Mr. Moderate

You ought to read John Dean’s article about impeaching presidents. Dean is best known for telling the truth to Congress right at the point when the consequences of telling the truth were the worst for the President of the United States. But Dean is (was?) an old-style conservative and there were just certain ethical boundary lines he would not cross, even if it meant severe damage to the nation, his President, and the Republican Party. Dean’s article makes clear that most old-style conservatives maintain certain bedrock ethical principles which they would hold to no matter what. Dean ends his story with these words:

Disturbingly, it has been clear for some time that Bush and Cheney did indeed lie – and that their lies fit within a clear, extensive pattern of abuse of power. Yet condemnation from Congressional Republicans has yet to be heard. Sadly, it seems possible that today’s Republicans — unlike Wiggins and the other Nixon apologists who changed their minds when confronted with proven presidential lies — have no moral lines that they will draw.

I wrote yesterday about the “win by any means” archetype, which unfortunately includes lawyers, politicians, cops, military members, and criminals. Dean points out that elder conservatives didn’t use to lack moral boundary lines. It is only the newer conservatives (or “neocons”) that align most perfectly into this archetype. And Dean isn’t the only one noticing this change. In an article dated last Wednesday (7/23/08), Paul Craig Roberts, another “old school” conservative, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and a Contributing Editor to the National Review also wrote that the Republican Party was now the worst enemy of American values. And I consider myself to be among them. Please read my own “Confessions of a Goldwater Republican.”

So, what do all these people (Dean, Roberts, Goldwater and myself) have in common? None of us are willing to see the Constitution of the United States disrespected in any way. We all have an ethical floor which requires respect for the founding principles of our democracy as enunciated by that document.
Continue reading ‘New Conservatives Lack Ethics’ »

I’m involved in a long-running but gentle discussion with another old-style Republican who is uncomfortable enough with the modern Republican Party to strongly consider not voting for McCain. He isn’t to the point where I am yet, voting for Obama, but he clearly recognizes that the Republicans have strayed so far off track that they no longer deserve his vote.

As our discussion of Obama continues, he expressed discomfort with the family history of Obama, particularly the doings of Obama’s own father. Barack Obama Sr. fathered Barack Jr. (the current candidate for President) while messing around in Hawaii with a white woman while Sr. was still married to Kezia Obama back in Kenya. This explains why two of Senator Obama’s half-siblings are older than he is while two others by the same mother are younger. The reference for this discussion was a tabloid newspaper article in The Sun.

The question that my friend raised was whether or not there might be some “criminal gene” which somehow managed to infect Obama, Jr. that was somehow deemed to be present in Obama, Sr. since Sr. was seemingly involved in a number of shady dealings, not the least of which was whatever story he told to Obama, Jr.’s mother about his family in Africa. In reply I pointed out that it really hardly matters since so many politicians are lawyers and since lawyers, cops, criminals, politicians, and military members are all part of a common archetype that believes in “win by any means.” We have a lot less to fear from politicians than we do from other members of the archetype because politicians are so addicted to power and so much in the public eye that they learn to behave better, more often than not, so as to retain the power that the people entrust them with.
Continue reading ‘Hating the “Win By Any Means” Archetype’ »

Michael Savage is a conservative radio talk show host whose program I listen to and whose web site I link to here on my own blog. First and foremost we must recognize that Michael is an entertainer, with millions of listeners, and it is the job of an entertainer to entertain. Entertainers will frequently use exaggeration to get our attention, and Michael is one of the greatest exaggerators I’ve ever listened to. Last week Michael started a controversy about autism when he exaggerated the over-diagnosis of the disease. Media Matters then picked out his most-overblown statements:

On his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage claimed that autism is “[a] fraud, a racket. … I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’ “

Many people reacted to the above statements with anger and strong complaints against Michael Savage, trying to get his program thrown off the air for those remarks. One conservative blogger even called Michael “the most hated conservative in America.” Well, in some sense I suspect that Michael relishes the label of “most hated” so long as it gains attention for his talk show and increases his base of listeners.
Continue reading ‘Michael Savage and the Autism Controversy’ »

We all know the classic image of the ostrich with its head in the sand while its body is exposed to whatever comes along. In our culture, we interpret this image as a refusal to see the obvious. Well, Lyme Disease exists, but 9,999 out of 10,000 doctors have their heads in the sand when it comes to properly diagnosing and treating Lyme Disease. But anybody can go on the Internet and find a picture of the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria which causes Lyme Disease. It shows that the organism is a spirochete, or “corkscrew-shaped” bacteria. How can Lyme Disease not exist? This gets to be a real mystery, so please read on.

