CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE PART TWO

CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE PART II :MORALITY, CIVIL LIBERTIES AND FOREIGN POLICY

Secy. Of State Hillary Clinton wants to make tolerance, equality and protection under the law for gay and lesbian persons in the more than 70 countries that criminalize being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or trans-gendered, a standard for aid and assistance as well as cordial relations with the US. There should be no conservative objection to this and in fact it should be robustly supported by people within the conservative movement.

As I have opined previously, these are about rights for all individual where no one is exempted. This should also not become an opportunity to disingenuously bash conservatives who are looking for fidelity to the Constitution as the bottom line in the conduct of our foreign policy. Gov. Rick Perry allegedly said that this policy Secy. Clinton outlined, constitutes “ a war with people of faith in this country”. If that statement is true and in context, then Gov. Perry is both politically, morally and spiritually wrong in my opinion. Since the latter two are areas where the essence of debate centers on questions of interpretation of dogma and thereby in the realm of opinion or faith, I will focus on the secular realm of politics.

Human rights for all individuals should be at the center of all American Foreign Policy. If it is not, than we are a fraud and not the exceptional nation we claim to be. Unfortunately we see all too frequently that the sanctity of human life expressed in freedom from tyranny, is more of an imperative with some countries than with others. The plight of women and girls in some “friendly” Islamic countries as well as Christian minorities throughout the greater Muslim world comes to mind .

In point of fact we pick and choose who we want to lecture about human rights abuses and excuse those who we do not want to offend for a variety of pragmatic reason usually associated with military and/or economic necessity. Often piety about the rights of certain oppressed groups satisfy domestic political agendas more than they actualize real foreign policy goals or even bedrock statements of principles.

This has been the reality of foreign policy for a very long time for many, if not all countries of the world. But we are not just any country and as enticing or practical the specter of watching what we do and not what we say may be, at the end of the day we have always paid dearly for being “outed” as not being sincere when we sacrifice our principles for expediency. We have gotten in bed, far too often with people that run the gamut from nasty but harmless to malignant and demonic… all in the name of the best interests of this nation. When the inevitable “other shoe drops’ we almost always find ourselves worse off than before.

The rights we champion are who we are. They define us in their practice better than any words can. If we use them as mere enticements or bait for suffering people who think we mean what we say then all we are doing is a kind of diplomatic carnival sideshow. If our real objectives entails ending the absence of freedom and human rights as merely a side effect,fringe benefit or ploy than we damn ourselves by our lack of integrity even while we believe we are playing the historic game of nations brilliantly.

Making human rights for all individuals a center of our foreign policy is not and cannot be construed to be an act of naviete. We must reject this notion because implicit in it, is the belief that we cannot define who we are and determine our own destiny.

Our enemies believe us to be weak because we kowtow to criticism or disarm ourselves unilaterally in the notion that all leaders of all countries will become enchanted by the power of our good intentions and the seduction of our words. None of that has ever worked in a world that has always been a dangerous place. The truest of all axioms in the world of foreign relations and diplomacy if that if you want peace then you should prepare for war. To this truism should be added “and stand always by your ideals without deviation”.

So if we are adding the rights and dignity of LGBT persons as part of the expression of what American freedom means as opposed to freedom elsewhere, than we should be prepared as part of keeping our homeland free, to fight for it elsewhere with every means at our disposal because a world that resembles us in the rights afforded its citizens, is a safer world, a more prosperous world and one where real hope replaces cynicism .

Conservatives should never feel threatened by the fact of any individual simply asking for their natural human rights. We don’t have to agree with or be silent about lifestyle, policy, legislation,, speech or public behavior that we may find privately abhorrent, but we do have to let the world know that even clamorous disagreement doesn’t mean that in our rowdy democracy, it will inevitably end in the denial of human rights or worse.
ERLANDSSON

CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE PART ONE

CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE. CIVIL LIBERTIES AND HUMAN RIGHTS

The persistent accusation that conservatives are not sympathetic to and are even hateful towards individual civil and human rights for all individuals who live within broadly acceptable norms of lawful behavior is I believe, either not true or overstated for emotional or political reasons.

