What would a Tea Party foreign policy look like?

Is there a Tea Party foreign policy?

In general it can be said that the Tea Party movement is concerned with local and National affairs, and this is true   of the branches of the Tea Party that are being seen in the UK, Italy, Israel, Australia and even in such places as Russia and China (the Vodka Party and a more underground movement in China).  Getting local and National government under control so that it stops wild spending, gets out of people's lives and lowers taxation, all while continuing to pay down debt, is the main target of the Tea Party organizations.  Foreign policy has been outside the realm of this, which has allowed some National politicians like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul to try and craft some sort of foreign policy out of Reaganism or Libertarianism.  There is a problem in trying to graft on a foreign policy outlook that doesn't grow from the sentiments of a movement: it is likely to be rejected in whole or in part by the movement.  Worse is that it can serve as a 'wedge issue' that could split up Tea Party organizations into factions.

What has not been attempted is to look at the foundations of the interior of the movement and ask: what grows from this as a foreign policy?

Key issues internally beyond taxes are sustained by the support of the Natural Rights of Man as Individual.  Thus Liberty and Freedom for the individual are the underpinning for the tax and small government message.  By removing power to do things at the local and National level from government, the things done then devolve down to the people to address at a more localized level.  Foreign policy is the direction of a Nation as a whole and how it interacts with brother Nations.  If we seek to sustain liberty and freedom at home and have a government that recognizes that all rights and power come from the people, then should that not be a defining part of a Tea Party foreign policy?

If this is put center stage then there is an outgrowth from that in that the Tea Party movement seeks to recognize that the power of the individual is paramount and that those Nations that wish to befriend the US must also have similar sanctuary from tyranny for the rights of the individual FROM government.  That makes the Bill of Rights and the general rights secured by the US Constitution a touchstone to how we approach brother Nations, and in that we have a ready-made list of actual items that brother Nations that wish to be friendly to the US must have:

- Freedom of conscience

- Freedom of religion

- Freedom of speech

- Freedom of the press

- Freedom to peaceably assemble

- Freedom to petition government

These are Freedoms FROM government regulation, and even the US has fallen down on the job as its political elites have determined that government must be an arbiter of these things for the people.  Yet that power is not granted to it, thus all laws dealing with restricting these freedoms are against the US Constitution.  Even the famous 'not yelling fire in a crowded theater' is a LOCAL and STATE concern and is one of attaching liability, by law, to actual actions of malice towards others.  Hateful language is protected, language used to stampede people so as to harm them is not protected not because it is an exercise of speech but is abridging civil speech to coerce others to panic with a threat to their lives.  You don't yell fire in a crowded theater: you get up in front of all people and point out that there is a fire in the room and it needs to be evacuated in an orderly fashion so that all can be safe from it.  That might still get people killed, yes, but that has devolved responsibility of those reactions to the individuals by giving them the information necessary to make a decision.  That is the civil use of freedom of speech, and all freedoms have responsibilities that go hand-in-hand with them to uphold them as a freedom for all people.

After this comes additional rights from government.

- The right to keep and bear arms

- The right to not have troops or government agents stationed in your home

- The right to security in your papers, property and person

- The right not to self-incriminate

- The right to a jury trial by your peers

This goes on for a bit more, but the point is made that these are actual rights and freedoms to be exercised.  From the legacy of Great Britain comes these rights and they were hammered out to keep monarchs, which is to say the head of government, from encroaching more and more on the liberties of individuals and their freedoms by passing laws against certain activities that intruded into these areas.

It should be noted that the right to keep and bear arms is an adjunct to the Natural Right and Liberty of being armed and that as the negative form, which is to say offensive warfare, is relegated to the State, the positive form, that is defense from war, defense of the State, defense of life, papers and property... indeed defense of all other Civil Rights is backed by the Natural Right and positive Natural Liberty of defensive warfare and self-defense.  As our works and property are gained by exercising our freedom and liberty to gain them, thus exchanging time for goods, any taking of these things without due process of law is a threat to the life you have already created for yourself.  And when due process intrudes further than conscience allows, then the people have the right of self-defense of their lives in whole.

As a basis for foreign policy by a Tea Party these cannot be seen as 'window dressing' by a government.  A government cannot have a right to keep and bear arms and then require so many things to be done that, effectively, no one may be armed.   Civil government cannot abolish the positive Natural Liberty of warfare or the Natural Right to self-defense via arms.  All arms are included in this, and as those who break the law see no compunction about following arms restrictions, the people must be able to counter such threats by similar civil arms.  Similarly having freedom of speech but having that right so circumscribed by government to quash petitioning of government or to even allow freedom of civil assembly is not supporting the freedom of individual speech, assembly or petition of government.

Minimal government requires maximal individual liberty and the exercise thereof.  This is not, exactly, a Libertarian view as libertarians elected to office have seen fit to pack in their own ideas of personal liberty that require such things as grades going to a college student and not to their parents.  That intrudes on contractual agreements within a family and should be something that Libertarians uphold as a Natural source of contracting.  And yet that is not the case.  From that a minimalist view of government requires that government get out of the support of going to college completely and lower the burden of government to all of the people and let individuals see if they can actually afford the burden of further education.  Thus Libertarians can be caught in the idea of government doing 'good things' from their perspective, while Tea Partiers will take a view of government as a Punisher and that giving it the carrot and the stick is the recipe for tyranny.

Foreign policy wise this then puts requirements on those who would befriend the US to off-load as much of the overburden of government to the people of their government to their people.  As I've said the US has been doing just the opposite from this for over a century and it has led to fiscal ruin and debt that cannot be paid and, under the current view, has no intention of EVER being paid off.  The slow-roll of bonds and modest overspending and debt passed out of the rear view mirror back in the 1970's and isn't on the horizon ANYWHERE.  Fiscal rectitude by a brother Nation is something we need to practice at home and if it is a top value, then it is something the US should be encouraging abroad.

This then gives a set of tests to a Tea Party foreign policy of which of our brother Nations we can be friendly to and which will get reciprocity from the US.  This does not mean that all of such individual Natural and Civil rights and liberties are to be maximal, this is true, but that they must able to be practiced and government recognize that it is not the purveyor of these rights and liberties but the protector of them for their people.

Free Trade was a Reagan era mantra and the practice of it to make people free just has not worked.  Mexico is, if anything, in worse straights for its people due to NAFTA than they were before it.  The massive upheavals in their economy and the direct competition with US agriculture has had large-scale effects on Mexico which has created a large set of criminal syndicates that are waging war against the citizens of Mexico.  It is a good thing that local neighborhoods and towns take up arms in their own defense in Mexico and it is a bad thing that they must break the law to do so as their government restricts the use of even bolt action rifles to its citizens.  Why do we have free trade with such a Nation?  Similarly freer and more open trade with China has seen the few there, its government officials and cronies, prosper while the people of China earn little and have internal inflation going on that their own government can't even recognize.  The people have no freedom of assembly or petition of government, and yet it gets Most Favored Nation Trade Status?  Why?

In general this outline of a foreign policy begins to break out into a tri-fold path, which is something I've looked at before, but with an ideological backing to it that can be well understood.  The outline of the path is clear, and requires that those who put forth nostrums on things like Free Trade making people freer actually demonstrate this mantra after decades of trying it.  There are negative cases to this, and as those point to a major problem with the supposition, the mantra, itself, must be put in doubt and re-examined.  The US is not the World's Policeman and, in the words of John Quincy Adams, we support freedom and liberty everywhere, but are guardians only of our own.  To that end the first goal on the military side of foreign policy, is to help bolster and deepen the self-defense capacity of friendly brother Nations.  This can be done with direct trade, yes, but can also be done by seeking to have restrictions on the use of arms repealed so that there is a greater reservoir of those who can defend their own Nation to be called upon in event of crisis.  Working together militarily comes at the END of this process, not the BEGINNING, and those Nations that recognize that their own self-interest is best served by a civil armed populace goes a long way towards demonstrating the concept that governments cannot predict when and where war will happen as the negative Natural Liberty of warfare can be reclaimed by those who go savage and use it against their fellow man to their own ends.  If governments could control this, then they are the ones liable for every act of individual, which is to say personal, warfare as they CONTROL IT.  That is not the case.

