature of American capitalism. 

A half century later, the hardline paleoconservative and white nationalist break from the fusionist consensus was focused intensely on the plight of "Middle America" farmers. The paleoconservatives lamented the foreclosed and benighted farming community as a cultural nexus under attack from globalists, often depicted as " internationalists" consumed with Israel's security but loathe to lend a hand to the interior of the country.

Jeffersonian yeoman's democracy became a cudgel to be swatted at Washington bureaucrats who had sold out the American ideal (agriculture) and the American heartland (agricultural America) to the highest bidder. And who, if I may ask, is naturally assumed to be fraught with money and usurious enough to use it for power-hungry internationalism? This is seen in the heavily paleoconservative tones given by groups like the American Agricultural Movement, whose rank and file members accused Washington of abandonment for the pecuniary embrace of globalist power center, often in anti-Jewish-power terminology. 

The white nationalists took this to what could be argued as its logical conclusion, preying on bankrupt farmers by asserting that Jewish power sought to end their way of life, and that the Zionist Occupied Government saw them as little more than parasite Gentiles. One could look at the literature from the Aryan Nations and its splinter child in Robert Matthews' The Order for example after example of how outreach to the farming community was seen as a potential goldmine given their already-ingrained mistrust of outsiders, particuraly those of Jewish origin. 

While the nationalist and supremacist community ultimately failed in constructing a white power base (if one forgives the expression) among the farming community, it remains true that both paleoconservatism and its cousin in white nationalism see the Midwestern farming community as more potentially fruitful acolytes than the American South or the coasts.

What does mean for Sen. Hagel? In the most cautious of terms, I suggest that Hagel's anti-Israel leanings, and more importantly his apparent obsession with "Jewish power" (in re Aaron David Miller interview), are part and parcel of the underlying political sympathies of his geographical area. The cultural mindset of some in the agricultural community is one that takes localism and a mistrust of federal influence to a mistrust of those seen as perpetrating their current plight. Many times, the simple fact that Jews are seen as disprortionately powerful in the professions of banking and law create a specific mistrust of Jewish power.

 It is from these roots and preponderances that I believe cloud Sen. Hagel's judgement, especially when accusations of dual loyalty and power conglomeration are afoot. As a son of Nebraska and an archetypal prairie Republican, the less savory elements of what it means to be a classical populist Republican have taken root. Whie they have not created a bald-faced hatred (anti-Semitism)of Jews, they have been midwife to a series of comments and actions that lend credence to an historical mistrust of Jewish power and its purported monetary supremacy. 

Achin' Akin: An Admonishment of the Pro-Life Community As It Fast Approaches Moral Bankruptcy

Note: Originally written August 2012

Perhaps there are a few of us in the politically-minded camp who have not yet heard today’s outburst from Missouri. In the interest of context, the Republican senatorial candidate’s words are reproduced below:

            "From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist."

There is little need to bog down in the mire of what exactly he said, suffice to say that is a deplorable statement.

If I could for a moment be more personal, I would like to share my view on abortion. As a Christian, a conservative, and a moral person, I am abhorred by the practice. Abortion does indeed terminate life without fault or blame for its explication. In a society of my own making, abortion would be strictly relegated to the extreme and rare cases of rape, incest, and life of the mother.

Those of us on the Right who are more willing to be critical of the grassroots GOP base will sometimes hone in on the steady progression of the Republican base towards radicalism on certain issues. For example, I remain stalwartly critical of the Tea Party approach to electoral success and intellectualism, especially in terms of its rhetoric. However, these excoriations are usually prefaced with a critique of the ‘modern’ itineration of the movement; the inference is that the divorce of pragmatism and principle is a recent phenomenon.

The pro-life movement, in contrast, cannot be disparaged in its ‘modern’ form. It cannot be done because it has acted in this fashion since its inception. The pro-life movement has never in its 40 year history any remembrance of days of pragmatism, no relic of less militant times buried away in a forgotten closet. Unlike any other American political movement, pro-lifers have been unique in that their message remains unchanged throughout four decades of shifting American political winds.

With this is mind, it must be made perfectly clear that the pro-life movement has been an utter failure. Even ‘utter’ is more understatement than an accurate assessment. Tell me, can they give me a list of states that have banned the practice? Or demonstrate to me how significantly they have reduced the number of American abortions? Perhaps they’ve acquired some success in altering the poll-verifiable opinions of the average American concerning abortion? No, no, and no. Every attempt made to ban abortion wholesale is rejected, even in Mississippi and the Dakotas. While abortion rates have declined from their peak in the early 1990s, the dip has been marginal by comparison. Americans polled on the issue of abortion remain nearly identical to their counterparts in the 1970s.

It is perhaps telling that the only tangible pro-life success in that time has been a ban on partial-birth abortion, a practice so despicable that only the most stridently pro-choice individual would support it. Even this progress took three decades to enact.

I repeat again that the pro-life movement has been a failure, and a resounding one at that. Why? Unlike any other social movement in the history of the United States, the pro-life movement has been the least willing to act pragmatically or compromise at any turn. This is endemic in the pro-life community. I personally know pro-life Americans who are against parental notification laws, ultrasound checks, etc because they feel that they are legitimating the practice by passing a law that does not abolish the action outright. Bans on second-trimester abortions, which a majority of Americans have expressed support in, are also cast aside. Instead, the standard of ‘personhood’ is raised via the ballot box, only to miserably fail every time it is voted on.

