Libertarians and Democrats

I saw this Will Wilkinson piece earlier and read it all: "A Libertarian’s Lament: Why Ron Paul Is an Embarrassment to the Creed." I didn't bother commenting on it because Wilkinson's not worth it. He's a drug-addled leftist, IMHO, and a pretty much typical libertarian. So, what do you know, but American Glob has picked up the slack, "In Which I Respectfully Disagree With Will Wilkinson" (via Glenn Reynolds):

I don’t know Will Wilkinson personally but I know he’s a Libertarian writer who has worked for the highly regarded Cato Institute.



Wilkinson wrote an article for The New Republic today in which he calls Ron Paul an “embarrassment” to the creed of Libertarianism.



I like many of Ron Paul’s ideas and disagree with others, specifically his approach to foreign policy but my objection to Wilkinson’s article has nothing to do with Ron Paul.



It’s based on the first half of his second sentence…

In 2006, I tossed a few dollars at the Democrat running for Senate against the loathsome Rick Santorum. It could have been a three-headed goat, for all I cared, but Wikipedia says it was Bob Casey.

Before you jump to conclusions, let me state for the record that I am not now, nor have I ever been a supporter of Rick Santorum. I don’t believe he is a “loathsome” person as Wilkinson characterized him, I think he is probably a decent man despite our political differences.



My problem with Wilkinson’s article is simply this:



I don’t believe it’s possible to be a Libertarian and support Democrats. Ever.

Keep reading.



Actually, I doubt it would take long, but you could probably find lots of libertarians who supported Democrats in California last year, when Proposition 19 was on the ballot. Both Democrats and Libertarians endorsed the measure, which placed them in a de facto political alliance. Indeed, there's also a "progressive-libertarian coalition" that joined forces on the initiative. So, while in theory it may be impossible to be a libertarian and support Democrats, in fact those two ideologies generally have just as much in common as do libertarians and conservatives on support for free markets. Indeed, if you look at criminal justice and civil liberties you're more likely to see Democrats (progressives) allied with libertarians. Frankly, when it comes to a robust foreign policy and a defense of social conservatism, I make little distinction between leftists and libertarians. Throw in gay marriage (libertarians back it), and really, what's left for libertarians to be associated with that is generally referred to as right wing? Ron Paul is loathsome to me on foreign policy, but even more we learn over and over again that's he's anti-Semitic, and even Will Wilkinson attacks him as racist. I just can't stand people like that. A foreign policy that excoriates U.S. support for Israel turns quickly into a crude copy of neo-communist Jew-bashing eliminationism. So with all due respect, I'd think American Glob might want to rethink his partiality to Ron Paul in a hypothetical match up between Paul and Obama. They're both disasters, and a pox on both of their houses.

Romney Leads in Latest Reason-Rupe Public Opinion Survey

At Reason, "Romney Edges Perry in New Reason-Rupe Poll; Obama's Approval Rating at 47% and Congress' at Just 14%; Nearly 75% of Voters Open to 3rd-Party Candidate." Well, polls sure are more interesting when you have such lovely ladies analyzing the results:

PJTV Trifecta: Conservative 2012 Showdown?

A great discussion, and Bill Whittle elaborates some of the themes from his talk last week:

Libertarians on Abortion

I'm going to having more on libertarianism in an upcoming essay. I don't see it as a governing ideology, although certainly we could improve a lot of public life, especially economic life, by adopting a way more libertarian programmatic agenda. That said, I've always disliked the rejection of a lot of social morality in libertarianism, and Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie capture some of the moral spinelessness at the clip:

It's enough to say, as Matt Welch does, that one supports the freedom element of the right to an abortion. That part is fine. I've never argued we should have 100 percent criminalization of abortion. The squishy ground is where Nick Gillespie treads, and I don't think he acquits himself well. In fact, he's so squishy he harms even the liberty case for the pro-choice position. Libertarianism becomes a license for perverse libertinism. It's sick to think about what happens to the baby when a woman exercises that sliding scale for the termination of pregnancy. But again, that's why I'm neoconservative on domestic issues.

Ed Morrissey, who prompted the clip, has more: "Video: What is the libertarian position on abortion?"

Progressives Cheer Death of Motorcyclist Who Died Protesting Helmet Laws

I guess the death of Philip Contos, who lost control and flew over the handlebars on his '83 Harley, hitting his head, gives ideological vindication to the progressive left, some of whom are gleefully mocking the rider. The background details are at Clutch & Chrome, "Rider dies at motorcycle helmet protest in New York State."