Thus:

Path I is established: foreign relations with those friendly to the US and who hold the same values for individual Liberty and Freedom are key to good relations.  From this grows fiscal rectitude, the removal of State overburden, the lowering of the accumulation of debt and the outlook that debts cannot be contracted for at high levels ad infinitum.  These are the Nations that deserve free trade: they are friendly, they support the rights and liberties of their people including the freedom from government, and seek to foster a fiscal climate at the large scale that allows greater freedom and liberty at the small scale.

Path II comes from those Nations not on Path I but who are not hostile in word or deed towards the US.  These are Nations to which we cannot afford allegiance and from that trade with them can be burdened.  A 10% tariff, which is to say a 10% payment of the value of goods to be imported by those seeking to sell them in the US, is paying the freight to support a government which fosters trade amongst Nations.  Want to get that lowered or removed?  Become friendlier to the US and begin upholding the values necessary for Path I.  This is something that can be tuned by Congress and by giving a framework as to why it is imposed it also puts a value on being able to support such individual liberties and freedoms to those who don't support them in full or who are not friendly nor unfriendly to the US.  The middle of the road is a perfectly safe place to be, don't expect the US to help you, however, unless you start to move towards Path I.

Path III is what is left.  Nations hostile to the US in word and deed, who have shown themselves to be untrustworthy in treaties and who seek to put their own people under tyrannical rule.  We don't trade with these Nations.  Indeed, part of that 10% tariff should go towards support of the military so that we are well armed AGAINST them.  If they give safe harbor to terrorists, pirates or any other form of Private War, then they are an enemy not just of this Nation but to the order between all Nations as they do not seek to act in ways compatible to civilized life.  We do not have to be antagonistic towards these Nations, no.  We do need to be well armed against them.  On the tit-for-tat scale they wish to live and so that is all they do understand, and we can only respond in ways that befits a civilized Nation in the brotherhood of Nations.  Sanctions are one thing.  Quarantine another.  Translating our works that describe our traditions and how man is the source of all power of government and then getting them to the people of those Nations hostile to us, is a third way.  There are others, of course, but the scope of what can be done is held in by civilized restraint and by holding the civil sword well honed and practiced with.

This outgrowth of a tripartite set of paths within foreign policy would be a direct outgrowth of the ideals held by Tea Partiers.  Ideology drives policy, not the other way around as is the case in the modern world that slips into tyrannical ends for government.  Moreover it is a set of principles that are well understood internationally and are easy to remember, as anyone can remember: Friends, Neutrals, Enemies.  That is the path of Law of Nations amongst all Nations in all Eras in all places on Earth without regard to race, ethnicity, culture or any other thing.  It was practiced by the Ancient Mayans like this, and so did the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Egyptians act like this.  International law is only a set of contracts between brother Nations that is built up and each holds the others to account for signing onto the contract we call treaties.  Nations can leave treaties, as well, and have that full right and responsibility to do so so as to safeguard their own people.  That is upheld via this tri-fold Path system and in particular it points out who those seeking to bring down the civil, international agreements between Nations are and points them out for all to see.

As a policy system it allows large amounts of work and fine tuning for individual cases, and yet the touchstones are clear and abundant, so that easy to pass milestones in improving the civil rights of citizens leads to better trade and more robust interaction, and improved self-defense.  Reaganites should understand such a systems as should Libertarians as it puts individual rights and liberties in a civil context into a foreign policy system that then seeks to uphold them for all mankind while securing them abundantly at home.

Of course this means the home-side dovetail of actually removing the burdens to civil exercise of rights that have been put in place for the last century and more, at home.  This is leading by example.

An Exemplar Nation.

Showing the Way.

A Shining City on a Hill.

We need some good neighbors.

And we need to clean up our act at home to get them, first.

RIP Andrew Breitbart

RIP Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012)

Collapsed walking near his home, survived by a wife and four young children.

My condolences to the family, friends, co-workers and those who loved this Happy Warrior.

That, my son, THAT was a man.

Ending the bipartisan era

The following is a personal outlook paper of The Jacksonian Party.

Amongst the gloomy news on economics, on inane attitudes towards terrorism and terrorists, and the general disheartening way that the current Administration treats our National Friends & Allies, there is only one back-handed way in which this attitude actually is a help.  With the election of President Obama and a Democratic super-majority in the House and Senate we have seen what you get when you aren't 'bipartisan' and don't accommodate 'across the aisle', and what happens when your ideology is put forth in mush-mouth bills that ramble on for a thousand or two pages: you get challenges to the good sense of the Nation.

Ushering in a super-majority was supposed to be a 'sea change' and a 'permanent change' in politics towards the Democratic Party, and yet that party now unravels at the seams as its most trenchant ideologues are in charge of the House, Senate and White House, yet those ideologues are finding that the only way they can pass anything is by bribing their own party members and there often aren't enough of those to form a simple majority.  Instead of offering a JFK style recovery via small business and personal tax cuts and trimming the federal budget, this group of ideologues and their accomplices have sought to expand federal spending, federal power, let repeals of taxes lapse and to put in place newer, larger bureaucracies that create nothing and manage so poorly that they aren't even efficient.  By intruding on the banking industry to cover for one large bank, Citi, and forcing other banks to take failing financial institutions, like the Bank of America in the Merrill-Lynch deal, and by not seeking to repeal the power of the FHA, Freddie, Fannie, Ginnie and Federal Reserve to push AAA security ratings on loans that are taken by those unable to pay them back, and through the threat of even more regulation, small businesses aren't expanding so as to get the economy out of the doldrums.  A large GDP growth is in inventory, only, while actual growth is at less than half the 5% mark of growth.  Talking up small businesses now, in a climate that is hostile to them, won't work until the atmosphere changes and the institutions that oversaw the financial and banking problems, including the SEC, are brought to task for their ill-advised backing of schemes that would not work.  Schemes started by Congress like CRA and its follow-ons, plus banking regulations pushing more money out the door than can be covered by borrowers.

These regulatory systems were set up by bi-partisan agreements in Congresses for decades, and the founding of financial and mortgage institutions dates back to 1914 for the Federal Reserve and to the FDR Administration for mortgages and SEC.  These institutions have never been called into account, never audited and never had the basis of their standing questioned by later Congresses to see if they were doing fiscally prudent oversight or just bowing to Congress wanting fiscally imprudent schemes.  There is no single party to blame in this as both parties have had majorities in both Houses and exchanged the Presidency multiple times over the last 60 years.  The bi-partisan of National Defense during the Cold War also ushered in an era of Progressive government expansion for social programs based on the foundations laid by Woodrow Wilson and FDR with the Federal Reserve, SEC, FHA and Social Security. To that was added more mortgage based systems, expansion of Federal Reserve powers, medical subsidies (in the form of Medicare/Medicaid), affirmative action programs (which changed government outlook from color-blind to color-biased), welfare, unemployment compensation, massive regulatory systems for 'the environment', and expansion of powers into education and firearms.

The characterization of these as Progressive Government is one that dates back to the Progressive Era in which the power of the States was reduced via the Constitution and Public Law, which I have gone over previously.  This has changed the public dialogue from the Constitution as a negative rights document, in which rights are granted to government from the people, to a 'positive rights' conception of government in which government grants and then must support new 'rights' that can only be had through government.  These new 'positive' rights, held and asserted by government, come at the cost of your own rights as an individual, which I covered previously but do let me note that many of these 'rights' derived from government are de-basement of personal liberty held by you.  A woman has the liberty to have an abortion, but may have the right to do so circumscribed by public law.  One has the liberty to seek out health care, but when that is supported by the government there are multiple problems on supply, demand and cost that get thrown into disarray as the government is not a positive economic actor (it does not create wealth) but a negative one that taxes wealth and then impedes the movement of wealth via regulation which is an impediment to personal liberty.  All regulations, good and bad, do this: they are negative in nature and stop the free flow of personal decisions based on government fiat.  Anyone has a right to seek health care, and if their liberty can provide or if the charity of society or other individuals can help provide it, then it can be received.  Government by placing a price on the priceless renders a value judgment not based on personal outlook and liberty, but governmental cost outlook, thus pricing your health and determining if you should have access to health care at all.