I am increasingly of the belief that electoral success is no longer, or perhaps never has been, a goal for the pro-life movement. It has become so inalterably obsessed with the moral rightness and ideological purity of its actions that it would rather breathe the evanescent vapour of moral victory and the buttress its own conscience than be successful. It is a movement overwhelmed with the hypocrisy of choosing its own self-aggrandizement over actions that would reduce, limit, or even eventually prevent the death of others.

This is the apogee of a movement fast approaching its own moral bankruptcy, yet still puttering along with its insistence that more aborted faetus photographs will shock the American conscience. It is a group who feels it necessary, as Akin did, to downplay rape in order to explain the internal contradictions in your own radicalism. Abortions in the case of rape, incest, and life of the mother constitute no more than 1% of all American abortions, but that 1% has now become what the movement has been defined by. If exceptions are made in these cases, American support for a national ban on abortion nears a majority. Yet that 1% means enough in their self-righteousness that they are willing to let the abortion rate remain unchanged and no progress be made towards saving the lives of the unborn?  

If they are to succeed in their goal, which should be to limit abortion as much as possible, there must be sharp movement towards pragmatism. Look to the environmental protection movement. If Rachel Carson had echoed the modern talking points of the Sierra Club in Silent Spring, the entire movement would be devoid of success. Indeed, would we be having a national discussion on same-sex marriage if LGBT advocates had called for it en masse sans compromise back in the Stonewall Riots? Of course not. We live in an America that celebrates Martin Luther King, but is largely ignorant or dismissive of Stokely Carmichael. Why? Because we value gradualism and denigrate radicalism in our social movements.

Yet the pro-lifers do not have the courage to engage in difficult compromises in order to achieve their goals. There is no bravery, no true moral fortitude to be found in screaming outside of Planned Parenthood with blood and gore bedecking your signs. There is no true moral conscience in a movement that routinely chooses a path it knows it will never succeed in save a moral high ground built ever higher on the graves of the unborn. If they were brave, if they were not increasingly morally repugnant, they would compromise. They would work every year to limit abortions in state legislatures, one trimester and restriction at a time.

The greatest fear of the pro-choice movement should be a pro-life counterpart that is willing to build a coalition of Americans around the idea that abortions must be strongly limited, but not banned. That is a movement that could eventually see a United States without 95 + % of its abortion. Also, it is a movement that this author will not feel ashamed to be a part of, one that does not label him pro-choice because he does not see progress towards a goal as an abandonment of principle. Therein lies the reason for their failures, and a rationale for a new course. Are they brave enough to take it? Most likely not.

An Address to the Right: On the Stalinist Anti-American Muslim Cleric from Kenya (President Obama)

Note: Originally written July 2012

For eight long years, my fellow conservatives and I lamented the treatment of President Bush by his political opposition. We were filled with righteous indignation at every equation of President Bush to fascism. We rankled at every shoe thrown, every raging grandmother whisked away by security whilst screaming her heart out about war crimes.  Our visages paled in utter disbelief when Americans, no different than myself save political convictions, openly joked about assassinations, beatings, and public shamings of the President.

But no, we did not stop at mere outrage. We held up the bruised arms of our President for monuments. We dutifully dug in the trenches in service of the Office so as to use the fill dirt to build a moral high ground. And upon that massive pile of earth we sat, chiding our friends, and rightfully so, for their incivility. Our common contention was that the Left had twisted itself in the convolutions of its own ideology, blinded by hatred of a President who sincerely wished the best for the country irrespective of politics.

Alas, we did not stop at outrage or political homilies about civility. Many of us, myself included, pricked our fingers and swore to treat the next President, regardless of party, with more respect than our opposition. Did not our mound of dirt filled high from these abuses demand it? Did it not freely escape our lips that President Bush was treated worse than any President since Lincoln? We would be better.

Now we are nearly three and a half years into a Presidency with whom we markedly disagree. Those who know me are fully aware of how blisteringly critical I am of this President’s actions, in policies foreign, domestic, and economic.  I am not one to shun partisanship, nor do I seek undue comfort in bashing my party for the sake of bashing it.

But I have not once failed to give this President the respect that is due his Office.

Now consider your actions. Consider the Birtherism, the calls for impeachment, the effigies, the accusations of Islamic (or Islamist) faith. Recall the henny-pennies of the Fall of the Republic, the notion duly believed that this President is a half step in the mire of dictatorship. Think on every time you spit out his name with bile, without the title of President that YOU OWE HIM to give as a citizen of this country. Remind me of the colour draining from my face every time I am told straight-faced that he is not your President. And to drown me in the fullness of misery, engulf me in the waves of supposedly mainstream and respected outlets of the Right that engage in this behavior. It isn’t just Alex Jones anymore; it’s Alan West.  The Birchers have come home to roost, and we stand unguarded and unwilling to stop these battalions of tomfoolery.

Is our memory so short, our political eyesight so myopic, that we have forgotten what it was like to be the indirect (or direct) object of their hatred? Have we excused the excesses of our fringe elements as minor distractions, when we saw the Daily Kos’ vitriol as the veritable bellwether of attacks against the President?  When we saw a Left so acidic, so acrimonious as we watched them besmirch the Office of the Presidency time and time again? Or perhaps we see no difference in placing a hammer-and-sickle next to this President and condemning a bedraggled leftist scribbling a swastika on his sign with a different face years before?