The death of a motorcycle rider while protesting helmet laws in upstate New York has made international headlines.

The tragic irony around the death of 55-year-old Philip A. Contos won’t be lost on those involved in the ongoing debate which weighs rights against needs in the case of mandatory helmet laws. Nor will it be the last time the events of Saturday June 2nd are discussed.

The accident happened Saturday afternoon in the town of Onondaga, in central New York near Syracuse. Contos was taking part participating in a protest ride against helmet laws in upstate New York in an event organized by American Bikers Aimed Towards Education, or ABATE.

ABATE is a motorcycle rights group organized by chapters all over the United States and promotes motorcycle safety, awareness and education and organizes motorcycle rides.

Contos was riding his 1983 Harley-Davidson with a group of bikers who were protesting helmet laws by not wearing helmets when tragedy struck.

"He hit the brakes, lost control, was ejected and struck his head on the road,“ State Trooper Robert Jureller said, “He suffered a skull fracture."

Crooks & Liars is using the story to ridicule self-interested personal behavior, which is apparently a lesson for "Ayn Rand fans." See, "Moral of The Story: When You Always Put Your Own Interests First, It Can Work Against Your Interests." And even worse is ASFL John Cole at Balloon Juice, "Freedumb Riders."

Don Surber responds, "Mocking the Dead." (Via Memeorandum.)

InstaVision: 'Libertarians to the Rescue'

Via Glenn Reynolds:

Buy the book: The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America.

Man's Rights

Well, with all the recent talk about "Atlas Shrugged," I've been skimming back over some of her writings. The novel is almost 1,100 pages, and I have no plans to re-read it (although I'm considering The Fountainhead for another round). I have been reading some of Rand's essays, for example, "Man's Rights", which is featured in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness. A sample:

The principle of man’s individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system—as a limitation on the power of the state, as man’s protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right. The United States was the first moral society in history.

All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary coexistence of individuals. All previous systems had held that man’s life belongs to society, that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by favor, by the permission of society, which may be revoked at any time. The United States held that man’s life is his by right (which means: by moral principle and by his nature), that a right is the property of an individual, that society as such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights.

A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self- sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action-which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)

The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.

More at the link.

Kurt Loder Reviews 'Atlas Shrugged' at Reason

See "Where is John Galt?":

Anyone not familiar with Rand’s novel will likely be baffled by the goings-on here. Characters spend much time hunkered around tables and desks nattering about rail transport, copper-mining, and the oil business. A few of these people are stiffly virtuous (“I’m simply cultivating a society that values individual achievement”), but most are contemptible (“We must act to benefit society”…“a committee has decided”…“We rely on public funding.”) These latter creeps should set our blood boiling, but they’re so cartoonishly one-dimensional that any prospective interest soon slumps. We are initially intrigued by the recurring question, “Who is John Galt?” But since the movie covers only the first third of the novel (a crippling miscalculation), we never really find out, apart from noticing an anonymous figure lurking around the edges of the action, togged out in a trench coat and a rain-soaked fedora like a film-noir flatfoot who’s wandered into an epoch far away from his own.

She's Hot. She's Sexy ... Ayn Rand's Bigger Than Ever

From Matt Welch at Hit and Run, "How Ayn Rand 'was loathed by the mainstream conservative movement'."

Following the links takes to Donald Luskin's piece at WSJ, "Remembering the Real Ayn Rand: The author of "Atlas Shrugged" was an individualist, not a conservative, and she knew big business was as much a threat to capitalism as government bureaucrats."

Welch notes that Luskin's got a new book coming out, "I Am John Galt: Today's Heroic Innovators Building the World and the Villainous Parasites Destroying It." And he also points us to Reason's 2009 cover story, "She’s Back! Ayn Rand is bigger than ever. But are her new fans radical enough for capitalism?" It's a little dated (nobody's "going Galt," for example), although there's an important message there, revived again this week by President Obama's speech on the budget:

For Rand’s popularity to achieve political traction, Randism will have to move beyond the strange preoccupation of a few politicians and the full-time passion of two specialist think tanks. Her ideas will need to become the guiding principle for a significant voting bloc or politically active movement. And that is a difficult problem for Objectivism, which as an organized movement never managed to convert the millions of cash-paying Rand customers into active “radicals for capitalism,” to use the author’s own self-description.

