I believe Brownstein is rationalizing the need for moderate influence in the Republican Party and minimizing the current indicators in New Jersy, Virginia and New York elections where limited government candidates are making a statement. An alternative theory is that limited government sentiment is more widespread than Brownstein is willing to accept, and that a major backlash in 2010 could cause moderate Democrats to distance themselves from progressives in the Democrat Party – progressives who are more and more being associated with Obama – and that when 2012 rolls around, the momentum will be in favor of limited government. The moderate Democrats who begin sounding more like Republicans will cause the public to concede that progressivism is too risky to support, and that the safest route is to vote Republican rather than hope the Democrat Party will control the progressive influence.

As Jan Narveson wrote about in his book, The Libertarian Idea, there has to be more to this issue of “change”, because surely all change is not necessarily good, nor is all change necessarily bad. Dropping the cartoonish distinctions between modern liberals and conservatives for minute, let’s look at change from a different angle.

Most people who still retain a healthy respect for our Constitution would agree that changing the restrictions in the Constitution and giving the State more control over our lives than the Founders intended, and the Bill of Rights supports, is bad. So it’s safe to say the Constitution and the rule of law provide the parameters in which change can take place. Considering change from this angle alters the perception of resisting change simply as preserving the past– change can be desired, and happen, within the Constitutional parameters which protect our individual rights. 

The minimal-state, libertarian position is that once the parameters are set then change is limitless, and this is how I understand the intentions of the Founders. Going back to conservatives and modern liberals/progressives, what we’ve experienced lately is that the progressives are attempting to change the parameters, and this is not the type of change, I don’t think, that many who voted for Obama had in mind — but it’s becoming apparent that it is the type of change that progressive supporters had in mind. Obama clearly won the independent vote, but many, if not most, of these independents didn’t understand what hope and change means to Obama and his progressives supporters, many of the supportes in congress and prominent government positions.

The conservatives are right to resist this type of change — however, conservatives are being challenged to refrain from relying on state power to resist changes in society, based on moral preferences, which are within the proper parameters. This type of resistance to societal change, based on morals, has turned off a large part of the public which are socially liberal. This doesn’t mean that morals have no place in public discourse, just not in legislation — there are plenty of private forums to work out moral issues, but modern society has grown beyond moral enforcement.

The conservatives are building the right position by resisting government over-reach and promoting the free market — now they need to understand the importance of civil liberties and the moral space free people need in order to change and grow, become responsible and work out their own spiritual path (“spiritual” meant in the broadest sense of the word). This is where a libertarian-conservative alliance can take place to roll back progressive madness and return America to prosperity, charity, liberty and opportunity for everyone.

Rahm Emanuel will now attempt to win over the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber doesn’t need to capitulate – the progressive agenda is anti-business and this is one area where cooperation is deadly. The Chamber is doing the right thing to resist the healthcare takeover and cap and trade legislation.

This is representationally important, a symbol of the free market standing against an over-reaching government. How the Chamber reacts can either inspire opposition to the progressive agenda or it can deflate opposition at a time when vigilance is necessary to fight for free market principles.

I don’t want to overstate the position in which our country is placed, but it’s obviously not a time to back down.

What they are not doing, and largely are not even trying to do, is to drive the GOP agenda.  They are, in effect, content to leave the GOP agenda as little more than “vote no on everything” and tear down whatever the liberals do.

I can see where wonking is necessary at times, but we’re in a dangerous situation where the missing art in government is to know when to wonk and when to stand on principles. It’s naive to think the Democrat majority is going to allow Republican influence to substantially change any legislation they propose.

Actually, to be fair to the Republicans, they have offered alternatives to the progressive onslaught, if you can call it an alternative. The fact is that the Republicans are being ignored by the Democrat majority. The Republicans are being framed as obstructionists, as if this is a bad thing. The implication from the critics is that the Republicans ought to be helping the Democrats craft better legislation. Well, like I said, they have tried, but it fits the left’s narrative if the Republicans are seen as rightwing obstructionists with a few good moderates crossing the line to help the cause. 

Here is an article from the New Majority — David Frum’s effort to work with the system in order to influence the process. Pseudo-intellectuals have historically gotten this wrong — from Stalin to Hitler to Mussolini to Mao – but, of course, what’s happening in America will pale in comparison to the carnage caused by these madmen – however, what the broad-thinkers miss is the ideology driving these movements. It’s all some form of socialism that inevitably goes awry, because central planning is antithetical to our human nature. People flourish in freedom, having choices, not by central planning and social engineering.