My brothers, do not confuse my anger for disavowal of our cause. In an age where political hypocrisy is not an El Dorado but ubiquitous as a fly, I ask but this: that we who spoke with such forcefulness on respect for the President give this President at least an ounce of respect more than the previous President was given by his opposition.  How many conservatives can tell me, straight-faced and without a hint of mendacity, that you have conducted yourselves any better? 

(Part 2) Experiences With The Muslim Community In Colorado Springs: Anecdotes, Thoughts, And Reflections

Note: Originally written August 2012

Now we leave my anecdote and move to reflections. Understandably so, many of you will severely disagree with many of the observations and opinions presented. In fact, if there is not any umbrage taken by persons on both sides of this issue, I will have failed.

First I will begin with a brief reflection on my experience with the Colorado Muslim community. As those of you who read it may recall, it was a very pleasant experience. Not only that, it was not unlike in many ways the myriads of church luncheons dotting my childhood. To be sure, I winced at the sight of segregated sexes, but it is to be expected at some point. The persons I met were not ‘stealth jihadis’, not shrouded in suspicion and mystery, but kind and surfeited with joy at my presence. Absent a few minor differences, I could have closed my eyes and thought myself at any other all-American picnic with families of faith exercising their freedoms alongside other good citizens.

In order to gain perspective, there are a few opinions that must be broached. First, that it is an undeniable fact that the West is involved in some level of conflict with politicized, militant forms of Islam. To deny it is to turn a blind eye to the history of the world. While all faiths have been exercised in militant fashion throughout history, it is my strong contention that there is something endemic within Islam that lends itself to a greater propensity for violence and militancy. To deny that is to slough off the burden of nearly a millennia and a half of terror brought forth by militant Islam. Unlike Christianity, whose Savior is as non-political as a religious figure can be, Mohammad (pbuh) was a military commander with more political intentions for Islam, as part and parcel of the culture in Arabia at that time. This, and many other factors, gives Islam a relatively larger penchant for radicalism in the modern context compared to Christianity, especially after the Reformation unyoked large portions of the Church from the oxcart of the State.

This viewpoint is not made out of ignorance or political expediency.  My interpretation of Islam as susceptible to a framework for ferocity and antipathy for those of other faiths is drawn from my understanding of the Quran in total. The Quran is a beautifully written text with a combination of remarkably poignant calls for the best of religious devotion and rather unsavory calls for violence. Those on the fringes who excoriate the Quran, the hadiths, etc. as automatic instructions for violent war are missing a broader framework, but it is not an entirely unfounded perspective.

Additionally, while a vast majority of Muslim communities in the United States are as welcoming and the finest of citizens as the group in Colorado Springs, there is also a small yet troubling number of Muslims in the United States who are not. This is due to many factors, and I refuse to bog us down in the question of “why?”. The simple fact remains that there are indeed, as the Imam corroborated, a number of radicalized Muslims who seek to harm the American community at large, driven by a heavily politicized and theologically myopic view of their faith.

 To those of my friends on the Left who seek to downplay this threat as simply another chapter in the book of American xenophobia and racism: you are in denial of the many of these cases known and unknown involving radicalized Muslims.  In your self-righteously noble zeal to defend those who appear persecuted under the American system, you are doing nothing more than offering social safe haven for the enemies amongst us. By seeing every legislative attempt to protect American citizens from an incredibly real danger as an assault on the Muslim community at large, you only move us closer to the social segmentation that currently wallows Europe in a race-relations morass that makes our problems appear meaningless. Tolerance  at all costs becomes criminal when applied to that which is undeniably evil and harmful to society, and I fear that your gallant attempts at radical inclusion only reap a bitter harvest.

To those on my Right who see a few instances of radicalism and proceed to denigrate an entire community as a fifth column, I urge you to embrace sanity. One can be anti-radical yet supportive and defensive of the Muslim community in this country, but all I see from you is bile and bigotry.  While I am in agreement that politicized Islam is hazardous to our shared values and our vitality, the vitriol and ignorance I find among far too many of your ranks is nothing short of disgusting. To me, it matters not that you may be right in some instances. If you so loudly wail that you cannot find a ‘moderate’ Muslim voice, perhaps you should consider the fact that your rank antipathy for Muslims at large prevents them from making the inroads they so desperately want to make in this society. If you truly sought a nation free from radicalized Islam, you would defend them. But I am more convinced that there are those among you who quietly yearn for religious war of their own, and seek pretext for it by bashing Muslims.

So what is to be done? Is there hope at all for acceptance of Muslims in American society and their absorption into an American fabric? Given that the excesses of the Right and Left are willing to use a ‘new’ (in the American experience) faith community as a political bludgeon, is there room for consensus? Part Three will discuss these issues.

(Part 1) Experiences With The Muslim Community In Colorado Springs: Anecdotes, Thoughts, And Reflections

Note: Originally written August 2012

Lazy cross-over dribble got the better of me.  Wood-tip of a Black and Mild clenched in his teeth, the scraggly yet surprisingly coordinated fellow my opposite capitalized on my distraction and hastily poked away the basketball.

It was an odd scene. What was odd about it was, in a sense, its many familiarities: the pick-up game of basketball with strangers, the playful joshing of ever-competitive males, a warm Colorado sun made slightly more intense from the reflection on the pavement. It was a park in Colorado Springs not unlike dozens of others, fields of grass valiantly trying to keep up appearances while dying for lack of water, dozens of families dotted at tables and strewn about on blankets. All of this was so familiar as to be forgetful.