I love the celebration of the individual, but I'm no atheist and some of Rand's individualist abandon leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But Rep. Paul Ryan is cited at the piece. Ryan's Catholic, so he's not going in whole hog for Rand's vision in the moral sphere. But he does endorse the emphasis on liberty in the market (narrowly defined), and the threat from the bureaucratic Leviathan that's more real than ever under the current Democrat regime. I think these points indicate an adaptable Randism for people who aren't that radical. Frankly, it's pretty rad just to go Rand on economic individualism, so folks can sort out Objectivist ethics in others moral realms after that point.

'Atlas Shrugged': New Film Takes Sorta Randian Road to Big Screen

I'm surprised.

A decent and fair report on the front page of today's Los Angeles Times, "'Atlas Shrugged' finally comes to the screen, albeit in chunks."

It has taken businessman John Aglialoro nearly 20 years to realize his ambition of making a movie out of "Atlas Shrugged," the 1957 novel by Ayn Rand that has sold more than 7 million copies and has as passionate a following among many political conservatives and libertarians as "Twilight" has among teen girls.

But the version of the book coming to theaters Friday is decidedly independent, low-cost and even makeshift. Shot for a modest $10 million by a first-time director with a cast of little-known actors, "Atlas Shrugged: Part I," the first in an expected trilogy, will play on about 300 screens in 80 markets. It's being marketed with the help of conservative media and "tea party" organizing groups and put into theaters by a small, Salt Lake City-based booking service.

The fact that one of the 20th century's most influential books is coming to movie screens in such a fashion is — depending on whom you ask — a reflection of liberal Hollywood's aversion to Rand's ideas, a symptom of Aglialoro's rigid adherence to them, or a testament to the challenges inherent in adapting the complex tome.

Aglialoro ultimately made a movie that hews more to Rand's ideology than the conventions of cinematic storytelling, at the risk that far fewer people will see it. Taking a page from the independent blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ," however, he is paying for his own theater bookings and marketing his film to an audience Hollywood often overlooks.

Keep reading at the link. The piece notes that the producers "showed footage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington..." Also mentioned there is Freedomworks, where bloggers at the CPAC blog-bash saw a preview screening of the film's trailers.

The movie comes out next Friday, April 15th. There's a couple of local tea parties that day, so I might see it on Saturday --- and then I'll update with my own review.

True Conservatives

I'm trippin' on this graphic, from Melissa Clouthier, "Should Libertarians Be Banned From CPAC?" (via Memeorandum). It's not developed from Melissa's discussion, but can we say the tea party represents "true conservatism" if large numbers of tea partiers are closer to the libertarian position on defense? I'm neocon, and firmly is the defense and social conservatives circles, but I'm also a tea partier and would like to see more fiscal restraint in government, although that circle's less defining of my ideological identity. Anyway, folks'll have to read Melissa's post to see if she'd boot libertarians from CPAC. (And folks should check Midnight Blue's CPAC updates, while I'm thinking about it.)

P.S. I doubt Dan Riehl would be a "true conservative" as measured by the graph. He's not a big defense kinda guy, but nevertheless touts himself as an ideological gatekeeper.

Don't Text and Drive

At Mashable, "AT&T Documentary Takes on Texting-While-Driving."

I don't text and drive. I hate that others do. Should the state prohibit it? Of course, but check with the anarcho-commies like JBW for the "nanny state" whining (and the stoned Reason-oids as well, unfortunately).

WikiLeaks' Dishonesty and Hypocrisy

The latest WikiLeaks dump could be breaking a record for provoking debate. I've said a lot already. But I'm thinking back to how badly the MFM and progressive manchild bloggers got beat on the Apache video last April. Jawa Report was doing yeoman's work, for example, "For The Idiots Who Still Say There Was no RPG -- UPDATED: Wiki Leak as Left Wing Propaganda."

Liars and hypocrites. And lots more in the news. For example, at The Guardian's reader-response interview, Julian Assange refused to answer this question:

Julian.

I am a former British diplomat. In the course of my former duties I helped to coordinate multilateral action against a brutal regime in the Balkans, impose sanctions on a renegade state threatening ethnic cleansing, and negotiate a debt relief programme for an impoverished nation. None of this would have been possible without the security and secrecy of diplomatic correspondence, and the protection of that correspondence from publication under the laws of the UK and many other liberal and democratic states. An embassy which cannot securely offer advice or pass messages back to London is an embassy which cannot operate. Diplomacy cannot operate without discretion and theprotection of sources. This applies to the UK and the UN as much as the US.

In publishing this massive volume of correspondence, Wikileaks is not highlighting specific cases of wrongdoing but undermining the entire process of diplomacy. If you can publish US cables then you can publish UK telegrams and UN emails.

