The Conservative's Handbook - Part II
Thanks again, Phil Valentine, for such a well-written and timely book. "The Conservative's Handbook - Defining the Right Position on Issues from A to Z" should be required reading for every Republican politician and those desiring to seek office on a conservative platform. This is what our country needs at this critical time in history. I fear the Obama years will bring our country closer to liberal desires - higher taxes, bigger government, and a weaker country. To counter-balance these effects, Republicans need to get back on track. (2010 and 2012 are just around the corner.) "The Conservative's Handbook" sums up conservative values and offers real answers - not the liberal "feel good" solutions that just end up perpetuating the very problems they try to solve.
I truly believe that the majority of Americans want less government intrusion in their daily lives. They want to be allowed to keep more of their own hard-earned money with lower taxes. And we must remain a strong nation - especially facing terrorists who wish to kill us simply because we exist. So, here's a continuation of my earlier post, with the most interesting chapters and key points highlighted (please note: given the length of the book, I found it difficult to try to include something from every chapter, so I narrowed my selection down to the most important and provocative issues we currently face).
Here we go:
Chapter 9: Illegal Immigration is dangerous to this country.
- We have immigration laws for a reason. They were designed as a filter to allow us to pick and chose who we want in this country and why.
- There are basically two groups illegal immigration hurts the most. The first is the working poor in America. There's also a reason not to legalize illegal aliens that is completely ignored by the pro-illegal immigrant crowd, and that's the second group harmed by illegal immigration: those countrymen the illegals leave behind. The underlying reason most Mexicans come here illegally is because the living conditions in their own country are abominable. Allowing them to escape their own country's problems does a disservice to their countrymen. Illegal immigration works as a release valve, taking pressure off of their government to change it's policies.
- Aside from the obvious danger of terrorists crossing our borders, there's another issue threatening to boil over while our attention is diverted. As most Americans look overseas for our next conflict, I (the author) believe the next big problem is brewing right here in our own backyard. It's the issue of losing control of parts of the Southwest United States. Think I'm (the author) overreacting? There is a movement in that part of the country called "La Reconquista" (the reconquest). It's a calculated effort on the part of some Mexican immigrants, illegal and legal, to gain political control and return to Mexico the areas of the United States lost by the Mexican War of the mid 1840's. These reconquistas are quite bold and explicit in their desires. "California is going to become a Hispanic state," reconquista movement leader Mario Obledo warned, "and anybody who doesn't like it should leave!" That's a view held by many Hispanics inside and outside America.
- The reconquista movement is all the more reason why English should become the official language of America. A dominant second language becomes a wedge that drives people apart.
- The cost of illegal immigration is staggering in monetary terms and lives. A 1997 Rice University study placed the net cost at $20 billion dollars. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) took the Rice study and extrapolated it using figures that took into account the explosion of illegal immigration since 2004. They came up with a net cost to federal, state, and local governments of $45 billion dollars. ERS Research released a 2008 study that placed the number of immigrants in the United States, legally and illegally, at 37 million. They estimated the federal costs alone equaled $346 billion.
- The human cost of illegal immigration is downright frightening. According to the Violent Crimes Institute, there are an estimated 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States. That's 93 sex offenders and 12 serial sex offenders crossing into the United States every day! On the average, 12 Americans are murdered daily by illegal aliens. That's 4,380 people per year. Or, to put it another way, that's more people killed each year than we lost in the first five years of the Iraq War. Did you see Code Pink nuts protesting against illegal aliens?
- The illegal alien problem needs to be faced head-on. Pretending that there isn't a problem or forgiving those who break the law only places our nation in greater peril on many different levels. Needless to say, if our borders had been tighter, the September 11 terror attacks would not have happened. If we don't learn from that lesson, the next one might very well be worse.
Chapter 11: Killing through partial-birth abortion is murder.
