Richmond, November 6, 2009

             For amusement, sometimes, or a kind of vacation away from the weightier aspects of this wahr, I sit and muse about the very basic elements of political and human discourse.
             Many years ago, around Carter's time, I read a column in the Arizona Republic by Mary McGrory in which she stated that "liberalism" stood for the proposition that all human activity should be subject to the political process. Since that idea was anathema to the Constitution, as a professing liberal I had a choice to make. So it was the day I quit being even a liberal in name only.
             Some years later, after a long stay in Russia, the first full winter after Clinton was inaugurated, I was walking in downtown Cincinnati, on my way to a meeting with some 5th Street lawyers. A tall young man, in black dress overcoat, grey scarf, and a clipboard stopped to ask me some questions. He explained he was conducting a poll, and seeing he was dressed better than I, I didn't bother to ask "for whom?".
             His first questions was simple: "What do you consider to be the most important political issue before the American people today?"
             Easy, as Clinton had already been there almost a year. So my answer was one word "Honesty."
             In dead seriousness, without looking up from the clipboard, he said, "I guess I can put you down as a Republican, then." It was not a question, but a statement of fact....so in quick understanding, I turned and walked the other way.

             I think about that episode a lot. I've told it a hundred times, and shushed more Democrats than you can imagine. But I was always unsettled about what that young fellow was telling me, for what that fellow was telling me was that honesty, simple honesty, telling the truth versus telling a lie had been reduced to a political calculation. One of the most important "survival-enhancing" attributes for civilization had been put into a box along with campaign slogans, songs, and parade banners. A mere "party" favor, really.
             Instead of politics being played on a field designed by a sense of truth, (among other cultural norms), in this fellow's eyes, truth was being played out on a field designed by politics. It really was an alternative universe one of us lived in.
            And there's the rub. Who's on the outside looking in, and who's on the inside looking out? And which, in anthropology-speak, represents survival for the civilization?
            My God! Mary McGrory had won...and civilization lost.

            I always knew there was something profound in these encounters, but since I had no drunk Russians at my side to quickly walk up and point it out, as they had with the operative (Homer Simpson) clause of the Declaration of Independence, it took years for the answer to be revealed to me.
           The Constitution of the United States, in it essence, is not a political document, and conservatism, therefore, in its essence, is not a political dogma.
           We are, to the core, anti-political, for the Constitution provides a system whereby people can go about their lives without politics, pushing what we traditionally refer to as politics to the margins of their lives, where they can attend to it as often as sitting down to make the house and car payment at the beginning of each month.
           Seriously, how can we debate politically Jefferson's famous Homer Simpson clause of the Declaration, "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" when we hold that as an essence of human existence? Only the Left, the Marxists, the "Fascialists", believe human equality to be a political issue, and By God, it seems they now control the turf.
           You can't watch a news show, even on Fox, in which some fundamental understanding of human liberty isn't matter-of-factly relegated to the subordinate position of an idea(l) whose political fate has yet to be decided, or considered to be subject to the political caprice or power. Think about it. Watch for it. It is pervasive. Every time the word "partisan" is used, look for an underlying relegation of a universal truth into a political niche.
         
           You can see why we're losing then. It's their ball field, their game rules, even their ball. By us (conservatives and GOP alike) dropping the ball by not making the constitutionality of the health care plan our first line of attack (or is it defense?), we have inadvertently cast the Constitution into that same old box of political tools, which, like truth, can be pulled out, or hidden away, at the choice of the game-players.
           We need to refuse to concede this field, or we can't win.
           Bernie Chumm has been working on a piece criticizing Glenn Beck's book, Arguing With Idiots (sort of), in which he says we must stop conceding premises to the Left that we know to be false. He believes, and I agree, that every time a newsman, interviewer or member of the opposition Left drops one of those "as everyone knows" little lies, prefaced often with "partisan", the conversation has to stop at that very moment, and the subject turned toward the lie, and not to whether the jobs saved by the stimulus package is factual or not.
          Rule: Refuse to play on a field designed by, and rules defined by, lies.
          Conservatism isn't about politics, it is about territory; cultural territory the Constitution (and God) says every free man and women are entitled to stake out, and even anthropologists will admit, are necessary for a culture to more forward, grow, and prosper, propagate and survive.
          This is why we fight.
          Now, we just have to start fighting smarter.
Vassar Bushmills