Some in the LGBT community for example, are currently making that charge due to certain campaign ads by Gov. Rick Perry in Iowa. Others cite the reactions to the efforts of Secy. of State Clinton to protect the civil and human rights of such persons via economic, political and diplomatic sanctions by the US, within the over 70 nations that now criminalize gay and lesbian people.

While it is ironic that Secy. Clinton makes this effort while addressing the inappropriately named UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, her efforts are important nonetheless, and should be supported by all people who believe in the basic natural rights of all individuals. Many if not most conservatives, don't like addressing rights on a group basis. Yet history has an unpleasant way of reminding us that the most prevalent way of demonizing individuals is by demonizing the "group" they either identify with or are associated with by others. Hence the struggle for equality and at times survival often must begin with group identity but should always end with individual liberty.

Hitler began the Holocaust by exterminating people with disabilities. They did not fit into his stereotype of what Aryans should look like and they had, in his opinion, no utilitarian value to the Reich. So they were murdered as a prelude to a larger horror in much the same way that a play goes into rehearsals in order to work out the kinks. Later in the second, and third acts would come homosexuals, Gypsies, Christians and finally the Jews This was done by men and women so ordinary that Hanna Arendt would later describe one of them, Adolph Eichmann, as being an example of the "banality of evil". This should be a reminder to all that true evil sometimes comes not with fangs but with a pleasing smile, making the good guys and the bad guys all the more difficult to sort out.

Because of this I believe we must look to the consequences of what is done in the context of what is said. Denial of civil and human rights to any person who is simply trying to exercise their inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is evil from a civic, moral and spiritual perspective. The advocacy of violence and hatred towards any innocent person alone or in combination with others is not acceptable at any level of human response. Human history is replete with the fear of the "different" as alien and strange leading to the attempted or actual destruction of the " different" while innocent and harmless.






Conservatives believe the Constitution by it's very nature forces us to respect one another on the civic plain. Conservatives who are persons of faith have the Golden Rule to guide them in their treatment of their fellow souls and that guidance is clear and unambiguous. So where does the perception of Conservative indifference or animosity toward persons in groups ranging from the poor to the gay to the non-white emanate from?

I believe that a good portion of that belief flows from the national arguments over identity and discrimination that we as a people have been having since 1776. The timeless struggle to make the Constitution applicable to all, insists on both reason, tension and passion. How could any thing as important as human freedom not be intense and passionate. Ask almost any immigrant and they will tell you how unique and precious are the liberties of this nation in comparison to others.

But these arguments can be intentionally and unintentionally misinterpreted as bias, prejudice, callousness, and hatred due to the reaction to the tactics and strategies employed by all sides. Far too often the "means" become the "ends" with faux objectives eclipsing real goals.

I as a citizen may fight explicit sex education in the public schools for a host of valid moral and parental reasons even when the purpose of that education is the expressed desire to protect young sexually active teens from disease and pregnancy. I as a citizen must also however protect and defend the promoters of that which I may detest from physical and economic harm for the very advocacy that is making me angry. In order to make America work as it was intended to work I cannot and must not let my passion destroy my reason or my reason dilute my passion and prevent me from protecting in reality, that which represents one vital and indispensable right clothed in two adversarial points of view.

Many, if not most conservatives I know, do not support "Gay Marriage". For many their opposition is based on religious grounds. Others see the expansion of civil marriage as a "slippery slope" leading to the destruction of one of histories most fundamental human institutions. Still others believe that the efforts for same sex marriage are nothing more than a plot to erode and degrade the time tested norms of Western and certain non-western civilizations. Yet we must address all of this anxiety and suspicion in the context of what the pursuit of happiness means to individuals who have rights that are inalienable. Issues such as these exemplify the tension we cannot escape that are innate within the great American experiment . Again our struggle with this tension should always be guided by reason, passion, fidelity to the Constitution and harmonious with the tenets of our faith and sense of public and personal virtue.

