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Senator John McCain

Finally we have a candidate with an heroic military record that is un-doctored, unexaggerated, and above reproach. Bravo, senator....sincerely. Yet I am reluctant to support a candidate who has collaborated so often with the Left Wing, even to the point of threatening defection to our Socialist-Democratic Party more than once (I know the dems don't call themselves that, but most democratic parties in Europe are at least honest enough to add that descriptive label to their name - and the dems in America have the same observable goals).

Hold your Nose and Pull the Lever...again: Senator McCain is undoubtedly the next watered down conservative-in-name-only that the republicans are going to ask us to accept. They have nothing better to say to us about their choice than "he's better than Hillary." True that, but what a sad state of affairs. Where is the vision, the backbone, and the leadership in having to sell us in that way? The whole republican party has tried so hard in recent years to "move to the center." McCain is the poster boy for that shift, and he is a classic "fence rider" and opportunist.

The Bigger Picture: I am troubled that the (slightly) more Conservative of of our country's two viable parties sees fit to pander to the middle in order to get candidates elected, rather than be unapologetically Conservative. No, that does not mean that I wish the party would force people to pray in school. If that's you're concept of Conservatism, then you have been led to believe that by a slanted and very shallow mainstream media.

What is Conservatism, then?: I don't want to write a whole article about that on this page but, in short, Conservatism means that we are "conservative" about how much government we want to have. Our Founders feared big government, and for good reason. But all governments (like all other institutions) inevitably tend to grow (it's called beauracratic inertia) if not led properly. With governments, this happens because people look more and more to it to solve all of their problems for them.

A conservative is bothered by that trend, and says so, and a Conservative politician enacts policies that SHRINK government. The reason that most people have been duped into thinking that conservatives are a bunch of fat cat "meanies" who want to pull the rug out from under the "little guy" is that the process of shrinking the government means reducing benefits to those who take advantage of the system. To people who don't understand that government can only "give" to someone if they first forcibly confiscate from someone else (via taxes), the reduction of Christmas presents seems "mean-spirited." Conservatives are people who realize that true "mean-spiritedness" is found in a government that plunders the productive people so that they can use that tax money to buy votes from other folks to whom they have promised "stuff." In doing that, they tell us that there is a limit to how productive we will be allowed to become before they come after our families' money. Hardly compassionate...it keeps us down. America is supposed to be the land of capitalism / opportunity.

Winston Churchill said that: "The worst thing you can say about Capitalism is that it is the unequal sharing of the blessings; but the best thing you can say about socialism is that is the equal sharing of the misery."

Conservatives are far more liberal than a modern liberal will ever be...because they believe in getting the government out of your life so that you can be truly free - with the unlimited opportunity to prosper. I wish Senator McCain - or someone else - would get out there (like Reagan did) and articulate that. Because the republicans have shown themselves incompetent at defining Conservatism, the media have been able to define it for them....and they have gotten it exactly backwards. I think the main reason republicans don't try any harder to actually be conservatives is because all politicians get elected these days by promising to give voters "stuff" from the government. Thus, even the ones who do little more than wear the Conservative patch on their sleeve end up trying to play Santa Claus with our hard-won tax money, just as much as any Socialist-Democrat. McCain is no different, and that trend will eventually bankrupt our country the way it has all societies in history that degenerate from true freedom into democracy.

We only have three rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Everything else (like education, health care, food etc) are not entitlements but things we are supposed to work for, not plunder our neighbor to obtain.

This is one of my favorite quotes. It's from Alexander Tyler, who was writing about the fall of the Athenian Republic. This quote is well over 100 years old and a succinct explanation of why our Founders feared democracy

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."

McCain calls himself a Moderate: And many people applaud him for this. But Moderates are merely people without an opinion. They ride the fence as long as they can until forced to decide on a course of action; while they watch to see where the tide is going. When they see its direction, they ride along. That's what a moderate politician - called a "populist" - does. That's what McCain does, and it's not leadership.

Mere democracy is Nothing More than Mob Rule: Many of you would try and tell me that politicians are supposed to be "representatives" of the will of the people; and that they should vote according to their constituency's mass interest. To you, they should not "vote their conscience" but instead go with the populist flow. If they had done that in the 60's, the Civil Rights Movement would not have happened, as the majority of Americans at that time believed segregation was the right policy. It took leadership and an adherence to the Constitution's true purpose - that is, the Rule of Law rather than simple "mob rule" - to make the changes that needed to happen. And that leadership is what we will always need to keep us on track.

Why do I believe we need this leadership from government? Haven't I said in so many of my other articles that government is the problem? Why then, do we need any of their leadership? In short, we need leadership to keep government in its rightful place. We need people in DC who will keep us from slipping into democratic "mob rule." Again, our Founders considered democracy it a dirty word. So did most people until FDR took us down that same old democratic path that all free societies have eventually tread...that of "gimmie stuff" entitlement. That's what a welfare state is, and we are supposed to know better in America.

