The American Spectator: Jeffrey Lord: 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Rik Schneider

Source:The New Democrat 

1964 is a big year  in 2014, for several reasons.  There are a few huge fifty-year anniversaries coming up, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Barry Goldwater winning the Republican nomination for president and Ronald Reagan coming on the national political scene. The third one is the main point of this post because Ron Reagan is far and away the most popular Republican President in modern American history.

This is why Republicans are always quoting Reagan or calling themselves “Reagan Conservatives” whether they are or not. There are Republicans who call themselves “Reagan Conservatives” and then there are actual Reagan Conservatives or Goldwater Republicans who actually practice what they claim to be their political philosophy.  They are for limited government and individual freedom, not big government intrusion into our personal lives.

John McCain, Jeff Flake, Rand Paul, and dMike Lee are all current U.S. Senators who are Reagan Conservatives because they stand by the key Reagan principles of limited government, individual freedom, peace through strength, and individual rights.  Then, there are Republicans who falsely claim to be Reagan Conservatives in order to get elected such as Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Governor Rick Scott of Florida.  They claim to be against big government except when they want Big Brother in our homes and bedrooms.  They associate themselves with Reagan to gain political power.  It is up to voters to validate their claims. 

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Malcolm MinisterMalcolm X: ‘We’re Going to Have to go to War Against the Racists’

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Erik Schneider

Malcolm X: “We’re going to have to go to war against the racists.” – YouTube.

Source:The New Democrat 

This could easily be interpreted as saying that the supporters of equal rights and freedom for all Americans “are going to have to win the war against the racists in the courtroom and on the political battlefield,” which is what they have done for sixty or so years now. The bigots, both racists and homophobes, have been losing ground, since the Eisenhower Administration and Brown V. Board of Education.

The opponents of Malcolm X, especially on the Right and Far-Right, whether they are racists or not, will take his statement to say that he was calling for a violent revolution and for the African-American community to start attacking law enforcement, especially Caucasians and others who are in their way. This is not what he was saying. He was saying that if you are physically or verbally attacked, you have a right to defend yourself.

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The New York Times: Opinion: Nesnine Makik: Freedom to Offend Everyone

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Ederik Schneider


The New York Times: Opinion: Nesrine Malik: Freedom to Offend Everyone

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This post was originally posted at The New Democrat on Blogger

A primary advantage of living in a liberal democracy is the ability to say what is on your mind without fear of government interference or sanction or suppression by private groups.  The Constitution constrains the government’s reaction and requires the public safety departments of government to protect all from private aggression.  This freedom and protection are enjoyed even by those who say things that are offensive or ignorant.  The Anne Coulters of the world can say Latinos aren’t real Americans, women shouldn’t have the right to vote, or complain about “the browning of America” as she did at CPAC 2014.  The Bill Maher’s of the Far-Left can take shots at Southern Anglo-Saxon Christians and Caucasian people in general.  Again, neither side need fear censorship, sanction, or violence.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution creates large difference betweens the domains of public discourse in America and Europe.  Europeans believe that they need government to protect them from things that they may find to be offensive, even if that means arresting or censoring people for saying hateful things in public.  America is obviously a completely different society and culture.  We are simply more individualistic and believe that  freedom trumps all as long as we aren’t harassing or libeling people or committing or inciting violence.

Keep in mind that the freedom to offend also comes with the possibility that you, yourself, may be offended without legal recourse other than publicly justifying and defending yourself.  You will not be entitled to any official legal sanction against the person who offended you.

The First Amendment protection of offensive language must be equally defended for all, regardless of political affiliation, especially in a country that is as politically as divided as we are.  Partisan media have equal rights and responsibilities when it comes to offending either side.  Neither side is entitled to special treatment under the law. 

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Commentary Magazine: Jonathan S. Tobin- Dems Realizing Hillary’s Record Matters

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Rik Schneider

Source:The New Democrat 

As far back as early 2006, it was not only clear that Democrats would win back Congress that year, at least the House of Representatives with, perhaps, a 50-50 split in the Senate, but that then Senator Hillary Clinton would not only win the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 but probably win the general election as well unless the Republican Party was smart enough to nominate Rudy Guliani,  Senator John McCain, or someone else on the Right but who could win Independents and also beat Senator Clinton in the swing states.