My question to you is: why should we not hold you personally responsible when next an international crisis goes unresolved because diplomats cannot function.

Julian ASS-ange

More later ...

PREVIOUSLY: "Progressive Manchildren and WikiLeaks."

Progressive Manchildren and WikiLeaks

That's John Hawkins:

And here's Progressive Manchild #1: Glenn Greenwald, "WikiLeaks Debate With Steven Aftergood." And seriously. Is Julian Assange a hero? Hardly. The dude should be dead.

RELATED: Just now seeing another manchild, "Doctor Science" at Obsidian Wings (hmm, could be a womanchild), "The culture of conspiracy, the conspiracy of culture" (via Memeorandum). This isn't all that complicated, as I discussed yesterday: "Misunderstanding WikiLeaks." Indeed, it's pretty much broken down to a debate between serious folks on national security and antiwar nihilists. And yes, idiotic manchildren, or in the case of Charli Carpenter ... well, I won't go there: "What is Wikileaks?"

Misunderstanding WikiLeaks

There's some debate on the degree of international cooperation in apprehending WikiLeaks' Julian Assange. At Telegraph UK, "WikiLeaks: British Police Asked to Join Hunt for Julian Assange." Also at Memeorandum. And there's some breaking stuff at NYT that I haven't gotten to yet, for example, "Diplomats Noted Canadian Mistrust Toward U.S."

For now what's sparking my interest, and some frustration, is the easy accolades so many commenters are offering to WikiLeaks, with attention especially on claims that increasing transparency is a means to a greater libertarian end. And in this I'm finding, as a side note, through Ross Douthat, that Will Wilkinson is now blogging at The Economist. I was a subscriber for three years while in graduate school. I read that magazine religiously. But like just about every other mainstream periodical in recent years, its quality has deteriorated badly. Outside the pages of Wall Street Journal, The Economist used to be the place to read the most rigorous analysis of free market economics. Yet now the previously classically-inclined editors at The Economist have jumped ship. (Alan Caruba captured this unfortunate descent just the other day, "Climate Change Idiocy and The Economist.") So I guess it makes sense that Will Wilkinson's blogging there now. The countercultural left has increasingly joined with ideological libertarianism to escalate the contemporary attack on the modern moral regime and the foundations of social order. To take that attack to its logical conclusion is to launch an extreme repudiation on state power, since it's the state that controls the monopoly of force and the means to prohibit certain activities, such as drug use and prostitution. But with the recent WikiLeaks dump, the left-libertarian alliance has metastasized into a romantic nihilism, which sees a heroic purpose to WikiLeaks when the exact opposite is true. My old infantile antagonist E.D. Kain gleefully provides a synopsis, which perfectly illustrates the verbose left-libertarianism's replacement of firm realism with fluffy fawning:

The government has a monopoly on violence; the media has only words. We should encourage underdogs like WikiLeaks who continue to fight an uphill battle, not against the United States – this country is more than its government, after all – but against the over-reach of the state. We have ceded so much of our own privacy to our government, perhaps now we would like to return the favor.

WikiLeaks may be a small player, really, in the bigger scheme of things. But to some degree it is also a bellwether, a forecast of things to come as information and technology continue to nip at the heels of the state. Perhaps we really are approaching a time when government becomes less relevant, less necessary, where other institutions both real and virtual can begin to supplant the role of the state in our lives, subversively at first but then more openly as time passes. I don’t know. I’m not even sure what that would look like in practice. Predicting the future is not among my talents; I cannot see where frying pans leave off and fires begin. But if I am at all correct then we should also realize that when an institution is threatened it reacts accordingly. Things will get worse before they get better.

If this were just a philosophical excursion vis-à-vis theories of federalism and government devolution, that'd be one thing. But it's not. We're talking about a 21st century non-state actor conducting information warfare against the United States. It's not a big surprise that WikiLeaks' most enthusiast backers are found among the world's anarcho-communist contingents. What's pathetic --- although not new, just even more pronounced --- is how willingly the libertarians jump on board this lame new vehicle toward alleged greater government accountability.

