Those who harbor misgivings about the nation's predicament, which is the result of leftist policies, do so from two completely different philosophical perspectives, with two radically different understandings of the fundamental causes of the predicament and two mutually exclusive recipes for redressing them. No, I am not talking about the left-right divide in America, but instead a less well understood schism found in the center-right.

While this feeling is widespread, I will argue here that those who harbor it do so from two completely different philosophical perspectives, with two radically different understandings of the fundamental causes of our predicament and two mutually exclusive recipes for redressing them. No, I am not talking about the left-right divide in America, but instead a less well understood schism found in the center-right.

Most studies of political/cultural/social philosophy in the United States divide the population into three broad categories: (i) those on the left, aka liberals or progressives; (ii) the cohort on the right, aka conservatives (usually including libertarians, although that inclusion is somewhat problematic); and (iii) the center consisting of moderates or independents. I have argued recently (in this blog) that, since the respective visions for America in the 21^st century promulgated by the left and right are so radically at odds with each other, those in the middle are straddling an untenable fence. The two visions are so irreconcilable that there is no viable middle ground between them and any attempt to maintain such a position is tantamount to a “non-Solomonic splitting of the baby.” Nevertheless, the middle exists and, if anything, seems to be growing as more and more voters identify themselves as Independents, while fewer and fewer subscribe to one of the labels Republican or Democrat.

I have also argued (in the previously referenced post, and in another, longer piece in this journal) that, for decades, the leftist vision has been conquering the nation while support for rightist ideas atrophies. Witness:

• The federal government has grown to gargantuan proportions; the federal budget now consumes a quarter of GDP (historically, it’s rarely exceeded 18-19%); the federal deficit has ballooned to $15 trillion – roughly equal to GDP, and continues to grow at an alarming rate that foreshadows a cataclysmic debt crisis; and federal regulations, which have exploded in number, complexity and scale, are choking the life out of businesses, large and small.
• The military is shrinking and our standing in the world is in decline. In a misguided effort to replace hard power by soft power, we coddle dictators and abuse our allies.
• Our culture is saturated with pornography, banality and immorality; the marriage rate is down; the out-of-wedlock birthrate is skyrocketing; drug use is mushrooming; and traditional values are threatened.
• Our leaders are obsessed with peripheral and specious issues like climate change, diversity and gay rights, but they ignore critical problems like illegal immigration, a failed educational system and anti-Christian bias.
• Our economy is beset by permanent slow growth and chronic high unemployment.

Now amazingly, the massive discontent that we see on the left – typified by the Occupy Wall Street movement – expresses itself by asserting that we have not pursued strongly enough the leftist policies that are already subverting America. In particular, they say: we have not closed Guantanamo; same sex marriage is not universal; unions are not sufficiently powerful or ubiquitous; Roe v. Wade is under assault; the internet is not yet regulated; fossil fuels have not been banned; the pledge of allegiance still contains the phrase “under God”; 10-15 million illegal aliens have not been legalized; corporate executives make too much money; and, horror of horrors, Israel still exists. To me, these are the rants of a deranged bus driver who is guiding his vehicle straight toward the edge of a precipice over which he will plunge if he doesn’t stop, but his only concern is that the speed of his vehicle is not sufficiently high. I discount the leftist view of America’s predicament – the success of the left is precisely America’s predicament.

It is the folks in the center and on the right who have a better appreciation for how the developments of the last 80 years have placed our nation in mortal danger. But within that broad group – although there is wide agreement that the country has slipped off the tracks and is in danger of an existential calamity – those who recognize the danger manifest two fundamentally different ways of understanding the predicament.

One group, with representatives largely from the center, but many also from the right, sees the matter in purely a technical way. They believe: the government spends too much – it must spend less; there is enormous waste, fraud and mismanagement in the government – it must be run more efficiently and transparently; climate change is a diversion, if not a hoax – the government must focus on more serious problems that we face like energy shortages; peripheral issues and groups (gays, illegal aliens, Muslim minorities) receive too much attention – we must do a better job of addressing mainstream concerns; we don’t save enough, don’t drive carefully enough, take too many drugs and eat too much – we need to have our schools focus on teaching our children better habits; we shouldn’t coddle our enemies abroad – we must engage our allies more effectively in an effort to isolate our enemies more cleverly; our system of federal taxation/regulation is too onerous – we have to streamline it.

In short, this group does not see that the fundamental character of America has been altered. Instead they see too many extreme and ineffective policies – the answer to which is not to go to opposite extremes, but instead to find pragmatic solutions by careful assessment, more prudent management, and more skillful political actions by the government. With the exception of Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party – since Coolidge – has been nominating people with such an outlook as its candidate for President of the United States. Some have won, some haven’t. But which of those who won has made the slightest progress in reversing America’s slide toward socialism? And now that we are on the verge of being destroyed by our problems, the GOP is poised to nominate yet another one.

Of course, it doesn’t go unnoticed that the word “earns” in the opening sentence is misleading. Mitt doesn’t have a job. He no longer runs a company or a State as he once did and as he is so fond of reminding us. He gets no paycheck for any services or labor rendered. No, virtually all of his income derives from capital gains – that is, from selling stocks that he acquired at an original cost that was a tiny fraction of their current worth. He acquired those equities early in his career as a private equity manager, or said otherwise, a “venture capitalist” according to his admirers, or a “vulture capitalist” according to his detractors. Either way, no one is asserting that he did anything illegal. But what our dear President does assert is that it is not “fair.”

Of course “fair” is never defined. It cannot be defined in an objective fashion. What is fair to me might not be to you, and vice versa. But that gives no pause to our leftist-minded President. In his patented arrogant style, even though he never articulates a precise concept of fairness – because it is impossible to do so, he, like Justice Stewart understands pornography, knows it when he sees it. In his mind, it does not matter that Romney amassed his fortune by playing within the legal boundaries of American free enterprise. It does not matter that the Koch brothers or the Waltons or the Mars family did likewise – the fact that they have so much money and that the average bloke in America has only a mere pittance by comparison is manifestly, blatantly, irrefutably UNFAIR. In fact, Obama is a total hypocrite as he is not bothered by the great wealth of Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, George Soros or Jeffrey Immelt – because they have the right attitude about what to do with their fortunes.

Obama believes it is the duty of the government to confiscate what he sees as excess wealth accumulated by those who have been successful – and then to deliver it to those less fortunate, but supposedly just as deserving. He is jealous and disparaging of those who succeed, especially as entrepreneurs. It offends his sense of fairness that some succeed, some fail, and too often spectacularly so. The green goo that courses through his veins has far less to do with his pathetically perverse devotion to environmentally-favored industries than it does to the envy and fury he feels toward those who succeed in our capitalistic system.

Our Founders set up a system that was designed to protect individual liberty by establishing a transparent rule of law, which gave everyone the equal opportunity to succeed and prosper. Their intention was that the government would establish and enforce the rules that allowed all to compete legally, equally and in a predictable environment. They understood that some would do better than others. But it was clear to them, if not to Obama, that the resulting inequitable outcomes were a small price to pay for ensuring that all enjoy the freedom to pursue their own destiny.

I will discuss the content of the book momentarily. But first I wish to highlight a claim made, albeit implicitly, by Olson in the book. Namely, of all the institutions that succumbed to leftist thought during the twentieth century, it was the surrender of the elite law schools that did the most damage to society. It is my goal to assess the worthiness of that assertion, and I encourage the reader to ponder the matter as I describe the salient features of Olson’s penetrating study.

Olson’s work is comprehensive and detailed. He traces, in mostly a chronological fashion, how progressive philosophy and leftist ideology at first seeped into and eventually flooded the halls of American law schools. He begins by pointing out that law schools became well established on American campuses precisely during the so-called Progressive Era, 1890-1914. The law schools’ newfound prominence dovetailed nicely with the advent of professional licensure in America. By that I mean the process by which the heretofore free-for-all entry of individuals into numerous professions and vocations began to be subject to government (or government-sanctioned) certification. This became common a century ago in various American businesses and industries – from meat slaughtering to pharmacy, from barbering to chauffeuring, from teaching to medicine. Well, there was no reason to exempt lawyering from the process. And so the country’s law schools became the gatekeepers for the nation’s legal profession. Thus the faculty at the nation’s law schools – especially, those of the elite variety – obtained control over the training and philosophical outlook of the nation’s lawyers. Since we are a country under the rule of law, those who control the lawyers thereby control the law and thus the country to a great extent.

