Just a quick (for me) thought to say simply, I like Dick Cheney. When the typically laconic Wyoming “cowboy” does speak, liberals fear to argue directly with him. He’s direct, to the point, and able to cut through the fog of doublespeak and eviscerate the two-faced. The worst thing he ever did is shoot his partner, but under the context of bird hunting, this is simply not as much as a faux-pas as one might think.

I’ll just put it out there: I shot my bird-hunting partner once. We were dove-hunting in some heavy mesquite-bush junk in SE California. We were both working in the same direction, about 70 yards apart, both shooting 12ga. Wingmasters, when a low-flying bullet (a dove) came whistling from behind and right between us. At some point in dove hunting, since the birds don’t follow that gentlemanly “BS” that Ruark’s bobwhites did, your shooting becomes instinctive, and this time was no different. I just happened to jump the bird before my friend did. I tracked the bird, about 20 feet above the ground, and shot. It was a good shot, and I couldn’t see anyone else at the time, but it turned out that one of the #7 1/2 shot flew out of the pattern and caught my partner under the eye. I was freaking out- he was quite a bit more circumspect. “You were hunting… really hunting. That’s just the way it is.” Ok, so Dick, by comparison, was hunting quail, but, if I recall, they were TEXAS quail: bigger and more ornery!

I can easily see Dick Cheney being that focused on the hunt. It happens, and he felt badly, but that’s just the way it is. What I feel badly about is that our former V.P. has to come out of the open country of Wyoming to deal with all this moronic drivel being created behind his back. I sure hope he’s training some protoge’ somewhere- losing Cheney’s insightful, keen perspective in the political world is akin to losing Buckley in the conservative, apologetic world. Dick Cheney is a good man. That’s a rarity in and of itself.

Given the recent quandries a number of conservatives and/or Republicans have been in regarding their place in the GOP, and given that a number of commentators have been pontificating over the Sarah Palin phenomenon, I’d like to proffer an idea that may or may not have been disseminated of late.

I have a dog in this hunt, as I left the GOP a few years ago as a protest against what I felt was the abandoning of the party platform. I became a member of the California Independent Party, known nationally as the Constitution Party, and have felt that my vote and voice have been wasted ever since. I knew I was in trouble as soon as I heard about the Florida faction of the party, representing an apparent “Christian” pro-life stance with no exceptions, fighting viciously with a Nevada, allegedly “Mormon” faction, which represented a pro-life position, but including an exception for the life of the mother… or something like that. When a third party fractures over what could be argued as minor issues, it clearly presents no alternative, and I’ve been considering a return to my “party of Reagan” ever since.

As an evangelical Christian, I have also been labeled as part of the “Religious Right”, and have been accused of forcing the Republican Party to pander to my predilections as well as being a party to helping to fracture Republican unity, both having been done with such apparent impunity that I was completely unaware of what I was doing when I voted for whom I did.

In deference to the Libertarian Party (to which I have previously referred, if I said that right without dangling a modifier), their descriptors are succinct in describing why someone might become a Republican- they argue, as I recall, that Republicans/conservatives are economically leveraged toward small government, yet we believe that federal goverment has a right to speak to things moral, especially within the public square. I would say that this generic definition is what rang true with me when I cast my first presidential vote… for Ronald Reagan.

Something since then has changed, albeit in smaller areas than the two aforementioned, at least for me. But I have to think, after watching innumerable “disenfranchised” Republicans speak (including many voices from within the party) that what I’m feeling( I’d rather say “thinking”, but that would only be partially honest) is not atypical.

Firstly, the “new” conservative has a bit of a different twist on civil liberties: he or she relishes the rights of the individual to the point that, where once he might have completely backed the police, for example, he now asks that police be carefully limited in their powers and be held to a higher standard. He concedes that this makes a cop’s job that much harder, but believes that a cop who’s philosophically tied to a “policeman as an armed citizen” with arrest duties given him by his fellow citizens does not want to advocate the militarization of the police or the removal of certain duties in order to preserve due process. I, for one, am upset that, here in California, I can be pulled over for something and detained because the officer pulling me over notices that I have a California-legal AR-15 or AK-47 in my trunk, but because the officer doesn’t have adequate training, can then detain and possibly arrest me and/or confiscate my weapon, and that cop is protected in his or her ignorance of the law. Apparently, if a police officer wishes to coerce information or a confession or whatever from me, he is legally protected if he wants to lie to me about what is going to happen to me, for instance, if I don’t cooperate. This is, of course, just one example of civil liberties issues, but the point is that we find ourselves closer to the libertarians than to the Republican Party because we believe more in individual rights than our predecessors, and we know that what might be misapplied to a miscreant might also be misapplied to us one day. I, for example, don’t care if 2nd degree murderers are released, as long as they’re released according to the rule of law, and our Governor has no right to abrogate said law. If it’s wrong for those guys to get out, tell the public and change the penal code… lesson learned. But don’t go changing it by administrative fiat. Law only protects us if those in charge of administering it are beholden to it. Those who don’t like this are Benthamites, and should be damned to hell! We are adamant in our right to self-determination and responsibility, and believed that this includes self-defense. We support castle doctrines, for example, and note that the crime rate during the days of the “Wild West” was miniscule compared to today mainly because the citizenry were empowered to collectively drive out the “desperadoes” or hang them as they saw fit. The real gunfighter scenario tended to be the bad guy riding into town only to discover guns pointing at him from many windows, and he would receive an admonition to hightail it out of town or else. Whatever else they might have been, most outlaws of the day were smart enough and quickly left. Even in high-falutin’ Big Bear, CA, there is still a hanging tree on display!

