Music of the Day: Chris Standring, I Ain’t Mad Atcha

RATING: S (Serious)

SPECIAL NOTE: This was written on Tuesday, November 4; again, issues with internet connections delayed posting until today.

The votes have been counted, more or less, and the Democratic Party has now assumed control over two of the three branches of our national government—the Executive and the Legislature. The sole remaining check against Democratic factionalism and extremism lies in the hands of one or two Supreme Court Justices, at least until 2010 when the Legislature can again be changed—with sufficient energy and dedication by those of us within the loyal opposition.

In the meantime we must be vigilant, mobilized, and outspoken against any and all possible or real usurpations, gradual or immediate, of individual freedom to pursue happiness, life, and liberty. If we take the Democrats at their word they intend to “redistribute” wealth (bizarrely, from “the bottom up”—how this is supposed to work no one can quite explain), to weaken all branches of our military (by 25% if Mr. Barney Frank gets his way), to kowtow to our avowed and acknowledged mortal enemies by engaging in open-ended and non-specific “talks,” to tolerate the intolerable, to further open our borders to God knows whom, and to stifle debate at home (by using the inaptly named Fairness Doctrine). So we must now marshal our resources (intellectual, moral, personal, and financial) and work to replace the usurpers at the earliest opportunity.

We will have to wait four years to run the strongest possible candidate against the incumbent President, but if we begin now, if we vow to stay strong in our beliefs, if we work and campaign and raise money and distribute well-crafted, well-written, thoughtful policy alternatives, if we strive to further educate an electorate easily swayed by appeals to crass class warfare and zero-sum economics, we can reassert conservative principles and regain some measure of influence in the politics of this nation.

The candidates we select must be women and men of great character and commitment—yet they will suffer the indignities of mendacious slander and puerile distortion by a media-establishment dominated and controlled by liberals, and so our candidates must be personally strong. They must be literate. They must possess the ability to communicate clearly and without artifice. They must be good stewards of public funds. They must have demonstrated an ability to resist the temptations and corruptions of power.

And even that may not be enough—the candidates we select must be completely impervious to the outright lies, half-truths, distortions, and ceaseless attacks from the left that will be heaped upon them immediately after they disclose a desire to run for office. It will not be enough for them to be honest, successful, patriotic (or, as the case of both Mr. Bob Dole and Mr. McCain, heroic men), morally sound, generous, thoughtful, or articulate—they will be portrayed as cynical opportunists, humorless drudges, grasping predatory capitalists, jingoistic narrow-minded fundamentalist ultra-Christians, profligates, snoots, or “country club Republicans.” And if that doesn’t work, they’ll be branded as stooges of Israel and in the sway of unpatriotic neo-conservatives who care more for Israel than the United States.

Still, the slim 6% margin of victory for Mr. Obama should give us much hope that the American people still value conservative principles and good stewards of those principles. But we have to reorganize and mobilize and, as the old saying goes, there’s no time like the present.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.