Having established the seminal power of the legal academy, Olson then traces the history of American law schools via two series of developments: first, various quantum leaps at the schools themselves in the nature of their curricula and structure; and second, how the former resulted in many radical legal ploys that shook the nation. Within the first of these, perhaps the most striking was in the 1950s when Yale Law School announced that it would no longer require its students to take a course in Property. Now it is widely acknowledged that when Jefferson enunciated our natural rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” it was well understood that happiness was to include, if not be a euphemism for “property.” The right to property is sacred in American law. Yale’s dropping it from its curriculum sent a powerful signal of the leftward drift of legal academia.

Some of the other major changes in law school curricula/structure that Olson discusses include: the almost obsessive focus on torts pioneered by William Prosser, the long-time Berkeley law dean; the compulsive emphasis on the training of law school students to be litigators rather than people steeped in a knowledge of the law who could put that knowledge to use in many different ways; the setting up of special “centers” in the schools, about the activities of which it would be difficult to distinguish from those of organized lobbying entities; and among these, law clinics – generously supported by liberal foundations – pursuing what is commonly called public interest law, thereby converting an academic enterprise into a hyper-political, “community organizing” type of operation. Naturally, Olson views all of this through the lens of a severe critic of the nation’s legal academy.

The above developments in law school curricula and structure heralded the belief – by those who ran the show – that ultimate legal authority should be vested in the hands of the judiciary, not the legislature – and that when necessary, law should be executed from the bench rather than from the White House or Governors’ mansions. This led to the birth of all manner of specious legal doctrines, causes, and actions. Olson discusses: the explosion in class action law suits; the emphasis on product liability; advocacy research by law school faculty; promotion of welfare; reparations for blacks…er, that is, African-Americans; Indian…er, that is, native American sovereignty; the rights of the poor; environmental rights; animal rights; endangered species; homeless advocacy; rule by injunction; and subservience of US law to international law. In every one of these quests, the overwhelming slant was to the left. Moreover, while pursuing these radical causes, our law schools trained legions of lawyers who went on to be trial lawyers, public defenders prosecutors, judges, Congressional aides – and of course Congressman if not presidents. These constituted a broad cadre of shock troops for the left who are thoroughly steeped in progressive ideology, who have no exposure to any other thought processes, who have no idea how programmed they are, who inflict their opinions on a cowed American public and who perpetuate their ideas and replicate themselves continually.

Olson’s style is actually quite engaging. Although he treats deadly serious issues with the earnestness that they deserve, he manages to maintain an understated, even restrained tone, which if anything makes his arguments more dramatic. Here is a typical example of his ability to gently, if sarcastically, find a silver lining behind a nasty cloud.

Are students being indoctrinated? (Sorry ‘ensured’ of having a ‘commitment to social justice’ fully ‘instilled’ in them…or encouraged to ‘struggle’ with implications of ‘lawyering within an unjust system.’) Well, the subject of indoctrination in the modern law school turns out to have generated a bit of an academic literature itself. Unfortunately, the theme of the literature is that schools are falling down on the duty to indoctrinate and need to be doing a much better job of it. The overall law school experience, complains one report, tends ‘to undermine student activism.’ For one thing, the work demands on students are so extreme that little time is left for marches and rallies. But the problems go further. You’re ‘taught to see that there are two equal sides of any issue,’ as a student complains in one widely cited volume. ‘Two equal sides’ is assuredly a misstatement; no law professor ever would or has presented both sides of all issues as truly equal. But it captures a kernel of truth about standard law training, which is that it conveys the skill of looking for ways in which the other guy – even a polluter, harasser or bigot – might have something of a case. In being forced to rationalize positions directly opposed to their own, one book laments, ‘most altruistic-oriented students are confronted with a perspective that seriously upsets their view of justice.’

Finally, why do I assert that Olson implicitly indicts the law schools as the worst malefactors in the liberal conquest of America? Primarily because of these passages in the final chapter of the book, entitled Conclusions:

“Irving Kristol famously discerned in modern American society the emergence of a new class, its standing founded more on educational achievement and cultural fluency than on older forms of wealth or social position, its specialty the manipulation of ideas and symbols rather than physical labor or the ownership of the means of production. Estranged from and suspicious of the world of property and business, the new class (Kristol argued) is instead friendly toward the continued expansion of governmental activity, in part because it is itself relatively successful in influencing the actions of government. In particular, it is skilled in argument, and it often achieves (whether in its voting patterns or in its likes and dislikes generally) a kind of class solidarity at least as cohesive and impressive as that of, say, business managers or factory workers.

According to Kristol and others who took up his analysis, the characteristic redoubts of the new class include the universities, journalism, and the media, the public sector itself, and the professions, especially law. But has ever an institution been developed that is as powerful an engine of the new class ethos as the one that sits astride all four of these sectors – the modern elite law school?”

So is he right? Was the Left’s conquest of the elite law schools the most consequential step in the liberal takeover of American culture and politics? I am not convinced. Tomes have been written about: the erosion of traditional American values by our pornographic media; the promotion of social justice – i.e., cultural Marxism – by major foundations; the constriction of our freedoms by an expansive, out-of-control federal bureaucracy; and the crony capitalism, which undermines faith in our capitalistic system, practiced by large corporate entities in cahoots with the government. Were any of these less destructive than the law schools? Actually, for my money, the greatest damage has been inflicted by the K-12 educational establishment. The brainwashing of our children, the theft of their ability to appreciate how exceptionally wonderful American history really is, and the conversion of our youth into economically illiterate, historically dense, sexually active, eco-freaks is a massive crime that steals their souls and prevents the country from snapping out of the leftist trance into which we have been hypnotized. This is not to minimize the havoc wrought by the elite law schools, nor does it diminish the clarity of Olson’s analysis. It just means that as much damage as the law schools have done, other segments of the leftist machine have done as much if not more.

There is a remarkable article in the January 3rd Wall Street Journal by Andy Kessler, a hedge fund manager turned author. In it, he proposes a novel idea – namely, while acknowledging substantial income inequality in the US, he asserts that in fact the nation has achieved an amazing level of equality in consumption. According to Mr. Kessler:

“It used to be so cool to be wealthy—an elite education, exclusive mobile communications, a private screening room, a table at Annabel's on London's Berkeley Square. Now it's hard to swing a cat without hitting yet another diatribe against income inequality. People sleep in tents to protest that others are too damn wealthy.

Yes, some people have more than others. Yet as far as millionaires and billionaires are concerned, they're experiencing a horrifying revolution: consumption equality. For the most part, the wealthy bust their tail, work 60-80 hour weeks building some game-changing product for the mass market, but at the end of the day they can't enjoy much that the middle class doesn't also enjoy. Where's the fairness? What does Google founder Larry Page have that you don't have?

Luxury suite at the Super Bowl? Why bother? You can recline at home in your massaging lounger and flip on the ultra-thin, high-def, 55-inch LCD TV you got for $700—and not only have a better view from two dozen cameras plus Skycam and fun commercials, but you can hit the pause button to take a nature break. Or you can stream the game to your four-ounce Android phone while mixing up some chip dip. Media technology has advanced to the point that things worth watching only make economic sense when broadcast to millions, not to 80,000 or just a handful of the rich.

The greedy tycoon played by Michael Douglas had a two-pound, $3,995 Motorola phone in the original ‘Wall Street’ movie. Mobile phones for the elite—how 1987. Now 8-year-olds have cellphones to arrange play dates.”

Mr. Kessler goes on the explain how the average middle class Joe – and not one necessarily high up in that class – can consume products and services that are shockingly similar to those enjoyed by the millionaires and billionaires so prominent on President Obama’s hit list. Even the most mundane cars today sport features and gadgets not terribly different from those that adorn the highest end luxury models. Yes, the super rich can jet all over the world in their private Lear jets; but there is nary a place on the globe that is immune from Aunt Nellie and Uncle Horace’s touring club. Moreover, as Kessler says, “most places worth seeing are geared to a mass of visitors.” As for high quality medical care: the rich have always had access to it; but “Arthroscopic, endoscopic, laparoscopic, drug-eluting stents—these are all mainstream and engineered to get you up and around in days. They wouldn't have been invented to service only the 1%.” In quality of health care, electronic gadgetry, transportation, even food and drink, the quality of the goods and services enjoyed by the masses is not that different from those savored by the super wealthy.

