Warner Todd Huston
Why conservatives have trouble getting elected
By Warner Todd Huston
The reason that I could never get elected to any government position is the same reason why conservatives have a tough time getting elected and, if they end up elected, can't govern in this era of the ill-educated voter. First I'll lay out my main principles...
Leave me alone
Stop taxing me
Shove your regulations
That's about it. Though there are complexities and nuance contained in them, these are the main tenets of modern conservatism simply put. And therein lies the problem. How can one get elected when his basic tenets are that government should do less, stay out of our lives, and mostly go unnoticed and unseen? In essence a conservative is saying: "Elect me and I'll do nothing for you." It's a tough message to sell in a day when people have lost touch with the American principles that are contained in those very tenets.
Leave Me Alone
The true conservative American does not want welfare or government involvement in his daily life. A real American wants government to shut up about his kids, his education, his religion and his home and hearth. A real American wants the freedom to make his own way in life, to grab for the brass ring without government holding him back. A true American is a self-reliant, family centric being that simply wants his government to leave him alone. This means that government must also stay out of it when men fail, too, and a good conservative understands this.
Stop Taxing Me
A real American understands that some taxes are necessary but feels that the up to 60 percent of his income (depending on where you live) that is currently stolen by greedy government do-nothings is exorbitant. A true American does not want to pay for illegal aliens to get heart transplants, or mentally disturbed people to get sex changes, or for government to pay for infanticide. A real American also has some trouble seeing his hard earned tax dollars going to third world dictators as "aid." And a real American really hates it when politicians and government placemen retire at age 50 to live on many times more money in government pensions than anyone in the private sector is ever likely to see. The waste, graft, and corruption in government is something that makes the average American wary of his government but makes a conservative sick to his stomach.
Shove Your Regulations
A true American does not want a government hack coming into his back yard to tell him how to build a shed and then charging him, perhaps, hundreds of dollars, for a "permit" for the privilege of building it. A real conservative has a problem with a government forcing itself on him at every turn charging him fees and licensing costs as he tries to start a business that will feed both his family and his employee's families. A real conservative knows that NO business is "too big to fail," nor should any ever be considered so.
These principles essentially mean that conservatives have expectations that the citizen tells government what to do, not the other way around, and that he wants the room to make his own way free from constant interference and nanny state hectoring.
But where does that leave conservative politicians? The best conservative politicians would, in light of these principles, be looking for ways to limit government, to stop it, not enlarge it. Yet, the dilemma for such a politician is that he'd be taking office with the explicit goal of taking away, or at least limiting, his own power to do anything. And that is something that few humans will do, conservative or not. It's almost antithetical to human nature. Of course that is why the founders built so many firewalls (we call them checks and balances) into the system in the first place, to act as a breaking on ambition and greed for power.
There was a time when Americans celebrated this independence of spirit. This celebration also helped instill that reticence for overreach in each succeeding generation. In fact, there was more than "a time" when this was celebrated, it was the normal American principle until the loathsome counter culture got all up in everyone's business — and even the hippies, dippies, and yippies started off wanting "the man" to leave them alone even as their cause quickly devolved into an authoritarian we-know-better-than-the-man end game.
Unfortunately, as the yippies began to realize that the hated democracy they lived in gave them the right to work inside the system to obliterate it, and as these same anti-Americans weaved their baleful influence into our education system starting most heavily in the 1960s, they've displaced the American spirit with a cancer called modern liberalism. Now our educational system teaches dependence, fealty to big government, and self-loathing. It teaches that American exceptionalism is bad and that European ideas are "better."
As a result of this mis-educational system we are now weighted down with, we are disgorging into the greater world from those flagellation stations we call "schools" citizens that mindlessly expect that politicians exist only to "give us stuff." The individualist spirit that expected government to leave us alone is now subdued, replaced with a spirit of looking to government as mommy. It is a mommy, though, with apron strings that strangle us to death.
And then conservatives stride forth asking for votes and are portrayed as uncaring because they say cut taxes, cut regulations, cut big government. Then, if lucky enough to get elected and in order to be loved by the media and indulging a misplaced concept of "the people" born of their Washingtonitis, they turn into liberals when elected. They do so in a mistaken belief that it is the only way of being reelected, but it is a self-induced fantasy born of their craving for power.
And that leaves me asking my government to get lost. And it also so firmly closes the door on any chances I might have to affect my government from the inside.
Quite the dilemma, isn't it?
And the answer, the solution to this dilemma?
Retake the initiative in our schools. Get rid of the anti-American educational establishment. Bust the unions, fire the tenured professors, dump the false doctrines of "wymin's" studies, stop pretending Marx is a worthy philosopher, and again teach our children why America is a great nation.
We can bring back our American first principles. But it won't be easy and it won't be quick. It also won't happen with electing just one leader. It will take all of us as a movement to effect these changes to return us to our greatness. It will take all of us to defeat the moral relativism so firmly entrenched in our schools. It will take a concerted effort to defeat this anti-Americanism but it can be done.
