In the approximately forty years of my political consciousness, two events stand out as watersheds—the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the election of the Newt Gringrich-led Republican Congressional majority in 1994. The first represented the culmination of the maturity of the conservative movement, beginning in the mid-1950’s, from a fringe, reactionary backwater, to a truly competitive, policy-based governing alternative. The second represented the consummation of the conservative revolution against the New Deal/Great Society legacy of over-reaching twentieth century liberalism. Both of these events set the stage for what now can be the advent of a new governing majority that, if properly led and managed, can last for several generations. From all appearances, it seems that George W. Bush is at the right place at the right time, with just the right temperament, to lead this transformation. It remains to be seen, however, whether the other necessary ingredients will be in place. These are, in no particular order of importance, as follows:

*The necessity of what George Will and Jonah Goldberg have called the use of “dogma and rhetoric over demagoguery”. Relieved of the damaging demagoguery, dogma and rhetoric are necessary elements of our political speech used for outlining priorities and policy boundaries. It is more important to know the “why” of policy than to know “what” and “how”, for we should do things for the right reasons, and conservatives, Bush in particular, haven’t been as adept with this skill as they need to be. The high ground on enlightened rhetoric and dogma must be captured and held.

*Avoid the diseases of incumbency and arrogance of power. The new governing majority will be short-lived if it fails to reject the sense of entitlement and perpetuation in office that were the diseases it was elected to cure. In the tenth year of conservative Congressional ascendancy, there are quite a few symptoms of these ailments now in evidence. Whither the Revolution of 1994? Its spirit needs to be revived very soon. Bill Clinton was fond of saying that you cannot love your country and hate your government. Maybe not, but you can and should want much less of it, particularly its corrosive tendencies to coercion and dependency.

*Have no fear of boldness. The forces of “progressive” opposition and the vested interests of the liberal status quo will be no less strident and vicious against half measures or “reform-lite” proposals on such issues as permanent tax rate cuts, Social Security reform, Health Savings Accounts, judicial appointments, and tort reform, so the motto should be to “go for the whole loaf”, and don’t buy into the “no mandate” nonsense.

*Trust the people. Clearly, this President has enormous capital with the American people, he says he will use it, and he should, early and often, by appealing to them over the heads of the Beltway insiders. The liberal/left is back on its heels in disarray, greatly misunderstanding the innate and unique brand of American conservatism that is congruent with Bush’s, and it’s time to “close the deal”.

Most second term Presidents are preoccupied with building or preserving a legacy and are leery of bold new initiatives. This one has an opportunity to be very different, in obvious ways by successfully completing the mission in Iraq and firmly installing the Bush Doctrine in U. S. foreign policy, but also by laying the groundwork for ending 20th century liberalism as we have known it, launching the “opportunity society” century and, as a result, a new governing majority. Go for it!

Or, as Emmett Tyrell calls it, the “tabernacle of hypocrisy”. Either description will do for the United Nations, which long ago proved its unworthiness as a responsible world forum, much less as an instrument for peace, stability, and human rights, and the corruption of its mission is beyond repair. The UN Security Council validated its irrelevance during the process leading to the war in Iraq, but I challenge anyone to name one instance since its founding when the UN has played a useful role in intervening to avert conflict. Rather than preserve international law, it has almost destroyed it. On the other hand, the General Assembly long ago became a haven and pulpit for the aggrandizement of racists, anti-Semites, anti-Americans, Marxist/Leninist demagogues, tinhorn dictators, and those erstwhile U. S. allies who need legitimate cover for their lucrative deals and conspiracies. The duplicity of Kofi Annan in the Iraq oil-for-food scandal and his failure to lift a finger to stop the massacre in the Sudan should simply be the last straws. He should go immediately, of course, but, more importantly, as soon as the elections in Iraq are completed, we should convene a world council of democracies and begin anew. Leave the humanitarian services capabilities of the UN in place, if necessary, but take Steve Forbes’s suggestion and invite them to move their headquarters to a country, such as Haiti, that would benefit more from their presence. Then invite those nations that are committed to the rule of law and consent of the governed to organize a new forum more appropriate to the new realities and aspirations of the 21st century.