Well Democrats did win back Congress in 2006, both the House and Senate, and Senator Clinton served in the majority party in the 110th Congress of 2007-08. But last time I checked, she’s not the President of the United States, wasn’t on the ballot at all in 2012 and served as Secretary of State in the first Obama Administration. Why is that?  Well,  she lost to then freshmen Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for president.  Before his great keynote address for Senator John Kerry at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, most Americans had never heard of him.

As late as late 2007, then Senator Obama didn’t seem to have much of a shot at winning the Democratic nomination for president. It was his great speech at the Thomas Jefferson dinner in Iowa in December of 07 that made him a major player and perhaps carried the Iowa Caucus for him that year.  He was  able to inspire people to get behind a cause for the society as a whole.  This was his theme for president in 2007-08.

I’m not sure if the Clinton presidential campaign was expecting a cakewalk to the Democratic nomination for president but they weren’t expecting a major challenger either.  Quite frankly, most of the Democratic Party, including me, as well as most of the national media weren’t expecting a strong challenge to Hillary for the Democratic nomination.  At the time, the possibility of being the first female President of the United States, the Democrat who was the most electable, and what people saw as a strong resume seemed to be enough for Hillary Clinton to be President.

I have a prediction for 2015-16. If the Hillary campaign believes the same strategy for winning the nomination and the presidency will work in 2016 even though it failed in 2008, they’ll lose and, perhaps, lose big. Not the presidency itself, because, as Newt Gingrich has acknowledged, there isn’t a Republican standing who can beat her right now, almost regardless of the campaign she runs, if she avoids major mistakes and nothing emerges from her record that could seriously damage her.  Her lack of a presidential vision and theme provides the opening that Brian Schweitzer, Martin O’Malley or Andrew Cuomo could exploit to defeat her for the Democratic nomination.  Any of those three would have that vision and theme to use against her.

I understand all the yearnings to have the first female President of the United States.  If the best candidate for president is a woman or Hillary wins the Democratic nomination, I’ll vote for her. But running for the presidency of the U.S. is applying for the most important job in the world.  To win that job you not only have to beat out all of the other applicants but you also have to show the country why you are the best applicant and what you intend to do after you are hired.  Hillary hasn’t done that yet.  She’s still playing it safe as if it were 2007-08 all over again. 

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Andrew Sullivan: If America Had Scandinavia’s Tax Rate

Posted on April 26, 2014 by kireschneider

Source:The New Democrat 

Jonathan Chait had a column in the, formerly liberal (ha ha) New Republic magazine arguing that, as we celebrate tax day, the U.S. should be thinking about increasing taxes on everyone across the board except for the working poor.  He based his argument on the example of Scandinavia.  They have much higher tax rates than we do and have traditionally had a very strong economy.  They have good public services with a very generous welfare state and, as a result, have had strong economic outcomes.

Ross Douhat, a columnist for the, lets say, progressive New York Times opinion page wrote a response to Chait’s column.  In it, he laid out why higher taxes work in Scandinavia and why they wouldn’t work here.  For example, Sweden is physically about the size of Turkey but has only about nine-million people.  Sweden is also not only energy independent but also a net-exporter of oil and gas. They produce a hell of a lot of energy with a lot of land and a small population to take care of. To put it in simple terms, they can afford to be generous with their welfare state.

The U.S., on the other hand, is physically the size of a freaking continent going from one ocean to another, with a three-thousand mile border on the North with Canada and a two-thousand mile border with Mexico on the South and a population of over three-hundred and ten million people.  It is a net-importer of oil.  We are still paying other countries for our energy supplies and paying them to defend them.

We have a seventeen-trillion dollar national debt and have been basically stuck in, or trying to recover from, one recession or another since 2001. We simply do not have the resources to pay for what we currently owe to our population.  We also have a high poverty rate compared to the rest of the developed world.  Our working class is struggling just to pay their current tax obligations.  Most Americans simply can’t afford Mr. Chait’s, and others, socialist, big government tax rates now.

When our economy was booming in the 1980s and 1990s, our taxes were low and our government budget to GDP ratio was low. In plain English, the percentage of the national economy that the Federal Government spent was low in the 1980s and 90s.  In both decades, we had low unemployment, high economic growth and record low poverty levels.  This is what we are trying to get back to and we need to protect middle class tax payers by not increasing their rates.  At the same time, we need to invest more in infrastructure, education and job training so that more Americans can live in freedom and not depend on income assistance. 

