Nothing like politics more readily reveals man\u2019s intellectual and moral vices.\u00a0 If ever we were in need of proof of the truth of this proposition, the Republican Party\u2019s presidential primary race supplies it in spades.<\/p>\n
The Democratic Party\u2019s penchant for duplicity has long been noted by most readers of this column.\u00a0 That it seeks \u201cthe fundamental transformation\u201d of our country into something bordering on a socialist utopia will be denied only by those who choose to characterize its prime objective in other terms.\u00a0 The ugly truth is that the Democratic Party of which President Barack H. Obama is the titular head abhors <\/em>the America conceived by our Founders, an America within which liberty<\/em> is the cardinal value.\u00a0 The United States Constitution\u2014the secret to this liberty\u2014is a burden from which Democrats seek relief, for as long as it remains, it stands as a monumental impediment to their agenda, a systematic program that involves nothing more or less than the repeal of the Revolution of 1776.\u00a0<\/p>\n These are harsh words.\u00a0 They are also true words.\u00a0<\/p>\n But lest my judgment be mistaken for a specimen of Republican Party agitprop, it should be noted that, sadly, I believe with every fiber of my being that the Republican Party <\/em>is no less committed than its rival to revoking theConstitutionalRepublic fashioned by our ancestors.\u00a0<\/p>\n To see that this is so, we need to look neither long nor hard.\u00a0<\/p>\n Consider, first, that our Founders chose to secede <\/em>from their Mother country because of the abuses of which they convicted the English government.\u00a0 This is particularly telling, for by our standards, the latter was about as close an approximation of the ideal of a \u201claissez-faire\u201d government vis-\u00e0-vis the North American colonies as any that has ever existed.\u00a0 At the very least, it wasn\u2019t remotely<\/em> as intrusive as is our federal government today.\u00a0 Still, our Founders, in love as they were with liberty, determined that it was intolerably oppressive.\u00a0 As a result, they sought to establish, not a <\/em>sovereign state, but a \u201cfederation\u201d of sovereign states. <\/em>In this new political arrangement the national government would only rarely be heard and almost never seen: as the offspring of the states, it would exist for their sakes only. <\/em><\/p>\n Next, consider the Republican Party\u2019s view of the federal government today.\u00a0<\/p>\n While their rhetoric may at times suggest otherwise, both their utterances and deeds at most other times inform us in no uncertain terms that establishment Republicans believe just as strongly as Democrats in the supremacy of the federal government.\u00a0 After all, it is Republicans more so than anyone else who expect for our federal government to lead\u2014<\/em>always through force\u2014not just the United States, which would be bad enough, but the planet. <\/em>\u00a0Although there isn\u2019t anything remotely defensive <\/em>about an interminable American project of \u201cdemocratizing\u201d the globe, so-called \u201cdefense spending,\u201d which already consumes no small amount of all national spending, is sacrosanct for Republicans: there isn\u2019t a single proposed cut that they won\u2019t swiftly reject.<\/p>\n Even domestically, though, Republicans are no less in favor of Big Government.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whenever Republicans are in power, they never aspire to affect any meaningful reductions in the size of government. \u00a0During the 1990\u2019s, Gingrich was in the vanguard of the much vaunted (and highly exaggerated) \u201cRepublican Revolution,\u201d a media-hyped phenomenon whereby Republicans assumed control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in decades.\u00a0 As Speaker of the House of Representatives, Gingrich\u2019s became the face of this \u201cRevolution.\u201d\u00a0 Now, as a presidential aspirant, Gingrich is busy touting his accomplishments as Speaker.\u00a0 He helped to \u201cbalance the budget,\u201d create a budget surplus, and \u201creform\u201d welfare, he tells us.\u00a0 While all of this is true, notice that Gingrich has not <\/em>mentioned a single <\/em>program for which he and the Republicans can be credited with slashing during their tenure in power.\u00a0<\/p>\n He has not <\/em>mentioned a single such program because he cannot <\/em>make mention of one.\u00a0 Nothing of this sort exists.<\/p>\n Nor does the fact that there was a Democratic president during the 1990\u2019s explain away Republicans\u2019 failure in this regard.