For me the "Conservative" approach to the civil liberties and human rights of any individual ends with the supremacy of that individual's natural rights and the protections that our laws give them. They should never be victims seeking protections solely for themselves due to the originality of their condition. They only must merely be human.

All of us in this treacherous time need to possess enough humility to always question our beliefs for evidence of error, so that we may maximize "knowing what we do not know". For me this is a path to hopefully obtaining a modicum of wisdom and thereby exhibiting some evidence that I did not spend 68 years on earth wasting my time.
ERLANDSSON

AFTER THE AGE OF "GREEN" ENERGY...THE AGE OF "SOYLENT GREEN"

AFTER THE AGE OF "GREEN" ENERGY...THE AGE OF "SOYLENT GREEN"




If you live long enough, a lot of science fiction, begins to resemble reality. David Brooks' Bastille Day NYT's essay this past July entitled "Death and Budgets" is the kind of sophisticated sophistry that the "chattering classes" of the right and left love to embrace over cocktails to prove that there really is common ground on issues of importance. In this instance however it is the effort to find moral consensus for what constitutes a life of quality and then shoehorn it into politics,policy, legislation and regulation.

The insertions of bookkeepers with lampshades between Doctors and patients and their families is really a predictable result of living beyond our means and looking for the lowest of low hanging fruit to balance our national ledger. We got to this point in history because in far too many instances our vision of a good and just society ( "the better angels of our nature" as Lincoln put it) is becoming defined by the acquisition of things (pepper spraying rival customers at a WalMart on "Black Friday" for an XBox comes to mind ) and not by the applications of moral imperatives based on time honored values.

John Adams once said "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” This is the essence of "American Exceptionalism" for both the religious and the non-religious. We take care of one another... we do not put our old and dying on an ice flow because they have become an economic drag on the tribe...we do not place a cost benefit test on issues of life and death. History has shown us where eugenics, in all it's many guises, takes us. It inevitably leads to an Auschwitz or some other perfectly moral and perfectly legal "final solution" hammered out by "reasonable" people over a working lunch. Our duty and history as Americans however is to strive and even fight to practice the morality of the "Golden Rule" and not just pay it lip service.

Death comes to us all. Our civic freedoms may allow us the right to choose the circumstances of how we decide to depart even while for many, religious beliefs may reserve that decision for God alone. Bureaucrats, budget mavens, politicians and pundits posing as prophets have no place at the table whatsoever.

In the 1973 film "Soylent Green" we find ourselves in a future NYC of 44 million people with foul air and massive shortages of food. Euthanasia is promoted for the old as a civic virtue and made to appear not only patriotic but appealing. In the end we discover that the supposed artificial food Soylent Green that sustains most of human kind, is made from the flesh of the old. When the film first played its message was the danger of overpopulation. Today the message is more nuanced but still as relevant. When society is in crisis... there are always those who will look to find a solution that really doesn't solve the problem. Rather they will look for a way to preserve a hierarchy of privilege and call it reason


ERLANDSSON

AN OPEN LETTER TO CONSERVATIVES

AN OPEN LETTER TO CONSERVATIVES WHO WANT TO PLAY POLITICS WITH IMMIGRATION

First and foremost I am a conservative who is a husband, son, grandson, nephew and cousin of immigrants. In addition my extended family all live abroad including two stepdaughters, one stepson and all my grandchildren and there is literally no way I and my wife, who is a US citizen, can bring them to the United States so that our family can be reunited and I can enjoy the comfort of their love and presence in my final years. The other part of my family all came here legally and with regard to my wife, at great expense while overcoming barriers this government has thoughtlessly put in the way of those who try to do things by the rules…rules, I must add that seem to keep changing by the year. My wife has an application to bring our youngest unmarried daughter here that will take by our best estimate, 20 years before it is even reviewed. I will be long dead by then. I raise all of this to make three basic points :

One is that legal immigration is broken in this country and is in itself a cause of illegal immigration. We simply do not have a comprehensive and coherent policy as to who we want to let into this country and why we want them here. If we did we would not now have job shortages in certain parts of the country in agriculture and skilled trades that inexplicably unemployed Americans don’t seem to want to fill.

