It’s not the president, and it’s not the Congress; it’s the people.
Clark Coleman makes a nuanced and thought-provoking argument for McCain, but his point transcends the question of whom we should support for the presidency and the Congress.
Mr. Coleman writes:
Either we succeed in imparting to the American people an understanding of what conservatism and liberalism are, and they choose conservatism, or else our civilizational heritage will be squandered. It isn’t whether we elect Obama or McCain. It isn’t whether we elect X GOP representatives and Y GOP senators in 2008 who have no philosophical understanding of conservatism and our heritage, or whether we fall short of numbers X and Y. Ultimately, endeavors such as VFR educate enough Americans or they don’t. If not, we decline and fall. That is why I spend time reading such as VFR in the first place. Those are the stakes.
In the meantime, exactly who we elect to the Presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives can be useful as a rear-guard holding action to buy time and slow the onslaught of the enemies of our civilization. There is value in such a fight. It is hard to predict which election outcome will slow the onslaught the most. A case can be made either way.
For me, in this sorry choice, the federal judiciary and the enforcement of immigration laws are the key holding actions. I voted for Peroutka in 2004, yet I find myself quite pleased to have Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court. If O’Connor had retired earlier, we might not have had the Grutter decision. There is very little to praise in eight years of Dubya, but judicial appointments are the primary exception to the rule. Bush took the advice of the Federalist Society crowd and made hundreds of conservative appointments throughout the federal judiciary. We had to pressure the boob to get Roberts instead of Harriet Miers, but the bottom line is still a success story. I was unconcerned in 2004 whether my vote might lead to a John Kerry victory. If Kerry had won, we might have no meaningful gun ownership rights at the moment, to take one example. I don’t want to repeat this by not voting for McCain and then being secretly pleased with his appointments. If I want them that much, and think our civilization might depend on them, I need to hold my nose and vote for him.
An amazing story not discussed much at conservative blogs is that the Bush administration has been aggressively enforcing immigration laws throughout 2008. Why would a lame duck Mestizophile like Bush have his executive branch doing such a thing? I don’t know, but I think McCain will continue the practice until he thinks it will justify seeking an amnesty, and then we can fight him on the amnesty like we fought Dubya. See Joe Guzzardi’s recent article for details.
Maybe having McCain as president will retard the progress of educating the citizenry, or maybe it won’t. I really don’t care a whole lot what it does to “the Republican party” per se because my hopes do not lie in politicians. My electoral philosophy is simple and realistic (a.k.a. cynical): Educate the people, then have the people bully the politicians, but never dream that politicians are anything other than what politicians have generally been throughout the ages. I think getting a large number of Americans to understand basic conservative philosophy (i.e. it does not just mean “tax cuts” or “military spending”) is less of a pipe dream than getting 51 senators and 218 representatives to be educated, philosophically committed conservatives in the absence of a public that is already so.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 24, 2008 08:36 PM | Send