Most people, when asked, will tell you that "it doesn't matter who gets into office;" so they don't care enough to be able to name their own representatives. That's apathy, brought on by the fact that we have it so good in America that we don't feel much urgency about politics. It's when we feel this way that government will grow its power when we aren't looking. Mostly they will do this by promising people more stuff...stuff that they have to take from someone else...that's where they get dictatorial again. That's why socialism and communism always leads to oppression. To provide for all the things they promise in exchange for your vote, they have to tax us, confiscate from us, because the government can't pay for anything on its own.

Back to McCain: what we need is leadership to break the dependency cycle. To do that you have to be willing to say to people that they can do for themselves and that they do not need to suckle on the teat of government entitlements. We need politicians who will be a check to the socialist politicians from the other party who want to grow the government. That's Conservatism in a nutshell, and it ain't McCain.

Many politicians end up falling in love with being in power, and even the people who started out as Conservatives are no exception. It's human nature, and McCain is apparently not immune to this. If he were to sound like a Conservative, he would be promising voters less than the democrats will, But by doing this he runs the risk of losing their vote because he wasn't Santa Claus enough. I understand his dilemma...he says "I have to promise stuff in order to get a republican into office in the first place." But I ask you

What good is it to get a republican into office if his policies are just as "entitlement-centered" as the competition?

So What Can McCain Do?: In short, I think the best solution to the inertia of the Welfare State dilemma is to tell people "yes, I am going to DC to reduce your Christmas presents, but I am also going to shrink your taxes in the process." The Fair Tax is a proposal that is already on the floor of the House and is already a great movement with gathering momentum. Two number one best-selling books have been written on the subject too. The Fair Tax would abolish the IRS and the unconstitutional income tax, and move us into a consumption tax that makes everyone pay their share, and lessens the heavy burden that taxes place on companies, thus lowering the cost of every item. It would also make the U.S. a "tax haven" for business that would bring more of it here, rather than chase it away, as the current confiscatory system has done. Huckabee supports it, and McCain has said that he would "be willing to look at it." The best thing McCain could do to show true Conservatism is to openly support the Fair Tax in his campaign, and perhaps even put Huckabee on his ticket as V.P. That would console us Conservatives far better than any thing else he could possibly do. Even if he didn't do anything else in office that was Conservative, the Fair Tax would do much of that work for him.

A Note about Huckabee: One of the latest and most evident examples of media bias is the treatment of Huckabee. The media will only report about his "evangelical-ness" and not the fact that his primary issue is in fact the Fair Tax. They paint all of his supporters as evangelicals, which doesn't even say the half of it.

Politics is about Opposition: Yet modern politicians like McCain try very hard to appear "moderate" and "able to get along" with their opposition. Why? We send our people to DC in order to oppose misguided policies, not to walk arm-in-arm with them. If we start to do this too much, then there really will be no difference from one party to another in the long run.

I have half a mind to vote against McCain and suck up having to endure having President Obama for the next administration just so the republicans don't think that nominating a "centrist" is the key to the Oval Office, leading to more of the same. If Senator Obama, or Billary, wins, then their socialist policies would make such a Carter-esque mess of the economy and international relations / conflict resolution that a new Reagan who returns us to actual Conservatism would have to be found.

I would take my chances and hope for that to happen four to eight years from now, and cast my vote for Senator Obama, if it were not for the Global War on Terror. Terrorism's threat is too immediate for me to approve of a candidate like Senator Obama who says openly that he will "get us out of Iraq." To do that is to appease and allow us to lose. That would embolden the terrorists to wreak even more havoc, just as Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler did. Weakness invites aggression when dealing with such people. If Chamberlain had instead opposed Der Fuhrer when he was a smaller potato(e), there's a very good chance that the whole world would not have been dragged into WWII. Similarly, Clinton's cut-and-run in Somalia when things got messy told the animals of Al Qaeda that we could be made to lose our resolve if we incur enough damage. The weak-knees we showed in Somalia emboldened terrorists to commit 9/11's atrocities. You think it's bad to be fighting in Iraq? Friends, it looks that way to you because you are civilized and do not understand that not everyone is. Many people out there are still operating by the rules of a pack of dogs, who attack only when our backs are turned. If we weren't fighting in Iraq, we'd be doing it here on our own streets as we did on Sept 11, and we'd be on the defensive. We'd be giving our enemy the initiative and would be merely reacting to each inevitable attack. That is no way to beat an enemy. More about this at my Military page.

Thus, I will have to support McCain and just hope that he will at least make an effort to be more Conservative in his future policies, as a way of making amends for his record. That's more than I could expect from Senator Obama or Billary.

What a sad state we are in that we have to see an election in this way. Where are the better candidates? Want to to know what I think (s)he would look like? Click here. It's not pie-in-the-sky...I believe that this candidate could have a lot of success if (s)he were on the campaign trail.