[Salon] Column: The Republican Party needs to revisit its first principles | PBS NewsHour

[Todd Pierce <todd.e.pierce@icloud.com>]

I think if there is one Trump “Groupie” I despise the most, it is Mollie Hemingway. She is the “New Rightist” in charge of “reinventing history” for the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement, to fit whatever theme will work best for New Right candidates in the next election cycle, that is, and therefore, one of the “New Right’s Chief Propagandists,” amongst many, as can be seen in this article: https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/08/i-interviewed-trump-for-5-hours-heres-what-he-told-me-about-stupid-f-er-mcconnell-mccarthys-bromance-with-luntz-and-the-fake-news-that-bothered-him-the-most/, and this: https://quincyinst.org/event/the-new-right-ukraine-marks-major-foreign-policy-shift-among-conservatives/

I’ve been spending time in the ASU Library here in Tempe, AZ, going through the Goldwater archives. And reading/scanning pertinent documents/letters, between Goldwater and various friends. To include GEN MacArthur, William Buckley, Harry Jaffa, Scoop Jackson, Ronald Reagan, Jacob Javits; all of “one mind,” on an aggressive foreign policy. Though to Goldwater’s credit, in a response to Javits, he criticized “ethnic” and “religious” groups  taking a position disproportionately favorable to their ethnic or religious roots, on Mideast issues, instead of seeing themselves as solely “Americans” (will share that later). Reagan and Goldwater in particular had a lengthy correspondence over the Panama Canal issue, being in agreement that the U.S. would retain the “right” to use military force when deemed “necessary,” by the President, regardless of whatever palliative language the Republicans would use to assuage concerns of too much “warmongering,” as the lesson Goldwater took from the 1964 campaign. Not against “warmongering;” but only against revealing it so openly, as he makes clear. But both being in agreement with Conservative Justice Sutherland’s doctrine that the POTUS is the “sole organ” of U.S. foreign policy, as described in the Fisher article at the link below, in regard to Sutherland’s “Curtiss-Wright” decision:

https://sgp.fas.org/eprint/fisher.pdf

"There was no need for the Supreme Court to explore the existence of independent, inherent, or exclusive presidential powers. Nevertheless, in extensive dicta, the decision by Justice Sutherland went far beyond the specific issue before the Court and discussed extra-constitutional powers of the President. Many of the themes in this decision were drawn from his writings as a U.S. Senator from Utah. According to his biographer, Sutherland “had long been the advocate of a vigorous diplomacy which strongly, even belligerently, called always for an assertion of American rights. It was therefore to be expected that [Woodrow] Wilson’s cautious, sometimes pacifistic, approach excited in him only contempt and disgust.”114"

Paraphrasing from an article I shared yesterday, in "seeking to uncover the structure of European [American] thought and practice that rendered not just the German [American] population, but large parts of Europe (and Israel)  susceptible to fascism . . .", I believe “ideological history” is important to know.  

While the “Neoconservative” gets, and deserves, so much blame for our Perpetual War today, that trope is designed to as much to conceal where “Neoconservativism” originated, intellectually, and ideologically, to shift blame on to a “strawman” by Conservative Republicans, for our wars, and disguise the “Origins” of our fascist-like “National Security State Ideology” (NSSI) from the Republicans, to the Democrats. Who deserve so much blame by themselves as well, but mostly for adopting NSSI so wholeheartedly today, after resisting it in part for so long. Which matters when lies are   deployed to “reinvent this history, as Mollie Hemingway wrote below: "Emphasize the Constitution’s brilliant balance of powers that keeps the impulses of the imperfect men and women serving in government in check.” 

Elsewhere, Hemingway makes clear that it is the Democrats and “mainstream” Republicans who are responsible for this departure from “Constitutional Principles.” But see the conversation preserved in the attached file, and see where the “Sole Organ Doctrine” had become so institutionalized in the Republican Party, by what could be called the original Neoconservative, and his older disciple, Reagan, leaving no secret where Dick Cheney picked this noxious doctrine up:

Attachment: Goldwater Conversation with President Reagan.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

Title: Column: The Republican Party needs to revisit its first principles | PBS NewsHour

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/column-republican-party-needs-revisit-first-principles

Column: The Republican Party needs to revisit its first principles

In the decades after World War II on through the triumph of the Reagan revolution, the Republican Party enjoyed electoral success in large part by uniting disparate groups that wanted to fight communism. Some viewed the aggressive Soviet Union as a major geopolitical threat, others as an economic threat to free markets, and still others as a threat to religious beliefs and the social order.

This common enemy also helped Republicans frame what they were for — strong American foreign policy, free markets and religious liberty. Even Americans less interested in the particularities of communist philosophy could support these universal goods. It was a solid and winning message.

And it worked. By the late 1980s, the Soviet Union broke up, and the Berlin Wall came down. The demise of the U.S.S.R. was a human rights victory long overdue. However, Republicans were victims of their own success politically – the demise of the Evil Empire left them without a common enemy. And the lack of enemy has been a factor in its uneven electoral success.

Republicans may have lost the last two presidential elections, but during that time, they gained 11 governorships, 13 U.S. Senate seats, 69 House seats, 913 state legislative seats and 30 state legislative chambers.

