Party platforms are usually better and more politically principled
than the candidates who run on them. Written as they are by
rank-and-file activists, they put the heart and soul of the party on
display, even when neither the officeholder nor the governing coalition
lives up to the promise. Rarely has a platform in our times been as good
as the Republican one from George W.’s own home state of Texas; indeed
it’s so good, it’s got all the right people mighty upset.
What’s especially interesting about this document is that it
indicates what’s on the mind of GOP activists in the state from which
the GOP presidential nominee hails. But unlike the candidate, these
folks are not interested in putting a conservative spin on the
Clinton-Gore ideological muddle. They are demanding a complete break
with the politics of the last decade.
The smarmy “third way” politics of our time is supplanted by
full-throated, Texas-style independence and radicalism that rejects
statism and collectivism across the board. Sure enough, Bob Herbert,
writing in the New York Times, considers it to be evidence of the “zany
extremism of the Republican Party in Mr. Bush’s home state.” Well, most
Texans would consider some of the goings on in New York a little zany
too.
As for Herbert, he would say the same (and probably has!) about
Jefferson, Paine, Henry, Adams, and the whole of the Southern political
tradition in America. He probably doesn’t care much for the Texas
penchant for resenting attempts at outside control. The platform only
appears non-mainstream by today’s standards; by the standards of
American history and current anti-government opinion in major parts of
the country and the world, this document is right on the money.
The preamble begins with a sweeping defense of freedom and
counterposes it with government’s continuing attack on liberty. This is
the single greatest insight one can have about the current political
situation. Freedom doesn’t mean having the Herbertian right to other
people’s money and property; it means the right to be left alone to
manage your affairs the way you see fit. Yet this one point eludes 9 out
of 10 commentators on politics who either don’t understand it, or favor
the wrong side in the battle.
Lefties are quick to jump on Republicans who praise freedom and then
demand that government step in to shape society in ways to their liking.
But the Lone Star GOP is more sophisticated: “No government on earth can
replace the nurturing love found in families, churches, and communities.
The more that government intervenes in personal relationships, the more
those relationships will be diminished, not strengthened. This is why
the more government spends ‘trying to solve’ poverty, education, and the
decline of the family, the more the problems grow.”
The preamble admits that some people find freedom to be a burden. To
them it warns that government is never a solution. “They will sacrifice
their future on the altar of the government’s false promises —
guaranteed education, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed security. No
government in history has kept those guarantees. Where has communism or
socialism worked?” This is the rhetoric of truth-telling, and not the
kind of thing you see in the mainstream press, or even the conservative
press.
The platform proceeds with a distinction that eludes even many
libertarians: the importance of localized political decision-making as
compared with centralization. “Not only does the Republican Party of
Texas proclaim the freedom of the individual citizen from the general
power of government, it also proclaims the state’s proper freedom from
federal control.” At last, some clarity about states’ rights, which, in
the American political context, always refers to the right to be free.
Even better are the named implications of this right: no census
powers for the feds other than those in the Constitution (counting
heads); the elimination of executive orders; an end to the “gathering,
accumulation, and dissemination of finger prints, Social Security
numbers, financial and personal information” by government; no more
federal emergency powers; no more federal land use controls; no more
taking of private property by the feds.
Imagine the degree to which this agenda would gut the central
government as we know it. It would matter less who held the office of
the presidency. Even if we someday ended up with another Clinton, he
would be denied the power to wreck the country with the stroke of the
pen — a power which Clinton has, and Congress has failed to take away
from him. Isn’t rule by good law rather than rule by men (whether good
or bad) what we should be seeking?
As we might expect from Texas, where guns are commonplace, the
platform is squarely against all gun control: “The Party calls upon the
US Congress to repeal any and all laws that infringe on the right of
citizens to keep and bear arms; to reject the establishment of any
mechanism or process to record, register, or monitor the ownership of
firearms; to reject the imposition of excessive taxation or regulation
on the manufacture or sale of firearms and ammunition.”
As for social issues, remember how the left is always trying to paint
the right as secretly theocratic? In truth, the threat runs the other
way: the government has come to believe that it is a god, and it has
been trying to crush the freedom of religion by erecting a secular
theocracy. The platform seems to understand this, asserting that “all
Americans have the right to practice their religious faith free of
persecution, intimidation, and violence.”
On environmentalism, the platform is rock solid. “We reaffirm the
belief in the fundamental constitutional concept of an individual’s
right to own and use property without governmental interference.”
Consistently applied, this provision would gut the invasive and
expensive eco-regulations which have locked up land and crushed new
technologies that would enhance our standard of living.
The Texas GOP comes out against the Department of Education, all
interference in the right to educate at home, the phony-baloney
classification of traditional discipline as child abuse, the federal
imposition of sensitivity training in colleges and universities, all
affirmative action and quotas, the minimum wage, all privileges for
labor unions, and even government-owned infrastructure.
The platform is further against the Kyoto Treaty, “sustainable
development,” the Endangered Species Act as a land-use control
regulation, the Biodiversity Treaty, all inheritance taxes, and the
Clinton administration’s “move toward the socialistic redistribution of
our national wealth.”
Left-liberal commentators have been whipping themselves up into a
frenzy about isolationism on the right, by which they mean opposition to
American imperialism. Well, the Texas GOP is Exhibit A in how dramatic
the turnaround from Cold War internationalism to the new right-wing
“mind-your-own-business” foreign policy truly is. Hence, the platform
demands a pullout from the United Nations, an end to funding the IMF,
the repeal of NAFTA and withdrawal from the World Trade Organization.
These are interesting positions. They suggest that the Lone Star GOP
should reevaluate its own leadership, which supported all these
programs.
Bob Herbert was particularly upset that the platform calls for the
abolition of the Federal Reserve System and the restoration of the gold
standard. Zany extremism? Not at all. Paper money is big government’s
credit card. The gold standard has the advantage of ending inflation,
ending business cycles, and restraining the growth of the public debt
and debt-financed government in general. It would also make sure that an
unelected banker like Alan Greenspan would no longer have the main power
over the economy; as even he once wrote, the gold standard and freedom
go together.
A platform that says something like this isn’t extremist or wacky, as
Herbert claims, though it surely shocks the sensibilities of New York
Times editorial writers. Its sentiments represent a radical departure
from the present command-and-control system of Clintonized government.
That is an agenda widely desired within the GOP, and also among
independents who don’t trust the GOP to carry out the program.
Devolution from central government and a restoration of liberty and
property is exactly what is called for in a post-socialist age. The
desire for such radical change isn’t limited to a fringe; it is the
dominant opinion in one of the largest state party organizations in the
country. Why must the nation’s press continue to report on rank-and-file
GOP opinions as if they are reporting on life on Mars?
In fact, if the platform has a problem, it is not its extremism but
its periodic and wholly unnecessary nod to conventional opinion. It
permits funding for NASA (located in Texas), some protectionism (when
domestic industries are out-competed), and the Americans With
Disabilities Act (no coincidence, passed by the Bush administration),
and whips up hysteria against China.
Also, the platform endorses the Pledge of Allegiance in public
schools, as if any child should be made to swear allegiance to the
central state in these times. This platform certainly doesn’t, and
that’s what’s good about it. Its significance is that it serves to
remind us that the opinions and taboos erected by our political leaders
and the mainstream press have little to do with the opinions of millions
and millions of real people, who, after all, have a history and a
future, and are voters too.
What is the greatest threat to free and fair elections in America? Here’s a hint
Dennis Prager