Secondly, the new Republican/conservative is adamant in his or her objections to growing government. We are states-rights people. I guess this mimics the old Federalist/Whig debates, or so I’ve heard, but I must confess that I don’t know the divisions well. I know Alexander Hamilton was on one side- something to do with the National Bank? Anyway, we decry Roe v. Wade as much for it’s improper application on the federal level as we do for its illegal funding via Planned Parenthood. We’re tired of all the “attachments” to the Federal government without real Constitutional moorings, such as the EPA. We insist on getting government out of our private lives, and this includes smoking issues (even though many,like me, don’t smoke, much less like the smell), helmet laws, and regulating what we eat. No compromise, no quarter. The Feds can keep our military up (even though, Constitutionally, an army is only formed for two years, and only when necessary), but who the heck is the ATF? Regulatory agencies are an affront, but that point goes back to the discussion on civil liberties.

Thirdly, we believe in a moral component of American Society, but we believe that things like welfare and charity are best run by the local moral components, such as churches and local Aide Societies, and that things like insurance are NOT a right per se, even though we may need to avail ourselves of them often. We do think the Federal government has a place in ethics by NOT intruding and promoting “hate crimes” against gays, as if the death of a straight person is somehow less. We do NOT believe that behavior is to be protected the same as race. We believe in tolerating each other as equal people, and that no group deserves being “re-isolated” in order to be “insulated”. We are adamant in our refusal to kowtow to politically-correct iterations of the law. We believe that Mexican-Americans want law and justice just as much as the rest of us, and that they are probably just as conservative in their family life as the Black Community is, so the Republican Party needs to quit trying to kiss their backsides in an attempt to win favor, and just say we want the Border regulated, and so do they! Perhaps we need to streamline the immigration process (10 years is not atypical), but stopping illegal drug and human trafficking needs to happen…NOW! California prisons are full of mules who were offered “plata o plomo”(silver or lead), and chose the plata. Such a perspective is anathema to the obsequious, placating, and nauseatingly concession-minded Republican Party that now exists.

I believe that the aforementioned explains the popularity of a Sarah Palin. We (dare I say) “neo-neo Cons” are growing, because we won’t simply lie down and acquiesce to the pablum foisted on us by the old Guard ideology. We need a home. And if the Republican Party won’t grow up and take it’s conservative belief system seriously, we’ll find a home elsewhere… perhaps with less-than-perfect-but-better-than-anything-else Sarah. In any case, since we’re principle-minded over party loyalty, we’ll happily wreck the Republican Party for its hypocrisy and then start anew. We’re tired of politics as usual, as we ain’t gonna take it anymore! The hope is that the Republican Party will see this division and not gloss it over, but instead anchor itself in its conservative roots. What good is pandering to the middle if you don’t even have a base?

By the way, I concede that I morphed from a mainly 3rd person perspective into this 1st-person plural thing, but, hey, that’s my thing, dang it! Actually, I’m sorry, but I’m too tired right now to revise it, so I’ll rest on the laurels of this being simply a diary and not an actual literary exercise. In any case, I readily acknowledge that I know better, so I hope you’ll forgive my indiscretions, good friend!

I have a friend, much more intelligent than I and trained in philosophical issues, that would disagree vehemently with me on my title above. I’m sure anyone named a “Sophist” would agree with my friend,but I think any supporter of the sophist position would have to at least concede that the connotative meaning of the word has devolved in its perceived value to a brute ugliness the Sophists certainly never intended.

Apparently raised in opposition to the Stoics, the Sophists’ goals were to, as I understand, reveal every nuance and subject any possible argumentation to careful scrutiny. Perhaps their mantra was “Nothing is as easy as it first appears.” Under their gaze, tautologies and red herrings were discovered and laid bare. Nothing was sacred: if an argument or proposition withered under sophists’ dissection, it was not meant to stand at all.

That original noble aim quickly degraded into a cynicism bereft of any desire for antithetical truth. Sophistry became the waystation of self-delusion and convoluted argumentation simply for the sake of argumentation. Today’s version has the goal of cutting the legs out from under an opponent before being forced to consider his or her suppositions. The physical manifestation is a dismissive wave of the hand, or, now, just being “shown the hand”. A quick slice or two in the riposte is adequate for the win, and pondering a point is for the slow-witted. How unfortunate.

It seems that political leadership in the U.S. has re-molded sophist argumentation into “zingers for us” versus “talking points and sound bytes” for you. Contained within those snippets is the arrogance that the argument is over, and our side doesn’t need to hear what your side is saying. This is hardly the sophistry of old. It is, however, a distillation of the idea of “gotcha”, of such clever argumentation and anticipation of the response that your king is felled in five moves. And this is what a sophist’s argument has become: a parody of the original intent.

You see this in the simplistic book-length rants of modern atheists, totally self-absorbed and unconcerned with counter-argument. For them, they are so smug in their cleverness that the end game is assumed, for they certainly must have covered everything in their original contention. They aren’t going to wait around for you to posit your points- there are no other points.