Encroachment of government into the daily lives of individuals to control those lives is the aim of Progressive Government, and it has many good-meaning, swell hearted backers who wish to have government tell you how to live, work, play and do every last thing in your life: from when to wake up to what you eat to how you work to what you work at to how long you work to how much you are compensated.  These are all parts of your liberty and freedom that Progressive Government aims to include in its umbrella of 'positive rights' and make it impossible for you to exercise liberty on your own behalf.  This could not happen without bi-partisanship in the Legislative Branch and appeasement of such goals from the Executive and Judicial Branches of federal government.  Time and again government 'rights' to your property and how you lead your life trump personal liberty and freedom, be it from the Kelo decision on eminent domain to the Raich decision (an article by me here on that) on being able to use plants that you grow, government at all levels has won on these grounds of property rights and personal liberty in your own home.  These are not problems that are unforeseen, and as far back as the debates over the Constitution there were those who pointed out that Congress would have this tendency over time to regulate and tax everything in sight.  What is fascinating is that this concept of government expanding was well known so far back and described, even though not named as Progressive, and even the backers of the Constitutions in the public fora (Hamilton, Madison and Jay as Publius) acknowledged that any system designed by man can be brought down via other men in later times.  It is to their great benefit that this took nearly 140 years to start as a serious project under Progressivism, and to our great dismay of not having recognized that over the next 90 years as just that: an undermining of a Constitutional Republic by Amendment and Public Law.

With the end of the Cold War, however, came the end of the rationale of the interim period of Progressive Government (1948-1991), and those coalitions of bi-partisanship frayed during the 1990's with the Moderates of the bipartisan and Progressive persuasion becoming those who would dispense the federal goodies during that decade.  Only the project to bring down unlimited welfare was achieved by those who are fiscally conservative, and while that was a great accomplishment that force was spent against the monobloc of 'moderate' Republicans and Democrats of the 'Third Way' form of Progressivism.  Socialists would describe this as incremental socialism or reform socialism that attempts to reform a capitalist system into socialist tendencies before it is ready for a full socialist transformation.  Many socialists actually were against that post-1918, not only due to the NOV 1917 Revolution, but as it put a clear and heavy dividing line between capitalism and socialism.  American Progressivism, influenced by Bismarck state-social reformism took a divergent path from European social democracy and put together a different constellation of reform-based socialism under that title of Progressivism.  Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the marginalization of conservatives in his autobiography at Project Gutenberg in Chapter X:

For the reasons I have already given in my chapter on the Governorship of New York, the Republican party, which in the days of Abraham Lincoln was founded as the radical progressive party of the Nation, had been obliged during the last decade of the nineteenth century to uphold the interests of popular government against a foolish and illjudged mock-radicalism. It remained the Nationalist as against the particularist or State's rights party, and in so far it remained absolutely sound; for little permanent good can be done by any party which worships the State's rights fetish or which fails to regard the State, like the county or the municipality, as merely a convenient unit for local self-government, while in all National matters, of importance to the whole people, the Nation is to be supreme over State, county, and town alike. But the State's rights fetish, although still effectively used at certain times by both courts and Congress to block needed National legislation directed against the huge corporations or in the interests of workingmen, was not a prime issue at the time of which I speak.

He then goes on to speak of the matter at hand:

This had, regrettably but perhaps inevitably, tended to throw the party into the hands not merely of the conservatives but of the reactionaries; of men who, sometimes for personal and improper reasons, but more often with entire sincerity and uprightness of purpose, distrusted anything that was progressive and dreaded radicalism. These men still from force of habit applauded what Lincoln had done in the way of radical dealing with the abuses of his day; but they did not apply the spirit in which Lincoln worked to the abuses of their own day. Both houses of Congress were controlled by these men.

[..]

I made a resolute effort to get on with all three and with their followers, and I have no question that they made an equally resolute effort to get on with me. We succeeded in working together, although with increasing friction, for some years, I pushing forward and they hanging back. Gradually, however, I was forced to abandon the effort to persuade them to come my way, and then I achieved results only by appealing over the heads of the Senate and House leaders to the people, who were the masters of both of us. I continued in this way to get results until almost the close of my term; and the Republican party became once more the progressive and indeed the fairly radical progressive party of the Nation. When my successor was chosen, however, the leaders of the House and Senate, or most of them, felt that it was safe to come to a break with me, and the last or short session of Congress, held between the election of my successor and his inauguration four months later, saw a series of contests between the majorities in the two houses of Congress and the President,—myself,—quite as bitter as if they and I had belonged to opposite political parties. However, I held my own. I was not able to push through the legislation I desired during these four months, but I was able to prevent them doing anything I did not desire, or undoing anything that I had already succeeded in getting done.

The Conservative dreads radicalism and holds a 'States Rights fetish' that Theodore Roosevelt was glad to break inside the Republican Party.  Of all the issues put forward during the Cold War it must be understood that this transformation of the Republican Party from a 19th century based Conservative (which is to say conserving the Liberal basis for States Rights and the Rights of Man as an Individual, or Jeffersonian Liberalism with Federalism) to a modern Progressive Party means that the concepts of 'fiscal restraint' espoused by Moderates in the Republican Party is not one of restraining spending or government, but in restraining the expansion of both to a moderate degree.  It is not on the table that government can or should expand, but that it will and needs to do so slowly.  For all that was espoused by Ronald Reagan coming into office, the government he had under him can be described as moderate in its expansion, not that it did not expand or even retract in scope or size.  Dissolving a public union is not on the level with, say, dismantling the Dept. of Education or Energy, or stopping the excesses of HUD or Dept. of Agriculture.  In this view Ronald Reagan, scion of so many Republicans, is seen not as a Conservative, although he talked at depth about conservatism, but as a Moderate Progressive for the expansion of government.  The concept that cutting taxes would restrain the growth of government was ill-founded and actually worked contrarily as a booming economy would signal the expansion of government with added receipts from the expanding tax base.  The legislation to do that was done by Congress.  A Congress that rejected any notion of paring down government in scope and size, and only looked to make it a bit more 'efficient' in its operation and expansion.

Old line conservatism, that of Federalism, limited government, limited taxation and diverse representation with the States holding an equal spot at the table, has very, very few adherents left in DC.  Perhaps 20 or so at most, across both Houses of Congress.  Fiscal Conservatism, which serves as a public base of understanding of how income works, has a deep and strong resonance across the Nation as households are used to balancing their books, paying off their debt and going into bankruptcy when you are unable to earn your way out of debt.  Stopping that bankruptcy process for private companies via public funds is not only deeply offensive but highly disturbing as government is going outside all normal venues of operation to interfere with the standard and normal practices of finances on a grand scale.  Intrusion of the government into health care is not only offensive, but seen as a power grab by the Federal Government to directly control a major portion of the economy.  When added in to home mortgages, banking, auto industry and financial companies, the Federal Government by trying to add that portion that is health care under its purview and direct interference is seen as trying to tip its control from plurality to majority, which is sold as a 'good thing' to the people. 

What has happened with government interference in health care, to-date, with subsidies to companies and individuals via tax breaks, and direct subsidies via Medicare/Medicaid is that it sets the payments too low after having put inflators on the cost to drive them up over time.   The response by the Federal Government to inflation on payment for services is one feedback mechanism outside the Federal Reserve's purview, and by backing inflationary spending for subsidies (be it medical care or wheat futures or sugar price supports) the Federal Government takes a direct part in not only keeping up with inflation, but putting down future inflationary budgets to ensure that inflation is adopted as a means of operation.  That message comes through and the market adopts inflationary outlooks to ensure that its pricing to the government will go up at least as much as the annual budget inflators allow, if not higher.  This is not a major part of the financial system when the government is a mere consumer of goods and services, but when it directs finances and payment schedules for larger parts of the economy, the tone for minimal future inflation is set and it is the very, very rare year when prices go down or hold steady in the face of an expanding federal budget willing to pay more for what it gets.

That is minor, BTW.  Regulations pushing loans, directing finances and even directing companies to buy each other out at government behest is not only authoritarian but destructive of a financial system that depends on bankruptcy as a known failure mode.  Who will invest in a company if it is known that it will be 'allowed' to fail by government?  And why would you invest in a company 'too big to fail' and 'too big to control its finances' when it is backed by the Federal Government, as there is no way it can get a profit under public control which adds another layer of bureaucracy for 'oversight' but diffuses accountability amongst the new 'oversight' structure and the existing dysfunctional corporate structure?  Being 'too big to fail' and being supported also comes to mean you are 'too big to succeed' thus the term 'Zombie Company'.  Not dead, not on life support but undead and unable to be killed by normal means.

When business, labor and government all sit at the table together, the public is left on the outside looking in.

That is to the ends of bi-partisan government that is Progressive and expansive in its scope and depth of power: that a very unrepresentative government puts in appointed officials to run things leaving the public out of the loop.

This has been hidden by decades of talking about how 'good' bi-partisanship is, and how much it serves the public 'good' while helping get convenient means of manipulation created to the ends of such 'good' government.  Unfortunately such convenience can become too convenient, too expedient, for government:

A bank of the United States is in many respects convenient for the Government and useful to the people. Entertaining this opinion, and deeply impressed with the belief that some of the powers and privileges possessed by the existing bank are unauthorized by the Constitution, subversive of the rights of the States, and dangerous to the liberties of the people, I felt it my duty at an early period of my Administration to call the attention of Congress to the practicability of organizing an institution combining all its advantages and obviating these objections. I sincerely regret that in the act before me I can perceive none of those modifications of the bank charter which are necessary, in my opinion, to make it compatible with justice, with sound policy, or with the Constitution of our country.

Andrew Jackson in the Bank Veto Message of 10 JUL 1832.

That National Bank had nowhere near the powers of the Federal Reserve, SEC, FHA, Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie and FDIC.  Strange that all these powers got added incrementally, over time, as a 'good' way to 'regulate' the banking,financial and home mortgage systems.  While, taken as a whole, they are far outside the scope of powers the Congress has to delegate.

It is very, very good that partisanship has returned to DC.

It is exposing the underpinnings of Progressive Government that expands day by day, year by year, Congress by Congress further and further into the lives of ordinary Americans.

And gets opposed.

Bi-partisanship gives cover to this project.

Partisanship makes it clear.

I support highly partisan political parties trying to push their agenda through against an unwilling public.

It makes the public less willing to sit around.

And far more willing to stand up against those they elect who do not represent them.

Anyone wanting a return to 'bi-partisanship' is asking to return to incremental expansionism, and they deserve the cold hearing they will get.

The two terms of President George W. Bush

Many are writing retrospectives to castigate the man who took office in 2001. I am not sanguine in that as it demonstrates only vitriol on the part of the writer and lack of understanding what a President is, what powers a President has and what the limitations on the Presidency are. I have heard much over the last 8 years that, if applied to previous occupants of the office, would have been laughed at as foolishness, non-sense and the inability of the writer to apply how the Presidency is crafted and how the tradition of it is carried through by each occupant. If any castigate George W. Bush they must castigate all Presidents at least as far back as Theodore Roosevelt and his doctrine of an 'expansive view of Presidential powers' to Abraham Lincoln and doing what was necessary in war to hold the Nation together and even as far back as Jefferson in regards to the Barbary Pirates and Washington in regards to the Whisky Rebellion and Neutrality stance he took. Thus I find the modern critics wanting in retrospectives and will attempt to put those things I see as necessary that have been done, left fallow or put at risk.

Many will disagree with this, and that is fine as it is my personal view only.

Of Necessity

This departing President was tested as the one before him was in his early days: with multiple attacks on US soil. His predecessor's response to slayings by a radical Islamist outside the CIA was lack luster and so, too, was his response to the first WTC attack. This pattern was not followed after 9/11/2001 and this President brought war to those who sought to wage unaccountable war upon the US and the world. That is to the good. He did not back up his immediate understanding of this type of war that included the 'Wanted Dead or Alive' concept. He was gravely and deeply mistaken in that and has left the Nation at future risk against those who wage Private War called terrorism or piracy. He did not seek to follow that initial response up and understand it in the realm of war, and so we are left naked in many areas where our Citizens can and should provide personal backing. To those who complain there is no 'sacrifice' in this war we are fighting, they mean economic. I mean personal commitment with one's blood and staking their honor to fight for the Nation against those who seek Private War. That is the Western tradition when personal, unaccountable actors take up arms against Nations: you empower your Citizenry to use all private means to hunt them down and bring equal pain to what they inflicted upon the Nation.

What he did was neither all good, nor all bad. He understood threat but not scope of response available and limited that to the highest cost one available to him. Just as the European powers would refuse to send warships in force or allow private captains to take war to the Barbary Pirates, so too did Jefferson use the US Navy and give authorization for private reprisals. We have forgotten that lesson of warfare and it will be our doom unless remedied.

In second instance this President had redeemed the word of his father that had not been redeemed by the intervening President. To the shame of the Nation we agreed to a cease fire with a hegemonic tyrant who would seek any way to defeat us. He was given a chance to keep his word FOR a cease fire. And failed. After months of build-up and a mere 100 hours of combat, this last President's father stopped and set a tyrant loose again when he would have been easily and cheaply defanged with the support of the world. The intervening President did worse than nothing and was seen as having no resolve at all, no ability to act and dithered time and again at every breach of the cease-fire agreement. He was unwilling to see that a leader who cannot keep his word during war, will feel no need to do so during peace and will, indeed, see you as weak if you give into him. That war should have been finished in 1992 and we would be done by now with Iraq. Years ago. That is the cost of war delayed that we faced and this President realized that if he let that go any longer our word as a Nation and a People would be meaningless to the world. The right place and time to fight it was when we had supreme power after Desert Storm. Doing nothing delayed doing something and if you complain about the cost of this minor back alley brawl, then you do not want to see what real war *is*. By the skill and courage of our soldiers we have prevailed over a tyrant, over the terrorists who sought to destabilize a key part of the Middle East and pushed them back by having them show how ruthless they are to those who FOLLOW their religion.

Doing that was worth the price paid in Iraq, and it was far lower in the terms of lives lost and wounded, cost as a part of the National budget and actual length when compared to the next great complained about war in Vietnam. How strange all of those calling Iraq the worst war of all time have now diminished Vietnam, the First World War, Second World War, Civil War of the United States, Revolutionary War... these must now be seen as cheap and easy, no? Iraq has followed the traditional US pattern set in the Philippines of initial liberation and long COIN campaign. They each had about the same number of soldiers, took about the same amount of time, and the one in the Philippines cost far more lives mostly due to climate claiming so many.

At no time during these conflicts has the US economy been put on a war time footing. We did not do 'guns and butter' and, instead, slathered on pork and tried to starve the troops. This President fought that, but it was due to a misplaced sense that the peace time economy could withstand what would happen to anything but a war footing. That does not mean high taxation, although that is likely. We have a great and deep well of talent in the US and asking for *help* from it is not beneath the dignity of any President, ever. It would be possible to have sought, from the private sector, more technical help, more commitment from individuals and give companies tax breaks on donating old equipment to two Nations we helped to liberate so they could stand up something closer to a modern economy for production and manufacturing. The industrial might of the US would have dried up terrorism in an instant if it was committed through the President to help these two Nations stand up on their own and dedicate time and effort to our poorest allies in doing the same with them so they would not be slighted. That is 'sacrifice' without taxation but high reward to those that sacrifice, to those we liberate and to our friends and allies in the world to demonstrate we are not afraid of their competition to us. We welcome it.

The necessity of a war time economy can and should be beyond mere taxation and 'donation drives' for scrap metal as seen in WWII. We are not so deeply in need of raw material as in that war, but in need of the technical and industrial prowess of our private sector. This basic necessity has gone undone, and we will pay for that by being seen as cheap, stingy and unwilling to commit to liberty and freedom in a meaningful way to help others uplift themselves from poverty and create good lives where they all have a say in government and radicals get short shrift as they want to make everyone poor under them and enrich themselves. That is the greatest weapon the United States can deploy, stronger than any missile or bomb and it sits gathering dust next to the Lost Ark of the Covenant somewhere in a warehouse.