My cause of distraction had been more of curiosity than anything else. At a gentle slope in the field adjacent, a smallish group of men began to organize in a loose collection of lines. The gentleman at the helm, sporting an age-appropriate oversized and tucked-in 90s polo, oriented the cadre in an easterly direction, then all knelt in the grass and began their recitation. It was then that I remembered where I was, and realized in my momentary ignorance what I had failed to see before. 

It was the Asr, or afternoon prayer.

I  had agreed to go with *John* to meet the Colorado Springs Muslim community for an afternoon and barbeque at the park. John was a member of my local church who has made outreach to the Muslim world his calling, though in the most unorthodox of ways. Fundamentalists would call it heterodox. Flushed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Bible, the Quran, the hadiths, and all overlap in between, he has made a global name for himself by living and serving with Muslim communities.  He develops personal relationships with as many mosque-goers as he can, speaking about Issa (Jesus) and how Muslims and Christians view Him.  In this capacity, he has been to multiple countries where, given his faith, it would be perilous to be an admitted Christian, not to mention having tea with local imams and speak at length about Christ. He is widely admired and welcomed by nearly every community he sojourns.

But I digress. To say that my emotions were ever-changing that afternoon is an understatement. What was I to think? I knew far more about Islamism (which admittedly intrigues me more to this day) than ‘normal’ Islam, I had rarely fellowshipped with those outside Judeo-Christianity, and…it was in Colorado Springs. I found myself always ready to wince in case of same ugly remark yelled from across the park about the group, obviously different from other families in dress and segregation (the women talked and ate at a separate park structure).

I continued my pick-up game with Steve and four others. Steve was a pale thirty-something, a recent convert to Islam and still smoking his drug-store cigar while we played. When I mustered up the courage during a lull in play to ask Steve about his faith, his rationale was simple: He had been with bad company, in and out of jail, and “decaying” as he put it. Islam and the Muslim community gave him discipline and order, a sort of stern yet loving kindness he had not found elsewhere.

In fact, Steve was not the only ‘obvious’ convert due to his background; a few African-American Muslims and their families also dotted the picnic group of about 85. Most of the men were unsurprisingly engaged in a half-dozen soccer games in the fields around the food area.

As we approached evening, the imam slowly worked his way around to the different groups, calling us to dinner. Words cannot begin to describe the meal laid out before us. The two dozen different dishes, from Indian to Arab to North African, would have sufficed. But the lamb on the spit made any attempts at description futile.

Conversation around my section of the table was fascinating. We talked over everything from the ins and outs of football (American!) to discussions and debates over Arab history. All of this was warming and pleasant, but the story that stuck with me was one that the imam gave when John asked if they’d had any new visitors to the mosque.

The imam cast a sobering look, put his hands together on the table, almost reticent to begin. His tone was saddening. Their mosque indeed had a few newcomers as of late. They were a half dozen young Muslims from the West Coast, stopping by Colorado on their way across the country. They were passionate, bold, and devoted. As the imam described, I was admittedly confused, as there seemed nothing the matter with the persons described.

Then I noticed his tone shift to a couched anger. This group of men was unwelcome because of what they were there for. Their passion was not in peace and quiet devotion. They argued with the imam and other on violence against others, crowed about being students in Pakistan and when they would next be there, and chastised the whole congregation as ‘un-Muslim’ for their perceived lack of fervency.  “These kids, they catch fire and they are poison each time their kind stops in”, he stated with visage marked with rank frustration. “We get kids like them a few times a year.”

Fearing that the presence of these youngbloods would, if discovered, strain the already tenuous relationship the community has in the Springs, the imam began to discourage them from attending Friday prayer, even going so far as (in his words) “putting myself at the threshold” when they  attempted entrance.

And with that the story ended. I desperately wanted to ask more questions about this incident, but the imamappeared tired, almost grieved, from speaking it. Our talk sprang back to more pleasant things, and soon we left our tables for the largest and most incredibly disorganized soccer game possible. Teams soon meant very little, as the younger men boisterously tried to steal the ball from their fathers, much to the delight of others.

At dusk, we began to pack up the odds and ends. I embarrassingly overthanked the imam after he told me to make several plates of food to bring home.  I stood for a while in the night air, sitting atop the hood of the car with lit pipe in my mouth, watching as the last of the group drove away.  But I soon left, as the smell of the lamb wrapped in foil beckoned me to the nearest microwave.

*John's name is changed to protect his relative anonymity.

On The Obama Doctrine

Note: Originally given May 2012

 It is nearly inarguable that foreign policy is among a President’s greatest responsibilities. As this is the case, it is vital that we first examine the President’s foreign policy in order to evaluate his tenure as Commander in Chief and contrast it with Gov. Romney’s beliefs.

It would be rankly partisan to not commend the Administration for several successes. The President’s leadership in the killing of Osama Bin Laden, his Secretary of State’s role increasing freedoms for the downtrodden in Myanmar, and his willingness to continue the conflict against Al-Qaeda and its affiliates begun by his predecessor are all laudable.

But this Administration is sadly a failed one. I briefly present to you tonight my perception of an Obama Doctrine, views held by this Administration that are to blame for these failures.

The Obama Doctrine can be summarized through three tenets; first, that American power and leadership should be tethered to the whims of international institutions and the sensitivities of undemocratic nations. Second, that those around the world seeking democratic governance at great peril to their lives are more nuisance than opportunity. Third, that rogue states like Iran and North Korea are to be naively engaged with at great cost to our interest.

These precepts are intertwined.  In Libya, this Administration belatedly resigned itself to leading from behind, waiting to intervene until what was a popular revolt against a bloody despot had metastasized into civil war. Why did he hesitate but out of undue deference to Russia and China, nations whose hands are richly stained with the blood of their own citizens.

