No doubt everyone on the Republican Party's mailing list recieved the same email I got yesterday from the RNC asking for donations and for any ideas I might have towards helping them regain power. So, I fired off this somewhat condescending, nuts-to-you response. My respect is something the Repubs will have to re-earn.
"Republicans are out of power because they share the same primative beliefs of the Democrats. Americans don't want to be involved in a long self-sacrificial war where the lives of enemy civilians are given a higher value than the lives of our soldiers. General Patton once said that the way to win a war is to get the other guy to die for his country. Those are words of rational self-interest, not altruistic self-sacrifice. But there are no Republicans who understand this anymore.
When our founders said man has an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, nobody noticed that this political ideal is based on the moral code of rational self-interest. It was never made explicit. But many Americans sense it and would be receptive to ideas base on it.
The morality of altruism and its requirement of self-sacrifice is killing the republicans' hope of ever regaining power. The Democrats want Americans to sacrifice for the state, The Republicans want sacrifice to god. But the concept of a non-sacrificial way of life has been abandoned by Republicans. Dems never embraced it.
So why does it matter that republicans never regain power? Because it is common knowledge that the Dems can't wait to bring a socialist dictatorship to America. And when they do, there will be no misunderstanding that it is the fault of capitalism, free enterprise, freedom, rights, etc.
Republicans are giving all those concepts a bad name by pretending to be for them while promoting socialist, self-sacrificial principles. When Dems insist that everyone has a right to say health care or whatever, you don't know how to answer them on moral and practical grounds. You compromise and give in.
If it seems like I'm asking you to take a very strong, principled, non-sacrificial, selfish (rational self interest) individual rightish position, I certainly am.
I witnessed a fine principled republican go down to a terrible defeat in 1964 by an uneducated public. But had America collapsed back then, no one would have blamed him for feeding America the poison that killed it. Does the current Republican Party want that kind of legacy?
You asked for ideas on how the Party could regain favor with the American people. Yes, I have ideas as well as moral and practical supporting arguements. But strategic ideas won't work unless based on a consistent world view, a philosophy. As long as Repubs share the same basic world view as Dems, and only offer Americans a different altar on which to sacrifice themselves, they will be attractive to no one."
No comments:
Post a Comment