Of Liberty

Competent Administration from the Executive must ensure the liberty of all Citizens. That requires equal enforcement of the law put in place by Congress and adhering to Judicial findings with each of them. This President has had a lackluster term in this regard as he does not seek to uphold the duties of office as he swore to which would ensure the safety of the Nation by its Laws, not just its Military might. Those things that allows us to be a Sovereign Nation must be done absolutely above all others, and in that this departing President has failed the Nation. Our borders remain unsecured and in his two terms we have seen our southern neighbor deteriorate rapidly into criminal insurgency. Much is spurred by narcotics money from regions in South America, some is fueled by money from outside non State actors including terrorists and criminal concerns, and all of it is due to the inability of Mexico to enforce its own laws, enforce ethics upon its police and judiciary and to properly husband their resources and economy to protect the poorest within their own Nation. When we created NAFTA we forgot that the Law of Nations trumps the Wealth of Nations and that our own security as a Nation and those signing the treaty is paramount. Thus our low end industrial market shifted to Mexico, creating factories and jobs and taking the poor from their fields. Then a shift in labor rate and low cost shipping moved those jobs overseas and the US large scale agribusiness shot holes in the Wealth of Nations concept that industrial and production might would play no role in agriculture. Mexican farmers were outcompeted by large scale US agribusiness, making the traditional path from poverty no longer available. Then we shifted jobs out from Mexico and those people could find no employment. Then we had a wonderful idea of using food crops for fuel, and the skyrocketing cost of basic food stocks brought true problems to Mexico that no longer had a rural farm basis. Is it any wonder that people turned to the employer of last resort, which is crime?

In not securing our borders, we now have hit squads from multiple criminal organizations hosted in Mexico seeking to dominate crime venues in the US. We are now faced with the next COIN deployment for the US Armed Forces not being in Iraq or Afghanistan or the Philippines or even overseas: it will be in California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Oklahoma... that is no longer mere prognostication on my part, but the results of the military analysis in DoD. Both internally to NORTHCOM and externally, the next COIN fight will be on our soil and that of Mexico. While this failure cannot wholly be owned by this departing President, it being the failure of his predecessors back to President Carter, he can and should be faulted for not only doing NOTHING but encouraging less secure borders for the Nation. Those spouting Reconquista in the US will find that criminal concerns do not brook laws and Nationalism as they hinder it, thus those seeking to weaken the US will also be those first at peril if the rule of law collapses: not from our citizens but from those seeking to destabilize the Nation. That is how revolutions and insurgencies go: they eat their young. Which, in this case, are those fostering them. We are faced with a Nation mighty enough to win far-flung wars in the hardest way possible and yet lose itself to the easiest things to do as a Nation. That is a paramount threat to the liberty of all citizens of the US and the world, as absent the rule of law we will see the rule of the strongman return. While we have suffered no terrorist attacks upon our Nation since 9/11, we now see a total dissolving of order in Mexico that will threaten death and chaos in our Nation far beyond what 9/11 could do.

As the President is given the duty to protect the Nation from threats 'foreign and domestic', and he is given the Admiralty power over the administration of the Laws of the Sea by our naval units (public and private registered to the US), and as he is commander of the Armies and the Navies, the President must respect the boundary of the Nation and her People within those bounds, and the laws set by Congress for Treaties and other measures that come to the territory of the US. There have been more complaints on this topic of a disingenuous nature than on nearly any other one. In both instances he has used the power of Head of State, Commander of the Armies and the Navies, his Admiralty power and that of the Head of the Nation in ways that all other Presidents have during war and peace. We are no strangers to keeping prisoners over seas during foreign wars: we did not ship to the US captured Germans or Japanese or Italians. Against a foe who declaims that no Nation will have authority over them and that they revert to the Law of Nature and claim all of their rights and liberties, bar none, to themselves, these terrorists have no claim to the protection of the Laws of War and Peace nor the Law of Nations, both of which support the civil utilization of war powers by Nations, not by individuals who are not taking part in a National activity. In falling outside the reach of any Treaty these individuals have previously fallen into articles of military conduct written by Abraham Lincoln, and yet this President refuses to acknowledge that President Lincoln promulgated military law in this realm. If he cannot remember what the founder of his own party did, is it any wonder that no one else in the Nation can do so?

Similarly, when outside the confines of US territory, including US flagged ships at sea and our extra-territorial spaces in Embassies, US Citizens are not subject to US law save for those communications between citizens of the US. And even those have been curbed during war time as seen by censorship during warfare. That censorship goes beyond purely military matters and into civil communications that may be taking place between our adversaries under guise of other means. Similarly the only Civil Law that can be applied is the Piracy Code as it covers the activities of terrorists completely, and specific terrorism codes must be considered secondary... that is if we had decent understanding of the laws on these things. Under both the actual communication with terrorists acting contrary to the Law of Nations is punishable, not just by Civil Law.

Similarly acting outside the Geneva Conventions, as Civilians, in ways that do not conform to them, such as reporting on incidents of deaths to soldiers without respecting the dead or giving the Nation involved time to review those works is also contrary to federal law and abrogates the responsibilities your Nation has signed you up for via international agreement. Thus those agencies showing the deaths of soldiers that do *not* hand those over to the military authorities and airing them before families have been notified are in violation of the statutes that support the enforcement of the Geneva Conventions which applies to civilian activity in war zones as well as numerous military regulations regarding information in war zones under that treaty.

The concept of expanding the US Constitution to cover the planet is one that is not only contrary to US law but to international agreements which strictly address that citizens have restrictions upon them by common agreements known as treaties. The idea that 'civil rights' trump international accords when signed by the President, approved by the Senate and legislation enacted by Congress is quite astounding. If those laws are found in non-agreement with previous Constitutional provisions, of course, then they are to be struck down by the Courts as those treaties are only at the level of, but do not amend, the Constitution. I have yet to hear any citation of what rights are being lost when the President acts in the international arena using the powers of the Presidency to protect the Nation in areas that Congress cannot cover as they are not given Sovereign Power to do so, being restricted to a very few international powers, mostly concerning warfare, approval of treaties in the Senate and then enacting legislation to support such treaties. Appealing to the international treaty on civil rights misses the last item in it, that specifically lays out that anyone not abiding by their Nation State responsibilities are not covered by that treaty.

In these two areas the President is given wide powers as those are the Sovereign Powers of the Nation invested in the Office of President. There is no 'co-equal' power relationship to Sovereign Powers amongst the branches of the federal government. There are checks and balances, but no co-equivalence of power. Each Sovereign Power has its own limitations and bounds, and in interfering with those bounds outside of checks and balances, those branches of government seeking to do so put the entire Nation at risk. To date that has not happened as final judicial review involving these items has demonstrated the proper operation of these Powers within the bounds given to them. If you don't like it that rented property by the government overseas is not subject to direct federal power, then perhaps you should ask for the invasion of said country to take it over and bring it under full US purview. Of course we have lots of such properties in Japan, Australia, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Philippines...a good argument can be made that the US government should have NO rental property outside of the those territories held by the US or as extra-territorial enclaves called Embassies, but I do not hear that as an argument given by anyone, even if it is the logically consistent one for the items involved.

Of Freedom

The freedom of the Citizens of the United States to act in pursuit of their liberty is a prime concern and the major concern of government. With that said, the government is given strict powers and bounds for laws and enforcement to respect the rights and freedoms of the individual. President Bush in no way came in on a platform to keep government intervention in the lives of the individual citizen down, and, quite the contrary, came in with a package of seeking to insert more government at its largest scales into religion, schools and the economy on some premise that 'conservative values' can be aided by more intrusive and larger government. It is very strange that the 'conservative' values that President Ronald Reagan ran on have been so ill served by Conservatives in power for the past three decades. There is apparently a large discrepancy amongst 'conservatives' that run for office on what they believe in, what they say and what they do. An Elitist position, on the Left and Right, has been one in which government is no longer recognized as a necessary evil, but as some benefactor to the Nation and individuals. When considered as a necessary evil, we seek even-handed justice and application of the law from government, but when those in power try to make government selective, to help some over others and to promulgate non-equality under the law, government is no boon but an evil enhanced to force compliance with the Citizens of the Nation.

