Let’s face it. In the most optimistic scenario conservatives can
imagine for November 6, Mitt Romney defeats Barack Obama by a whopping
five points, carrying Ohio, Virginia and Florida by narrow margins. Wow.
What a resounding victory for conservatism!
That this is the most optimistic scenario we can imagine should be a wake-up call to conservatives: If only half of the voters are willing to repudiate Obama’s economic failures, unconstitutional acts and radical redistributionist agenda, then our nation is so far down the road to serfdom that restoring constitutional liberty may well be a lost cause.
The pessimists among us believe it is too late and all we can do is hold ground and hope for a miracle. The optimists think we can still reverse course and restore constitutional principles if about a dozen very difficult tasks are accomplished during Romney’s first term.
The root of the political problem for constitutional liberty is, of course, the cultural meltdown we have experienced since the 1960s. Our nation is now divided between people who celebrate the traditional values of American individualism, personal responsibility, free enterprise and limited government, and those who champion the values of collective action and “social justice.” This November’s election will tell us how far this culture of entitlement has spread.
The political dilemma for those of us who cherish America’s heritage of ordered liberty is that our party, the GOP, seems wedded to a mindset that must be called a strategic myopia. The Republican establishment is content to slow the growth of government, but has no plan to reverse it — because it has swallowed the leftist, historicist propaganda that the trend cannot be reversed. Thus, it not only has no strategy for downsizing government, it has no desire to develop a strategy.
That this is the most optimistic scenario we can imagine should be a wake-up call to conservatives: If only half of the voters are willing to repudiate Obama’s economic failures, unconstitutional acts and radical redistributionist agenda, then our nation is so far down the road to serfdom that restoring constitutional liberty may well be a lost cause.
The pessimists among us believe it is too late and all we can do is hold ground and hope for a miracle. The optimists think we can still reverse course and restore constitutional principles if about a dozen very difficult tasks are accomplished during Romney’s first term.
The root of the political problem for constitutional liberty is, of course, the cultural meltdown we have experienced since the 1960s. Our nation is now divided between people who celebrate the traditional values of American individualism, personal responsibility, free enterprise and limited government, and those who champion the values of collective action and “social justice.” This November’s election will tell us how far this culture of entitlement has spread.
The political dilemma for those of us who cherish America’s heritage of ordered liberty is that our party, the GOP, seems wedded to a mindset that must be called a strategic myopia. The Republican establishment is content to slow the growth of government, but has no plan to reverse it — because it has swallowed the leftist, historicist propaganda that the trend cannot be reversed. Thus, it not only has no strategy for downsizing government, it has no desire to develop a strategy.
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