So, egalitarianism has come to America! It’s just not politically imposed by the government; but rather it has been acquired via the market. We have achieved leftist goals by rightist means.

Well, is all of this “stuff and nonsense,” or is Kessler on to something? I would say: yes and no. First, there is no question that income and asset disparities are becoming more pronounced in the United States. Despite the fact that the rich pay an increasingly disproportionate share of the income tax in America, and despite the fact that more and more of us derive robust incomes from government – both directly and indirectly, the gap in income and assets between the rich and the rest of America continues to grow. Why that might be is the topic of a separate article. Suffice it to say that even though Keynesian, soft socialists have been running the country (with a few exceptions) for decades, income equity – the Progressives’ dream – is no closer to being achieved than it has ever been in the nation’s history.

But have we truly achieved, as Kessler implies, a state of equity in our consumption of goods and services? It is undoubtedly true that many products and services that we traditionally think of as exclusively the province of the wealthy have become accessible to the middle class (and sometimes even to the poor), even if only in relatively modest versions. Whereas in the past, the meals, clothes, travel and vehicles of the rich were so far beyond the grasp of the common man, today that is no longer the case. Joe the Plumber may not be able to fork out thousands of dollars for a bottle of rare wine, but for $50-$100 – which he might well be willing to spend, he can get something remarkably close in quality. Lowly Louise cannot jet off to Vienna to see a production of La Boheme, but she can watch it streamed on her big screen LCD TV at a tiny fraction of the cost. Neither Joe nor Louise can afford an elaborate second home on Lake Winnipesaukee, but they can rent the place with friends at an affordable price and enjoy all the amenities.

Maybe Kessler is right. And if so, it is an amazing consequence of our (relatively) free market system in which courageous entrepreneurs, brilliant inventors, sagacious investors and visionary businessmen bring the playthings of the rich and famous down to the level of the common man.

And yet, while there is certainly truth to Kessler’s observation, he is missing an important point: all those zeroes. Whatever the budget/income/expenditures of your average middle class bloke might be, the corresponding figure for the super wealthy has multiple zeroes tacked onto the right end. Moreover, the power, accessibility, opportunity, connectivity and authority afforded by those zeroes are impossible for the bloke to experience or even understand. Yes, it might be that our amazing capitalistic economy has enabled the middle class – and sometimes the poor – to experience the flavor of the gadgets and amenities favored by the wealthy. But it is totally beyond the ability of the middle class to mimic the gargantuan sense of authority, control and influence that enormous wealth affords.

Now I do not claim that such a sense makes the wealthy any happier, better adjusted, humane or honorable than the middle class. We know of too many instances of wealthy individuals who stoop to crime, corruption, cruelty or cravenness. And often they do so because all those zeroes give them a false sense of superiority and invincibility.

“Now Lipsman,” you might interject, “how would you know? You’re not wealthy.” True. But I’ve known some very rich people. And in every instance, I’ve sensed a super self-confidence, haughty arrogance and air of entitlement that is impossible to miss. Sometimes it’s merited; sometimes not. Either way, the phenomenon of consumption equality that Kessler has identified – while interesting, and on target to some extent, does not really describe a true equality in the citizenry of the type that Progressives envision when they pine after income equality. The middle class may be able to acquire a taste of the concrete accoutrements enjoyed by the rich. But they cannot feel the power, haughtiness and grandeur of the latter. I suspect Progressives know this and resent it. Thus they will continue to strive for income equality. Let’s hope they continue to fail. My reason for saying that is also a topic for another day.

Thus having taught the world how to peacefully install a legitimate leader, as well as how to gracefully escort him to the exit, it was incumbent upon the American people to decide how long they wished the time span between entrance and exit to last. George Washington solved the problem. He refused to serve more than two terms – thus setting a powerful precedent that lasted nearly a century and a half. This feature of America government became ingrained in our political DNA: presidents serve no more than two terms. And when finally this virtual commandment was violated by FDR, the nation ensured that there would be no repeat offense by writing it into the Constitution.

It is my thesis, however, that Washington set not only an upper bound, but a lower bound as well. Namely, he established the precedent that, unless there are compelling reasons not to do so, a sitting president shall be re-elected to a concluding second term. In fact, with the exception of two relatively brief periods (of 20-25 years each), it has been the habit of the American people to re-elect their presidents – unless one of two readily identifiable conditions (to be explained below) obtains.

In particular, not only Washington, but five of the first seven presidents were elected to two terms – the only exceptions being the Adams boys, father and son. Then followed a period (1837-1861) in which the American people gave the hook to every president. This fickle electoral behavior coincided with the extremely volatile antebellum period during which America was wrestling with the highly divisive slavery issue, as well as the rapid westward expansion of the nation.

The country reverted to form during 1861-1877 when it elected and re-elected Lincoln and Grant. But then came another 20-year period (1877-1897) when no president was re-elected. This includes Cleveland who served two non-consecutive terms. The explanation for non-stop presidential turnover in this period is not as clear cut as it is for the antebellum period. Certainly the late 1800s was a time of great upheaval in the country – but without any calamitous issue like slavery. It was the period of America’s industrialization: large migrations from farms to cities, growth of manufacturing, accumulation of wealth, massive immigration and the emergence of the USA as a world power. America was impatiently fulfilling its destiny as the world’s greatest bastion of individual liberty and free market prosperity. Perhaps its impatience extended to its assessments of its leaders.

Whatever the cause, following this period, the country reverted to form again in terms of its treatment of sitting presidents – and it remained there. From 1897 until 2009, only four US presidents were defeated for re-election: Taft, Hoover, Carter and Bush the father. (I do not count LBJ as he stepped aside voluntarily.) In the specified 112-year period, most sitting presidents, of both parties, were re-elected. The American people even re-elected FDR three times. So, how to explain the four exceptions? They fall into two categories. First Taft and Bush the elder. Both fell victim to an unusually strong third party candidate – Taft to Teddy Roosevelt and Bush to Ross Perot. Sans the extra competitor, it is almost certain that both Taft and Bush would have been re-elected. (I note, parenthetically, that the existence of such a candidate does not guarantee an upset – witness the 1924 election where the strong third party candidacy of LaFollette did not derail Coolidge’s re-election.)

More interesting are Hoover and Carter, who were trounced by their challengers without the help of a strong third party accomplice. Simply put, the people judged these two men to be incompetent, misguided and dangerous to the Republic. The public held them directly responsible for the sorry economic state of the country at the time of their race for re-election and sought remedy by decisively expelling them from office. Since the Spanish-American War, these two men hold the unique distinction of being the only sitting presidents to be summarily fired. This is quite an achievement on their part because many of our re-elected presidents were not held in universally high esteem. Yes, some were extremely popular and were re-elected in a cake walk (e.g., Reagan, Eisenhower, FDR); but others had to battle mightily to retain their positions, sometimes by slim margins (e.g., Bush the younger, Truman, Wilson). The American people might have been ambivalent about the latter presidents’ performances, but as was their natural inclination, the people stuck with their president. Not so for Hoover and Carter who are now universally ranked among our worst presidents.

The Liberal West has, for decades, indulged itself in an orgy of self-flagellation. We have enjoyed comfort and security, but these, in the absence of gratitude and patriotism, cause insecurity, This attempted cure for insecurity can be seen in protestations of our worthlessness, and the indictment of private property…How may they still the resulting anxiety? The Left’s answer is the oldest in the world: by appeal to the Gods. But how may the Gods be appeased? The immemorial answer is: By human sacrifice…The essence of the Torah is the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac. The God of Hosts spoke to Abraham, as the various desert gods had spoken to the nomads for thousands of years: “If you wish to relieve your anxiety, give me the most precious thing you have.”…In abandonment of the state of Israel, the West reverts to pagan sacrifice, once again, making a burnt offering not of that which one possesses, but of that which is another’s. As Realpolitik, the liberal West’s anti-Semitism can be understood like Chamberlain’s offering of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, a sop thrown to terrorism.

It is an astounding and horrific accusation. That is, by eagerly abandoning Israel, and thereby placing it in mortal peril, the West seeks to ease its guilty conscience over its supposed transgressions against the Muslim world and over its disproportionate share of the Earth’s wealth. Craven and cowardly do not do justice as descriptors of this heinous behavior. Treacherous, morally bankrupt – indeed, evil seem more appropriate labels.