The title of this essay is from a book by that name by Thomas Frank. I haven’t read it, but reviews indicate that it essentially makes a point that illustrates perfectly the quandary in which the left finds itself—the inability for liberal elites to understand why any rational voter would cast a ballot for a party (Republican) or a candidate (Bush and others) with policy views that seem to them so contrary to his interests. Kansas is used as a prime example of how well conservative Republicans have “fooled” the heartland. I was reminded of this review and this point by a report by the Pacific Research Institute, which annually ranks the states based on its “freedom index”, using five policy criteria—fiscal, regulatory, judicial, government size, and welfare. It is instructive that Kansas ranks number one and, in fact, 24 of the top 26 states in the ranking were Bush and “red” states in the recent election. Another survey, this one involving fertility rates, as reported by David Brooks, notes that Bush carried the nineteen states with the highest white fertility rates, and 25 of the top 26, while John Kerry carried the sixteen states with the lowest. Folks, these aren’t political tendencies, they are spiritual. It doesn’t require a doctorate in sociology to know that people who are building families are optimistic people and, as Brooks correctly notes, are rejecting materialism and hyperindividualism in favor of other values. Are the voting patterns in these two surveys simply coincidental? The answer should be obvious, but it will take the left a while to figure out why Kansans and other heartlanders and Sun Belt city dwellers are so “gullible”, and much longer to determine what to do about it.

During the past few weeks, I have revisited two classics—one, a book, Witness, by Whittaker Chambers, and the other, a movie, Judgment at Nuremberg, with an all-star cast directed by Stanley Kramer—and I was struck by a profound thought: that you can’t fully understand the 20th century unless you understand the issues raised so penetratingly by these works. Witness, of course, is the life story of a former Communist and active member of the CPUSA underground, who left the party and later provided crucial and very controversial testimony in the famous Alger Hiss Case before the House Un-American Activities Committee on the Communist infiltration of high levels of the U. S. government during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) tells the story of the trial and conviction by the post-World War II American tribunal of high-ranking members of the Nazi German judiciary during the Third Reich.
Nothing I have read captures the essence of the Communist mind and socialist threat as Chambers does, and he weaves his tale in 1954 in a way that is eerily prescient of many of the conflicts we still face today, for the crux of the Communist faith, which is that salvation by society in a world without God is the only solution to the crisis of history, is alive and well in the progressive remnants left behind under other names, both here and abroad, by the discrediting of institutional Communism. And it is amazing how complicit in this faith and the relentless pursuit of power based on that faith were and are the American fellow-travelers, up to the point of complete denial to this day, despite incontrovertible evidence gleaned from KGB files since the fall of the Soviet Union, and how willing to ignore or rationalize the pervasiveness of this evil our major cultural institutions were and are.

Judgment at Nuremberg is a must see in understanding the true corruption of the Third Reich, because it focuses not on the military war criminals, but on those whose insidious corruption of the rule of law undermined what was at the time the most advanced intellectual society in the world. I was particularly struck by how easy it might have been to rationalize, as defense attorney Rolfe (portrayed by Academy Award winner Maximillian Schell) did, the compromises of the rule of law as temporary expedients to salvage a nation and a culture. It is also a classic treatment of the conflict, very much at issue today, between the positive law and natural law in the prosecution of crimes against humanity, and how, in fact, our distinctively American philosophy of pragmatism as expressed in key U. S. court decisions during the progressive era was thrown back at us in defense of Nazi eugenics policy.

These are timeless works with messages to match, and I was reminded of C. S. Lewis’s line about the “magician’s bargain” from The Abolition of Man: “Give up your soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.”

Two huge domestic policy battles are now underway that will transform the social contract in ways that will have enormous consequences for the American experiment far into this and probably the next century. One, the President’s push to repair the Social Security system, has been given high visibility and top domestic priority in his second term; the other, health care reform, is also high on his list, if not quite so visibly at present. Both of these issues involve the same philosophical conflicts and divergent worldviews that seem to drive much of our domestic policy—more government or more individual responsibility, more socialism or more capitalism, more market-based allocation of resources or more top-down one-size-fits-all solutions. Writing in the January/February 2005 issue of Foreign Policy, Kenneth Rogoff notes that “the next great battle between socialism and capitalism will be waged over human health”. I agree, and I would add the Social Security system to his prognosis. In both cases, the question is not if government will have a role, for, as Rogoff suggests, the case for some government intervention and regulation in both policy areas is compelling on the fairly well settled grounds of efficiency and moral justice (I would add, much more settled as to the latter than the former), but the issue is precisely how much redistribution of income and government intervention is warranted.