This President’s response to the Arab Spring has been to treat its democratic disciples as an annoyance, rarely given their cause the slightest mention. His damnable silence during the Green Revolution was a moral abandonment of our principles as Americans to look with fraternity on those who would rather be butchered wholesale by government thugs than bow to a theocracy.

Why was this Administration silent during the Green Revolution but out of fear that support for those butchered in the streets of Tehran would harm attempts at engagement? This from a regime whose only acceptable negotiations are to negotiate on the negotiations.

The brave citizens in Syria, whose struggle is now a year old with 10,000 slaughtered, have been sacrificed on an altar of convenience. This Administration waited five months to say what Syrians had said from the start, and has since been silent while Assad waits out the storm with massacres.

Presented with the opportunity of leadership transition in North Korea, the Administration joyously proclaimed that is had curtailed a drive for missile launches in the Sea of Japan. Imagine our surprise to find the North Koreans attempting to launch long-range missiles soon after.

In Latin America, press freedom in Ecuador and Bolivia are virtually non-existent, Chavez and Ortega continue to deny basic political rights, and this Administration finds it better to stab Britain in the back over the Falklands.

What is it that ails this Administration that they would intervene in Libya under the ambiguity of a “right to protect” Libyan citizens, yet be hushed to the Syrians besieged by their own government? The disease is thus: that this Administration views American power and leadership as something to be shunned and reluctantly assumed, better left to other powers. When our power brushes up against a nation like Russia and China, we retreat into a meek supporting role at best, and a complicit observer at worst. This is not the thinking of a certain Democratic President who circumvented the UN to stop genocide in Kosovo.

This Administration’s handling of Iran’s nuclear program has nothing short of shameful. When the Senate voted unanimously for stronger sanctions, this Administration worked hard to dilute the measures, believing  that 3 years of failed engagement could still work. And what of the sanctions save that they have done nothing to curtail Iran’s apocalyptic ambitions? In the past three years, the Iranians have progressed further than in the past three decades. Before this Administration, Iran had zero centrifuges providing 20% weapons-grade uranium; it now has hundreds. Our appeasement of Iran, including three years of cold-shouldering to Israel and the Saudis, has done irreparable harm to the safety and security of the world.

This Administration remains so committed to separating itself from Bush policies that it has turned a blind eye to our interests and values. Ironically, this President’s few successes are either due to the successes of his masterful Secretary of State, or to policies continued from Bush policy.

So what is this Obama Doctrine? It is an aversion to American power, a tendency to see democratic movements as a nuisance to our decline in power, and a willingness to engage with rogue states in unrequited naiveté.

Where does Gov. Romney’s vision contrast with this evaluation? Unlike this Administration, Gov. Romney understands that when the United States is strong, it is the greatest ally for peace this world has even seen. It is with this leadership that we ensure not only our security, but the security and prosperity of our friends (and our enemies) throughout the world.

Under Gov. Romney, no longer will it be tacitly deemed acceptable for Iran to possess nuclear capability that, in the President’s own words, would be a gamechanger. Under Gov. Romney, the democrats of Syria and the greater Arab world would not be left wondering whether or not we believe in our commitment to democracy, human rights, and self-determination for those gunned down in Damascus, Tehran, and Pyongyang.

Gov. Romney rejects the idea that we can retreat into a less assuming role in this world. Our shared values with our allies are not to be compromised, our renewed commitment to the freedom of peoples under the yoke of tyranny should be rightfully weighed with our interest, and our diplomacy should not be all-extending.

There remains a sincere hope that our foreign policy can lead us into another American Century of leadership. That hope is built on nothing less than a rejection of the Obama Doctrine, and a validation of Gov. Romney.

Towards A New Fusionism

Note: Originally written May 2012

Greetings, my name is Andrew Struttmann. I am the Vice Chairman of the Colorado Federation of College Republicans, as well as a student here at the University of Denver. It is an honour to be here amongst so many other proud members of the Republican party.

There remains so much that I could discuss with you in terms of how my generation will be affected by these upcoming elections. So much so that I would be doing it a profound injustice in this short time. I could tell all of you how this President and his party have mired us in the morass of crushing debt, and that would be true. I could rouse you with denunciations of this President and his party as diluting our freedoms, our liberties, and drowning us in the murky depths of social democracy. This too would be true.

But those are lines overused to a fault. I wish a moment of your time to engage in a conversation that I feel the Republican party must have if we are to remain successful.

In darker days for the Republican party, a time when the threat of Communism convinced Whittaker Chambers that he had indeed switched to the losing side by abandoning Communism, Frank Meyer, an conservative intellectual and writer for National Review, developed the idea of fusionism. Fusionism, in short, is a marriage of traditionalist conservatism and libertarian individualism, two ideologies that in warred as often in Meyer's time as they do today. Under this new masthead, the Right and the Republican party was unified against the threat of Communism, and fusionism was instrumental in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. In time, the neoconservatives as well conglomerated into our consensus.

Meyer rightly understood that seeking to minimize the gulf between libertarians and conservatives would allow for the intellectual Right to reinvigorate the Republican Party. With the fall of Communism in the early 90s, the bonds forged by fusionism were broken Since that time, our party has been fraught with squabbles amongst these two ideologies.

It is my contention that it is time for the GOP to move towards a new fusionism on the ashes of the old. If we are to defeat Barack Obama and his party this fall, we must embrace it.