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The Washington Post: George Will: ‘Progressives Are Wrong About the Essence of the Constitution’

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Erik Schneider

Source:The New Democrat 

The more I hear from today’s, so-called, Progressives, the more I believe that they are from a different country or, at least, have lived a long time in another country. They don’t seem to see the U.S. Constitution for what it is.  They say, “Look, this is how other countries do it and it works there so we should do the same thing here.”  They seem to be ignorant of the Constitution’s constraints on the Federal Government.

These people are really Social Democrats.  They believe that the United States should be ruled by majority rule.  If we ever let the will of the majority decide everything without that annoying document that keeps interposing the Federal court system,  we could build the socialist utopia that they’ve always wanted and take care of everyone.

The Social Democrats, in the absence of the Constitution, would move to a parliamentary social democracy where Congress, actually just the House of Representatives, would pick our President for us.

The Constitution protects our individuals rights, our ability to live our private lives with minimal interference from government.  Today’s Neo-Right Republican Party doesn’t like that.  They claim to favor democracy but support the banning of homosexuality and same-sex-marriage.  They complain that the courts are thwarting the will of the people and being undemocratic when one of their big government behavioral control proposals is rejected.  They are either ignorant of the Constitution or hypocrites.

As George Will said in his column today, the U.S. Constitution is not about protecting American democracy but  protecting the constitutional rights of individual Americans.  Government at all levels is prohibited from infringing these rights even if certain of them become unpopular and a popular will emerges to limit these.  The U.S. Constitution protects Americans from big government even if an overweening big government becomes popular. 

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Russia Today: Thom Hartmann: Jeffrey Ohara: How We Stop Paying For Food That Kills

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Derik Schneider

The New Democrat

If we want to encourage people to eat healthy diets and take care of themselves, we have to change the Federal Government’s farm policy to stop subsidizing junk food and soft drinks and to change our  Food Assistance programs so that low-income people can afford healthier diets.  We need to change the crop allotments of the farm subsidy programs, which were set many decades ago, to reduce or eliminate subsidies for animal feed crops and to shift those funds to crops that are more healthy for human consumption.  Food Assistance funds should not pay for junk food and drinks but should be targeted on  healthy foods and drinks.

This is a good example of how encouragement, or subsidization, of positive behavior, which has been the New Democratic approach to problem solving going back to the early 1990s or further, beats the paternalistic big government approach that says, “Dammit, these things aren’t good for you so Big Brother isn’t going to let you have them.”

The encouragement or subsidization approach realizes the fundamental fact that telling someone that they shouldn’t or can’t do something that they’ve been doing, and enjoying, for as long as they can remember will not stop them from doing it.  But you can show them that there is a better way and give them financial incentives to improve their behavior.

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Salon: Alex Pareene: Leftist Fascism is Everywhere!: Behold its Shocking Rise

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Ederik Schneider

The New Democrat

A Liberal isn’t a fascist.  Liberals believe in the First Amendment which guarantees freedom of speech and assembly.  They wrote it, for crying out loud, and the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as well.  Tolerance of views with which they disagree is fundamental to liberal philosophy. 

I’m not saying there aren’t fascists on the Left.  The Communist parties are examples.  The Democratic Party,  of which I’m a proud member, has a Far-Left fringe that would like to outlaw not only hate speech but certain forms of pornography that they view as sexist, and some right-wing media,  A few months ago, Fred Jarome wrote a piece in the far-left magazine, Salon, arguing for nationalizing FOX News and news in general to make America a fairer and better place where the Federal Government controls the flow of information to the public. (Its hard to say that without laughing)

Every time I hear the words liberal and fascist put together, especially as “liberal fascists,” I feel like throwing a baseball through a window. Thank God, marijuana has been decriminalized in Maryland so next time I see that I’ll have that to calm me down or cool me out, whatever the phrase is, chillax.

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Townhall: Opinion: Jacob Sullum: Pot, Poker, Prohibition: Do Republicans Really Want to be the Party of Unprincipled Killjoys?