My second point is that the statement that Speaker Gingrich made on how to deal with undocumented individuals who have been here for a substantial period of time, have sunk deep roots into this country and have families here, has been one small part of his very public comprehensive plan on immigration for months as well as a reflection of his views in this area for years. It is not amnesty but a path to legality he seeks. The two are distinctly different. The newly discovered outrage of Rep Bachmann and the mis-characterization of his position by Gov. Romney is desperation politics disguised as principle and usually something we see from the other guys not “conservatives” who supposedly take an intelligent and high moral stand on all issues and those involving families in particular. For any one who wants to actually read his very well thought out positions simply go to http://www.newt.org/solutions/immigration and educate yourself before you jump to a conclusion that is more knee jerk ideology than reason.

His position on immigration is defined by three principles i.e.
1. No “comprehensive” plan can work. President Bush could not pass one during six years with a Republican Congress. President Obama could not pass one with a Democratic Congress. Immigration reform can be outlined as a complete proposal but has to be passed in a series of steps, with each one understood and passed on its own merits.
2. Under no circumstance can a path to citizenship be created which would allow those who have broken the law to receive precedence over those who patiently waited to become residents and citizens via the legal process. Those who adhered to our immigration law cannot be usurped by those who violated it.

3. We must reconcile the goal of legality with the reality that there are millions of immigrants currently here outside the law, some with a long set of family and community ties, and some with no ties. A system has to be established that establishes legality but no citizenship for those with deep ties, repatriates those with no family or community ties in a dignified way, and quickly sends home those who have committed criminal and other destructive acts.

His solutions are in ten steps: i.e.
1. Control the border.
2. Create a 21st Century Visa Program
3. “In-source” the best brains in the world
4. Allow foreigners who want to spend money, invest and create jobs in America to do so.
5. There has to be a legal guest worker program, but its management must be outsourced to a sophisticated manager of anti-fraud systems, such as American Express, Visa, or Mastercard.
6. Create a path to earned legality for some of the millions of people who are here outside the law.
7. Deportation of criminals and gang members should be efficient and fast.
8. Ensure that every new citizen and every young American learn American history and the key principles of American Exceptionalism.
9. English must be the official language of government.
10. Young non-citizens who came to the United States outside the law should have the same right to join the military and earn citizenship.

My third and last point is directed to all the candidates, the voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, the entire country and my fellow conservatives in particular. The sub set the Speaker described in his debate statement and in his position papers is not simply comprised of “illegals”. It also contains a far larger number of American Citizens who under the policies advocated by Bachmann and Romney in particular, will lose a father or a mother or a spouse or a grandparent because once again politicians have failed to think this thing through and end up hurting American voters. In the end stupid, inaccurate and harmful attacks such as those we are witnessing on this issue will result in voters wreaking their revenge at the polls and justifiably so.

Gingrich was right when he challenged the Republican Party and the Conservative movement to live up to their claim of being the champions of the family. You can’t rip families apart because of a “magnet” theory that makes no sense when applied to the population under discussion, and then try to hide the damage you will do to American citizens. by claiming it is being done to benefit them as American citizens.

Sometimes Republicans exhibit a death wish born out a zeal for political perfection particularly when they seek that perfection by walking over a cliff.
And sometimes politics is truly “ a tale told by idiots…full of sound and fury …and signifying nothing”.

ERLANDSSON