In the political realm, leadership now dogpiles the opposition with multiple players laying out individual canards designed to confuse the enemy, much as the smoke from the back-end of a Panzer or our Sherman hid the real work of the tank. Stripping the time element away from the opposition leaves him or her stuttering, and wondering where to start. Obama has used this element in a chronological fashion, dumping one bill/issue after another on a weary front stretched too thinly to adequately fight back. This then, is what sophistry has been dumbed down to: not attacks on the merits of the argument, but mellifluous-sounding mortar shells cascading in a death rain of clever quips.  In short, sophistry is a style, and a style designed to obfuscate or obliterate not the substance of a counter-argument, but the perception that a counter-argument even exists. When “we” make a statement, we have already considered all the possible contraindications, and we have made allowances. All, therefore, is OK. The statement is produced as the fait accompli, and we receivers of such are expected to lap it up willingly and without question.

I don’t think we’ll ever get back to a world of mutual consideration of an idea from, perhaps, mutually-exclusive positions. Our ideologies no longer permit the other side demonstrating that we’re wrong about anything. As a Christian, I’ve claimed for a number of years that if someone proved to me I was wrong in my theological perceptions, I would admit it and change. Now, I’m rather confident, after 34 years in my faith, that such proof doesn’t exist, but if it does, I’m ready. Of course, I demand that the other side be forthright and concede Pascal’s Wager, and that they consider that if they haven’t been able to disprove my beliefs, that they go with the odds and believe with me. By example, I must admit that even Mortimer J. Adler never really adequately answered the theodicy question, and that is a legitimate stab at my faith… but it is not even close to checkmate. By not wrapping myself up in protective layers of dismissive chain mail, however, I can better handle the thrust, consider the argument (for years, if necessary), and wrestle( Ok, mixing metaphors here, but the only thing I know about fencing is that it comes, often, in rolls) with it until I make a valid counterpoint, answer the charge, or concede. Wrapping oneself in the new sophistry only serves to kill thought and to be disinterested in truth. Less insecurity would go a long way to ending conflicts in places like, for example, Sacramento, where Democrats consistently ignore ways to solve the budget woes without raising taxes and dump illogical but emotive sound bytes on their constituents in order to throw the voters off the scent and get themselves re-elected. By example, Democrats willingly flushed away 30K or so of their probable Latino voters in California’s Central Valley in order to promote their environmental sensitivity for the Delta smelt, a meaningless fish in the grand scheme of things. Conservatives- now that sounds like an argument!

On the way home today, I was able to observe an electrical company erecting huge metal power poles along the freeway. They’ve been at it for awhile, apparently hooking up a gas-fired generating station about 50 miles away in the East to somewhere to the West of me. I had thought, and still wonder, that they were to hook up to a solar panel station scheduled to be laid out in the desert north of my armpit of a town. Now I’m not so sure, but I’m hoping- if the solar panel area goes on the grid, we’re promised a reduction in our price per kwh, and here in SE California, we can use the help!

The power poles, made of a shiny aluminum it would appear, are closer to my “town”, and also closer to the freeway leading to my town. They’re rather obnoxious, and they will obviously deleteriously affect my unobstructed view of the mountains to the south of me. Prior to their erection, this area of the desert only displayed some low-lying wooden poles that seemed, in comparison anyway, to merge into the browns and tans of our stark, bare peaks.

It’s pretty apparent that a once beautiful (to some- perhaps we’re desperate in the desert!) vista will basically be gone to those of us who are used to seeing it. Is this sad? Perhaps. Is it to be seen as a negative element in my desert experience? Of course. But, ultimately, is it wrong, or even “bad”? I’d have to emphatically say, “NO!”

Seeing the bottle of Pepsi my boys drink on the kitchen table for me is a negative experience. I want to drink it, but my inner health-o-meter and my doctor say, “No!” Is it bad or wrong that I see that bottle of sin beckoning me? No- in fact, it’s a rather good thing if I exercise the will to resist… which I’ve managed to do for a few days now. Don’t bet on my future- but I’m hoping the boys will have it drunk before I encounter it again! In the same way (sort of- I wasn’t vetting a philosophically tight analogy here… I just wanted to illustrate the idea) we should look at power poles across an almost virgin landscape (no, not really virgin- but you’d have to be awfully close to tell, or in the air) as a negative with very positive consequences resulting from their existence.

There are people closer to L.A. that are whining about power poles and towers near their domiciles, saying that it detracts from the “natural beauty” of their area. Many are the same ones advocating “clean” energy, yet they don’t want to be the ones to “pay” for that energy to get to them or their neighbors. I wonder where they get their hubris from? What makes their view more valuable than, say, mine? What makes a view of anything more valuable than people’s needs, anyway? Ok- I can easily concede that plastering billboards along the edge of the Grand Canyon is a terrible proposition- but that’s in regards to a view that’s publically recognized as important to preserve, rare, and precious. I can remember leaving my college in La Mirada, CA in the summer to go work in El Centro, CA, and driving through literal “amber waves of grain” around Corona along the 91 freeway. Now, shoebox houses climb the hills and there’s no evidence that grain ever waved there at all! Sad? Yes. But everywhere we live once looked different. And before we reminisce about Iron Eyes Cody and how sad it all must be for the Native Americans, remember that this country looked even better before those guys made it across the Bering Strait, and there were plenty of Wooly Mammoths upset that “those kind” made it into the neighborhood! After all, that’s Aunty Mabel they’re grilling over the coals!

What I’m really setting up here is the classic “conservationist vs. preservationist” debate. And I don’t want to do the debate, just my selfish side of the coin. As a hunter (which should indicate a conservationist), I concede that man is here to stay, and that, due to his brain power, instead of being on the bottom of the prey side, he is clearly a top predator, especially with a Remington 700BDL in .270Win (or so sayeth Jack O’Connor)! And my job as a hunter is to manage the habitat so that the animal population, whatever it may be, may exist healthily within said habitat. The Department of Fish and Game agrees with me, and tells me how many of said animal may be taken each year in order to promote health among the rest of the “herd” or whatever it may be. The preservationist, by contrast, is so full of denial that he wants to boot man from whatever it is the preservationist believes is being harmed by man; thus, for instance, preservationists of one particularly stupid ilk wanted to completely fence off the Sequoia National Forest, keep humans out, and sell postcards in L.A. made in China from lead-based inks. What would happen inside of the fence was up to whatever lived inside of the fence. Now, maybe this seems utilitarian, but what would the point be? No matter how natural it was on “the inside”, nobody could enjoy it… or could they? I guarantee you that the preservationist’s elitist bent would have donors that gave untold thousands to the project getting special “access’, cameras only, to the inside. The managers, of course, would go in and manage the place, without telling us they did it. Kinda like PETA killing thousands of pound pets in NC- we tell you one thing, but it necessitates us doing another. The DFG would offer depredation permits for government “specialists” to go in occasionally to blast away any runaway populations, but there would never be any hunting tags, much less guns, allowed in. And there would be no pictures- not of that. We would need to manage the public perception, but, of course, it isn’t propaganda.

We have a couple of ex-hippie idiots that live in our area. They’re famous for, among other things, stopping us from filling in a man-made hole with man-made trash. Even though the technology to protect us from the possibility of groundwater contamination is extraordinary, they’ve injected politics into California’s activist courts to tie up the hole-filling, which would have meant 85 jobs or so, in a population somewhere around 500 with nothing else locally to do. They’ve also harassed development projects and, although I’ve dreamed of a D-9 they might be standing in front of losing its brakes and suddenly flattening them, they still are around. They tried to block military exercises in a nearby abandoned (nearly) iron mine, and they’re on record as opposing the aforementioned solar panel project, ostensibly due to possible encroachment on the ubiquitous-in-name only Desert Tortise territory. These two morons want to “preserve” the desert culture, and they drive up to their mailbox in their pickup and send out papers made in mills probably in Ohio and use electricity to communicate by and clothes made by polluting machinery, all to get support for their cause. It is only a matter of time before Al “the Environmental Whore” Gore flys his non-carbon neutral jet out to make a speech only “Ole’ Woodenhead” would believe. But it’s their desert, and they have decreed that no one shall detract from their particular vision of it. Their vision, obviously, is more pure and undefiled. By what measure, you ask? By theirs- and don’t ask.

These mental paragons would slay the windmill beasts up by the freeway… if they had to look at them all the time. They’re about 11 miles away, so we must forgive their reticence. Gods can be capricious, even if well-intentioned. And if Sancho Panza would rather not be enamored of, who was it, Esmeralda, who cares? What such people refuse to recognize is that it is impossible for the world to exist without man, at least at this point. We ain’t gonna go! The windmills aren’t giants, and the sheep aren’t enemy knights. And if we lose a view in order to effectively provide for human needs, so be it. A lost view, though sad, pales in comparison to, say, illegal aliens that are found dead in our deserts for want of liquid sustenance(no, I’m not arguing for water stations), or people frozen to death when winter storms rage across the Midwest. If we accept the inevitable need for people to live, and to do so as efficiently as they and their money will allow, we can go visit Yosemite or the Grand Canyon for the view, and not be so selfish about our little corner of the world being more important than anyone else’s. And by the way, my wife has more legally-obtained Desert Tortises living on the side of our house than there are in this whole basin we live in!

We should do what we can to wisely steward our resources, including the views. But we cannot, nor should we, impede meeting people’s needs (their wants is another story). Even environmental whackoes recognize this, as when a wayward coyote snatches one of their kids out of their driveway, or a mountain lion shows up on a bike path in Camarillo and takes out a rider- we go and kill the killers,the animals, suddenly willing to do the awful, but necessary work to have us live in safety with our wild kingdom all about us. Those that refuse to stop human predation deserve what that one bear lover got up in the Kodiak or somewhere. When he stopped to lunch with the wild bears- he became lunch. Completely fair- after all, it’s only Nature! Meanwhile, here in my erstwhile oasis, I think I’ll get out of my truck and walk south of those power poles, and see the vista close up… and maybe look through a Leupold scope mounted on a .270 at a coyote and, if blessed by God with a shot, kill it.

I just did an informal survey with my three kids, the oldest of which is 20 and the youngest of which is 13. I asked them if they knew the lyrics to some of the classic Americana songs being played in the background while fireworks danced on the TV screen. I’m sure two of them were instantly upset at the third, who was sick and thus was responsible for everyone hanging out at the house for fireworks on TV, where Dad had the opportunity and the captive audience to assail with seemingly inane questions.

They were stumped beyond the first line of any of them. And they were all three products of a patriotic, conservative family (and homeschooled, I might add). “Purple mountain’s what?” “My country tis’ of Thee? What’s that mean?” I had clearly failed them somewhere along the line, probably because between my stint as a public school teacher and the remainder of my time as a teacher of adult males in a state prison, I had been trained to be sensitive to what I could not promote.