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Rik Schneider


Townhall: Opinion: Jacob Sullum: Pot, Poker and Prohibitionism: Do Republicans Really Want to be the Party of Unprincipled Killjoys?

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This post was originally posted at The New Democrat on Blogger

Yesterday, Matt Welch had a column in the libertarian magazine, Reason, talking about big government paternalists on the Left.  He said that Progressives not only want to manage American’s economic lives but their personal lives, as well.  Links to that article and to a post byThe New Democrat will be on this blog.  Welch was basically talking about what he sees as paternalistic and prohibitionist Progressives, people who want to outlaw fun things for Americans’ own good.

Today, Jacob Sullum, an editor at Reason, had a column in Townhall talking about prohibitionist, big government, statist Republicans.  They want Uncle Sam to outlaw things that think are dangerous and deny Americans and the states the right to make these decisions for themselves.  Today’s Tea Party Republicans like to talk about principles and standing by them.

Before you can stand by your principles you have to have some and you can’t abandon them every time  somebody in the private sector or at the state level gets involved in activities that you personally do not like.  If you invoke a Federal solution in such cases, you are putting yourself in the position of some kind of god or something that has the moral judgement and authority to make such decisions for the entire country.  Except for Rand Paul and Rick Perry, you don’t see a lot of Federalists in the Republican Party, right now.  

The paternalistic statists on the Left  want to outlaw, at the Federal level, hate speech, gambling, soft drinks, firearms, tobacco, and, perhaps, alcohol.  Some of them want to continue marijuana prohibition and, even, outlaw right-wing media. This statist wing of the Left definitely exists and is the farthest left that the left wing gets, while still believing in some form of democracy.

There are paternalistic statists on the Right as well.  If the crews of Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann ever had their way, pornography, gambling, same-sex-marriage and, perhaps, homosexuality would all be illegal at the Federal level with no provisions for options at the state level.  And, of course, marijuana would remain illegal.

Labels and principles have real meanings.  If you are going to call yourself a Federalist and a believer in individual freedom, you should know what those words mean and realize that you live in a liberal democracy where other people have the freedom to do things of which you personally do not approve. You should know, as well, that we are a Federal Republic with the police powers reserved to the fifty states by the U.S.Constitution.  If you don’t, then when you put labels on yourself, you are just calling yourself names. 

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The Washington Post: Alyssa Rosenberg: ‘If Conservatives Lost the Culture War, That Doesn’t Mean Liberals Won it’

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Erik Schneider

Source:The New Democrat 

When people use the term “Culture War,” it’s not immediately clear what they’re talking about.  It could be some pop culture war between Hollywood and Nashville, the capitol of country music, or, perhaps, the broader Bible Belt. Well, that sort of conflict is really not of much significance.  A more significant  Culture War is in the arena of politics and the way Americans look at life and how they believe they should be living it.

All the evidence you need to know that Liberals won that Culture War is that it’s no longer 1955.  We no longer watch black and white TV or get together in the living room to listen to the radio. The man of the house is no longer likely to say, “Honey I’m home,” when he comes home from work, with honey responding “How was your day dear?  Your favorite drink is by your chair in the living room.”  Honey may not be there.  She may still be at work.

This may sound simplistic but we are in a completely different era where both men and women believe that they can do anything they want to if they work hard and get a good education and the skills they need to be successful. Gone are the days of stereotypical masculine and feminine roles.  African-Americans no longer live, for the most part, to serve Caucasian-Americans by working in their homes.  Gays are no longer trapped in the closet. Men and women no longer feel that they have to be married in order to have sex or live with their romantic partner and have and rear children.

The 1960s was obviously not a perfect decade but it was a liberating (great liberal word) decade for millions of Americans, thanks to the Baby Boom generation.  Today, 40-50 years later, we as a country, at least outside of the Bible Belt, feel that we have the freedom to live our own lives and do as we please without the threat of government or the religious and social establishment interfering.  Now, legalized gambling, legalized marijuana, same-sex-marriage, homosexuality, and  adult pornography are all mainstream.  Bye bye, Billy Graham, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Phyllis Schaffly.  You lost the Culture War.

As much as the Christian Right may want to put the whole country in a time machine and take us back to Leave it to Beaver Land (1955), those days are long gone.  America, today, is much more free than it was then and it seeks ever more personal and economic freedom.  It is never going back. 

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