© Warner Todd Huston
November 28, 2009
The reason that I could never get elected to any government position is the same reason why conservatives have a tough time getting elected and, if they end up elected, can't govern in this era of the ill-educated voter. First I'll lay out my main principles...
Leave me alone
Stop taxing me
Shove your regulations
That's about it. Though there are complexities and nuance contained in them, these are the main tenets of modern conservatism simply put. And therein lies the problem. How can one get elected when his basic tenets are that government should do less, stay out of our lives, and mostly go unnoticed and unseen? In essence a conservative is saying: "Elect me and I'll do nothing for you." It's a tough message to sell in a day when people have lost touch with the American principles that are contained in those very tenets.
Leave Me Alone
The true conservative American does not want welfare or government involvement in his daily life. A real American wants government to shut up about his kids, his education, his religion and his home and hearth. A real American wants the freedom to make his own way in life, to grab for the brass ring without government holding him back. A true American is a self-reliant, family centric being that simply wants his government to leave him alone. This means that government must also stay out of it when men fail, too, and a good conservative understands this.
Stop Taxing Me
A real American understands that some taxes are necessary but feels that the up to 60 percent of his income (depending on where you live) that is currently stolen by greedy government do-nothings is exorbitant. A true American does not want to pay for illegal aliens to get heart transplants, or mentally disturbed people to get sex changes, or for government to pay for infanticide. A real American also has some trouble seeing his hard earned tax dollars going to third world dictators as "aid." And a real American really hates it when politicians and government placemen retire at age 50 to live on many times more money in government pensions than anyone in the private sector is ever likely to see. The waste, graft, and corruption in government is something that makes the average American wary of his government but makes a conservative sick to his stomach.
Shove Your Regulations
A true American does not want a government hack coming into his back yard to tell him how to build a shed and then charging him, perhaps, hundreds of dollars, for a "permit" for the privilege of building it. A real conservative has a problem with a government forcing itself on him at every turn charging him fees and licensing costs as he tries to start a business that will feed both his family and his employee's families. A real conservative knows that NO business is "too big to fail," nor should any ever be considered so.
These principles essentially mean that conservatives have expectations that the citizen tells government what to do, not the other way around, and that he wants the room to make his own way free from constant interference and nanny state hectoring.
But where does that leave conservative politicians? The best conservative politicians would, in light of these principles, be looking for ways to limit government, to stop it, not enlarge it. Yet, the dilemma for such a politician is that he'd be taking office with the explicit goal of taking away, or at least limiting, his own power to do anything. And that is something that few humans will do, conservative or not. It's almost antithetical to human nature. Of course that is why the founders built so many firewalls (we call them checks and balances) into the system in the first place, to act as a breaking on ambition and greed for power.
There was a time when Americans celebrated this independence of spirit. This celebration also helped instill that reticence for overreach in each succeeding generation. In fact, there was more than "a time" when this was celebrated, it was the normal American principle until the loathsome counter culture got all up in everyone's business — and even the hippies, dippies, and yippies started off wanting "the man" to leave them alone even as their cause quickly devolved into an authoritarian we-know-better-than-the-man end game.
Unfortunately, as the yippies began to realize that the hated democracy they lived in gave them the right to work inside the system to obliterate it, and as these same anti-Americans weaved their baleful influence into our education system starting most heavily in the 1960s, they've displaced the American spirit with a cancer called modern liberalism. Now our educational system teaches dependence, fealty to big government, and self-loathing. It teaches that American exceptionalism is bad and that European ideas are "better."
As a result of this mis-educational system we are now weighted down with, we are disgorging into the greater world from those flagellation stations we call "schools" citizens that mindlessly expect that politicians exist only to "give us stuff." The individualist spirit that expected government to leave us alone is now subdued, replaced with a spirit of looking to government as mommy. It is a mommy, though, with apron strings that strangle us to death.
And then conservatives stride forth asking for votes and are portrayed as uncaring because they say cut taxes, cut regulations, cut big government. Then, if lucky enough to get elected and in order to be loved by the media and indulging a misplaced concept of "the people" born of their Washingtonitis, they turn into liberals when elected. They do so in a mistaken belief that it is the only way of being reelected, but it is a self-induced fantasy born of their craving for power.
And that leaves me asking my government to get lost. And it also so firmly closes the door on any chances I might have to affect my government from the inside.
Quite the dilemma, isn't it?
And the answer, the solution to this dilemma?
Retake the initiative in our schools. Get rid of the anti-American educational establishment. Bust the unions, fire the tenured professors, dump the false doctrines of "wymin's" studies, stop pretending Marx is a worthy philosopher, and again teach our children why America is a great nation.
We can bring back our American first principles. But it won't be easy and it won't be quick. It also won't happen with electing just one leader. It will take all of us as a movement to effect these changes to return us to our greatness. It will take all of us to defeat the moral relativism so firmly entrenched in our schools. It will take a concerted effort to defeat this anti-Americanism but it can be done.
© Warner Todd Huston
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