- No matter what your opinion on abortion, reasonable people should be able to agree that partial-birth abortion is murder. Unfortunately, there are those who choose to be unreasonable. First, there are those who deny that such a procedure even exists. There are also those - the hard-line pro-abortion advocates who, when backed into a corner, will argue that a woman has a right to an abortion up until the moment of delivery. They continue to defend the indefensible.
- A brief description of a "partial-birth" abortion from Nurse Brenda Pratt Shafer in 1993 (who was originally pro-choice at the time): "I stood at the doctor's side and watched him perform a partial-birth abortion on a woman who was six months pregnant. The baby's heartbeat was clearly visible on the ultrasound screen. The doctor delivered the baby's body and arms, everything but his little head. The baby's body was moving. His little fingers were clasping together. He was kicking his feet. The doctor took a pair of scissors and inserted them into the back of the baby's head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall. Then the doctor opened the scissors up. Then he stuck the high-powered suction tube into the hole and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby was completely limp. But I am still haunted by the face of that little boy. It was the most perfect, angelic face I have ever seen."
- The pro-partial birth abortion advocates claim the procedure is necessary, either for the health of the mother or because the child is deformed. Dr. David Brown studied that very issue and found the majority of partial-birth abortions are elective, having nothing to do with health or deformity. He said, "The "typical" patients tend to be young, low-income women, often poorly educated or naive, whose reason for waiting so long to end their pregnancies are rarely medical."
- The great President Ronald Reagan said that "until we could fully determine exactly when life began, he would rather err on the side of life."
Chapter 12: Liberalism is an ideology doomed to failure.
- Liberalism is oftentimes a quick fix, while conservatism takes a little longer.
- Something else most Americans don't realize, and many liberals try to hide, is that the Ku Klux Klan was a militant offshoot of the Democratic Party. Klansmen organized in the South primarily to keep blacks away from the polls, in defiance of the Republicans in the North.
- Supporting civil rights for blacks was neither conservative nor liberal - it was just right.
- The liberalism to which I (the author) attach the dismal future of failure is American liberalism of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It's a basic philosophy that the government knows better how to run your life than you do. That's quite condescending, when you get right down to it. This is best illustrated in our government's wholesale warehousing of the poorest Americans in housing projects. We have congregated the most desperate of society in one convenient location, making them easy prey for the hucksters, swindlers, pimps, and drug dealers. How compassionate is that? The politicians have learned how to bribe people with their own money, enslaving a substantial enough segment that they can use the voting bloc of the government-dependent to confiscate sufficient money from the rest of the population to keep the Ponzi scheme alive. Eventually, you run out of productive citizens to bilk and the whole thing implodes. This is the fate awaiting runaway liberalism.
- Another reason liberalism is doomed to failure is because it's largely based on emotion instead of facts. It's what I (the author) refer to as "liberal logic." A couple of examples: in order to stop kids from having sex, liberals hand out condoms at school. Or, to stop innocent citizens from being gunned down, they take away their guns. Liberal logic is a purely emotional approach to solving a problem. Liberal logic is an oxymoron because it is completely devoid of logic.
- AIDS has a cure. It's called abstinence. Liberals love to blame conservatives like Ronald Reagan for the AIDS virus. They claim it's spread by the lack of federal funding. Actually, it's spread by a lack of common sense. We know exactly how it is transmitted. We know exactly who is most at risk. We know exactly how to prevent it. You don't need a vaccine. It's almost wholly a result of reckless behavior. There are, indeed, horror stories of people contracting AIDS as a result of blood transfusions, but those cases are extremely rare. That's not to say that we shouldn't have compassion for people afflicted with this disease. We most certainly should. People find themselves with all sorts of ailments because of bad choices, and kicking them when they are down serves no purpose. However, it only serves to perpetuate the problem if we continue to condone the behavior that causes it. But that is what liberals do. Instead of facing the facts of why people have AIDS to start with, they insist on spending hard-earned taxpayer dollars to find a cure. That's the liberal way of solving problems.