Anyone who can’t see that the current progressive efforts to centrally plan the economy and engineer society to a predetermined end is blind, purposefully or through ignorance. The idealistic stance that progressives are ready and willing to work with conservatives to find win-win compromises for the betterment of all concerned is naive in the extreme. Progressives have no intentions to work with conservatives — they are bent on marginalizing conservatives and libertarians and sensible liberals so that their agenda can transform the country into an American version of socialism. Progressives temporarily have the power, and the mistaken idea that reasonable people will prevail if they get in their wonk-groove is beyond naive, it’s a dangerous capitulation. Reasonable people will prevail if they eliminate all progressive/statist influence from government.

A lot of writers have a lot to answer for when they continuously promote  a dishonest narrative. I’ve watched more news shows than I’ve wanted to watch, and I’ve seen interview after interview with one Republican or another stating what they think is best for healthcare and the nation, yet the narrative is that Republicans have only opposed the Democrat plans. No, the Republicans have foolishly tried to influence the process, but the system is broken. This has to be a co-ordinated campaign of disinformation, given the fact the narrative is so widespread and consistent. I would expect more free-thinking from young minds like those that pontificate at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen. The New Majority I can understand, being lead by someone entrenched in the D. C. culture.

With the present reform, and with the information age going into high gear, we’re inundated with the ugliness of government central planning and the stark reality of myopic special interests. Politicians, the media and academics have denigrated capitalism for many decades now as a failed system which cannot address the greater good of the many and only benefits the powerful few. You can be assured that what we see now in the healthcare debacle is not capitalism — it’s statism and the process of socialization.

Capitalism has never promised that businesspeople will act in some ideal fashion of perfect competition. Most people who understand capitalism realize that systems are important, and that capitalism is not about individual businesses or individual business people, it’s about a system where businesses fail or succeed based on how well they provide what consumers desire, and by how well businesses are managed to deliver products and services and to maximize profit. Capitalism requires freedom from government interference, except when government interferes to prevent any violation of rights. The economic system of capitalism depends on the basic, individual rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. If these basic rights aren’t protected, then you can’t have capitalism. This makes capitalism, above all else, a moral system, even if practiced by some immoral players. However, if government is doing its job protecting the public from coercion in any form, then the bad players are weeded out — the only way bad players can survive is if they are protected by government. 

The economic system under which we presently operate is not capitalism — it’s what I call State Marketism. The State is managing the economy through laws and regulations which have less to do with protection of individual rights and more to do with picking winners and losers and socializing losses of favored businesses and industries. Government interference and protection have allowed large enterprises to survive which in a capitalist system would have failed — GM is a prime example. Now, politicians are preparing to kill off some businesses while co-opting others to work for State purposes.

Since State Marketism is the new system, businesses are scrambling to position themselve as winners, or to at least get some scraps thrown their way. In the healthcare reform process, drug companies, physicians, hospitals, insurance companies, unions and consumers are forced to fight for the best deal to protect their interests. Government holds the power to choose winners and losers, and in the process individual rights will be violated. As a nation we are dangerously close to embracing and finalizing the acceptance of an idea which has infected and slowly killed the capitalist system — individual rights take a backseat to the greater good (whatever that is decided to be by whatever gang is in power).

Protection of individual rights has always been the core of the American Experiment, but for years individual rights have become less important than what politicians determine to be best for the “people” — or is it what’s best for the State?

Members of congress are going forward with their healthcare plan, despite opposition from the public, making deals with the drug industry, trying to satisfy the unions, attempting to co-opt the physicians, and developing plans to squeeze the insurance companies — the whole healthcare industry is balkanized into warring groups. The jungle and guerilla war of capitalism, as the left is disposed to frame it, are nothing compared to what the State has created with its power to coerce and violate rights — what we’re entering now is unbearable — it’s a war against life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.

Let the free market handle healthcare.

Just look at him –

Looking into his eyes sends shivers down my spine. Had not government rules and regulations forced the schools to look out for dangerous characters like Zach, who knows what carnage might have occured? It’s obvious this little monster of a human being was on the verge of going ballistic, slashing until his twisted thirst was quenched.

Thank you, U.S.A, thank you!

Many times in emergency situations, there’s no time to figure out the whys, you just act with the knowledge you have at the moment, then figure it out later, but this is only in emergencies. Government is making a virtue out of pragmatism when what’s needed is analysis and systemic thinking. We were told the bailouts and stimulus were pragmatic reactions to an emergency situation — and even if that’s true, we can now analyze and think systemically — was it necessary? Do adjustments need to be made? Could we have done something different? What needs to be done to avoid this happening again? What caused it?

Rather than look at fundamental problems and fundamental solutions, government continues to look at symptomatic problems and symptomatic solutions. Because banks made bad loans, politicians see only the banks and decide that more regulation is needed, rather than ask why banks made these bad loans to begin with. Others have looked at the fundamental problem which led to bad loans and it leads to government pressure to expand home ownership, and guarantees that Fannie and Freddie would buy these loans.