At the heart of both issues is the fact that they are central to America’s “entitlement mentality”, in the case of Social Security because of a particular promise made in another world seventy years ago, and for health care because of the employer-based finance system, which was an expedient also devised for another world and different time. Both of these commitments have become deeply embedded in the social contract, but they should be revisited and significantly revised. Many of the solutions being floated are variations of a theme that involves better use of government, on the theory that the public good can be better (or only) served through public sector direction and oversight, while the focus should be on empowerment—how to reverse this entitlement mentality and get many more individuals involved in and committed to personal responsibility for their personal and family welfare. There is a wide gulf between the “entitlement society” and “ownership society” mentalities. President Bush understands this, and I also think he knows that the old paradigm will die hard and not without a huge fight. In fact, his prescription for solutions in both cases would, over time, completely transform the dynamics of the welfare state, which the left cannot abide. But it’s a fight worth having now, for the sake of our economic viability and, more importantly, for the sake of our experiment in self-government.

Of all the immediate responses to the enormous tragedy of the Southeast Asian tsunami catastrophe, the two most misguided were (1) the silly allegations that the U. S. was not responsive enough in timing or financial commitment, and (2) the continuing questions, “where was God?” or “why would God allow this to happen?”. To the first of these, suffice to say that any critics of American response should now have been entirely silenced, if not embarrassed, by the now obvious fact that the U. S. is totally dominating the relief and recovery effort, and, in fact, has shown that its logistical capabilities to do so effectively dwarf all other humanitarian relief capabilities, most conspicuously those of the U. N. And, incidentally, where is the Islamic world in this effort? The last time I noticed, the Arab countries were virtual “no shows” in relief of this devastation, which was primarily centered on Muslim populations. So much for Islamic solidarity.

As to the question of God’s role, this is probably one of the most enduring mysteries of faith, entangled as it is with the issue of theodicy, or the problem of evil in a world created by a benevolent, loving Creator. Although it is human to wonder why bad things happen to innocent people and what sort of God would let a thing like this happen, our postmodern intellectual climate has damaged our capacity to respond. To this question, two Jewish Rabbis had the best responses I have seen. Jonathan Sacks recalled the teaching of Maimonides that natural disasters have no explanation other than that God, by placing us in a physical world, set life within the parameters of the physical. Nature is not benign in this world—sometimes innocents die—and we are called upon to be “partners in the work of creation”. Daniel Lapin reminds us that God runs this world with as little supernaturalism as possible, and gave us the intelligence and commanded us to make ourselves less vulnerable to nature. And, while the casualties cannot be blamed on human actions, many of them can be blamed on human inactions, such as failure to provide warning systems or, I would add, the failure to allow countries like Sri Lanka to participate fully in the global trading system by eliminating tariffs and other impediments so that they and other developing nations can have an opportunity to build better infrastructure and fend for themselves against nature.

There is in these questions, I sense, an element of what the ancient Greeks called acedia, the fear of things spiritual, or, in more current terms, fear of a transcendence that our all-seeing and all-powerful science cannot and will not ever fully explain. In this world, there are no guarantees.

It was called the most philosophical inaugural address ever, and I thought it was Bush’s best ever, until he at least equaled, and might have topped it with his State of the Union speech. One would be hard pressed to find more comprehensive pronouncements of natural right conservatism (some might add neo-) this side of Leo Strauss, and it was blended with his own particular style of Christian political philosophy. Peggy Noonan, surprisingly, said the inaugural contained “too much God”, Joseph Bottum said it had “just the right amount of God”. Whatever your preference, and I lean more toward Bottum, there was plenty of Lincoln and a whole lot of Bush’s favorite new friend and author, Natan Sharansky (whose book, The Case for Democracy, I am now reading and highly recommend). And no one can say that they were not bold, visionary messages from a President who will not be satisfied with anything less than changing the course of world history. These are big ideas—“ending tyranny in our world”, “no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave”, “self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self”, “when you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you”, and “there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty”—and no bigger ideas have guided an administration since the days of Lincoln. Over-reaching in some respects? Possibly, and as Noonan suggests, some of Bush’s objectives are not possible in this world, only in the next, but we live in a world in need of more, not less, bold vision of the type that is restorative of our founding ideals and less, not more, of the “laundry list” of government commitments of favors to the special pleaders on the right and left.

There is in the insular world of American political life an extreme bias against initiatives that are not absolutely politically necessary as a last resort to respond to a crisis, and there is a void in incentives for strategic thinking that is firmly embedded in D.C. culture. In these two speeches, Bush has confronted these biases with rare choices—conviction over calculation, transformation over transaction, event-making over event-managing, and risk-taking over legacy-building.