Ambassador Gutman has been roundly criticized in the American Jewish community for the content of his speech. In it, he claims that the widespread animosity – which has increasingly spilled over into violence – of the European Muslim community toward Jews is not an instance of historic anti-Semitism. Rather it is purely a consequence of the unsettled dispute between Israel and the Arab/Muslim world. That is, according to the esteemed Ambassador, the hate-filled, bigoted and vicious slurs – accompanied too often by physical attacks – directed by Europe’s Muslim community toward their Jewish brethren is due solely to the discomfort the former experience because the latter’s cousins in Israel refuse to play nice with their Arab neighbors.

It boggles the mind. Is Ambassador Gutman stupid? Perhaps naïve? Brainwashed by his less than Hebrewphile European hosts? Suffering from some sort of Stockholm syndrome?

I shan’t dwell on the many unsurprising accusations that have been hurled at Ambassador Gutman. He has been accused of being a self-hating Jew, a Jewish anti-Semite, a water-carrier for the President’s blatantly anti-Israel policies and a naïve dupe. I suspect that he is merely a very confused person who cannot believe that, only two generations removed from the virulent anti-Semitism that killed his father’s family, such unpleasantness could rear its ugly head in Europe once again.

Instead I wish to focus on one sentence in his dastardly speech and point out an awful aspect of his twisted reasoning that has escaped attention. Commenting in his myopic confusion about how events in Israel arouse the anti-Jewishness of European Muslims, Gutman asserts:

… every new settlement announced in Israel, every rocket shot over a border or suicide bomber on a bus, and every retaliatory military strike exacerbates the problem and provides a setback here in Europe for those fighting hatred and bigotry here in Europe.

So in addition to myopia, apparent self-hatred and Stockholm syndrome, Guttman is suffering from the affliction of moral equivalence. He cites four specific incitements: suicide bombings, rocket attacks on Israeli soil from Arab territory, Israeli military retaliation, but first of all – new settlements. Thus the premeditated assault on and murder of innocent Israeli civilians is as much a cause for concern as any Israeli attempt to defend its citizens or – heaven forbid – set up a kitchen on holy Arab land. Aggression is morally equivalent to self-defense. Murder is morally equivalent to building housing projects. Jihad is morally equivalent to the pursuit of Zionism.

The nature of human life was altered radically by these developments, and mostly for the better. By contrast, asserts Steyn, the time traveler from 1950 would be far less impressed. Oh the gadgets have been glitzed up a bit, but the American home, neighborhood and country did not look all that much different in 2010 than they appeared in 1950.

Steyn acknowledges two great exceptions to his assertion of an overall desultory advance in the last 60 years: space travel and information technology (IT). But he doubts that either has had a beneficially revolutionary effect – the first because we have lost interest (due to cost, boredom and a lack of vision and boldness); the second because much of the information technology revolution has resulted in vapidity (mind-numbing computer games, frivolous communication, pornography, cyber crime and too often, great wastes of time, energy and resources). I would like to take strong exception with him in the case of IT.

I believe the IT revolution has changed the way that we live as much as did any of the labor-saving, distance-shrinking machines invented in the first half of the twentieth century. The compute power that I hold in my hand (inside my smartphone) is truly astounding. It dwarfs what was available to me in gigantic machines that I programmed 45 years ago. And “dwarf” doesn’t do justice to a comparison between my smartphone and the guidance computer on the Apollo 11 spacecraft. Moreover, the depth and variety of the tasks that I can perform with my smartphone boggles the imagination. Here is a tiny sample:

• I can produce in seconds an answer to virtually any question on any topic that is posed to me.
• I can locate and obtain directions to literally any spot on Earth.
• I can instantly access news stories about almost any event that occurred in the last decade with the flick of a finger.
• I can obtain current financial information about any public company, stock or government agency in a flash.
• I can pay my bills, complete my shopping, find out where my kids are, see the weather forecast for the out-of-town locale at which I’ll be next week, read a pending Congressional bill, peruse the menu of the restaurant in which I’ll be dining tonight, get the ball scores, consult my social club or place of worship’s newsletter, set the temperature in my bedroom (from my office), warm up my car, and oh so much more. The power at my fingertips would be just as inconceivable to 1950s man as were the mid-century gadgets to 1890s man.

These and numerous other capabilities have altered human life in myriad ways – among which are the following:

1. Information. I have virtually instantaneous and almost unlimited access to all the knowledge in the world. There is barely a question, on any subject, to which I cannot get one or more answers with a few taps and swipes of my finger. Of course, it is incumbent on me to judge the reliability of the source of the information. But – perhaps unbeknownst to us – that was always the case. In the past we trusted unquestioningly the encyclopedia and Walter Cronkite. We should have known that the former made mistakes and the latter allowed his political biases to color the content of his reportage.
   
   This item alone represents a revolutionary feature of human life that was beyond the imagination of any human that lived up until say 30-40 years ago. But the technology in my smartphone has also revolutionized many other aspects of human life.
2. Communication.Email, texting, video-conference and online chat all provide communication capabilities that would have been way beyond the ken of our grandparents. Moreover, we access them at a fraction of the cost of their clunky ancestors.
3. Business & Finance. From online and instantaneous stock trades to QuickBooks to internet banking to ATM machines to smartphone credit transactions, the world of the businessman, investor and consumer has been changed immeasurably.
4. Education. The educational tools available to today’s students and teachers are as many light years removed from yesterday’s slide rules, calculators and chalk boards as was the Ford Mustang from an 1890s nag. My 5-year old grandson’s classroom amazes me, as does the knowledge that is already accumulated in that boy’s head.
5. Entertainment. When I visit the park, I can take with me the music of the world’s greatest composers, the words of its greatest authors and the movies of the finest film directors.
6. Politics. In principle, the activities of our national and local governments are more transparent to the citizenry, as any of us can easily access government legislation, regulations and budgets. It doesn’t always work out as it should, but new IT capabilities have had profound effects on political fundraising, organization and campaigning.
7. Culture. Again, in principle, advanced IT makes the varied aspects of our multicultural society readily knowable to all citizens, which should have a homogenizing and salutary effect on society. Once again, it doesn’t always pan out as expected. But there is no denying that the USA is the most successful polyglot nation on Earth, and the technological improvements that have abetted matters in the previous six items have helped to make it so.

Now one may legitimately ask: are all these dramatic changes good or bad for the human condition? In fact, there is no shortage of arguments on both sides of the issue. On the plus side, the tech aficionado asserts: how can the availability of vast amounts of information, which was previously inaccessible to the individual, not be a good thing? Furthermore, the ability to communicate easily across vast distances helps to keep families close. Investors have more information about investment opportunities; consumers are more knowledgeable about the products they seek; children are exposed to more ideas and opinions in their education; and all of us learn more about other cultures, which leads to a more tolerant and peaceful world.

But not so fast: the unbridled freedom of the internet has led to licentiousness and a coarsening of the culture; the ubiquitous nature of political discourse has led to political polarization and government gridlock; computer trading allows insiders to control the market and enhance the gap between rich and poor; the brevity and unsupervised mode of information technology communication has eroded verbal and literary skills, and contributed to the dumbing down of American youth; the hypnotic nature of IT has turned citizens into automatons and rendered society more fragmented, disunited and incohesive. All the electrons flying around are frying our brains.

These are legitimate, if somewhat overdramatized complaints about the consequences of the IT revolution. But it is instructive to note that the same kind of of diametrically opposed evaluations of societal evolution could be – and were – made in 1950. The arguments for the positive effects of the labor-saving, distance-shrinking devices of the early twentieth century are evident and have already been made. Contrarians would counter: cars polluted cities, created lifeless suburbs and damaged the environment; all the labor-saving devices freed up women to be more like men with horrible consequences for marriage, the family and children; the advent of popular and cheap visual media crippled reading and literary capabilities, and contributed to the dumbing down of America; and splitting the atom led to the most barbarous act ever perpetrated by mankind (Hiroshima) and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation.

Nevertheless, on balance, I think most would agree that the positive consequences of the advances of the first half of the twentieth century outweighed the negatives. Although…acknowledging two world wars, one can argue that it was the bloodiest half-century in world history. But the root causes for those tragic conflicts lie at the feet of human beings – whose behavioral instincts have not advanced an iota in millennia. That doesn’t change the fact that the nature of human life improved dramatically over the course of the trip taken by our first time traveler.

With regard to the enormous advances in IT that occurred during the journey of the second time traveler, they must be judged to be generally of benefit to mankind. Human stupidity, greed, cruelty and jealousy may still plunge us into regular turmoil. That doesn’t alter the fact that because of pioneers like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Sergei Brin, our physical and social lives have undergone marked improvement.

The process of selecting a Republican presidential candidate to oppose Obama resembles a combination of American Idol and Whack-a-Mole. The contestants compete in preliminary popularity rounds and the people vote via opinion polls. The last idol standing will be the nominee. But during the process, different candidates pop their heads out of their holes, only to be whacked back down by the media – who discover that the candidate: allegedly, sexually harassed women or was inexperienced (unlike Obama, of course) or couldn’t utter a coherent sentence or, worst of all, consulted for Freddie Mac. It’s enough to make one pine for smoke-filled rooms.

The latest “mole” to poke his head out of his hole is Newt Gingrich. Thus far, the whacks administered have not been sufficient to drive him back into the ground. Perhaps that is because an insufficient amount of time has elapsed since the whacking began. But should the bashing of Newt achieve the same effect as it did with Bachmann, Perry and Cain (in that order), there will be no more moles left to whack. Indeed, the other bobble head idols are actually rigid, not movable. Romney has been stuck at 20-25% forever – reflecting the rough percentage of Republican voters who desire a pragmatic, “moderate,” establishment-friendly candidate who will – at best – ameliorate to some extent the harsh consequences of the super-liberal Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda. Paul is stuck at 10% -- reflecting the rough percentage of Republican voters who are more libertarian than conservative. And both Santorum and Huntsman are stuck at essentially zero. Neither is going to get his head above ground.

So if Newt gets whacked, then with all the moles buried, Romney wins by default. But the conservative voters of America are truly alarmed at the havoc wreaked by the Obama-Pelosi-Reid wrecking ball. Many see the forthcoming election as an opportunity to historically reverse America’s liberal slide over the last century into a collectivist, social welfare state. Some of them see 2012 as the last opportunity to do so. Mitt Romney is not going to lead the conservative resurgence those voters seek. So perhaps, sensing this, the Idol voters will decide that they might as well choose the last mole standing.

Each of the four moles (i.e., Bachmann, Perry, Cain and Gingrich) has expressed the intention of leading such a conservative resurgence. But three of them have been whacked – and their candidacies appear hopelessly damaged. That leaves Newt.

I was a big Newt fan in the mid 90s. He conceived of the idea of ending the Democratic stranglehold on Congress and, amazingly, he brought it about. The Contract with America was brilliant. It articulated a relatively simple, but forceful program for conservative governance. His accomplishments included balancing the budget and welfare reform. The latter is particularly important. Why? Well, it is widely recognized that the conservative movement rests on a three-legged stool: (i) fiscal prudence and commitment to free markets; (ii) strong national defense; and (iii) traditional values. The latter has a cultural as well as a political component – so, not only a reverence for individual liberty and limited government according to the consent of the governed, but also strong families and communities, a reliance on faith, and a commitment to high morals. Reagan succeeded brilliantly in addressing (ii); he was somewhat successful in (i); but he never touched (iii). Newt did – and if his writing is a guide, he will again. The importance of doing so is addressed by the author in another article.

But alas, Newt had some serious flaws. He could be nasty and haughty and abrupt with people; he was sometimes quixotic in both personal and public behavior; his self-confidence occasionally tipped over into arrogance; and he had lapses in judgment (his global warming commercial with Pelosi, e.g.). He lost his grip on power and faded from the scene. But I continued to read his books and follow his ideas through the 00s. On the printed page, in videos and in personal appearances, he continued to formulate and articulate, in clear and convincing fashion, strongly conservative ideas and policies. He seemed to understand well the damage that the increasingly liberal hegemony was inflicting on the country and he had concrete and workable ideas for reversing the trend.

I recall, as my disappointment with George W Bush mounted, thinking that maybe Newt would be the one we needed. (Actually, from the moment I heard the phrase “compassionate conservative,” I knew that W was not the one.) Sensing that the tea leaves were unfavorable, Newt bypassed 2008. But then, to the surprise of many, he threw his hat in the ring for 2012. My initial reaction was: they’ll crucify him. They didn’t have to; they ignored him. And he didn’t help his cause with early missteps like alienating his staff and criticizing Paul Ryan. Yet, here he is: the last idol – or is it mole – standing. Perhaps it is an accident. Newt was hanging out down in the cellar with Santorum and Huntsman (and Johnson during his brief appearance). Was it pure chance that the Bachmann, Perry and Cain moles popped before Newt?

In fact, I believe something more profound is going on. During the summer, Newt was no better off than Santorum, who is another credible conservative. Why didn’t Santorum pop? The answer is in the Idol process – that is, the debates. It is clear to any dispassionate observer – and even more so to the forlorn conservatives who are paying close attention – that Newt is the sharpest tack in the bunch. He is quick, articulate, clear and commanding. He disarms the moderators, never criticizes his opponents and answers questions confidently, intelligently and crisply. More importantly, he explains the conservative philosophy in memorable terms, and he highlights brilliantly the vast difference between his political/cultural beliefs and those of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid team. He can be a little rough – e.g., when he characterizes the Super Committee process as a “stupid” idea (although events are proving him to be correct). But I believe the Republican electorate is responding positively to him for two main reasons: (i) they believe he easily is the best choice among the idol candidates to defeat Obama in a debate setting; and (ii) he is a reliable conservative spokesman – not a flip-flopper like Romney and far more able than Bachmann, Perry or Cain to explain the conservative agenda. Whether the general electorate will resonate to him remains to be seen.

Thanks to the never-ending series of Republican presidential candidate debates, the American people are being exposed to a hearty dose of skepticism about the role of government in society. Nevertheless, I believe all would agree that a proper and fundamental governmental role is the protection of the people and the homeland. At the national level, this of course involves the military and at the local level, the Police. It is the latter that I will address here. I will suggest, based on personal anecdotal evidence, that the answer to the question posed in the title is no.

When I retired a little over two years ago (from a university faculty position), I began volunteering in my county’s Police Department. I have spent up to four half-days per week working in three different units in the Department. Having had (fortunately) almost nothing to do with law enforcement throughout my life – other than some cursory interactions with the Campus Police during my time as an academic administrator – I bring an objective and dispassionate eye to an assessment of the Police Department.

I live in Montgomery County (in Maryland, just outside Washington, DC), which has a population of roughly one million people. The county Police Department – or MCPD, as it is universally known and referred to – has approximately 1150 sworn officers and 400 non-sworn employees. While not comparable to New York or Chicago in numbers, MCPD still represents a major police force in size, scope and operation. Incidentally, the ratio of officers to residents is rather low compared to most jurisdictions. This reflects both the socio-economic nature of the county as well as the fine job that MCPD is doing. In fact, I believe that MCPD is indeed doing an excellent job. But before I try to justify that assessment – as well as to highlight a few areas in which improvements could be implemented – let me describe a terrific feature of MCPD as well as offer a comment on the nature of its senior personnel and their attitude toward their role.

I have been fortunate to have received assignments in three high profile units within MCPD: Media Services, Major Crimes and Special Investigations. Oh don’t mistake me, the cops have not entrusted this sexagenarian volunteer with any dangerous responsibilities. Rather I have been involved mainly in document preparation and database maintenance. But in principle, my efforts free up the time of police officers – and that is the point of the program under whose rubric I serve: using the talents of volunteers and interns to enable sworn officers to devote more time to the most crucial aspects of their job.

My association with MCPD began with an 18-week course in its Citizen Academy (one night per week for three hours). The course is open not only to volunteers and interns, but in fact to any citizen of the county who wishes to familiarize himself with the workings of the Police Department. The course was phenomenal. Each week we had an in-depth introduction to one of the units of MCPD. The presentations – by sworn officers, some at very high rank – were thoroughly prepared, professionally delivered and mesmerizingly interesting. They were also very hands-on. In particular, I: spent a Saturday evening in a police cruiser while the officer patrolled the county streets (I wound up directing traffic as she dealt with an accident); sat in at a 911 call center; went behind bars at the County Detention Center; participated in a mock trial at the County Courthouse; witnessed a mock suspect apprehension; fired a Glock at the county range; engaged in an electronically simulated shoot-don’t shoot exercise; and observed a canine unit training session. I have since learned that the thoroughness, imagination and professionalism that characterized the Citizen Academy are representative of the operation of MCPD as a whole.

I have been fortunate to get to know quite a few of MCPD’s senior officers (Captains and Lieutenants). And most interestingly, because of a geographical accident and a special visitor, I have made the acquaintance of the Chief. The Chief is an amazing fellow – a local boy who rose through the ranks (of neighboring jurisdictions) to assume the top spot. Like many who rise to the leadership of a big organization, the Chief is intelligent, self-confident and incredibly charming. But I also sense a deep commitment to MCPD, to the public he serves and most of all to the men and women under his command who risk their lives to keep our streets safe. This attitude permeates down and is reflected in the senior personnel who lead the various Departmental units.

Here are a few more concrete features that illustrate the excellent job MCPD does:

• Whether they are responding to a citizen’s plea for help, a criminal incident on the streets, a reporter’s request for information or a sister agency’s query about a suspect, the response is prompt, courteous and appropriate. I am always amazed, when working in Media Services, by the ability of the personnel there to formulate public information in the most useful way without divulging sensitive information on suspects or victims.
• The above represents only one aspect of the interaction with the public. From traffic stops to victim assistance to criminal pursuit, our officers never lose sight of who it is that they are sworn to protect – and they do so diligently, professionally and in the glare of the public spotlight.
• MCPD appreciates that the events which draw its attention are often played out over an extended period. I am impressed by the persistence and doggedness that is evident in MCPD’s approach to complicated crimes that are not quickly adjudicated.
• Police officers are engaged in dangerous work. One of the quivers in their arsenal is superior training. From the incredibly rigorous requirements of the Police Academy to the ongoing insistence on weapons and personal training, our officers must meet a high standard. Obviously, this serves them and the public well as they pursue their hazardous tasks.
• Finally, the methods and gadgets that our Department deploys are among the finest. Budget constraints are a problem, but it is reassuring to see state of the art crime labs, computer systems and police vehicles.

Admittedly, all of the above is anecdotal – determined by personal impressions. In fact, there is ample data on crime rates on MCPD’s web site to corroborate the impressions. Next, a few observations on personnel:

• I find the detectives the most interesting group of people among police personnel. They bear some resemblance to the characters who portray them on TV. Not only are they dogged and fearless, but their sense of humor is fantastic. Perhaps it’s a requisite of the job because of the slime they encounter on a regular basis – murder and mayhem require a high level of emotional detachment in order to survive. The cavalier way that they refer to perps and cadavers takes some getting used to, but they are a fun bunch to hang around with.
• There is an esprit de corps among the non-sworn personnel that is palpable. Actually in some ways, these folks remind me of the non-academic staff at the University. Most are dedicated to the mission of MCPD, take pride in having a job at a critical public institution and provide excellent support for the sworn personnel.
• Finally, there is the cop in the cruiser. Keeping her eye on the street, manipulating that complicated computer at her fingertips, staying in close contact with home base, never knowing whether the next public interaction will be mundane or murderous, boring or brutal, routine or riotous. It’s exciting, challenging and dangerous, and it requires a level of expertise that gives new meaning to the phrase “people skills.” From what I’ve seen of it, our guys and gals do a great job.

There are a few warts of course. Let me just mention three – and I would say that all of them arise as a consequence of the fact that the Police Department is a government agency and that police personnel are unionized government employees.

1. As in any government agency, there are employees who behave badly: shave work hours; manifest laziness and inattention to detail; worry more about their breaks, lunch hours and quitting time than about doing their job conscientiously; become disgruntled when their step pay increases don’t match their expectations and consequently adopt poor work habits that inhibit their chances of promotion; lose sight of the fact that theirs is a service position; complain incessantly, cast aspersions on the work ethic of their more diligent colleagues and count the years until early retirement. Fortunately, this is not the typical employee.
2. Again, as in every government agency whose priorities and policies are set by politicians, there is a painfully evident problem of PC – political correctness, that is. There is too much pandering to minorities, coddling of illegal immigrants, genuflecting to “environmental concerns” and searching for "hate crimes.” Actually, it was much worse at the University.
3. I won’t belabor this, but there is too much waste. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, as with any government agency, those responsible for budgets are not spending their own money. Waste is inevitable.

Well, despite the aforementioned three, overall I would give my Police Department high grades for the honor and faithfulness with which it discharges its duties. To get a sense of what an achievement that actually is, allow me to quote from my speech as the class representative at the Citizen Academy graduation:

If you, as a member of the general public, are interacting with a police officer, you are probably not having a good day. You are a suspect, a victim or a witness and in any of these roles, dealing with a police officer was not high on your priority list when you arose that morning. Moreover, when the police officer looks at you, he or she likely sees someone who is injured, indignant, potentially or actually violent, frightened, confused or suspicious, and perhaps some or all of these simultaneously. In the face of such overwhelmingly negative a priori conditions, it is the police officer's job to be professional, polite, thorough, forceful when appropriate and mindful of the myriad laws and regulations that govern his or her interaction with you. It seems to me an incredibly challenging job and one of my main motivations in taking the course was to try to get a sense of how our police officers meet and surmount that challenge. I am pleased to say that 18 weeks in the Academy have reassured me that the vast majority of our police officers are doing an excellent job in meeting that challenge.

More generally, it is my assessment that my Police Department, MCPD, is doing a first-rate job of meeting its Constitutional responsibility to protect the public. National and local polls reveal that the public rarely reaches a similar conclusion about almost any other government agency, save the military.

I retired recently after a 40-year career in the Mathematics Department of the University of Maryland – the last eleven of which were spent as a senior campus administrator. My prior presentation here dealt with an article that I published in the American Thinker, which was read by Rush Limbaugh over the air, and in which I described my difficulties in surviving as a conservative faculty member in an overwhelmingly liberal campus environment. The short story is that, to my shame, I did it by staying in the political closet for many years. But as I approached retirement, I did three things: First, I wrote a book entitled Liberal Hearts and Conservative Brains, which is referenced on the handout. Second, I came out of the closet on campus. The campus response is described in the American Thinker article, which you can find on their website, at the link above, and also by following the links on the handout. And finally, I began to write for and publish regularly in conservative online magazines. Richard has asked me to speak today about two recent articles that I published. They appeared in The Intellectual Conservative and The Land of the Free – and, to continue the shameless commercial, you can also find them by following the links on the flyer.

The articles are entitled respectively: The American Train has Jumped the Tracks and Getting America Back on the Tracks. Let me begin by quoting the opening of the first article:

Unlike virtually all other countries, the United States of America was founded upon a set of ideas. Its people did not coalesce around a religion, race, ethnic heritage, language or geographical area in order to form itself into a coherent, recognizable nation. Rather the US was constituted by an amazingly astute and prescient group of Founders who created an entity that would maximize individual liberty and endow the people with the greatest chance to have a life of freedom, justice and prosperity. The ideals that undergird this nation, unique in the annals of world history, are enshrined in its founding documents – the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. To be an American is to subscribe to and strive to embody these ideals.

The founding documents laid out the track that Americans were to follow in order to preserve our freedoms, our just society and our unparalleled prosperity. Alas, America has jumped the tracks. It is my purpose here to explain the derailment more concretely and to pose an overarching strategy for returning to the rails.

Now I assert in the piece that the tracks that our beloved country has jumped are laid out along three rails: political, moral and idealistic. In the first of these (the political), I refer to the ideas of a republican government with limited, enumerated powers, individual liberty, rule of law and equal justice, consent of the governed, and the other founding political principles bequeathed to us by our Founders, and from which we have been fleeing at an alarming rate. The moral rail refers to the idea, completely understood and enunciated by our Founders, that the experiment in limited government could only succeed if the people were generally “good” – meaning that they had a clear understanding of and could distinguish between good and evil, just and unjust, honesty and dishonesty, responsibility and irresponsibility. If the people made the right choices when confronted with moral opposites, the system would work well and the nation would thrive; if not, then corruption, vice and malfeasance would surely follow, with tyranny the ultimate outcome. The people would learn to make the right choices because they were embedded in a society that prized strong families and communities, charity and good works, universal education, a powerful work ethic and the fear of God.  I hardly need remind you that such ideas would be found laughable by far too many of America’s current leaders. And finally, the third rail, the idealistic, is summarized, perhaps a bit glibly, by asserting that the Founders were the first believers in American exceptionalism. They saw the American people as the “new Hebrews,” a people chosen by God to provide, by their example, a light unto the nations in regard to how a just and free society should be organized and governed. The Founders understood that they were creating something unique and revolutionary. They expected that their descendants would guard it zealously and hold it up as a beacon for the peoples of the world to emulate. The “descendant” who currently resides in the White House is not waving any beacons.

Americans rode these rails for more than a century. But beginning in the so-called Progressive Era a century ago, continuing through the New Deal and the Great Society, and culminating today under the Prophet Obama, the American people have been abandoning these tracks. In all three strains, the train has been diverted onto a route that bears less and less resemblance to the path laid out by the Founders. We might ask: How and why did this happen? And if we can formulate an accurate answer, can we make use of it to get back on the rails?

The answer is found in my articles. At the risk of oversimplification, it goes as follows. First I subsumed the second and third tracks under the single heading culture. After all, the components that determine a people’s morality and ideals are precisely the contents of their culture. The key point is then to acknowledge the insight of the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci from the Progressive Era, who asserted: One need only capture the culture. The politics will follow. And that is exactly what the leftists did over the last century. Through an unremitting assault on many fronts, the Left took control of all the opinion-forming organs of American society: the media, educational establishment (lower and higher), the legal profession, foundations and libraries, the government bureaucracy and the unions, the seminaries, the marketing industry and (to a certain extent) the upper echelons of big business. Once the people’s mindset was converted from individual liberty to collective equality, security and order, it was easy to convince them to implement the political changes that enabled the conversion of America from a free society into a statist society.

The cultural assault by the Left was broad, sustained, relentless and purposeful. The Right – naively assuming that things would naturally stay the way they always had been – wasn’t even paying attention. A few noticed (e.g., William Buckley), but for the most part, traditionalists and conservatives did not appreciate that the fundamental organs of society that supported and maintained the traditional American culture were being subverted and diverted to something radically different. It is only in recent times that a substantial portion of traditional America has awakened to the radical leftist revolution that has swept the country and which threatens to kill the historic society that America embodied. The issue is how to resuscitate the latter.

The answer is in principle simple: we do it exactly as we lost it, i.e., by retaking control of the culture, reestablishing the moral and idealistic themes that animated the American soul for more than two centuries. Here are some concrete suggestions:

·       Fox News has proven a valuable counterweight to the mainstream news media. We need many more such venues.

·       Similarly, conservative newspapers like the Washington Times have provided some balance in the print news media. We need more such conservative newspapers, magazines, periodicals and online journals.

·       The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute have arisen to challenge the Ford, Rockefeller and other left-wing foundations and think tanks (which ironically were established by conservative businessmen). The former must be multiplied many-fold.

·       In the same vein, Regnery has provided a conservative counter punch in the book publishing industry. More such outlets are required.

·       We need to have law schools that champion strict constitutional interpretation of the law; public libraries that display conservative books more prominently than liberal ones; movie producers that explore patriotic themes and other genres that extol the virtues of traditional culture; and highly successful businessmen (unlike Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, e.g.) who promote conservative ideas and resist the lure of crony capitalism.

·       The next suggestion is more political than cultural, but the American people must return to the idea (most clearly articulated, ironically, by the arch leftist, FDR) that unionization of public sector employees poses a grave threat to the nation. Unions like SEIU must be decommissioned. When that happens we might be able to address our explosive and crippling entitlement programs in a rational way.

·       And finally – and most importantly – we must take back our schools. The damage that the Left is doing in our public schools is amply documented in Marybeth Hicks’ recent book, Don’t Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid. Whatever the medium – charter schools, vouchers, or something else – we must break the back of the monopoly that the NEA has on the education of American children and enable schools to re-instill traditional American values into our children, and so into our future.

Two points to close: First, polls continue to identify America as a “Center-Right” nation. One sees percentages like: 40% Conservative, 20% Liberal, 40% Centrist or Independent. And the polls have reported such figures for a long time. How can that be? How can such a supposedly conservative country have so readily glommed onto the liberal/statist program that has dominated our politics and culture for decades? I think that there are two components to the answer. First, many who identify themselves as conservatives are not really so. For example, consider those who see themselves as patriotic, law-abiding and proud of their country’s history; but who at the same time, also approve of wealth redistribution, same-sex marriage, the United Nations and affirmative action. It does not occur to them that such views constitute proof that they are indeed not really conservative. Second, what exactly does it mean to be Independent? The competing visions for America held by the Left and Right are irreconcilable. It makes no sense to be “in the middle”; it does not reflect a coherent worldview, but rather a non-Solomonic willingness to split the baby. Alas, many in the middle are equally comfortable with the ideas that I attributed above to faux conservatives. Thus many are confused about where they stand in the political spectrum and it is dubious that we truly continue to be a Center-Right nation. But we can be again – if we find a way to implement the steps that I outlined above.

The short form of the question is obviously: Who should the Republicans nominate to oppose Obama in 2012? For me – a staunch conservative – the long and much more important and meaningful form of the question is formulated as follows:

The US has been listing left for a hundred years, drifting away from a constitutional Republic devoted to individual liberty, free markets and limited government by the consent of the governed toward a statist society of forced equality, shared economic misery and unlimited, unresponsive government. Following a brief (and temporary) course correction under Reagan, we have continued our inexorable slide toward socialistic oblivion under the two Bushes, Clinton and especially under Obama. There have been signs in the last two years that a significant percentage of the electorate has finally awakened to the existence of the cliff toward which we are speeding. The next election provides a chance – perhaps the final chance – to irrevocably halt the mad dash to the edge and then to restore America back to its original political/cultural roots and traditions. Is Herman Cain the Moses we so desperately seek to lead us back to the promised land?

The odds may be slim, but I believe that the United States has the opportunity to effect a fundamental course correction next year. It is possible that the people might elect a truly conservative President and supply him with a sufficiently conservative Congress so that together they could halt the leftward drift and set the country on a more traditional course. It may be that enough of the electorate is actually ready to bring this about. Reagan would have done it a generation ago, but he lacked the requisite companion Congress and the people had not sufficiently awakened to the gravity of the progressive threat. Today the conditions are more ripe.

One thing is clear: Mitt Romney is not Moses. Of course he would be immeasurably better than Obama. But it is absolutely certain that he desires to be president not in order to answer the question in the form that I posed it. While his instincts might be more conservative than liberal, Romney is a “big government Republican,” another Bush or McCain, who:  

• has no appreciation for the perilous course that our nation has traveled in the 20^th century;
• thinks that Obama pushed the wrong levers rather than sought to radically transform the nature of the country;
• and who will do no more than briefly arrest the country’s mad dash to the left, while leaving intact the socialist infrastructure to be further ratcheted up by the next Social Democrat that succeeds him.

Make no mistake – there are people out there who understand the perilous state in which we find ourselves and who might formulate and implement a program to rescue the nation. People like Jim DeMint or Mike Pence come to mind. Paul Ryan perhaps. But they are not running. Who among those actually running might be our Moses? As I said, Romney definitely is not. And the people know it. That’s why, despite his advantage in experience, organization, money and recognition, he can’t break away from the pack. Who then is the answer? Certainly not Huntsman – another faux conservative. Not Paul – an extreme libertarian whose opinions on national security and social morality are frightening.

That leaves five: Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Perry and Santorum. In fact, I believe that each of those five understands the horrible drift of the country over the last century and would be determined to reverse it. So which of them should be Moses? Well, none of them is a perfect redeemer. And our American Idol style of selecting a nominee has exposed the warts in each of them. Santorum is severely damaged goods. His overwhelming loss in his Senate re-election run in 2008 makes him a sure loser. No one is taking him seriously; his poll numbers are anemic; he would do us a favor by joining Pawlenty on the sidelines. When the Idol process began, Bachmann raced to the front. But then, apparently due to her relative inexperience and her permanent “deer in the headlights” facial expression, the ardor for her cooled. Next to streak to the front was Rick Perry. But his feeble performance in several Idol rounds knocked him off the pedestal. Gingrich’s numbers have not oscillated up and down like the previous two. In fact, he is clearly the sharpest tack in the bunch, but his track record of quixotic behavior and moral ambiguity gives pause. And so that leaves the Hermanator (a term that Cain uses for himself in his 2005 book). People like him and for the moment at least, he has leapt to the front of the Idol polls.