Among us there are some who are caught in a perpetual contest of out-conservativing each other. Others in our party seek to exploit our differences on social issues and tear us apart from within. These are damaging, and their excesses must be eclipsed by our new-found unity. We must continue to celebrate, not denigrate, our differences, and know that the Republican party is a place for us to channel our ideas into good governance. If we continue to allow radicalism for its own sake, I fear that any hopes of unity will be frayed. We must avail ourselves to some standard on this issue.

So I challenge all of you, including myself, to look towards a a new spirit of principled unity for our party. But fusionism does not end with our party. It continues in our conversations with other Republicans, it is sharpened by our differences, and reinforced by our overarching similarities. If we are to defeat this President, if we are to make this party the par exemplar of the American Right, then we must move forward in singular purpose. Thank you.

Note: Originally written March 2012

“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” - Winston Churchill

 Churchill's maxim is not just representative of a liberal-conservative divide, while it is amusing to ponder. It also, in my view, can be applied to our journey through conservatism these past few years.

 Allow me to elucidate. We began our political careers as smart, albeit monochromatic, movement conservatives. We were fraught with idealism to the point where American society was set one step from despotism, and one step from right-wing utopia. Our idols were to the letter combative, flushed with the passion of political combat; less jujistu, more Krav Maga. We were distrustful of government to the extreme. So extreme, indeed, that our backs would be in the wind only with the fiercest of condemnations concerning government. Of course, we were stolid in our belief in the common man against the Elite. Elitism was the stuff of 'liberalism', and we admonished ourselves against the detached tyranny of urban thought.

 We were good Jeffersonians. We celebrated the anti-Federalists as purveyors of liberty, ponderously shaking our heads at Continental calls for centralizing power. In the same breath, we criticized Hamilton and Adams, and desired a grass-roots groundswell of popular revolt against the Establishment. Equally as harmful as the Left was this amorphously insidious Republican Establishment, a dried husk masking the ripened harvest of “true” conservatism.

These are all "liberal" in some respects. We spoke the paranoia of the ever-growing state and extolled the virtues of common society in the same breath. We were flirtatious with the excesses of conservatism out of a desire to be prophetic radicals. Jacobin without the Jacobinism, militancy without the arms or intent. Democracy was seen as perfectible vehicle for our march onward, in which we would link our arms with a conservative majoritarianism and march on to drain the swamp.

 And now we are changed.

Our spirits no longer cry for Jefferson , Paine, and ill-understood liberty. It stands with Hamilton, Burke, and order.

 We now avoid majoritarian struggles, and criticize populist overtones with the slicing pendulums of our minds. So many of the talking points of the movement are but canards to us now, false choices that neglect the search for small, yet good governance that once defined conservatism. We stubbornly resist the sweeping, grandiose exhortations of Tea Party types, who see society as one step away from socialism, and one leap away from paradise. Utopia is simply that; an ill-founded fantasy.

 Good governance is not only possible, it is a CONSERVATIVE belief to defend it. Disraeli was more conservative than Gladstone, Ames more conservative than Paine. The populism of Jackson stands naked and shivering before the cold wind of Federalist, Anglophilic polity.

True conservatives reject the radicalist conclusions of their own ideology, metering it and molding it into a relatively pragmatic, prudent way of governing and orienting society. While our philosophies will regardless be perceived as radical by our opponents, it is a joyous burden to pragmatically outmaneuver and neuter their efficacy, rather than sound the clarion call of radicalism and gain naught but hollow victories of false conscience.

In these senses, we have already moved, in many ways, from the "liberalism" of our political youth.

Cigars and Childhood

Note: Originally written March 2012

To me, there was always something enigmatic about cigars, my exposure almost completely relagated to the chomping teeth of Disney cartoon characters or sketches of pinstripe-suited patricians in children's stories. But there was one moment from my childhood that truly put a mystique around that odorous bundle of leaves that, I believe, has influenced my pleasure in the hobby ever since.

I was six years old, living in the quietly beautiful prairies, forests, and fields of Northwestern Illinois. My exposure to smoking was, as my parents were both militantly against the stuff, limited to the harsh realities of the "Non-Smoking" section at Pizza Hut, where my mother would sternly dictate to the server that we were to be as far removed as humanly possible from the smoking area. Of course, I dutifully followed my mother's lead in my first-grade-level exhortations and condemnations, mimicrying a nasal quarantine against the smell of cigarettes.

And to be sure, I to this day find the smell of most cigarettes to be foul and nauseating. This inculcation of anti-tobacco theology was no fortified against every test.

I often visited the local music shop in downtown (yes, there is a downtown) Sterling as a young child, almost always to obediently have my next piano theory book purchased for my lessons. As we would enter the store, my mother would always hushedly demonize the proprietor of the store for it "always smelling like dirty cigars in here". Truth be told, the place was bathed in the balm of cigars, the ceilling tiles slightly yellowed after falling prey to clouds of smoke resting atop the rows of music books and columns of woodwinds and horns. 

The odd thing about this scene was my mother had, perhaps through a puritanical premonition, always managed to take me to the music shop when the owner wasn't smoking. So, while the nasal evidence of the action was ever around me as I pawed through the stacks for yet another children's piano book or staff notebook, I never saw him actually smoke the enigmatic little things.

All this changed one wintry Illinois day. My mother had groceries to grab at the local County Market, and I, strapping and precocious youth as I was, privileged with the task of going into the music shop to snatch up a new theory book. 