This is the first of a two-post set, the other of which discusses the claims by Michael Savage that the mental diseases of autism and ADHD are vastly over-diagnosed in this country. As I say at the end of that other post, what is totally a mystery to me is this: Why does the establishment (schools, doctors, drug companies, etc.) want to diagnose kids with autism and ADHD and yet they refuse to diagnose kids (or adults) as being sick with the actual bacterial disease of Lyme?
Continue reading ‘Lyme Disease and Medical Ostriches’ »

Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
…

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
– Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who

One of my favorite quotes of all time is by George Santayana (from The Life of Reason [1905 1906], Volume I, Reason in Common Sense, Chapter 12):

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. . . . Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Ronald Reagan came to power in 1981, and a large part of what he pledged to accomplish was to “get government off our backs” by deregulating various industries. One of the deregulated industries was the Savings and Loan industry which, I’m afraid, you need to be fairly old to understand how critical that industry used to be to the American economy. But in its zeal to eliminate government regulations that prevented businesses from seeking profits wherever they could be found, the Reagan administration convinced a Democratic Congress to vote away the governmental controls which ensured that industry remained healthy. However, they did not vote away, but actually increased, the guarantee of health provided by the US taxpayer through the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC). This was, of course, a recipe for disaster as the greedy owners and managers of savings and loan corporations sought vast personal wealth for themselves without one thought for the safety of the federally-insured funds they were using to create that wealth. This led to the Savings and Loan Crisis (or S&L Crisis) of the late 1980s, which was the precursor to the current subprime mortgage crisis. Apparently, we never did really learn our lessons from the S&L Crisis so I’m going to begin with a discussion of what went on with that mess.
Continue reading ‘We’re Getting Fooled Again!’ »

Mr. Moderate is old. In fact, I’m old enough to have supported Barry Goldwater for President back in 1964. In those days, you had to be 21 to vote, and I was younger than that. But I still supported Barry. I watched him give his 1964 acceptance speech live. There were things he might have said but didn’t, because it was only 1964, and the civil rights movement had not yet generated the violence which would force America to examine a whole host of issues centering around what “equality” really means. Barry was unfairly labeled a bigot because he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In fact, he has a long and distinguished record of advocating for racial equality, including prompting the full and complete integration of the Arizona National Guard long before President Truman issued orders to integrate the regular military forces.

Goldwater’s brand of conservativism was a balance between libertarian ideals and a pragmatic recognition that order was necessary for a civil society, and the purpose of government was to establish the rules that created order and maintained or even enhanced civilization as we know it. The justification for a civil law was to remedy an obvious injustice. But for Barry, the limit of the federal government was established by the Constitution of the United States, and he would not vote for any law, necessary or not, if it would cross over the line of limited Constitutional government as he viewed it. That is why he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964: he strongly felt that the law, however good it was in the abstract, stepped over the line limiting federal powers from interfering in the rights of the several states to manage their own affairs. In 1964, the view was that the federal government had no business messing in the affairs of local school districts. Since that is exactly what the Civil Rights Act of 1964 proposed to do, Barry wouldn’t vote for it.
Continue reading ‘Confessions of a Goldwater Republican’ »

Its been just over a year since my last post. Things have happened in my life. But I’m ready to come back to blogging now, so here we go.

A number of issues have experienced dramatic change since I ran out of time and energy for blogging back on July 1, 2007. BBC reporter Alan Johnston was released from captivity, largely unharmed (physically, anyway; the mental strain is another matter). The housing crisis in the USA has ballooned into a full-blown disaster for America, with major financial institutions forced into unfavorable take-overs or other painful reorganization steps. General Petreaus was actually able to make “the surge” in Iraq work. But while the military news is reasonably good, politically the Iraq government is still demanding that US troops leave Iraq, which means that we will still eventually lose any long-term benefits from fighting the Iraq war.

Unfortunately, however, most of the other topics I wrote about over a year ago are still with us today, largely unchanged. So, once more into the blogosphere I go. Please keep an eye on this page as I expect to post regularly at least through the 2008 election.