The domination of the left in the higher reaches of our elite institutions of higher education may have reached a tipping point with the eruption of Ward Churchill at Colorado University and his characterization of the 9-11 bombers as “combat teams”, the Pentagon victims “military targets”, and the World Trade Center victims “little Eichmanns”. This might just do it—this might finally command the attention of mainstream opinion leadership to the abrogation of responsibility on the part of higher education leadership that has been much needed since the total capitulation of university administrators to the militant left forty years ago. Add to this the remarks of none other than the President of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers: “One of those disturbing tendencies in academic life is that there is a desire on the part of many in the name of open-mindedness to fall into a kind of relativistic denialism in which all positions are equally legitimate, all positions must be respected, and compromise must be entered into no matter what the starting point or reasonableness of the two parties”. This strikes me as an astounding statement from one in his position, and a major breakthrough for common sense. Academic freedom and the cover of tenure can and should be set aside in the case of moral turpitude, and a clear case for it can be made here as with those continuing comments of Robert Jensen of my alma mater, The University of Texas, among many others. We may be bound by freedom of speech to tolerate their ideas, but we aren’t obligated to pay to hear them.

As Edward Feser states so well in his essay, The Opium of the Professors, “the de facto function of the modern university is precisely the opposite of the traditional idea of education, which was to socialize the young by instilling into them, at a higher intellectual level, the culture they have inherited from their forebears. The professor was the guardian of a tradition greater than the student and greater than himself, a tradition which it was his duty to impart—not uncritically, to be sure, but at the same time with a reverence and humility appropriate to the grandeur of a civilization that has existed for over two and a half millennia, and for the wisdom that its institutions embody and its thinkers have articulated.” Dare we hope for a comeback of this mission in its fullest?

“The ultimate outcome will be transformational, for I believe there is no way to avoid the massive restructuring of the Muslim world that will follow (and parallel) this conflict. The ruling elites in these societies, friend and foe alike, must choose which future they want, and the status quo ante is not acceptable, for us or for them. In too many instances in the past, U. S. foreign policy has supported stability as the ultimate human objective, where revolution would have been preferable, albeit messy.”—The Texas Pilgrim, November 2001.

With apologies for again repeating this passage from the period immediately following the 9-11 attack on America, I must ask, folks, how are we doing so far? With the impending ouster of Syria from Lebanon, the first real elections in Egypt now imminent, The New York Times editorial page and several normally anti-Bush European editorials at least leaning toward an admission that the Bush Doctrine might be working, the radical anti-American Lebanese Druze leader Jumblatt equating the Iraqi elections to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and other related “dominos” falling, it is clear that revolution is in the air and the transformation is well underway.

What next? First, no gloating—we are at a tipping point, but it could still tip the other way, particularly in Iraq. There remains much to be done, and firming our resolve to finish the job is the most important priority. And we should keep the pressure on the Saudis, the Russians, Assad of Syria, and the mullahs in Iran. We still don’t know what kind of revolution this will be—let us pray it will be closer to the American style than the French, with its totalitarian legacy, but the important thing is the conversion to freedom and the rule of law for, as Natan Sharansky so well explains in The Case for Democracy, “Freedom’s skeptics must understand that the democracy that hates you is less dangerous than the dictator who loves you”. Viva la revolution!

Meanwhile, on the domestic war front, we owe Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott our thanks for defending the religious freedoms enshrined in the U. S. Constitution by forcefully arguing before the U. S. Supreme Court the case for keeping the Ten Commandments monument on the State Capitol grounds.

To illustrate the point to be made, last year The American Enterprise magazine ran a very interesting picture “tour” of several of Washington, D. C.’s major federal buildings that included: Moses with the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Library of Congress; the Ten Commandments in the floor of the National Archives; the “Liberty of Worship” statue with the Ten Commandments outside the Ronald Reagan Federal Building; Moses with the Ten Commandments tablets on the rear façade of the U. S. Supreme Court; Moses with the Ten Commandments inside the Supreme Court’s hearing room; and an excerpt from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, with its multiple references to God, carved into the interior of the Lincoln Memorial. We could add many other examples in that city, but you get the point.

Some will make the argument that the only way these icons on government grounds, along with such of our heritage expressed in the mottos of “in God we trust” and “so help me God”, can be justified is by confirming their role in a kind of “ceremonial deism”, carefully avoiding any representation that their subject actually informs our creed. In other words, we should pursue a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as to any religious presence in the public square. Au contraire. Listen to James Madison: “We have staked the whole of our political institutions on the capacity of mankind to govern themselves according to the Ten Commandments of God”, or note the argument of Michael Novak: “…….the specific right of religious freedom guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution is based on Judeo-Christian concepts not replicated in any other religion”.

As to sectarian religion we must be neutral, but if by that neutrality we mean neutral on the validity of the foundational belief in a moral order undergirded by natural law with its origins in divine law, then our civic republican ideal of ordered liberty under the rule of law cannot survive.