Armed with nothing but a folded 5 dollar bill in my pocket, I trudged my little boots through the darkened slush to the door,  beginning the long (for me) walk down the indoor foyer to the entrance.

When I pried open the door with my mitten-clad hands, I noticed something other than the resounding clingle of the door chime as I passed the threshold. The smell was still there, of course, but it was different. Rather than the musty reminiscents of smoke soaking my nostrils, there was a fresher, more vibrant odour. It smelled leathery, almost like the smell of a walnut triumphantly cracked by my little hands on Christmas eve. It was still strong, yes, but I felt as if this was a smell that invited, not repulsed.

Slowly working my way to the beginner's section of the sheet music, I finally caught a glimpse of the culprit. Blueish smoke hung like a halo over the balded head of the Smoking Man, so familiar from every visit, yet so transformed at this moment. From a distance, the smoke around him seemed almost sarcophageal, as if his movement were wholly restricted by the wisps and curls of smoke.

Task in mind, I  tried in vain to pore through the piano section, impervious to what I was actually looking for. I was transfixed, in near rapture, as the cigar nestled comfortably in his fingers, sending a trail of meandering smoke rivulets towards the ceiling. 

Finally comprehending which book I needed, I sauntered gently, nearly reverently, towards the register. The Smoking Man turned to face me, his mouth pushing out the remnants of a puff on his cigar. For the brief moment before he spoke,  I saw what had been unrecognizable before. 

There was not only an insatiable power in his grip on the stogie, but something telling in his demeanor. For a moment I felt as if he was a Man among men, a tower with its balcony perched and observant over expanses of rubble. What I now see as rugged individualism filtered through my child's eye as a sort of canyon between he and I, a chasm that deepened with the smoke. Not a disinviting divide, but a delineating one, where I saw myself on a road to manhood, and the Smoking Man as what that may comprise. For that moment, the currents of smoke were no longer abstract, but testifers to his person, appendages of his new-found majesty.

And then it passed. Cigar went to its covey in the ash tray, and the Smoking Man made some forgetful joke about barely being able to see over the counter, and before I knew it my my purchase had been bagged and I was on my way.

As I followed my still-visible boot-tracks on the carpet back towards the door, I cast one final glance back at the Smoking Man. His back was now to me, his hands busy at work polishing a horn, and the faintest of faint smoke-curls rising above, cigar clenched in his teeth. I smiled, still quite puzzled, and left.

From that day on, there was always a stinging hesitation when my parents criticized yet another cigarette smoker, compiling their litanies and reciting them with predictable content. And every time, I would hesitantly wince, convinced that there was something different about the Smoking Man and his cigar.

Now, my childhood fading, I hold the cigar like the Smoking Man. When I am with friends, our sharing a cigar enriches not just our conversation, but our friendship. When I am alone with my thoughts, it is a gentle companion, and I relish the perfect puff, and the incomparable wisps of smoke tickling my nose and mellowing my senses. And most of all, I have become an individualist like the Smoking Man. When I look out below scores of mountain valleys on a fall excursion in God's mountains, cigar clenched with each step up a switchback, I am Man. To quote a brilliantly crazy woman, "I am the warrant and the sanction." There is nothing, not schoolwork, not politics, not any of the accoutrements of this world that dare stand in my way save myself and my Creator. Oh, and a fine cigar.

Rand Paul And The Ignorant Arrogance of Non-Interventionism

Note: Originally Written December 2011

Amid the political squalor over the McCain-Levin Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Bill and the myriad number of domestic issues currently plaguing the country, a recent exchange between Sens.Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rand Paul (R-KY) nearly went softly into the night of forgotten postal name changes and fuzzy resolutions.

   After Sen. Rubio offered an overwhelmingly bipartisan resolution trumpeting closer NATO ties with the tiny Caucausian republic of Georgia, doing so much as to place it for unanimous consent, his measure was blocked by the cantankerous Paul the Younger. Paul hurriedly admonished the action as possibly leading to military conflict with Russia, whose 2008 invasion of the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia elicited widespread American support for the underdog government in Tblisi.

   This spat nearly went unnoticed but for the good graces of the paleoconservative/libertarian Right, whose feelers were all abuzz with hyperbolic relief and hushed reverence.     

Noted paleoconservative (and Buchananite) commentator Jack Hunter was aglow with admiration for Paul, “the only Capitol Hill leader who tried to prevent a war with Russia last week”.  Conversely, he had nothing but admonition for Rubio, claiming “some Republican senators attempted to lay the groundwork for a shooting war with Russia. I wish I were exaggerating.” Wish granted. Hunter then quotes foreign policy juggernaut Pat "Amen Corner" Buchanan, who waxes conspiratorial on ties between individuals in the Federal government and the Georgian state.

Likewise, the paleoconservative/libertarian blogosphere was awash with praise, marking Paul’s single-handed stop to what would inevitably result in nuclear war with Putin’s Russia. With characteristic rhetorical flourish, Paul was painted as a paleoconservative Mr. Smith in a conflict-itchy Capitol, a Samson pushing away the pillars of warmongering edifices with naught but his force of will.

But as with most non-inverventionist bally-ho, facts and logic can be escaping little buggers.

To begin, Rubio’s amendment would not have automatically granted NATO membership to Tblisi; rather, it would have recommended that a strategy for Georgia’s eventual entry into the organization, first promised in 2008, would be presented at the succeeding NATO summit. Yet typical of the hyperventilating non-interventionists, Rubio’s modest proposal somehow spelled the dawn of war between the US and the Russian Federation.