I do not question that the outgoing President is intelligent: he has made many good and skilled moves to shift Iraq from a deadly, on-going peril to one of full transition to local representative democracy and peace. The evidence of that intelligence is plain. Just as plain is his misguided ideas on using government to minister to the people of the United States and not *serve* them evenly, equally and with justice for all. Complaining about statutes that Congress passes is one thing, and as the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the Nation, the President must uphold the laws. The outgoing President has chosen to ignore robust enforcement of laws that would protect the Nation at its borders from a growing criminal insurgency, but has been more than willing to apply ill-made law by Congress to the economy so as to promulgate decades old social concepts that see those unable to pay for housing being given low cost loans. Congress has mandated *both*, but this President has been very selective of equal protection of the law and safeguarding of the Nation's safety and economy. It is the responsibility of the Office of the Executive to *question* such laws IN COURT if he sees them as a threat to the Nation and well-being and safety of its Citizens. The housing 'bubble' that was inflated by Congressional mandate starting with the Community Reinvestment Act and then having regulations on lenders removed and actually forcing them to give loans to those unable to pay (the NINJA borrower: No Income, No Job or Assets) has put the economy into a position where 'bailing out' these companies that were daft enough to try and profit off of Congressional guidance that went beyond sound fiscal concerns in borrowing and lending practices as a 'good thing'.

Not only is that not a 'good thing', this encouraging non-sound fiscal policy, but the very laws that caused this are STILL on the books to this very day and continuing to damage the Nation. The President is to be a check and balance on Congressional law making by challenging ill-conceived laws that threaten the Nation in court. All the way to the Supreme Court. In not doing so, and in trying to get his own vision of 'good things' government can do, we lose the blessing of government that is impartial to the tyranny of one that is biased. Not only is that a long-term loss for the Nation, but the actual parts that get enacted, such as the 'No Child Left Behind' Act, turn out to be a waste of time and money, put more regulation on local schools from the federal level and continues a process of slow federalization of the schools that began in the 1970's. This was done in reaction to Johnny being unable to read and the sad fact is that with all the hundreds of billions poured in from the federal level, Johnny is *still* reading at the exact *same* rate as he was in 1958. Apparently money and federal oversight with various forms of good ideas has done NOTHING to help that, and has actually made the problem worse by creating a huge, officious bureaucracy that now tells local schools what to do for the pittance they receive from the federal level. Yet, when under pure, local control and cost guidance the schools did JUST AS WELL as they do now. That is not 'conservatism': that is Progressivism to think that all solutions lie with larger, more powerful central government. With decades showing the contrary, that larger central government is a horror and bane to individual liberty and freedom, we still hear 'conservatives' who want to try and change a necessary evil to something pure and good, even when their wisdom tells them that this is just an agency of easily corruptible mortals who will seek more power to themselves so as to dictate to their fellow man, 'Compassionate Conservatives' think that is GOOD.

It is not.

It is the worst form of evil imaginable in a representative democracy with a limited government system made to secure the rights and liberty of each individual. And it is these very, same 'conservatives' who *complain* when 'liberals' use the exact, same tools they have made stronger to OTHER ENDS than what the 'conservatives' wanted. And yet they are the very ones voting to approve those tools, weaken the Constitution and expand the federal government into areas where it has ZERO power. The 'commerce clause' is now so distorted that the federal government feels it can now regulate purely intra-state markets for trade that does NOT go outside the purely local. That goes far beyond growing pot for oneself and one's friends, and is a critical step in the direction of putting all markets at all levels under pure federal control.

Of course none of President Bush's critics on the Left ever speak of this as this empowers their agenda of putting more power into government hands and out of local control and oversight. You cannot start a tyrannical regime *without* such concentration of power, and doing so changes the necessary evil of government into something repressive to the liberty of the common man by taking responsibility for purely local and personal affairs out of the hands of the individual, local and State governments. Now even the States, which were once the strong backbone and vital organs of the Nation, are suffering and seek 'bailouts' and succor from federal government. They do not look to their people, first, but upwards to those that have less ability to adapt. That is an abrogation of State level representative democracy and being held accountable to the people of a State due to the actions taken at the federal level to encourage State governments to invest and spend unwisely.

That is a prescription for failure of the Nation and our compact amongst the People to give government only a limited set of things to do to safeguard the Nation, liberty and freedom. When government begins to think it is good and can hand out 'rights' then we are denying the self-evident truth of all men being created equal and having all rights endowed to them upon their creation as people. I really don't want government at the highest level getting into deciding to intervene for the unborn as we have seen the wicked ways that tends when we give it something simple like protecting the borders. If it can't figure that out, then being 'nice' to give everyone 'equal access' to health care is an illusion to having your health, well being and ultimate death decided by and for government, not by you. By trying to 'protect' such things at the federal level outside of the very limited constraints we give to the federal government, we begin to abuse our fellow citizens for the well being of the few, the powerful, the rich and the Elites at the cost of our liberty and freedom as individuals.

I deeply laud President Bush for his work in Afghanistan, Iraq and against terrorism.

Those immediate and long term threats had been neglected all the way back to the first attacks on US Embassies going back to the 1960's by terrorists. Of necessity for pure survival, and holding a tyrant accountable to his word, those had to be done and the power hungry and those seeking to destroy all Nations to their own evil ways confronted.

In other affairs of actually doing his job to secure the Nation, confront ill-guided and dangerous laws and to uphold the security of the Nation and individuals from ever more invasive and neglectful government, he has done less well and has actually empowered those seeking more power over the common man in America. Confronting the threat of terrorism abroad while neglecting narco-terrorism by criminal syndicates across the border in an effort of 'good will' is insane and will cost us more in time, money and lives than Iraq and Afghanistan combined as the threat can now walk into the Nation to kill its Citizens.

Exercising some foreign affairs well, to curb terrorists, and neglecting and even disdaining other duties to the Nation, he has left us with the horrific scenario of a criminal insurgency and weakened economy unable to properly confront it. I expect that future historians will laud the work in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Africa, Philippines... and then scratch their heads on why he didn't use the exact SAME outlook on Mexico. How he could see that lower taxes can have the economy thrive, but ill-founded social ideas on handing out cash to those who can't repay it and do nothing about it could ever originate from the same man.

I have defended him on the things that I see he has done right.

Criticized him on those I have seen him do wrong.

And see that one set of threats has been confronted, while another set has grown immensely during his terms in office. If he had not confronted the threats we have had for decades we would be far worse off now, than at the start of his terms. He has not, however, upheld his duties to safeguard the Nation and its people in all areas under his purview and covered by the Oath of Office. Those who fretted about the blood and treasure spent in Iraq will now come face to face with blood and treasure spent in the desert south west of America.

If we are lucky.

If not, it will not be in other States, but in your front yard, gunning for you.

And being 'nice' will get you killed... or enslaved... to those willing to take up barbarism and reclaim their animal rights and liberties. They may be criminals or government functionaries seeking to 'secure' you and 'help' you and 'save' you. Then the cost is your own blood and treasure, if you can survive in the Iron Times that bring them to you.

We were born free.

We agreed to common laws and governance.

Now those are turned upon us by those who are ill-guided in their view that civilization is somehow 'nice'.

Now we will pay for this folly.

A look at conservatism and where it isn't

This is a personal outlook paper of The Jacksonian Party.

Read at your own risk.

Power Line blog has recently pointed to thsi article at The Wall Street Journal OpinionJournal "The Conservative Mind" by Peter Berkowitz (29 MAY 2007) which gives overview of major themes in conservative thought and how modern conservatism is typified by multiple strands of thought while modern liberalism has removed such from that portion of the political sphere.

