A friend recommended I read Andrew Price’s How Conservatism Can Rise From the Ashes, by Andrew Price, in hopes of raising my optimism about the political future.
This was kind of him, but the results were not as advertised. It’s a well-written and well thought-out argument, but I found little in it to cheer me.
First of all, Price criticizes conservatives for concentrating on the wrong things, and delivering losing messages. One of the wrong things he wants jettisoned is what he calls “theology,” which I take to mean pro-life and pro-family principles. I’ve said it before – I don’t really care much if the Republicans start winning elections again, if they win by dumping conservative social values. I’d probably still vote for them, because low taxes are better than high for everybody, but I’d nevertheless consider my country lost.
Secondly, this book depressed me because Price outlines a series of radical changes in the Republican platform – an “assets tax,” toughening regulation of corporations and the environment, new retirement and health care programs, radical changes to education funding. He might be right, but I rate the likelihood of any of these changes being enacted pretty low. If this strategy is the only one by which we can win, it seems to me we’re probably doomed.
Finally, I question the logic of one of his contentions – that the public hates conservatives because we’re mean and call people names. If calling names turns the public off, why do they vote for the people who keep calling us Nazis?
How Conservatism Can Rise From the Ashes is a perfectly good, thoughtful book, but it did not raise my spirits. It might work for you, though.
I would not be surprised to see a re-alignment of the coalitions in the not too distant future. For most of my adult life, when Republicans have won they have done it with a coalition of wealthy fiscal conservatives providing money and not so wealthy social conservatives providing the volunteer legwork. When they have lost you can generally find that either the Country Club Republicans decided they were too embarrassed to be associated with the Pro-Lifers and pushed them out of the picture, or the Pro-Lifers realized that their agenda was only getting lip service so they stayed home. If the GOP is going to build a majority without one of it’s major factions, they will need to convince one of the historically Democratic factions, such as unions or environmentalists to come over to their side.
Thanks to my grandfather, I grew up following politics like some people follow sports for entertainment. Current politics is like the weather which is changing all the time as the commentary about it does. What are the social and economic institutions that are shaping people’s lives? There are a lot of layers of context that shape and define political behavior in the short and long term. In the short term, Obama has succeeded, like Reagan, in putting the States rights vs. Federal rights power struggle back on the forefront on the political agenda; but unlike Reagan, Obama is a young politician who demonstrates his inexperience in building strategic coalitions to enable him to execute his agenda for healthcare reform and taxation. As one veteran political observer put it, he excels in selling himself, but not his ideas. Political personalities wither away political support by their ineptitude. In the short term, Obama has
agitated a political hornets nest by his agenda for insurance and taxation unlike any President I have seen since LBJ and Reagan. The 2014 and 2016 elections are going to be significant and will most likely reflect national discontent with Obama’s domestic policies in the short term. There are so many contradictions within Obama’s record with foreign affairs that he has lost his Nobel prize winning popularity and he is making Russian President Vladimir Putin look like an international statesman that most of the world can understand and accept even if they disagree with some of his views. In the long term, the Alternative Independent Education Movement (AIEM), until just recently, has been quietly and steadily has been building, from the ground up, a nationwide base of family support since the 1960s that has redefined what is possible within Education in America. I know that most of you reading this will dismiss this as unimportant because you were not a part of it. I am, like many of you, a product of the public school system. I spent my 7th through 10th grades at an inner city school and my 11th and 12th grades in a suburban school, which was pretty much a waste of time. A school counselor at the suburban school told me not to consider college and seek vocational training because of my mediocre grades. The public school system offered me nothing and I got nothing from it. I grew up within a family of readers. From a very young age I caught the love of reading from my family. My library card was the most precious possession I owned and I used it regularly. My siblings and myself became English majors in college. My sisters became school teachers. One of my sisters became ‘a radical’ and decided to home school her children with self paced learning materials that were just being experimented with during the 1960s. There are no lectures in a self-paced educational program. It is done primarily by reading a structured curriculum, under supervision, with periodic testing to demonstrate comprehension and skill, before moving on to more advanced curriculum. The Home School Movement(HSM) has gone through various phases of development and it is no longer just a one home, one family educational experience as they often work in cluster groups now as part of a genuine Parent-Teacher Association(PTA)in local areas that are directly involved with the home school clusters/circles. It was the Home School PTAs that broke the monopoly that the teacher unions had over the primary and secondary educational system, which the unions legally fought in every way that they could. The teacher unions were the ones that introduced annual diagnostic testing in select school districts to prove that home schooling was substandard to the public school system. When home schooled children were consistently out performing their public school peers, especially in the ACT and SAT scores, which brought them to the attention of the colleges and universities, who offered them scholarships, the unions abruptly took the position that the diagnostic testing, ACTs,and SATs were unreliable and could no longer be trusted. The Charter School Movement (CSM) that we have been hearing so much about in the media could not have come about without the HSM paving the way for its existence as a legitimate alternative educational choice, and for how the public schools are now being monitored and tracked for consistently graduating students who are functionally illiterate. This is a social revolution in the making that is creating new generations of independent and self-reliant educated persons. The charter schools have more visibility and the attention of the media because they are brick and mortar institutions that are directly challenging the public schools that are graduating illiterates. Charter schools do a lot of experimentation which is why they produce differing results. Home Schools are not magic boxes of education, but they directly reflect the commitment and involvement of the local PTAs who guide them; and their curriculum development over the years have produced consistent and reliable performance skills among their students. During the 1970s, I was invited and sat with a group of home school students between the ages of 8-14, and I informally led a discussion of the books they were reading, which, among others, included The Wind and the Willows, Watership Down, The Hobbit, and The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe. Their parents and teachers told me that they were all one or two years ahead in their self-paced learning levels and would be eligible to apply for college entrance early. Now, in the last five years or so the so-called Free Online Education Movement(FOEM)has entered the educational arena and everyone: AIEM, HSM, CSM, and the after hours public school system are all experimenting with it along with their own curriculum software. There is no monopoly on the social and political views of students who are educated within the Alternative Independent Educational Movement. They are heavily influenced by their Parents and Teachers who became directly involved in their education and development, but they are also trained to be independently self reliant in thought, word, and deed. Who will appeal to this new independent educated class? I know that my life would of been very different if I had their kind of personal development and self confidence and self image.
Homeschool people are great. But they don’t constitute anything like a majority of the American voters. As long as masses of Americans rely on the Democratic Party to keep the welfare checks coming, I don’t see hope along those lines.