 To follow on the footstool of Paul’s argument, it is simply ludicrous to assume that NATO membership would somehow spur Russia into conflict with Georgia or the United States. Russia would not only risk attacking Georgia because of the threat of NATO involvement, but is wholly unprepared for containing its own citizens protesters  much less assailing a neighbor over its well-known intentions to enter NATO.

 Russia’s actions in 2008 were built on the myth of invincibility for Putin and United Russia (his party), where satellites would be relegated to a status similar to their pre-1991 relations with the Kremlin. Even before United Russia’s embarrassing defeat at the polls these past few days, Russia’s economic woes and insecurities in the hinterlands leave them ill-equipped to react aggressively to closer NATO-Georgian alliances.

 Additionally, for those on the Old Right who accuse Georgia and the Tsakashivil regime as instigators of the conflict, NATO membership for Georgia would also curtail their ambitions to, as fantastically asserted, attack Russia. What, and receive an automatic Article V invocation from the whole of NATO?

 This little spat, while marginal in its geo-political importance, illustrates several underlying propensities of the non-interventionist conservative. First is the arrogance to assume that anti-war conservatives are noble sentinels dutifully guarding the Republic against warmongers of both parties. Anti-interventionist sentiment has left the United States woefully unprepared for conflict and morally ambigious in our foreign dealings, such as the Lindberghite Old Right during the 1930s that made British appeasement seem hawkish and forthright by comparison.

Furthermore, non-interventionists are insistent that an American removal from conflicts in the world, and its withdraw of the diplomatic rattling saber to a rusty hilt, will prevent other nations from seizing the initiative in their own designs. The hyper-triumphantalism for which the old Right has so long criticized neoconservatives is far less utopian than a foreign policy that too often sees American action as the cause of furthering conflicts throughout the globe, and that peace can be assured by avoiding conflict at at costs.

 These deficiencies are clearly evident in Paul’s knee-jerk position on the issue. While an admirable Senator in many facets, he has fallen into the antiquated, sullied idea that the slightest action on behalf of an ally would be another case of American militarism creating problems abroad. The arrogant ignorance of non-interventionism is in its full-frontal and wholly serious belief that simplicity, cookie-cutter neutralism, and paranoia are adequate substitutes for a measured, exceptionalist foreign policy where regimes and actions are weighed not by the monochromatic lens of “No action”, but on their merits.

A Speech On the United Nations

Note: Speech given in November 2011

To classify the actions of the UN as fatally flawed would suddenly render those words airy and meaningless. Hopefully, most of us are already aware of the headline corruption of the UN, from Oil-for-Food to rampant abuse in the Congo, the coddling of rogue regimes to its shameless human rights laurels to despots.  This goes beyond the talking points.

We cannot simply shake our heads at the UN’s obvious faults, nor dismiss its transgressions as non-indicative of the body as a whole. As serious as these charges may be, these shortcomings of the UN are not outliers: They are an outgrowth of its total institutional failure.

Leaving the United Nations is not a legitimate course for the United States to take. What is imperative for the US role in the United Nations is a proactive, multifaceted policy of reform necessitated by the many failings of the UN.

The UN has long served as a haven for authoritarian regimes to shelter themselves from accusations of human rights abuses. It is devoid of any qualifications for its members, which has allowed for countries with deplorable records on human rights, such as Libya and Iran, to join the Council without but the meekest protest.

While the UN Charter has a strong focus on civil and political rights as barometers of freedom, the UN today would rather bide its time creating new rights, new norms, and new demands for a global governance structure to deal with the contrived new assault on rights. The continued promotion of economic, social, cultural rights over the most basic of political and economic freedoms creates a crude moral equivalence, where the right to leisure time is now equitable to the rights of life, liberty, and property. In this lack of hierarchy, both Ireland and Iran have equally imperfect records. It fails to grasp the uncontested connection between political freedom and human rights, preferring instead to pay lip service to new rights that do not jeopardize authoritarianism.

One need only ask the Kashmiris, the Cypriots, the Kurds, or dozens of others to show its complete failure in conflict resolution. Ironically, the UN often incentivizes conflict by providing an excuse to continue disengagement, as that would then mandate more UN funds.

With these failures in mind, the US must present bold, stark reforms to the UN that preserve American interest and investment. The US must strongly encourage the UN to move to a system of voluntary funding. By assessment, the US foots a quarter of both the GA and peacekeeping budgets, and helplessly watches while its investments are mismanaged and abused. Since the UN budget can be ratified by a 2/3 vote, the 128 countries that pay less than 1% of the UN bill can as a bloc decide 99% of its budget.

Voluntary contributions would create a powerful market incentive for programs to achieve their goals and keep their budgets. After all, a bureaucracy that does not pinch the purse of its members is not easily removed. Many UN-affiliated groups, like the UN Joint Program on HIV/AIDS already implement this system.

The US should both seek strong levels of reform in the HRC as well as consider the creation of an alternative human rights body. Without any requirement from its members, the HRC will continue to be a hypocritical and ineffective organization.  The alternative group would break the false monopoly of the UN as a propagator of human rights by actually having standards for membership, including a proven track record of human rights.

The US should consider using its large contribution as a bargaining chip in seeking these reforms. Bipartisan, rational attempts at this in the past have been successful in attaining some successes, and should be vigorously pursued.

The overarching failures of the UN call for the US to play a role in which it seeks stringent and meaningful reform while retaining its commitment to the UN as a treaty body, not an organ of global governance.