This is reflected by The Corner on National Review Online with an original post by Jonah Goldberg (with previous posts by him here and here), then follow-ups by Jonathan Adler, Goldberg looking more at the "Big Three" with a review towards a correspondant via e-mail, Stanley Kurtz kibbitzing, Adler chiming in with more, Iaian Murray questioning why no analysis of Hayek is being given, John J. Miller looking at Russell Kirk (and pointing to this site on Kirk) and by Peter Lawler at No Left Turns which questions the premise of a "Big Three" in conservative thought. And that is it as of this writing without doing further link reviews outwards from there as this is stirring the realm of thought inside conservatism, even if it is not apparent to the everyday conservative working at their job. Truly this open-ness to examining underpinnings of conservatism is a blessing to that part of the political sphere and it is absent from the Left or even liberal side of the political spectrum.

Conservatism, in its modern sense, looks towards a plurality of outlooks to come to common conclusion and agreement on some basics and vital topics for humanity. By trying to look at what that *is* requires a deep review of multiple philosophers going all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. That is because conservatives like to know where their arguments are coming from and *why* they are supportable. What that means, however, is that there must be interplay between differing conservative views and a working towards some understanding and using of actual thought to work through ideas and to *not* trust emotions and gut reactions right off the bat. Conservatism does not rely on emotions as a first order premise for reasoning although it is the driving force behind reasoning and wishing to sustain what exists and understand how it works.

Leftists have moved away from that and the commonality of 19th century liberal thought which *also* had this interplay of ideas. The trends away from this were driven by a few things: the move from agricultural basis for economy to an industrial one, the rise of the corporate entity as separate from government, monetary theory which posited the amount of remuneration for given work, and, finally, Marxist class theories and their economic outlooks. Early Socialist movements tried to incorporate classical liberal outlooks on the natural rights of man, liberty and freedom, but the ethos of tying *those* to labor and then making labor paramount to understanding social order shifted the original base away from individual freedom to one of class based freedom and struggle. I have previously reviewed Socialist underpinnings for society with The Limits of Socialism and The Theory and Practice Conundrum. By putting forth mid-19th century basis for examining social order in regards to industrialization, those views became locked in even when the industrial basis was rapidly changing and morphing as it adapted itself to National cultures and further spurred on ways to adapt products to society. The 1930's, perhaps, represent the culmination of all that Marx saw on the technical side, but did not address the changing types and role of technology and society nor the adaptability of social structures to those roles. After that classical Marxist theory runs out of gas as the underpinnings for its class-based view eroded as society changed to move from a means of production basis to a means of ownership and self-sustaining via work concept.

On the other side of things, the conservatives also had to deal with industrialization and the impact of human created legal structures in the form of corporations and the fact that being a 'corporate citizen' meant being something different from the old fashioned 'human citizen'. These things culminated in late 19th century struggles to come to a common understanding that the monopoly corporation was an outgrowth of that structure and one that was inimical to changes within industrialization itself. Marx fully expected a standardization of needs and means of production while, contrarily, conservatism hewed towards freedom of interplay between forces in the industrial sphere as having a societal good. That did require actually enforcing that via anti-monopoly laws which were broadly supported: monopolies not only stifled the marketplace of ideas and creativity, but they also stifled those working for them and raised cost to society for their goods.

From those comes these emergent conservative views, and here I will use the broad summary of the Berkowitz article on them:

Kirk identified six elements that make the conservative mind: belief in a transcendent order that "rules society as well as conscience"; attachment to "the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence" as against the routinizing and leveling forces of modern society; the assumption that "civilized society requires orders and classes"; the conviction that "freedom and property are closely linked"; faith in custom and convention and consequently a "distrust of the 'sophisters, calculators, and economists' who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs"; and a wariness of innovation coupled with a recognition that "prudent innovation is the means of social preservation." The leading role in this mix that Kirk attaches to religion marks him as a social conservative; his insistence that religion provides the indispensable ground for individual liberty marks him as a modern conservative.

Famously, at least in libertarian circles, Hayek, an Austrian-born economist who became a British citizen and then immigrated to the U.S. in 1950, wrote a postscript to "The Constitution of Liberty" (1960), explaining why he was not a conservative. For him, "true conservatism"--which he confused with European reaction--was characterized by "opposition to drastic change" and a complacent embrace of established authority. Because his overriding goal was to preserve liberty, Hayek considered himself a liberal, but he recognized that in the face of the challenges presented mid-century by socialism, he would often find himself in alliance with conservatives. As a staunch member of the party of liberty, Hayek was keen to identify the political arrangements that would allow for "free growth" and "spontaneous change," which, he argued, brought economic prosperity and created the conditions for individual development. This meant preserving the tradition of classical liberalism, and defending limited, constitutional government against encroachments by the welfare state and paternalistic legislation.

For Strauss, what was most urgently in need in preservation was an idea, the idea of natural right. Like Kirk, Strauss believed that modern doctrines of natural right derived support from biblical faith. Like Hayek, Strauss taught that limited, constitutional government was indispensable to our freedom. But Strauss also saw that modern doctrines of natural right contained debilitating tendencies, which, increasingly, provided support for stupefying and intolerant dogmas. To arrest the decay, he turned to the classical natural right teachings of Plato and Aristotle, who were neither liberals nor democrats, but whose reflections on knowledge, politics and virtue, Strauss concluded, provided liberal democracy sturdier foundations.

Each of these has differing views and outlook on what, exactly, the shift should be within conservative thought to adjust to a highly adaptable technical sphere and social sphere that is supported by that technology. Each of these saw the 19th century concept of Progress in different lights and looked to see what they meant to society as a whole. Property rights from classical liberal viewpoints were upheld by each of them: for Kirk it was an indispensable entanglement of property rights and freedom, Hayek for the utilization of property to bring about betterment via change and protecting that from government, Strauss looked to older solution basis for property and freedom and then moved to tie those in with outlooks on politics and what is 'right' for individuals. Together they posit the individual as best suited to understand their own conditions and then to utilize the tools that society provides to work towards their own betterment as individuals.

Some of these do play important roles in Jacksonian outlook, but, by trying to ascribe social view above and beyond the personal, what is missed is the Jacksonian reliance on 'emergent behavior'. This is a more modern term for something that is pretty well understood in the fields of engineering and mechanics, along with many trades and skills: many parts doing simple things come to complex and yet understandable conclusions. This is not deconstructionism, of taking a complex system apart to try and find its irreducible components, but it is a view of the components as working parts and then seeing how the parts fit together. Each part, for a Jacksonian, has known ways to operate and may, in and of itself, be reducible to further components, but the operation of that part need not be reduced unless there is a poor reaction due to not understanding the nature of the part involved.

As an example Andrew Jackson did not trust having a centralized banking system for the United States. In that Bank Veto message of 10 JUL 1832 is the very basis for the Jacksonian message of protecting the Union, ensuring that liberty and freedom are not usurped and by proposing for multiple ways to find a solution are all present:

The present corporate body, denominated the president, directors, and company of the Bank of the United States, will have existed at the time this act is intended to take effect twenty years. It enjoys an exclusive privilege of banking under the authority of the General Government, a monopoly of its favor and support, and, as a necessary consequence, almost a monopoly of the foreign and domestic exchange. The powers, privileges, and favors bestowed upon it in the original charter, by increasing the value of the stock far above its par value, operated as a gratuity of many millions to the stockholders....

The act before me proposes another gratuity to the holders of the same stock, and in many cases to the same men, of at least seven millions more....It is not our own citizens only who are to receive the bounty of our Government. More than eight millions of the stock of this bank are held by foreigners. By this act the American Republic proposes virtually to make them a present of some millions of dollars.

Every monopoly and all exclusive privileges are granted at the expense of the public, which ought to receive a fair equivalent. The many millions which this act proposes to bestow on the stockholders of the existing bank must come directly or indirectly out of the earnings of the American people....

It appears that more than a fourth part of the stock is held by foreigners and the residue is held by a few hundred of our own citizens, chiefly of the richest class.

Is there no danger to our liberty and independence in a bank that in its nature has so little to bind it to our country? The president of the bank has told us that most of the State banks exist by its forbearance. Should its influence become concentered, as it may under the operation of such an act as this, in the hands of a self-elected directory whose interests are identified with those of the foreign stockholders, will there not be cause to tremble for the purity of our elections in peace and for the independence of our country in war? Their power would be great whenever they might choose to exert it; but if this monopoly were regularly renewed every fifteen or twenty years on terms proposed by themselves, they might seldom in peace put forth their strength to influence elections or control the affairs of the nation. But if any private citizen or public functionary should interpose to curtail its powers or prevent a renewal of its privileges, it can not be doubted that he would be made to feel its influence.