So to be clear: Julian Assange despises America with all he's got. There's nothing good about his agenda. And libertarianism is deathly nihilism if folks can't get their heads around the idea that there's little functional alternative to the nation-state in today's post-modern advanced democratic societies. That's not to say we can't limit the expansion of the state nor improve government performance and accountability. But we'll destroy ourselves by radical attempts to tear it down. And back over at The Economist is a deep clue to the ideological confusion. Folks apparently never got the memo from earlier this year on the bogus WikiLeaks Apache video "Collateral Damage." There's wasn't anything "objective" about it. But tell that to The Economist:

WikiLeaks's release of the "Collateral Murder" video last April was a pretty scrupulous affair: an objective record of combat activity which American armed forces had refused to release, with careful backing research on what the video showed. What we got was a window into combat reality, through the sights of a helicopter gunship. You could develop different interpretations of that video depending on your understanding of its context, but it was something important that had actually taken place.

A lot of commentators apparently act as though they're offering profound insights of democratic theory when expounding on WikiLeaks. I note E.D. Kain as one exhibit, although Glenn Greenwald comes to mind as well. But it's really not such a super sophisticated or intellectually glamorous issue. WikiLeaks wants to destroy authority. People are going to get killed, and not in the name of any state interest that could be otherwise checked by the processes of democratic governance. IBD had a great editorial on Julian Assange the other day, and I'll close with this, "An Infoterrorist?":

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the soon-to-be chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is absolutely correct in calling for Assange's outfit to be classified a terrorist organization under U.S. law. King has called on Attorney General Eric Holder to charge Assange with a crime under the Espionage Act. While Holder's office has announced an investigation, don't hold your breath.

But what of Assange's accomplices in the U.S. and foreign media?

The New York Times, where Assange gets to dump "all the secrets fit to leak," boasts that its collaborations with WikiLeaks give "the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions" — hardly a rationale for endangering our liberty.

This is a continuing, slow-motion disaster for the U.S., and our government has done little beyond having a State Department lawyer send a huffy letter to Assange's lawyer in Sweden.

These leaks must be plugged — by force if necessary — before it is American blood we find flowing.

At the video, more radical left-wing Wiki-boosting from communist Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!

RELATED: From Peter Feaver, "WikiLeaks Only Interested in Damaging U.S. Foreign Policy."

Proposed Cigarette Product Warning Labels

At the FDA (and at WaPo):

Commentary at Weasel Zippers, "Nanny State Gone Wild – New Graphic Cigarette Warnings From the FDA."



I don't know. Maybe some folks are so stupid they actually need these warnings. Besides, what would folks like egghead JBW do without some Nanny Statism to gripe about? Get rid of warning labels and marijuana laws in one fell swoop!! Then everyone would have equal opportunity to death!



Added: At Doug Ross, "The FDA's 10 Most Terrifying Proposed Cigarette Warning Labels."

Rand Paul Responds to 'Anti-Christian' Attack Ad

It seems eons ago, but back in May I wrote in defense of Rand Paul's comments on the meaning of the Civil Rights Act. Paul had just won his Senate primary race and he took a big gamble debating the nuances of states' rights and federal policy on the Rachel Maddow show. On principle, Rand Paul "won" that debate hands down. The problem is that we're past the point in America where it's even respectable to make states' rights arguments --- e.g., a business owner's right to serve whom they want without federal interference --- without appearing cold-hearted at least and out-an-out racist at worst. Rachel Maddow was having a field day, and Paul held off on public appearances for a week or two after that.

I haven't paid much attention to Paul since then, and I suspect that in the long run his ideas aren't all that different from his dad's, and thus pretty much unforgivable. So I'm interested in this new attack on Paul from his opponent Democrat Jack Conway. Left Coast Rebel's got the background: "After Debate, Rand Paul Refuses to Shake Hands with his Democratic Opponent Jack Conway." At issue is this Conway ad, which attacks Paul as anti-Christian:

That's a scorcher. And Rand Paul's not taking it lying down:

My good friend Tim is urging his readers to "Support Rand Paul." I'm not going that far. I'm still a bit agnostic on the Kentucky GOP Senate nominee. Paul's got big question marks on foreign policy. See Philip Klein, "Rand Paul and Israel," Jenn Q. Public, "Rand Paul: A Jeremiah Wright Republican," and especially Sultan Knish, "Rand Paul, Anti-War, Anti-Gitmo and Anti-American."

RELATED: From Melissa Clouthier, "Libertarians: Still In Search Of Their Perfect World. Practically Irrelevant."

Cameras in the Supreme Court

Making the case at Reason:

HAT TIP: Glenn Reynolds.

Tea Party Populism

Check Henry Olsen, at National Affairs, "Populism, American Style." Olsen contrasts the millenarian populism of modern totalitarian regimes to the historically moderate populism of the American case:

American populism shares with its classical cousin the use of heated rhetoric against an unjust "other," and the idea that popular control of the state is essential to the restoration of justice. But it breaks from the classical model in three significant respects.

First, successful populist movements tend to characterize the American people not as helpless victims, but as honest folk dispossessed of their right to achieve prosperity and happiness through self-improvement and hard work. As such, American populists seek not a charismatic leader who will bring them order and justice, but rather a re-opening of the avenues to self-advancement and self-reliance.

Second, the "other" in American populism tends not to be vilified as an implacable enemy without rights. Instead, he is an adversary: one who might be corrupt or acting unjustly at the moment, but still a fellow citizen who retains his basic American goodness, is capable of redemption, and is secure in his rights. Despite some reckless accusations to the contrary, today's populist movement seems no different on this front.

Third and most important, effective American populists generally do not seek to take the enemy's property to redistribute it to the people....

This passage might raise an eyebrow for folks today looking for lessons from the past:

In the '60s, many Americans grew uneasy with the course the country seemed to be taking, both politically and socially. The America of farms and small towns was giving way to a nation of suburbs; the growth of large corporations, the rise of television, and the sharp increase in internal mobility were eroding the cohesiveness of local communities. Accompanying these changes was the growth of the national government, which had continued apace even under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower. Despite increasing affluence and relative peace abroad, an ever-larger number of Americans felt their country was becoming unrecognizable — and they wanted to take it back.

So it was that intellectual conservatism and popular anxiety joined forces in Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign to create a crude populism of the right. But despite what would appear to have been a favorable political climate, this amalgam proved dismally unpopular. While the rhetoric of Goldwater's campaign was generally fairly measured, that of his backers was too often not. Much like the Populist farmers in the late 1890s, Goldwater's supporters felt themselves to be oppressed. Many railed against elites, sometimes crossing the line from battling an adversary to assaulting an enemy; they argued, for instance, that there was a conscious conspiracy between business, government, and intellectuals to end American freedom and to yield to communist ambitions at home and abroad ....

Ronald Reagan, then an increasingly political Hollywood actor, entered the fray near the end of the campaign with a nationally televised speech on Goldwater's behalf. Casting the election as a choice between "up or down — up to man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism," Reagan accused incumbent president Lyndon Johnson of spreading socialism. Johnson's administration, Reagan said, was seeking to "trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state" and engaging in "appeasement" with our enemies. Noting that he was a former Democrat, Reagan closed with a conscious invocation of Franklin Roosevelt: "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness." The movie star's message roused the faithful, but fell flat among the voting masses.

Goldwater's crushing defeat seemed to all but the most die-hard conservatives to be the death knell of this nascent movement. Viewed against the backdrop of American political history, it is not hard to see why Goldwater lost: The tone and ideas of some of his extreme backers were viewed as odd and frightening by most voters ....

But check this passage on the prospect for upcoming elections:

Those who believe that the aggressive, angry pitch of the Tea Partiers' rhetoric will automatically alienate independent voters should think again. As we have seen, successful populist movements define adversaries in stark and often abrasive terms. Skilled political leaders in a democracy — figures like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan — know what pundits and academics often overlook: that they must move the heart before they can persuade the mind. In our modern mass democracy especially, this often requires a simple narrative: an easily identifiable "good" hero, a "bad" villain, and an unambiguous moral arc — one that shows how society can be redeemed from its current, fallen state, and how average Americans can flourish under the reformed regime. Such an appeal obviously requires sharp rhetoric and clear divisions.

Critics of the Tea Partiers and other conservative populists are right, however, in their concerns that aggressive rhetoric can go too far. William Jennings Bryan lost because he painted a portrait of his time that voters didn't recognize, and because he made a majority afraid. Some libertarian populists, with their rejection of every facet of the modern welfare state, are likely to do the same — because even this center-right nation does not want to see the welfare state dismantled. And just as some of Barry Goldwater's supporters tainted his campaign with their accusations of communist conspiracies reaching even to the presidency, the conspiracy theorists who insist that President Obama was not born in America risk damaging conservative populism today.

Sound statements.

A skilled conservative/libertarian might do well to ponder them as we head into 2012's "invisible primary," which launches almost as soon as the votes from this November midterms are counted. But who might be that skilled, that is, "Reaganesque"?

PHOTO CREDIT: An enthusiastic tea party patriot at Irvine's tax day tea party, April 15, 2010.

Inequities of American Farm Policies

Via Left Coast Rebel:

And check the website, at Cato Institute.