\u00a0 Even when Republicans held the presidency and <\/em>the Congress, they not only maintained those programs and agencies that were in place; they created policies that served to enlarge<\/em> the federal government further.\u00a0 The \u201cCompassionate Conservatism\u201d of President George W. Bush is nothing other than a robust and comprehensive species of \u201cWelfarism.\u201d\u00a0 Whether it is \u201cNo Child Left Behind,\u201d \u201cthe Home Ownership Society,\u201d \u201cFaith-Based Initiatives,\u201d \u201cComprehensive Immigration Reform,\u201d or any number of other policies, the Republicans under President Bush, with their \u201cCompassionate Conservatism,\u201d managed to grow the government at a rate that hadn\u2019t been seen since Lyndon B. Johnson\u2019s \u201cGreat Society.\u201d<\/p>\n No, today\u2019s Republican Party is galaxies removed from the world of our Founders.\u00a0<\/p>\n And yet this generation of Republicans, both elected officials as well as the rank and file of the party, speaks as if it were a contemporary replica of the founding generation.\u00a0<\/p>\n It can\u2019t be repeated often enough that for however politically unpopular the language of \u201cCompassionate Conservatism\u201d may be now at days, there is no one among the field of GOP presidential candidates, except for Ron Paul, that has to date repudiated this ideology of Big Government.\u00a0 Worse, Republicans continue to advocate policies that require further centralization of the federal government at the same time at which they speak of \u201climiting\u201d it.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, nothing reveals the hypocrisy and inconsistency of Republicans more than their reactions to the presidential primary race.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ron Paul is the one candidate who is deadly serious about returning our government to the vision embodied in our Constitution.\u00a0 Some may take issue with the proposition that he is the only <\/em>such candidate; yet none would dare to take issue with the proposition that he is as impassioned and ardent an exponent of genuinely Constitutional government as any that it has. But Ron Paul has been ignored, dismissed, and trivialized by the establishment of his party.\u00a0 Instead of turning to him, the majority of Republicans have instead looked toward most of the other candidates\u2014all of whom are practically indistinguishable from one another.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, Newt Gingrich<\/em> and Mitt Romney <\/em>are the contest\u2019s frontrunners.\u00a0 This about says it all.\u00a0 Both are establishment figures; both have been vocal advocates of socialistic designs, whether health insurance \u201cmandates,\u201d \u201cinitiatives\u201d to combat \u201cGlobal Warming,\u201d the venture to deliver \u201cDemocracy\u201d to the proverbial Four Corners of the Earth via the United States military, etc.; and both now have establishment Republican pundits producing one lame excuse after the other in their transparent\u2014and pathetic\u2014attempts to render these champions of Big Government appealing to the base of their party.<\/p>\n Mitt Romney, we are told, really <\/em>is conservative; he just fooled <\/em>(deceived) the Democratic voters of Massachusetts into believing otherwise when he ran for office in that state.\u00a0 In any event, regarding healthcare, although he expressed his desire to do for America what he did for Massachusetts, he now<\/em> claims that he has changed his mind on this point.\u00a0 And even though Gingrich just two years ago appeared in an ad with Nancy Pelosi in which he helped the latter promote \u201cCap-and-Trade,\u201d he now <\/em>acknowledges that it was a mistake.\u00a0<\/p>\n This, of course, is just a sampling of the sort of intellectual gymnastics in which the pundits are engaging with respect to polishing Gingrich\u2019s and Romney\u2019s images.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Rest assured, there will be much more reality-denying to come.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published at The New American\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nothing like politics more readily reveals man\u2019s intellectual and moral vices.\u00a0 If ever we were in need of proof of the truth of this proposition, the Republican Party\u2019s presidential primary race supplies it in spades. The Democratic Party\u2019s penchant for duplicity has long been noted by most readers of this column.\u00a0 That it seeks \u201cthe…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n