They’re not doing poorly at all.

Still, a new common “enemy” can help clarify what it means to be Republican, and if it’s a message that can somehow encapsulate the best parts of what presumptive nominee Donald Trump is selling, it could provide much needed cohesion heading into the election.

Looking around at our ever-expanding, omnipresent federal government, it’s easy to see that the new enemy has chosen itself: totalitarianism.

Looking around at our ever-expanding, omnipresent federal government, it’s easy to see that the new enemy has chosen itself: totalitarianism. We usually think of totalitarianism as affecting other countries, but political theorists have long warned of its possible rise in democratic republics such as ours.

It’s a free country

The United States is a blessed country. Its citizens have more material goods and live longer than they did in previous generations. But much of that wealth correlates with a loss of meaningful ties that bound us in less prosperous times.

The intact family is increasingly rare. Community-based jobs have been replaced by the effects of globalization. And massively expanding federal, state and local bureaucracies are encroaching on the _expression_ of culture, religion, economic activity, families, education, and other means by which individuals express themselves.

Financially, we’re well off. In other ways, we’re suffering. And we have the drug addiction, suicide rates, and socio-economic strife to prove it. American sociologist Robert Nisbet said totalitarianism is a process of the annihilation of individuality, beginning with the erosion of social relationships. Without ties to family, friends, and community, people look to the government for help and validation. This isolation and alienation allows the state to control us.

“To destroy or diminish the reality of the smaller areas of society, to abolish or restrict the range of cultural alternatives offered individuals by economic endeavor, religion, and kinship, is to destroy in time the roots of the will to resist despotism in its large forms,” he wrote in Quest for Community.

Families break down as a result of a sexual revolution we insist on treating as an unalloyed good, all evidence to the contrary. Bureaucracies tell people how little they can practice their religion outside of their sanctuary walls, or how little control they have over their child’s education, or how little they can determine how to run a family business. Corporations are increasingly tied to a government that bestows favors on those who adopt a rigid set of doctrines set by the state. And our media frequently give the impression there’s only one correct side to an argument, ostracizing or belittling those with different opinions.

You don’t need to be a conservative to wish that we lived in a country that permitted greater individual variety and _expression_.

You don’t need to be a conservative to wish that we lived in a country that permitted greater individual variety and _expression_. It’s a message many Americans are hungry to hear, no matter their personal economic or social views.

Make America great again for real

The way to broaden the message of the Republican Party, without losing core voters or principles, is simply to revisit — and emphatically restate — our first principles.

Emphasize the Declaration of Independence’s radical defense of self-government and natural rights as opposed to both parties’ current message asking to hand over more power to the state.

Emphasize the Constitution’s brilliant balance of powers that keeps the impulses of the imperfect men and women serving in government in check. Much of our domestic strife is due to courts that wish to legislate hot-button issues never even imagined by Constitutional drafters that should instead be decided by we, the people. A few presidents in a row who objected to constitutional limits on their authority haven’t helped. And Congress has been avoiding responsibility for legislating for so long it’s hard to remember if they ever did. Condemn these violations of the Constitution and build support for a nation of laws, not men. After all, it’s a free country–and the Republican Party is uniquely positioned to remind people what that really means.

It’s a free country–and the Republican Party is uniquely positioned to remind people what that really means.

And at this time when college campuses are actively fighting free speech and free association, Republicans should emphasize that theirs is the party of the First Amendment and the entire Bill of Rights. Support for religious liberty, free speech and free association might not be popular in academia, the media, or the halls of government, but these principles are certainly popular in the rest of country. They just need some statesman and other leaders to defend it.

---

Editor’s note: The PBS NewsHour is hosting a series of columns to run during both of the 2016 national political conventions.

Joining the discussion:

• David Biello, science curator for TED Talks and contributing editor for Scientific American wrote “Dirty air and foul water know no borders” and “When will the candidates pay attention to the biggest environmental issue facing America?”
• Karlyn Bowman and Heather Sims from the American Enterprise Institute wrote, “A first female president? Notable but not unexpected”;
• Rosa Clemente of the Green Party and Black Lives Matter on how “The Democratic Party is not what it seems” and “For the GOP, making America great is for the rich, white and male”;
• Shadi Hamid, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East on ” on “Will left vs. right become a fight over ethnic politics?” and “The thing both conservatives and liberals want but aren’t talking about”;
• Phillip Lohaus, Research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute wrote “The bell of globalization cannot be un-rung”;
• Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist on “Why the Republican Party can’t surrender to its worst impulses” and on how “The Republican Party needs to revisit its first principles”;
• Harold Meyerson of the American Prospect on “Why neither candidate will ever return America to its 1950s prosperity” and “The Democrats must be the party of the 99 percent”;
• Janet Murguia of the National Council of La Raza wrote “Key to America’s prosperity? Bold economic policies that address racial inequities” and “America once excelled at immigrant integration. Here’s the way back”; and
• April Ponnuru of the Conservative Reform Network on “Why I hope this populist fever in the GOP breaks soon” and “Republicans, it’s time to move beyond the platform of Reagan”.

Attachment: smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature