Bring Me Your Heresies!
Troy Senik, Guest Contributor ·
Dec 9, 2010 at 2:50pm
A few days on Ricochet and I'm truly delighted at the erudition and graciousness of the audience. You're an interesting group to read from, which is why I've decided to poke you with a stick.
Since we all know that the most interesting political debates are the fraternal quarrels on the right, I'm curious: what issue do you think the modern right (define it as the GOP, the conservative movement, whatever you please) is the most wrong on? I'll weigh in once I comb through some of your responses.
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Sep '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
Abortion targets the underclass. Yet, the GOP seems unwilling to ever advance the argument that abortion is the ultimate racial hate crime. I think that's a mistake.
May '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
The GOP has not rolled back the size of the federal government. More or less Big-Government conservatism.
Dec '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
The Right media, politicians, pundits and such have capitulated to the homosexual agenda. They are terrified of being labeled homophobic if they publish the truth about homosexual pathologies and just how detrimental they are to decent, and "liberal" society.
Nor do they rigorously defend Christianity in the Public Square.
The Right does almost nothing to assert and promote itself in the cultural world of art. TV, film, plays, music, literature are all ceded to the Left and allowed the schools to progressively deteriorate into propaganda organs for the Left.
(They are even sabotaging the Narnia series.)
Do you think I can get Jay Nordlinger or The New Criterion to review my compositions like my Christmas carol here?
The Right does almost nothing to find and promote serious artists on its own side.
There is not (as far as my search has gone) a single publisher like Regnery, a conservative organ, that will touch fiction, literary or genre.
All my novels have to appeal to agents and editors who lean left. A tough sell, indeed.
Nor is there a single Catholic publisher for fiction of any kind.
Jul '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
As a libertarian, I feel the GOP is not necessarily wrong on the social issues - abortion, marriage, DADT, stem-cells - but that they allow a very vocal group of zealots to dominate the messaging in such a way that alienates - indeed, disgusts - independent voters who otherwise could be wooed to our side.
The Left has done a great job of exploiting this: "Oh, you don't want to associate yourself with those people. They're mean!"
Dec '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
I was going to mention that the Right has determined its best message is a secular one for fear of what you describe.
Except the "disgusting" label gets used anyway. You're evil if you want less govt, less taxes, less welfare, less govt health care.
Libertarians are smeared just as much as Christians as being evil, cruel, cold hearted, selfish, and mean.
So trying to sanitize the message doesn't help at all. The goalposts keep getting moved back to the default position that the Right is evil always and everywhere no matter how they couch their terms or philosophy.
Well, we're scroomed anyway.
May '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
Perhaps building on what Kenneth says above, I find it frustrating that the Republicans, stereotyped as the "Party of No" have been so willing to live up to the label, and define themselves by what they are against. We have not told the very compelling story of how fine life can be as a free-citizen in a country where the vast energy of the American people is released.
Living in a very liberal town I have heard folks say, "Republicans hate the poor." The answer is that Republicans don't hate the poor, but they do hate poverty. When we attack a mis-guided and failing program aimed at helping the poor we leave people thinking the alternative is even worse poverty. That's not what we are wanting. We want to do effective things to create jobs and lift people from poverty, but that message gets lost.
I guess it's what George Bush Sr. called "the vision thing." As he was admitting, we need to improve there.
Aug '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
I guess this is a flaw common to all people: distinguishing between being in the right (or factually correct) and being edifying (approachable to those who do not yet understand).
As I said, this is a problem with people, not right-wingers -- and perhaps those on the right are already far better at the distinction than leftists: it's hard for me to judge since I'm not used to thinking of leftists as being in the right terribly often (else I'd be a leftist).
Anyhow, right-leaners rightly respect that there's a truth independent from anybody's viewpoint, that is, the existence of objective truth. But you can't conclude from this that people should listen because you're telling the truth as you see it, even if you do so as honestly as the human heart is capable of.
It's conceptually easier to say that every viewpoint is worth understanding because they're all equally true. Leftists don't really believe this, but they at least can say it.
It's harder to say that many viewpoints are wrong, but still worth understanding for the sake of communication.
Sorry for not putting it more elegantly...
Edited on Dec 9, 2010 at 4:01pmNov '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
I think most on the right fail to make the moral argument for free market capitalism. It's all well and good (and true!) to point out that embracing socialism will leave us poorer, but that is not the most important argument in favor of freedom.
Aug '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
GUNS!
Oct '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
Repealing the 17th Amendment seems totally wacko. This past election, only 100 of 435 House seats were even in play due to gerrymandered districts and entrenched incumbency. Ironically, the Senate seems more inclined to follow the popular will on the issues of the day. Watch these Senators up in 2012: Manchin, Nelson, Webb, Casey, Lieberman (Brown of Ohio is a left wing ideologue who won’t stop voting that way to get reelected).
Oct '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
Can I vote twice?
Where is abolishing public sector unions? This seems on nobody’s radar (even Chris Cristie). Education reform is opposed at every turn by the NEA, et al. California, New York and Illinois are near bankruptcy due to overly generous pensions.
Jun '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
I think some of my fellow conservatives, who scream bloody murder and get all hysterical about illegal immigrants from Mexico--the segment that came for greater economic opportunity--would, if they were a Mexican peasant (with a hungry family to support) do the very same thing. Border-jumping is a federal misdemeanor. If you get caught, they send you home...sometimes. That's it. If economic fortunes were reversed, and I could sneak into Mexico to earn four times as much as I could earn in the United States, I'd be running across the border too. I don't support legalizing border-jumping, but I don't get hysterical about people doing exactly what I'd do if I was in their shoes. In the reverse situation--I'm an American peasant looking at vastly greener pastures in Mexico--my "sacred reverence" for Mexican law would not keep me out of Mexico, if my family needed the money. Border-jumping, if nobody gets killed, if they just get their lawn mowed, is not murder. It's just people succumbing to overwhelming temptation.
Aug '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
Conservative parties the world over that are unable to:
(I thought about adding "eliminating public sector unions", but I think that's more of a means towards reducing the size of government.)
Edited on Dec 9, 2010 at 4:52pmJul '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
I'm in agreement with a couple of them Here: Freedom.
Not enough talk or action about Freedom. The GOP seems to want to fight the left legislation vs. legislation. It turns into more legislation.
I want to see and hear "cut," "chop," "trim," "eliminate," "end," "stop," "reverse," "amputate," "curtail," "reduce," "diminish......" legislation from the federal government.
Nov '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
One of the things that I have always struggled with is the question of regulation. My gut instinct, and what I usually hear from the right, is no regulation is good regulation. We should just leave it up to the market and to business to figure out. But, historically, when it comes to things like safe working conditions, or the disposal of hazardous waste, companies always trend toward the money decision, not the safe decision. So as conservatives do we believe that some regulation is necessary? If so, how much, and in what context? Is there a principled stand?
Nov '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
Honestly, I think y'all are not answering Troy's question. He asked what is the contemporary right most wrong on, and y'all are giving him a list of ways you wish the Republican Party were more conservative.
My answers are two: Taxes and gays.
On the former I refer to the "No tax raises ever" crowd, the Grover Norquist/David Limbaugh crowd. I'm with NRO's Kevin Williamson here; the only way to fix the deficit without raising taxes is to cut the government by 36%. Sure, deep down inside I'd love for that to happen. I'd also love to live in a functioning anarcho-socialist society, but neither of those is going to happen in the real world.
While I take a back seat to no one in my hatred of judicial activism, I do think gay marriage is inevitable, and DADT is just plain dumb. I think legislatively enacted gay marriage with proper protections for religious organizations is something we should support. The problem with marriage is not that too many people want it.
Aug '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
Yes. Note that I didn't write "eliminate regulation". I wrote "simplify regulatory regimes".
It comes down to things like how regulations are enacted (passed by Congress or created by executive fiat), the degree to which regulations try to pre-empt decision-making by meddling in minutia, and the ability of officials to interpret and make exceptions.
(You'd be better off reading The Death of Common Sense by Philip K. Howard, which examines these problems way better than I can.)
Here's the example I often trot out (ad nauseum, perhaps?) to illustrate my point: Obamacare is 2,700+ pages long. The Canada Health Act is six pages long. As much as Canadians may dislike their health system, they can at least understand it.
Another example: The Federal Highways Act of 1956 was about 28 pages long. It created the Eisenhower Interstate System. Could you imagine the size of the act if a project that large was attempted today? The regulations would take thousands of pages.
Oct '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
You have to have a canon to have a heresy. There does not seem to be a true conservative canon. Conservatism GOP style seems to stand more for the status quo than a set of principles. In modern political history, at least since FDR, and maybe with the exception of "the Gipper", the Republicans have fortified every advancement of centralization of "federal power" made by the progressive left.
Call me a paleoconservative, but what this nation needs is a radical conservatism that advances the true principles of federalism and the freedom of the individual.
May '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
Jimmy Carter:
Not enough talk or action about Freedom. The GOP seems to want to fight the left legislation vs. legislation. It turns into more legislation.
I want to see and hear "cut," "chop," "trim," "eliminate," "end," "stop," "reverse," "amputate," "curtail," "reduce," "diminish......" legislation from the federal government.
Agreed.
The GOP's core problem is that it always accepts and promotes the creation of new agencies, new programs and new laws. It needs to focus exclusively on neutering government -- not mere cuts, but actual elimination of government authorities and programs.
To sell that to voters, they need to constantly inform and show citizens what America was like only two or three generations ago. They need to demonstrate with specific, concrete examples what freedoms we have lost and hope to regain.
Republicans must get off defense, both in legislation and in debates. The Left utterly dominates political discussion right now. Stick to honest reasoning. Stick to God. And brook no nonsense. Voters respond to courage.
Aug '10
Re: Bring Me Your Heresies!
For me, the question of gay marriage just leads back to the question of over-regulation and entitlements. I'm very sympathetic to the idea that marriage should be privatized completely, and that it isn't up to the government to "recognize" anybody's marriage.
For example: In Utah, if a man is legally married to one woman, but he happens to have several other women in his home that he supports, has sex with, and who bear him children, the State declares that he's a bigamist, even though he's only legally married to one woman. To me, it seems like it's none of the State's business unless he starts demanding spousal benefits for his various "wives". At that point, the State could say, "sorry, but we don't do spousal benefits any more."