Somewhere along the line, the ACLU has managed to ingrain in the brains of those responsible for education, especially public education, that we are to not inculcate our students with any required patriotic stuff, especially any that might mention God. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why. I remember being picked up by the scruff of my neck, lifted right out of my seat, by a teacher when I was caught whispering during the prayer moment at lunch. I never once thought that it was because I was failing to communicate effectively with God- I thought it was because I was being noisy when I was supposed to be quiet. Somehow, my fragile ego survived the event. And, somehow, I managed to survive saying the Pledge at school, and because we faced the flag, I developed a respect for that symbol, figuring that if it was important enough for the teachers to say it and to make me say it, it must be important for me too. It was later that I learned that there were indeed reasons to revere the flag of the United States, to the point that I learned to resent those that would promote the flag of other countries over ours even while in our country, often illegally.

I remember getting righteously indignant when I first heard “God Save the Queen”, because I thought the tune had been co-opted by those dirty Brits, who were still trying to get back at us for our poking them in the eye all those years ago. And though it’s been years since I’ve sung “My Country Tis’ of Thee”, I bet I could still remember most of the lyrics if I tried really hard. Don’t ask me about “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean”, though; I still get confused with having a third name to represent our country! In any case, I was barely mollified to learn that the English originated the tune for “God Save the Queen”. The Beatles and Eric Clapton must have helped my appreciation of British musicality. But if I were to sing a line from “America the Beautiful” and think about the words, I’d probably still get misty-eyed.

That’s why I can’t figure out what’s wrong with inculcating kids with patriotism. It doesn’t make them see under the varnish any less; it just gives them a foundational appreciation for, at least, what the country could be, even if at the moment we aren’t measuring up to someone’s subjective standards. And while we’re at it, just why did those freakin’ hippies not learn about the aphorism to “not throw the baby out with the bath water”? It wasn’t enough to claim we were wrong about the Vietnam War (yes, I was around then and I think they were wrong, but isn’t that the point?), but their anti-disestablishmentarianism led them to throw everything out and supplant it with- what? Dr. Spock and socialism and Charles Manson?  Stupid is indeed an unforgivable sin!

So, now the law says we will teach our children to appreciate the advantages of homosexual parents, but we cannot teach them to love their country? Why not? Even the hobo-sage Progessivist Guthrie told us that “This land is your land”, and to appreciate what we have. And it’s often those in other countries and other “governments” that speak up to tell us how good we have it here. So what’s wrong with a paean to America once in awhile? And since it was those like William Penn that promoted freedom of conscience and belief specifically because they were a Christian sect, even if we don’t believe in their particular God, we ought to be appreciative of what that belief did for everyone, and not feel bad about singing about it. And during the 7th inning stretch at your local ballgame, don’t worry about the high note- it’s the words that count!

All of the internal dialogue amongst conservatives fails to mask one enduring problem: how can we act? We can bloviate (thanks, Bill) until blue in the face and still not redden our states. The offer to consider beer in our discussions is not without merit; wasn’t it over beer that the Sons of Liberty lubricated their discourse?

In a non-inebriated (is that ebriated, then?) state, I find myself wondering just what the law allows. As far as the media is concerned, the majority has spoken, and we in the conservative minority need to shut our whiny mouths and suck it up. But, according to a recent poll (thank you, media), over 60% of America consider themselves conservative. “Conservative” in America seems to imply some kind of laissez-faire acceptance of whatever government foists upon us, and it takes so much to waken the beast known for so long as the Silent Majority.

I’ve long been a proponent of tar and feathers. Henry’s makes a plethora of fairly liquidable pitches, many not requiring heat to use. According to one CHP officer I spoke to, going up to the Capitol (or, here in California, Sacramento) and dragging out our favorite dirtbag and riding him or her out on a rail simply would not be tolerated by law enforcement. How ironic, if law ultimately gives us the Jeffersonian right to throw the bums out! Hence, my question about the majority. If we show up at government offices acting with the force of the majority, perhaps law enforcement’s stance could change…perhaps.

Although conservatives arguably occupy the moral high ground, at some point we must say, “Enough is Enough”. We must act. Some would say we act at the individual level, adhering to our personal principles in order to influence others. I’d ask if we haven’t been doing that and, even in the aggregate, have been wasting our time as a result. Effecting change at the mass level is simply a different proposition. I think it’s time for a beer (Hefeweisen, and not Sam Adams, in my opinion) and a down pillow….

California, for some reason, just loves to offer up to the political sphere inane, imbecilic, and quite infantile women to represent the state at the national level. One only needs to witness Barbara Boxer to note that the qualifications for U.S. Senator need be no more than “must appear to be a bag of rocks”. I don’t know who actually votes for these useless idiots, but it’s nearly enough to convince a normal guy to go misogynistic! The only exception with our Caliwomen is Dianne Feinstein, who lives up to an assonance- rhyming word with her final appellation, and who is at least just mendacious…perhaps nefarious! Don’t argue with her about your right to a concealed-carry permit, however, or she’ll pull the .380 out of her purse, plug you, and have you buried in one of her husband’s cement plants!

We now need to add a Republican to that list: Mary Bono-Mack. There were people who told me that Mary was quite stupid, and that good ole’ Sonny was the brains of the operation in his day. I didn’t buy it- one simply couldn’t imagine that any guy hanging out with Cher could postulate political philosophy at all! And then Sonny ended up becoming the ultimate tree-hugger. I miss him. Ms. Bono-Mack truck for a brain voted for todays Cap and Trade proposal, assuming a level of hubris, as I told her website, that was hard to believe, since only seven other Republicans voted with her. What did she think she knew that others didn’t? In actuality, she proved her ignorance, settling for cozy-sounding elitist buzzwords about the environment instead of considering the job loss and the economic pain to be foisted on those blue-collar types, especially in California. Why didn’t she consider just how much of the “global warming” evidence, especially that attributed to human intervention, has been proven false? When she learned how we wouldn’t even have bread to eat, I’m sure she told someone to “Let them eat cake!”. I for one will help drag her to the guillotine when she comes up for re-election.

Pardon the double entendre in the title, but it points (pointedly, I might add) at an issue raised in my last post, wherein apparently otherwise honorable people chose to wax vitreolic not so much at my writing (I was summarily dispensed with), but, rather, at semantic differences in terminology.

Allow me at the outset to apologize for not defining the terms I used, for it was clear that, by the end, although others had followed their perspectives to their “logical” end, they had indeed supported my contention, assuming my terms. My main point was that being an economic conservative and a social liberal was oxymoronic, and some very tenacious minds took me to task for the comment, apparently because I had struck a personal nerve. Thus I feel some obligation to explain myself (and, thusly, my perspective), perhaps in order to make some sense for myself about just what I think. Since this is a diary, I’m allowed to pontificate, and to do so without mass quantities of erudition, no? If I’m stupid, you’re stupid for paying attention to me, n’est-pas? Albeit, the discussion is not without merit, for I suspect that much of the conservative disunity lies in abortive cross communication, and if there were a common standard, we’d have fertile grounds for discussion, and not just hollow, angry rhetoric.

An economic conservative, to me, seems almost self-explanatory. He, or she, doesn’t want to take money from those who have it and he or she ( henceforth referred to as the gender ”inclusive”, third-person singular “he” from the Old Days) doesn’t want to be forced to redistribute it to those who did not earn it. His economic conservatism thus bleeds, logically, into the social sphere where such redistribution might take place. For instance, Roe v. Wade is an economic issue to him because he believes that he should not have to pay via taxes for others to have the “right” to an abortion, and he abhors the taxpayer dollars distributed to, say, Planned Parenthood.

This economic, or fiscal, conservative also wants Adam Smith unshackled and Ayn Rand to “bust a move” on federal subsidies, and wants big government out of his shorts, in short. He sees the ultimate expression of Americanism as the Individual, who sinks or swims on his own. If someone will not work, neither let him eat, etc. According to some Libertarian literature I received in the past, this is where Republicans find some commonality with the aforementioned crowd.

However, such commonality dissolves when it comes to social conservatism. This explains why someone like me is not a Libertarian, and never will be. I cannot express a reverence and respect for our Original Documents without conceding their religious underpinnings. Although many are aware of the Federalist Papers, many are, by contrast, completely unaware of Samuel Rutherford and Lex Rex, a series of pamphlets written by Rutherford, a Scottish Presbyterian, to which the Founding Fathers owed much of their social sensibilities. Now, I’m no scholar, but it is even clear to me that, Deist or otherwise, the Founders took the imprimatur of freedom directly from the absolutes they held, ironically enough, absolutely, in a God Who Had Spoken (thank you, Francis Shaffer). Thus, if I am to be a consistent Constructionist, I must concede that the Constitution speaks with a moral, and not just ethical voice. This can only be what explains, for instance, the consternation of those involved in writing the document when they viewed their own actions in regard to slavery. Although their response was tepid, wan, and unsatisfactory, the fact that they found it a bitter pill to swallow speaks volumes of a deep sense of morality colliding with the hypocrisy of their actions. They did not act… but they knew better! But I digress.

One commentator on my last post brought up a valid point when he said I confused social issues with, I believe, social programs. I did within the context of the post, but I do not think, as he seemed to indicate, that they are unrelated. Clearly, a social conservative wants to keep government out of charity, for instance, believing that local entities respond more efficiently and wisely than the Welfare Department. The social conservative believes, rightly, that FDR and the WPA did more to extend the Great Depression than to help it (though you couldn’t convince my mother of that, who lived through it as a child). When it comes to social issues, however, what makes him conservative seems to be “grayer”. Does he, like the Libertarians, take a “hands-off” approach to others’ behaviors? Would he go as far as William Buckley in advocating decriminalizing drugs? That hardly seems conservative, and in fact, is not within keeping of most socially conservative perspectives. Yet it augures for the individual over societal control, which is within keeping of most conservatives; thus, according to the CATO Institute, the modern conservatives hails from the roots of the “classic liberal”, vis-a-vis Thomas Jefferson and the like.

For me, social conservatism abides in a sense of minimalist governmental interdiction, protection of religious liberties without foisting of the same on others, and a debriding, if you will, of social licentiousness or libertine actions, recognizing that, like Viktor Frankl saw, there is a difference between freedom and liberty, and that freedom invites responsibility. Having said that, however, I differentiate myself from other social conservatives in that I tend to, for instance, want to see no innocents go to prison in exchange for a few guilty people skating by (and I’d hold the D.A. liable) rather than insure that every guilty person gets caught, even if that means innocent people go to prison. The last is a socially conservative (and tenable, if argued well) position. Since I work in a prison, I wrestle with this last issue on a personal level, so sorry if it seems esoteric. If the disallowance of the rule of law ever gets you caught up in the “system”, you might end up thinking that it isn’t quite so esoteric anymore. There but for the grace of God go I, you know? But belief in the rule of law (and Blackstone over those prick Benthamites) is also a socially conservative perspective. So now things become muddied and a bit convoluted.