- Our country's approach to the AID's problem has been to throw good money after bad at an elusive cure while failing to condemn the very behavior that is at the root of the problem. Passing out condoms at school in an effort to stop the spread of AIDS is like handing out low-nicotine cigarettes as a means of stamping out smoking. Both send the wrong message: that the behavior is OK as long as you're "safe." Cities across the country do the same with needle exchange programs instead of attacking the basic problem of intravenous drug use.
- Steve Kagas, a devoted liberal and political journalist for the Internet site "Votelink" wrote extensively on his website about liberalism. Some of his writings better illustrate than I (the author) ever could the differences between liberalism and conservatism. Kangas wrote that "liberalism believes in collectivism (read: communism), while conservatism believes in individualism. Liberals are for democracy, while conservatives are for constitutionalism. He says liberals believe in pacifism, while conservatives believe in armed deterrence." I (the author) plead guilty on all counts. Kagas goes on to explain that liberals believe in "progressive taxes, anti-poverty spending, and other forms of regulation." He says they view "the runaway profits of the rich - especially in the later stages of wealth accumulation - as undeserved, so redistributing them among the workers who produce them is necessary to prevent exploitation." Undeserved? Who is Kagas or any other liberal to determine who makes what? This, is of course, an admission to waging class warfare, something most liberals aren't willing to admit.
- Ultimately, it's the obsession with class warfare that marks liberalism's failure. George Bernard Shaw reportedly once said, "A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul." The have-nots will always outnumber the haves. The producers are always going to make more money than the non-producers, or under-producers because they work harder, are smarter, or more tenacious. Once the nonproducers realize they can vote the producers' money into their pockets, the jigs up. LIberalism gives the nonproducer no incentive to get off his duff.
- Capitalism is like cutting more firewood to make your fire as big or bigger than the other guy's. Liberalism, on the other hand, is like taking the wood that the other guy has spent all day chopping because he doesn't deserve that much wood. Under the liberal scenario, eventually the guy who's been working to amass his pile of firewood, only to have most of it taken from him, is going to stop cutting wood. At that point, both the fires go out.
Chapter 13: Military strength deters aggression.
- "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it."
- Bill Clinton began anew the task of dismantling the military. After sitting at 95% readiness in 1989, the U.S. Air Force had slipped to only 65% readiness by 2000. The lessons of the Gulf War were lost on the Clinton administration, which sought to castrate the military machine, the very institution Student Clinton wrote that he "loathed."
- The sad reality is, the Clinton administration cut our soldiers off at the knees, never allowing them the strength or authority to do their jobs properly. He had taken the proud military of Reagan and Bush and returned it to near Carteresque levels of readiness.
- It's all too easy for us to become complacent and lackadaisical when it comes to protecting our freedom. Our Founding Fathers didn't have the luxury of basking in freedom; instead, they set about the task of first winning it and then protecting it with their lives. The liberties we all take for granted these days were gained by strong military might, not disarmament and pacifism.
- War is certainly not my (the author) first choice as the way to solve problems with errant nations and despots. Even those of us who have never been to war understand that it is a tragic and horrible thing. But even more tragic and horrible is the prospect of losing our way of life, of losing our freedom.
- Sometimes, especially when our core American values are threatened, there's no alternative but war. The question remains; at what point are you willing to go to war to protect those things that are most precious to you? I (the author) suspect that many on the left would say "never." If they can look at the rubble that was the World Trade Center and not be moved to war, then nothing will move them.
- The rest of us need to understand where the left is coming from when they spew the "guilt-ridden American" rhetoric in hopes of changing our minds. They hate our military might. They're embarrassed by our blatant display of military technology and hardware, but it's this display that deters rogue nations from putting it to the test.
- The peaceniks look upon our military as a war machine I (the author) look upon it as a peace machine. As long as I (the author) can see it, we're safe. As long as there are men and women willing to give their time and, if need be, their lives to protect this nation, then we're safe. It's only when we're not strong, when the appeasers win, that we all lose.
Chapter 14: National Security is the first responsibility of the federal government.