The reason government refuses to look at fundamental problems and fundamental solutions is because government actions are a large part of the problem and limiting government power is the solution. Systems thinking shows us that cause and effect are often far removed from one another by time, so it’s difficult to link a chain of events from the original cause to the effect. Peter Senge did a lot of great work on systems thinking and learning organizations years ago in his book The Fifth Discipline. This book should be required reading for all politicians. An ideal government would be one which understands its limitations and is a learning organization proficient in systems thinking.

Until we can drill down to fundamentals we’ll be stuck with symptomatic tinkering, stuck in a cycle creating the same poor results. As an example, how often have you talked with a friend who’s had serial relationship problems who comes to you for advice looking for a way to deal with the current problem, searching for some pragmatic way to make the current relationship better? After awhile you begin to see a pattern that suggests a fundamental problem with the way your friend approaches relationships in general — if you are brave, you reveal to your friend what you see, but this can be risky — no one wants to acknowledge that their way of thinking and acting is problematic and that deep fundamental changes are needed at the level of personality, value-judgements and mindset.

However, there can be no lasting fundamental change and improvement until the fundamental problem is discovered and acknowledged. With government the fundamental problem is the idea that technocrats can manage our complex economy, or that they should. As long as government is blind to the unintended consequences of its social engineering efforts and unable to see the chain of events leading from cause to effect over long periods of time, then our nation will continue to suffer from this tinkering with symptoms, giving aspirins for a fever which will return until the fundamental cause of the fever is discovered and a fundamental treatment is implemented. The fundamental treatment is to allow the free market to work.

The hubris of modern technocrats prevents the insight and humility necessary to understand economic principles which can’t be violated, or to fathom the moral questions involved when individual right are violated because some greater good is divined by a handful of manipulators. It’s not their right to make these decisions — much larger, over-arcing principles take precedence. Not only is it immoral to deny human beings free choice with their lives and property, as long as they are not violating the rights of others, it’s economic suicide to centrally plan when the variables of economic activity are unfathomable.

It’s also myopic, pretentious and cynically assumptive for a relative handful of patronizing social engineers to think that the welfare state is the only way to deal with poverty or to provide a safety net or to deliver healthcare. This fundamental idea that the public is self-centered and dispassionate, while the State is generous and compassionate, is the main cause of our most fundamental problems leading to de-humanizing effects — inner city dependents locked out of economic opportunity, and public schools failing to address the educational needs for the 21st century. These problems require innovation only the private sphere can offer within communities where the fundamental problems are understood and fundamental solutions can be found.

It’s time to find out why our asses keep getting in ditches.

Implementing these free market solutions would have an immediate effect, yet the Democrats are more concerned with making sure government has control, making it difficult to take their plans seriously. The underlying prize for the Democrats is government control of healthcare, gauranteeing a powerbase for years to come — or so they plan.

A major problem is the Democrat majority with media support, but if I had to pick a Republican who has faithfully and effectively articulated the free market options, I couldn’t. As of yet, no Republican has taken the risk of laying it all on the line to stand firmly as the voice of opposition. In fact, there’s evidence lately that enough Republicans will capitulate so that the Democrats will get their thin end of the wedge into healthcare — then it’s only a matter of time and tinkering before we have a single payer system.

So, although Republicans have offered free market solutions, the offerings have been diffuse without any courageous leadership, compelling analysis or inspiring articulation.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the truly needy in society can be helped through private assistance, but in the present arrangement, money is being confiscated and wasted, not just a little on bureacracy and corrupt organizations connected to politicians who use these organizations as vote-manufacturers.

All the people in the U.S. who have not been politically active are needed in the coming elections to change the make-up of local, state and national representation so that a clear message is sent that the U.S. will not follow Europe into socialization and mediocrity, dependent on others for its survival. This is a time for action, not talk.

Opposition to the present progressive movement will be framed as racist, heartless capitalism, ignorant conservative southerners and reactionaries against modern progress, but once you have a clear, libertarian vision of what America can be and how the State is gaining more and more control over the free market — a free market which is necessary for growth and prosperity, and, therefore, charity – then it’s easy to ignore the smears and move forward. Whether a conservative or a liberal not yet radicalized into a State puppet, a libertarian understanding is important to conviction.

It’s obvious at this point that the battle is between the State and the private sector — the State has reached a point in its natural growth, when left practically unlimited, it grows for the sake of growing and its power is used to protect itself for the sake of protecting power (and its corporate friends). There are only liabilities to a more powerful State, and no benefits.

This crossroads where we find ourselves will determine the future of America, and it transcends the facile partisan divisions which have kept people fighting one another as the State grows more powerful in the midst of the battle. The battle is no longer between Republicans and Democrats, it’s between a too-powerful State and the American people.