A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

Beck’s Rally

I imagine most of you have heard about the "Restoring Honor" rally Glenn Beck held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial last Saturday.   If you read the newspaper, or Time Magazine, or watch network news, you probably heard that a bunch of white conservatives got together to bash Obama.  This wasn't the case.  At all.

Jonah Goldberg of The Los Angeles Times and National Review has a brief, splendid piece on the 8/28 event that I found at RealClearPolitics.com.

An excerpt:

One striking feature of Saturday's rally was how deeply religious and ecumenical it was. It seems like just yesterday that everyone was talking about how Christian evangelicals were too bigoted to vote for upright and uptight Mormon Mitt Romney. Yet Christian activists saw no problem cheering for - and praying with - the equally Mormon but far less uptight Beck, who asked citizens to go to "your churches, synagogues and mosques!"

The inclusiveness transcended mere religion. While the crowd was preponderantly white, the message was racially universalistic. That was evident not just on the stage, but in the crowd as well. When Reason TV's Nick Gillespie asked a couple whether as "African-Americans" they felt comfortable in such a white audience, the woman responded emphatically but good-naturedly: "First of all, I'm not African, I am an American . . . a black American." She went on to explain how "these people" - i.e., the white folks cheering her on - "are my family."

I confess, if Beck wasn't a libertarian, I would find his populism worrisome. But his message, flaws and excesses notwithstanding, is that our constitutional heritage defines us as a people, regardless of race, religion or creed. Is that so insulting to Martin Luther King Jr.'s memory?

I concur with Mr. Goldberg's assessment in that Beck, while susceptible to over-the-top emotional outbursts on his show, is genuine in his desire to see a predominantly religious nation restore many of the Judeo-Christian values that we've lost.  How about you?  Did you watch any of the coverage?  Did you even hear about the event before this blog-post?

Moral Equivalency in the Media

Dennis Prager gives three recent examples of the kind of inverted moral thinking that typifies the modern Left in the media (and academia).

So how did Tavis Smiley, Michel Martin, and Chris Cuomo make such morally egregious statements?

The answer is not that these are bad people, or that they are not repulsed by terrorist violence.

The answer is leftism, the way of looking at the world that permeates high schools, universities, and the news and entertainment media. Those indoctrinated by leftist thinking become largely incapable of making accurate moral judgments. They once regarded America and the Soviet Union as morally similar. Today, they claim that the people they call Christian “extremists” (who are they?) and Islamist terrorists and their supporters pose equal threats to America and to the world.

That is how bright and decent people become moral relativists and thereby undermine the battles against the greatest evils — Communist totalitarianism in its time, and Islamic totalitarianism in ours.

The only solution is to keep exposing leftist moral confusion. One problem, however, is that in countries without talk radio, an equivalent to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, conservative columnists, and a vigorous anti-Left political party, this is largely impossible.

The other major problem is that the media that dominate American life have little problem — indeed, they largely concur — with the foolish and dangerous comments made by their mainstream-media colleagues. That is why these comments, worthy of universal moral condemnation, were ignored by the mainstream (i.e., left-wing) media. Instead, they directed mind-numbing attention and waves of opprobrium toward Dr. Laura.

Those who don’t fight real evils fight imaginary ones.

Read his full column here.

Sowell’s Back For More Insight

Here is Part 2 of the "Uncommon Knowledge" interview with Dr. Thomas Sowell.  Today Sowell comments on the legal and cultural implications of gay marriage and activist judges.

For more Sowell, check out his latest syndicated column, just out this morning.

Tinkering With The Constitution

Syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg sees a double-standard when it comes to discussion of amending the Constitution.

It's like clockwork. Whenever conservatives propose a constitutional amendment, progressives suddenly rediscover the delicate gears of the Constitution and the horrible dangers of "tinkering" or "tampering" with its precision craftsmanship. Consider the sudden brouhaha over the idea of revising the 14th Amendment to get rid of automatic birthright citizenship (which would make us more like that alleged progressive nirvana known as "Europe," by the way). Here's Angela Kelley of the liberal Center for American Progress on Sen. Lindsey Graham, who started the amendment chatter: "He's not one to tamper with the Constitution, so I'm surprised he would even suggest this."

"While everyone recognizes that there are problems with our immigration system in this country," Elizabeth Wydra of the progressive Constitutional Accountability Center tells NPR, "my perspective is: Let's try to fix this through legislation and not tinker with the genius of our constitutional design."

But wait a second. Progressives love to tinker with the constitutional design. They simply do it by stealth, by appointing Supreme Court justices such as Elena Kagan, who, her testimony notwithstanding, everyone knows will treat the Constitution like Felix the Cat's magic bag; when she searches the document hard enough you know she'll find what she's looking for.

But when conservatives who talk about reverence for the Constitution also want to update it in a way that is actually consistent with the "genius of our constitutional design," they are hypocrites and radicals.

He continues:

Liberals claim, we need an evolving Constitution that, as President Obama writes in "The Audacity of Hope," "is not a static but rather a living document, and must be read in the context of an ever-changing world." But as legal analyst Ed Whelan has noted, this "living document" argument is a straw man. Of course justices must read the document in the context of an ever-changing world. What else could they do? Ask plaintiffs to wear period garb, talk in 18th-century lingo and only bring cases involving paper money and runaway slaves?

The issue is not whether the world is ever-changing, but whether judges should treat the Constitution as ever-changing to meet their own agendas and desires, often over the lawfully expressed preferences of voters, legislators and the founders.

Still, if the Constitution is unclear or inadequate, what's a strict constructionist to do? Propose changes, and you're dubbed a hypocrite and a radical for wanting to "tinker with the genius of our constitutional design," or else you're guilty of hypocritical conservative judicial activism.

The relevant fact is that central to the genius of the Constitution's design are the mechanisms to change it. That process is arduous, requiring long and deliberate debates at the national and state levels. (In over two centuries, thousands of amendments have been proposed, 33 have been approved by Congress, and only 27 have been ratified by the states. That's not tinkering, that's craftsmanship.)

The Left could theoretically change America into the European utopia they think exists across the pond...but to do it, they'd have to change our Constitution.  Rarely, if ever, do they even attempt to go about their "hope and change" business in this manner because they know the majority of the American people want nothing to do with it.