- Let's face it, if our country is not secure, nothing else matters.
- It's one thing to argue over foreign wars on distant shores, but domestic tranquility is our birthright. It's laid out in the preamble of the Constitution.
- First and foremost - we must secure our borders.
- Think of how far we've come since the inception of our country, when the largest weapon of mass destruction was the cannonball. Now we have to contend with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that can wipe out large segments of our population in mere moments. The apparatus to contend with such threats is massive.
- Too much national security power in the wrong hands can spell trouble for American's liberty and freedom. It can also turn a prosecutor and defender of allies in to a despotic bully. We, the people, need to be constantly vigilant to make sure those in charge don't overstep their boundaries. National security should be our government's first and foremost responsibility, but we must continually remind our leaders that it's our freedoms and rights they're protecting.
- It's a balancing act to maintain national security without making us prisoners within our own borders. It's even harder t know when to get involved abroad to thwart perceived threats. A good rule of thumb is not to be penny wise and pound foolish. History teaches us that getting involved too late can cost a lot more in terms of lives and money. In the words of that great philosopher, Barney Fife, sometimes you have to "nip it in the bud." But "nipping it" needs to be done with caution and commons sense. One way for us to ensure that delicate balance is to stay informed and stay involved.
Chapter 16: Political correctness is the liberal version of facism.
- Just where did all this political correctness garbage come from anyway? Whatever its orgins, the political correctness movement professes openness and diversity while defining what's open and diverse by its narrow-minded left-wing lexicon. No matter who dreamt it up, they understood that controlling the language to fit your agenda ranks right up there with controlling the currency. If left unabated, you soon control the entire society.
- It started off innocuously enough. Chairman became chairperson. Okay. Fireman became firefighter. Then came the next phase. Handicapped became physically challenged. Then we were into the whole hyphenated thing: African-American, Mexican-American, etc. We began feeling self-conscious every time we spoke. Who were we going to offend? What phrase that I (the author) had always used was now taboo? We literally became afraid to utter the wrong thing.
- Once the PC crowd got us used to the new language, they started to dismantle time-honored American traditions. Gone were musical chairs and dodgeball. Dodgeball!
- Although exasperating, it's almost comical, this political correctness. In Eugene, Oregon, the city manager banned Christmas trees from public buildings. Citing the fallacious argument of "separation of church and state," he thought it was his duty to cleanse the city of anything religious. In reality, it's anything Christian, the only politically incorrect religion. When it comes to other religions, the PC zealots conveniently forget their "separation" tirade. For example, in the wake of 9/11, many California schools initiated Islam sensitivity training classes in which students dressed in robes, assumed Arab names, and memorized verses from the Koran. Ultimately, in an attempt to keep from offending a few, they've managed to offend everyone else.
- We can laugh at all these idiotic examples of political correctness, but the frightening part is, these PC people are actually serious. Many of them are also in positions of power and are changing laws, or bending them, to suit their agenda.
- Fascism is defined, in part, as oppressive, dictatorial control. That is exactly what political correctness is. In the name of tolerance, practitioners are totally intolerant of anyone who disagrees with them. Political correctness is not about broadening opinion. It's about restricting what is allowable conduct to that deemed appropriate by the politically correct.
- After 9/11, in order to better secure our country, Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered the questioning of five thousand Arab men. The cry went out from the politically correct crowd that we couldn't profile like that; it was a violation of their rights. Our country was under attack from Arab extremists, and still the politically correct tried to stand in the way of common sense. Their compatriots in the press continue to do their bidding by publishing biased stories or, in some cases, no stories at all.
- Political correctness is dangerous to America on many different levels. It has become a way to limit free speech and label those who disagree with you as not being worthy of consideration. Left unabated, free speech as we know it will cease to exist.
Wow! Phil Valentine really nails it on the head with these chapters. I'll be wrapping up this post with "The Conservative's Handbook - Part III" shortly. More interesting, factual, and insightful observations to come...