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society the farmers, mechanics, and laborers who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.

Nor is our Government to be maintained or our Union preserved by invasions of the rights and powers of the several States. In thus attempting to make our General Government strong we make it weak. Its true strength consists in leaving individuals and States as much as possible to themselves in making itself felt, not in its power, but in its beneficence; not in its control, but in its protection; not in binding the States more closely to the center, but leaving each to move unobstructed in its proper orbit.

Experience should teach us wisdom. Most of the difficulties our Government now encounters and most of the dangers which impend over our Union have sprung from an abandonment of the legitimate objects of Government by our national legislation, and the adoption of such principles as are embodied in this act. Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress. By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundations of our Union. It is time to pause in our career to review our principles, and if possible revive that devoted patriotism and spirit of compromise which distinguished the sages of the Revolution and the fathers of our Union. If we can not at once, in justice to interests vested under improvident legislation, make our Government what it ought to be, we can at least take a stand against all new grants of monopolies and exclusive privileges, against any prostitution of our Government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many, and in favor of compromise and gradual reform in our code of laws and system of political economy....

That is something based on an understanding that the freedoms provided by the Nation should not be put at risk nor danger by government monopolies. Good government is seen as a strong interaction between multiple levels of the Nation: Federal, States and the People. The strength of General Government is *not* in its centrality but in its diversity and abundance of having smaller and accountable units spread out to hold each other in balance. From those things Government must be safeguarded against favoring the rich and powerful over the poor and weak so that just and equal governance can be had for all of the People. Therefore government may not legislate in favor of this or that rich individual or group, but must adhere to making a good life for all of the Citizens.

To put it bluntly: the business of America is industrious Citizens making as good a life for themselves as can be had by the fruits of their labor.

And yet we get a very strange thing coming from modern conservatives: 'free trade frees people'. It is the ability to own goods and have them safeguarded *against* government that frees people. Selling to people who may have their rights revoked or goods confiscated by a dictatorial regime is not 'freeing' those individuals unless some structure goes with it. Government is the safeguard of property rights not the SOURCE of them. Too often trade with dictatorial or tyrannical regimes is seen as 'good' to modern conservatives as they can use free trade dogma to shield themselves from the fact that profit is being made from tyrannical regimes and that nothing is being done to *end them* by such trade.

When Government makes trade policy that puts forward trade with Nations that seek to endanger the United States, the primary safeguard of trade and foreign policy is being put under the dictates of corporations to get profit from suffering and tyranny. Even worse is that when the United States does so, those suffering under such regimes see that freedom is not being used in a constructive fashion to help others. By putting no conditions on such trade or reciprocity of outlook towards freedom and personal liberty to have individuals enriched by the fruits of their labors, modern conservatism is stuck in a really quite nasty rut of 'realism'. Somehow that economic 'realism' of stable trade does lots of good for corporations and their shareholders, but not much for the ideals of freedom and liberty for all of mankind. From that America gets hated because the Nation is seen as empowering tyrants that enforce repression and authoritarian rule. By not addressing this conservatives have fallen into the larger, polyglot category of the Right: putting commercial entities above physical ones and empowering those entities due to their long existence above those that are merely mortal.

As Jackson looked at the Central Bank so this modern era must look at Transnational Capitalism and elitism, along with the flux of Transnational Progressivism to dissolve Nations as meaningful units amongst mankind. President Jackson's veto lasted until 1913, and that awful decade that changed America for the worse. The trust put on the behavior of the States and the People to find a good way and *create* a common and good society without oversight and guidance from the Federal level has been eroded by those in the Right realm that puts large, transnational capitalist and corporate affairs ahead of those of the People and the Nation which the People hold in common between them. A Central Bank with a private profit motive puts the Nation at risk as the fruits of labor of the People are open for exploit by those that have pure financial gain as their motive. By putting corporations and freer trade ahead of the values of the Nation for freedom and liberty, the Right also erodes at those very freedoms at home and the liberty that sustains them.

Jacksonians have few problems with corporations so long as they are: non-monopolistic, competitive in the realm of markets, and do not try to influence, guide nor dictate the foreign policy or trade policy of the Nation.

Those Nations that wish to do trade with us and are tyrannical and repressive regimes are somehow equated as 'lost markets' to US Companies if we do not trade with them. They are *not* as they are not free people. Supporting the rights of individuals by refusing to trade or endorse tyrannical regimes gains benefit once those people are FREE as they will have seen us abiding by what it takes to ensure that tyranny gets no help from the United States. To do that today would cause a massive upheaval in the United States and the world because of the number of corrupt, repressive and tyrannical regimes that we allow *any* trade with from the United States. That would be a *good thing* to suddenly put a price on being tyrannical and repressive towards one's own people. The effects would be enormous because of the amount of time and depth of trade the United States has had NOT supporting freedom and liberty and, instead, expanding corporate profit.

Because modern conservatism does not put this forward as a necessary good of the People, they get shifted under the umbrella of the Right and National capitalism. That talking for viable ideas is very well and good, but the elite of the political and economic class adhere to a different ethos based on Transnational corporatism, thus losing the ability to have the National espoused and getting stuck with the anti-democratic Transnational. And as conservatives see no value in limiting those corporations that have become scofflaws, who have had multiple individuals commit crimes, by not enforcing the penalties that such crimes accrue, by not putting forth that a corporation must have a societal good beyond mere profit, and by allowing such to influence taxation, trade and foreign policies to their benefit, that diversity of voices is LOST as it finds no means to actually speak on these issues and propose changes to benefit the People. At least discussions are still *happening* , unlike the Left and liberalism which has succumbed to group think and the echo chamber effect of hearing the same thing so often that no other thoughts can work their way in edge-wise. Yet the reinforcing of the idea that the activity of trade trumps freedom and liberty is one that is slowly marginalizing conservatives on the National scale. They put forth NOTHING to restrain corporations and remove their influence from public policy.

One of the very strangest ideas I've had is to take this idea of a 'Corporate Citizen' and fully utilize it. Give them rights, responsibilities and the franchise in the way of one, single, solitary vote. Then a 'Three Strikes and You're Our' Law for any corporation that has officers found to commit felonies for the corporation. At the full upholding of the third felony the corporation is fully liquidated and brought to an end. That means that a corporation actually has a vested interest in operating within the law and ensuring that it does not violate the law: it is lethal in the long run not to do so. As corporations are not mandated by heaven and are purely the constructs of mere mortals, they are amenable to the tools of mere mortals and the laws of mere mortals. And if society wants to give them quasi-rights, then lets back that up with the full panoply of rights and restrictions put upon REAL individuals. Which means they pay PERSONAL INCOME TAX, not corporate. That means they have limits on campaign contributions exactly equal to that of one Citizen. Yes, fully and highly extreme! It gives long life to those entities that adhere to the law, act as good citizens and otherwise make sure that the Nation is supported. Those that do not do so find themselves at an end and that 'market segment' opened up for new and law abiding corporations.

You will not get that from the Right these days. Corporations are supposed to be sacrosanct in their privileges and immunities and able to influence government and society by those things. That doesn't sound right to me, nor is it all that 'conservative' this letting unaccountable corporations change society to meet their needs instead of them changing to support society.

And start eliminating this 'prostitution of Government to the advancement of the few'.

I see a LOT of that going on with 'earmarks' and illegal alien amnesty these days, and saying there are 'jobs that American's won't do'. They have obviously never watched Dirty Jobs. And I don't see a lot of illegals in many of those jobs, either... you know, real jobs that real Americans work at to make a better life for themselves. And perhaps it is time for conservatives to break with the Right and actually call those pushing corporatism as a *good* for America and ask if it is any good FOR Americans when such are able to denigrate the blue collar workers and undermine them via Federal subsidies and not getting Federal law enforced. That looks to be undermining the Nation.

But then, I am no conservative.

I am a Jacksonian and I stand for the United States and its proposal that all men are created equal because that is 'self evident' beyond any single religion.