In the end, I think there’s inextricable links between economic and social conservatism that either serve to point out the inconsistencies in one’s position or, if the bindings are acknowledged, manage to create a meaningful whole. From the latter perspective we can speak, from the former we persuade no one and we continue to squabble uselessly in the henhouse. At this point, however, the fox is not guarding the henhouse, he’s in the White House, and hungry for some chicken pot pie. If we at least concede that our personal imbroglios may have led us into various inconsistencies, who’s to say that we couldn’t live with some oxymorons, as long as we share the basics and learn to become pistol-packing chickens- since we ALL agree on the 2nd Amendment, no?

I’m not a brilliant man, nor even that astute (and no, this is not an opportunity for confirmation), yet I recall saying prior to Der Kommisar’s term as governor in California that he was not going to work out. In fact, I was railing against the promotion of another like Ah-nold: Dick Riordan. I’m not being self-congratulatory here- my perspective seemed obvious at the time, and I found it amazing that others of a conservative mien were not sharing a similar view. Now that Swarzeneggar has fulfilled his destiny, I find it difficult that I, even now, must state the obvious with those same conservatives: Economic conservative/social liberal is an oxymoron, not a tenable political position!

I suspect that claiming both positions simultaneously is a pretty overt attempt at pandering, so I can’t imagine a voter ignorant enough to be suckered in by the effort! I mean, wouldn’t they just be a Democrat? The argument against playing both sides is clear: you can’t advocate for programs you refuse to pay for! What the Governator has done, however, is to go schizo, in popular parlance (although it is most accurately referred to Multiple Personality Disorder; however, you must start with at least one in order to qualify…). Since being elected, Arnold has acquiesced and submitted coyishly to his Left on innumerable pet projects and money pits, all the while paying for them with future dollars. Now it’s time to pay the piper, and Arnold wants to shove the piper’s pipe down his throat, in an attempt to look fiscally-wise and deflect criticism from his lack of managerial skill. Yet, the best he, in his Teutonically-sterile frame of mind, can muster is to slap at the lowest common denominator he can find: the defenseless rank-and-file state worker.

Blame SEIU! The state worker has employed union muscle to wrest all the money from the State! However, the rank and file worker was never given a real choice to not go union- the difference between the full monthly fee and the “fair share” payment he is forced to make anyway is two dollars! On top of that, Administration practice has been to berate workers to the point that they find themselves greatful for a little protection, and all the while Swarzenegger allows State negotiators to promise the moon. Fortunately, it seems, the only place the State makes good on its payments is to CCPOA, the juggernaut correctional officers’ union. Cozy.

Since the Peter Principle is in full employ with most managers with the State (what little management training they get was dumped somewhere around 1959), most employees just want those monkeys off their backs! The average California state employee then gets to enjoy a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” status that is the envy of…well, no one.

Meanwhile, the State could drill 40-50 miles off shore and reap the bonanza of American oil- but California environmental elitists refuse to let us average folks afford energy until the experts perfect the “green” stuff. Evil! Evil! They can’t afford gas? Let ‘em eat the environmental equivalent of cake! And if you can’t afford your gas, we’re going to punish you for driving an SUV by doubling your registration fees. And if you can’t afford those fees, in 30 days were gonna nearly add half again of what you owe so that, what, you still can’t afford to pay? Hey, where you going? You can’t leave this state! We need your taxes!

And now we’re swimming in a sea of liberal ideology that doesn’t get that a government can tax away its base and be left with nothing of any merit to tax! Finally, the truth is there: all the Arnolds and Riordans and the like never were really economically conservative, or they never would have let loose the dogs of social(ist) programs in the first place.Swarzenegger’s elitist diet does not allow him to eat cake with us, and he has to keep his winsome figure. But rather than caviar, what Arnold needs to eat is a strong diet of tar and feathers. Any bets on whether California citizens have a right to ride him out on a rail?

In my job as a teacher of adult male inmates, I often find myself searching for that homogeniety factor or those factors that seem to predispose these incarcerated men toward acts of criminality. Since they seemingly come from all walks of life and age categories, the standard demographical data don’t appear able to be distilled down to any meaningful or distinct set of characteristics. Perhaps that’s the truth of the matter, yet I can look at my own life and see that, while I may have been given many reasons to resent society and to seek my revenge upon it, I can choose otherwise- and many, many others have done the same, often in extremely challenging and tragic circumstances that easily dwarf my own. As long as no factor accounts for 100% of it’s “victims”, there is always the possibility of choosing another path. Also, as long as there are ex-felons that exit prison and buck the recidivist trends, there is choice on the other side of a stint in prison as well. Thus I find myself asking what factors seem to be most able to be generalized to the adult male prison population as a whole.

One might ask what the point in asking such questions would be. I mean- who really cares? I would argue that we all should. The old adage “There but for the grace of God go I” has merit. Some of us may be only one or two choices away from finding ourselves in prison blue. Some of the issues that could get us there go to the root of criminality, others are just surface manifestations of deeper causes. I believe that the distillation that occurs when society separates out those who cannot or will not accede to group standards creates a microcosm of “wrong-path” possibilities, and if we examine the homogeneous factors of that microcosm, we can learn from them and avoid those behaviors, factors, or issues that point, for one reason or another, to the coarsening of our civilization as a whole.

Well, if any of the above made sense at all, I would like to offer what I believe is one of the major issues shared by a vast majority of inmates I’ve encountered- the objectification of women and the resultant “deformed” perspectives that result.

A few years ago (OK- quite a few… before DVD’s, anyway) someone released a couple of videos called Dreamworld and Dreamworld II, I believe. I seem to recall that the author was a sociologist( which made these significant videos all that more miraculous, but that’s another story…) who pointed out that, at least during the early days of MTV, female characters were designed solely as objects for sexual titillation (I recognize the rude pun, and I don’t intend it, but the word is right nonetheless), and they were often compressed into some near-Jungian archetype, albeit of a sexual nature, such as the Catholic schoolgirl. Of course, the repressed Catholic schoolgirl wanted to be taken by one of us males- and that was ALL she was about, or so a song might suggest… and she was ripe for the picking. Whatever the situation, the girl, even if she was the singer in the band, would be obsequious in front of her “man”. The videos were truly eye-opening, and I recommend them to anyone interested in this issue.

The inmates I’ve encountered tend to mirror this perspective. For example, if a woman in a movie is in an isolated situation with her possible paramour, most of the inmates will be disgusted with the male character if he does not immediately act, saying, “I woulda tapped that! What the h___ is wrong with him?” They seem to universally believe that the female characters mirror real life and that, as in real life, the females are all “asking for it”.

Inmates still mourn the removal of “pornography” from this state’s institutions; however, all is not lost for them. A number of magazines are available that pander to the state’s particular requirements for no frontal nudity by keeping “modest” girls in lingerie or only showing them naked from behind. Even Maxim magazine is now a favorite, since the magazine seems to be adept at getting “sexy” famous women to do “almost naked” spreads. This all again reinforces the idea that a woman’s value is dependent on her ability to sexually stimulate a man, regardless of her acting “ability”, or whatever other non-sexual talent she may possess.

The latest in the women’s movement has done nothing to correct this distorted perspective. It seems that women are being told to celebrate their sexuality, and even some bastions of the feminist movement have been quoted, apparently telling their adherents to use their sex as a tool to manipulate others as a means to success. To me, this would be more like a concession, and a poor one at that, to those who said the feminism of the 70’s had failed. It’s tantamount to saying that, since “we women” couldn’t successfully compete in the realm of ideas and decisions head to head with men, we have to fall back on using our “feminine wiles” to get what we want. Of course, I refuse to believe this , and I lament things like junior high girls wearing variously- colored bands to denote what sexual act they’re willing to perform for the boys, or women like Danica Patrick, who don’t have the constitution to stand on their talent as, say, an Indy race car driver, but denigrate themselves by displaying to others that, “Hey, if I can’t compete with the boys in a race car (and third place at Indy was not a win), I can at least display what I do (and they don’t) have, which is this sexy body”. In other words, Danica, and women like her, are saying that they have nothing to offer as people, so they willingly concede that their only perceived value is that of an object- a thing to be used by others as they see fit.

What does this mean for the average male inmate, and what can we generalize to society at large? It certainly means that objectification of women was a factor prior to institutionalization, but that this distortion is heavily reinforced in the prison setting. It also means that dehumanizing a woman makes her an easier, more permissible target. Of course, I don’t know if such dehuminization occurs prior to a crime, especially one against a woman, or if it happens afterwords as an excuse for some criminal behavior but, in either case, it makes the crime easier to bear. I also suspect that making women objects for men’s satisfaction is a similar effect for child predators, where the child’s innocence is used against him or her as evidence of the child’s inability to perform as an equal actor in the realm of ideas; thus, they may be perceived as “less human”. This is just a suspicion, obviously, but could be important in the goal to eliminate sexual abuse against those least able to defend themselves against such animalistic behavior. This last example may be seen as a digression, but in reality, it is just another symptom of the effects of objectification. If, for example, serial killers consistently discuss their penchant for turning their victims into “things”- amoral objects that, upon their removal, constitute no more of a moral issue than throwing out the garbage, shouldn’t we in society be doing all we can to stop objectifying any person or group of people?

I believe the goal of objectifying a person is to remove the moral inhibitions that naturally occur to all persons who are not sociopaths. To a lesser extent, when a person chooses to rob a store, for example, he must put away from himself that he’s taking away from a person. Instead, he argues that a system owes him, or that a particular people group discriminates against him, or that a store makes so much money ripping off the disenfranchised that it has a built-in buffer to provide for so many “legitimate” robberies. The choice of excuse is endless, but it comes from a common source- rationalizing the action by taking away any sense of humanity on the part of the victim- and that is the homogeneous factor I see amongst many inmates, and why I suspect many find it easy, even necessary, to make a woman or women into objects- the gratification of the offender is assured while his guilt is assuaged. The most unfortunate thing of all is that we in society promote this with our promotion of sex and the female object of that sex in the media. We virtually tell the individual that sees women as only things to be used that his perspective is justified. The most disgusting part is how many women are complicit in denigrating their own gender, nearly guaranteeing the desperate abuser’s belief in his right to so abuse a woman, seeing her flagrant displays in TV shows and films as the stamp of approval for his perverted perspective. Here’s hoping and praying that women will call themselves to account and stop giving ammunition to the warped among us… and here’s hoping and praying that men of character will insist on promoting those women noted for their talents not associated with sexuality, and that such people of integrity will become the solution and not further the resultant evils associated with objectification.