So what about Herman? Can he play the role of Moses? He has no money, no organization and no political experience. And there is something about him that suggests political naïveté. But his heart and, more importantly, his head seem to be in the right place. I just finished reading the 2005 book, which he wrote following his unsuccessful run for the Senate from Georgia in 2004. I believe that he understands what has happened to the country and would work assiduously to bring about a course correction that conservatives so fervently desire. Does he have the gravitas to pull it off? The last non-politician that the country elected president was Eisenhower – who only commanded the most formidable army in the history of the world. Somehow CEO of Godfather’s Pizza doesn’t quite match up. But let us not forget that Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild and Lincoln’s resume wasn’t all that impressive either.

Superficially, this analysis is correct. But it glosses over an important historical fact implicit in the dates supplied above for the origins of each Party’s coalescence into a single mindset. It also misses the fact that the national political/cultural conversation has been totally skewed for a very long time because of the vast discrepancy in those dates of origin. Indeed, the Left’s capture of the Democratic Party began during the Progressive Era – especially under Woodrow Wilson – and was arguably complete by the time of FDR – i.e., long before LBJ, McGovern or Obama appeared on the scene. On the other hand, the Republican Party has been adrift from its conservative moorings since the administration of Teddy Roosevelt, continuing right up to that of George W Bush – with some countervailing trends evident only during the Coolidge and Reagan eras.

The point is that while it is indeed true that today there are two very distinct visions for America competing for the allegiance of the American people, that dynamic has not been in play for most of the last century. As I described in an article published several years ago, Different Visions, the Leftist playbook was written by the Progressive Era Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who asserted: One need only capture the culture. The politics will follow. And that is exactly what the leftists did over the last century. Through an unremitting assault on many fronts, the Left took control of all the opinion-forming organs of American society: the media, educational establishment (lower and higher), the legal profession, foundations and libraries, the government bureaucracy and the unions, the marketing industry and (to a certain extent) the upper echelons of big business. Once the people’s mindset was converted from individual liberty to collective equality, security and order, it was easy to convince them to implement the political changes that enabled the conversion of America from a free society into a statist society.

The Left’s cultural assault was broad, sustained, relentless and purposeful. The Right – naively assuming that things would naturally stay the way they always had been – wasn’t even paying attention. A few noticed (e.g., William Buckley), but for the most part, traditionalists and conservatives did not appreciate that the fundamental organs of society that supported and maintained the traditional American culture were being subverted and diverted to something radically different. It is only in recent times that a substantial portion of traditional America has awakened to the radical leftist revolution that has swept the country and which threatens to kill the historic society that America embodied. Previously – and perhaps still – the framework for the national political/cultural conversation was set entirely by the Left and it was little noted – by any on either side – that the axioms assumed by all who engaged in the conversation were biased strongly towed the left end of the spectrum.

Now, how has the one-sidedness of our national political/cultural conversation been accorded recognition across the land? Simple; it hasn’t! With few exceptions, the American people have been largely blind to the vast transformation that occurred in our society over the course of the twentieth century. Does anyone ever question the legitimacy of Social Security? How many doubt that the FDA is critical to keeping America’s prescription drug supply bountiful and safe? Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America, but the mainstream media dubs Rush Limbaugh a fascist. Does anyone recognize that American pop culture is best described as a cesspool? And why exactly are they putting those condoms on cucumbers in the classroom? In presidential debates, candidates argue over how to run the government more efficiently, or who will start or streamline which program that that will most “benefit” the public. But the question of the nature of our Republic, how or even whether we should remain true to our founding principles, or which is more important – liberty or equality; these questions never come up. It does not occur to the moderator to ask them, nor does the failure to do so disturb the candidates.

It may be that there is some clarity regarding political vision today; but in the recent past, America’s perception of where it stood politically and culturally in relation to its historical practices has been that of a blind man. Moreover, the blindness manifests in somewhat different ways according to one’s place in the political spectrum.

• On the Left: Anyone who has sat in on a university committee meeting, or glanced at the front page of the NY Times, or attended a back-to-school night, or listened to Nancy Peolosi pontificate, knows that the Left takes absolutely for granted that a progressive agenda is the only agenda that is suitable for America. Moreover, those on the Left take it as axiomatic that any intelligent person recognizes and accepts the appropriateness of that agenda. In that committee room, it never occurs to the lefties in attendance (i.e., virtually everyone) that anyone in the room might think differently from them. Having achieved a dominance of the American political/cultural scene that they could only have dreamed of in 1911, the Left considers it normal and permanent, and an abomination (not to mention a surprise) whenever it is challenged in any way by someone on the Right. The horrific idea of returning to the conventions of 125 years ago is tantamount to the restoration of slavery and oppression of women – sins that have irrevocably stained America and which we have finally overcome only by implementing an unchallengeable, progressive agenda.
• In the middle: This is likely the largest category of people. Those who don’t see themselves as ideological leftists or rightists – but rather practical, sensible, compromise-friendly independents – are blithely unaware that the conversation has tilted tremendously. Such people often have a weak sense of history, little appreciation for the social and economic consequences of a century of collectivist programs, and are easily swayed by the bromides of a slick politician. They do not see how the fulcrum on the political spectrum has been shifted precipitously to the Left. They consider themselves centrists, but do not understand that the positions they take and programs they support are collectivist. A lifetime of exposure to the leftist-dominated opinion-molding organs of society has shifted their fulcrum as well.
• On the Right. This might be the smallest contingent. In the past, the practitioners were marginalized and ostracized. A few like Buckley were accorded respect. But in truth they were viewed as quacks to be tolerated for amusement’s sake – but they were not to be taken seriously. What is worse, but sadly true, is that many in these ranks were imposters, faux conservatives. For example, George W Bush, who was viewed by nearly all of society as a conservative, serves as a perfect metaphor. Bush expanded the government and exploded the debt as badly as any card carrying leftist (well until his profligate successor appeared). Incidentally, exactly as Bush begat Obama, so did Hoover beget FDR and Nixon beget Carter. Heaven save us from conservatives like Bush, who, in terms of the visions we have been describing, was blind as a bat.

In fact, Perry’s book surprised me very much. In short, it is terrific. He makes an articulate, impassioned, well-reasoned and well-documented argument for a staunchly conservative America. He is particularly strong when discussing the tenth amendment and states’ rights. He skewers the unlimited spending, over-regulating, unconstitutional mode of (national) government that has gripped the nation. Perry’s writing is forceful, coherent and convincing – and even humorous on occasion. One senses a person who is in command of his facts, who marshals his arguments in a cogent fashion, who speaks from a great deal of relevant experience and who is supremely confident of his analysis and recommendations.

So who the h— is that guy impersonating Rick Perry in those televised debates and what have they done with the real Rick Perry? The person I have seen on the boob tube several times now is inarticulate, unsteady in his elocution, seemingly unsure of himself, and generally rather less than impressive. It makes me wonder how he has been repeatedly re-elected Governor of Texas.

How can this be? The disparity between Perry’s performance as an author and his TV debate persona is glaring and mystifying. I can think of a few reasons:

·        He didn’t really write the book. He wouldn’t be the first national politician to employ a ghost writer; our current president is reputed to have done so.

·        He has been woefully unprepared for the debates. There is a school of thought that either he expected to run away with the nomination and didn’t think the debates could trip him up or he just doesn’t do well in an unscripted, spontaneous environment.

·        Both performances are genuine – i.e., he is a deep thinker and writer, but a poor public performer.

I have no idea which of these (or something else) is the accurate explanation. But I find it incomprehensible that the man who wrote the startling clear words below is unable to articulate them on stage. From the point of view of philosophy and what the country needs in the next president, I find Perry’s positions (as expressed in his book) superior to those of his competitors. But if he can’t improve his stage act, he won’t get the nomination – or if he somehow does, Obama will clean his clock.

“The statists believe in a powerful, activist central government that advances a radical secular agenda in the name of compassion. They hide behind misguided notions of empathy and push token talking points about fighting for “the little guy,” all the while empowering the federal government to coercively and blatantly undermine state-, local-, and self-governance.

Why empower states instead of a single, powerful national government? The simplest answer is this: Americans want to live free. They want to gather together with people of common beliefs and goals to establish communities in which they can prosper. They do not want to be told how to live their lives. They certainly don’t want some far away bureaucrat, judge, or representative of a different community to tell them how to live. That liberty has been the essence of America ever since the colonists came here.

These thoughts are explored more fully and eloquently by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post. Here is just a portion of her thoughts: