Surveying the Architect

On May 31st I and many others who stuck it out at the Republican Party of Minnesota’s State Convention’s bitter end were afforded a unique opportunity. Although the delegation dwindled steadily after the election of National Delegates on Friday many stayed till Saturday to salute or scorn our keynote speaker. He was, of course, Karl Rove, former strategist and adviser to George W. Bush. Although I find his actions irresponsible and at times verging on criminal I am inclined to suspend judgment when afforded a closer look at someone.

I took his speech as an opportunity to study the man who is called “the Architect.” The impression I came away with however was that he is not simply an architect but an artist, a spell-binder adept at achieving desired outcomes. However much I may protest said outcomes I must admit the talent he has. Although there were those few who walked out or tried to challenge his right speak the vast majority of the delegation was enthralled and I believe his address was a valuable insight to the inner workings of that large Norwegian forehead.

My foremost impression was that for someone touted as a master strategist, the tools he used in argument were textbook fallacies and plain old facts. There were no secret weapons, no divergent perspectives, simply an adept mastery of the fundamentals.

The first such fallacy I picked up on was his use of the false dichotomy. When appealing to us with “conservative” plans he simply dressed up the status quo in different garb. When he brought up allowing small businesses the same privileges as corporations, or making the Bush tax cuts permanent—ideas which of course sound tantalizing—he never once brought up the significance of enumerated powers or the encroachment of Federal authority. When he railed the Democrats for expanding government entitlement programs the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act were the true elephants in the room.

Beyond that his bread and butter were the straw man argument and some good old fashioned spin. While carefully using actual facts and quotes about and from Barack Obama he liberally created his own contexts. The heavy hand of implication was used to insinuate Obama’s extremism and naivity when the raw truth should be enough to prove those things to an honest man. The problem for Karl is that McCain himself is so close to left that he has to paint Obama even further down the spectrum in order to create a legitimate contrast for his Republican supporters. He spun us around to focus on the trifling differences and in doing so turned our backs to the fact that Obama and McCain are so similar in principle.

His reserve tactic was the emotional appeal. He emphasized his kinship with Minnesotans by stating his small town roots and announcing that he in fact has several Oles in his family. This way we accept him as one of us and conveniently forget his house in D.C and insider connections. He also demonstrated a sharp sense of humor with scripted jokes and a few ostensibly spontaneous quips.

His greatest appeal though was his story of a successful Orthopedic. It was an inspiring story of the strength of a mother and father who, after losing one son in combat, were preparing to see their second son deployed. He speaks of how he was so moved by the father’s attempt to leave behind a successful practice and join his son in the Marines that he did all in his power to allow the father into boot camp. He is undeniably right in praising the courage and resolve of the father, son and mother, but again he fails to mention the tragic irony of how hard he worked to create the war in the first place.

After listening to his speech and being marveled at the simplicity and effectiveness of it I came to realize his true skill. From a young age Karl has demonstrated an incredible capacity for organization and planning. He engineered a bitter fight to become chair of the College Republicans and came to engineer the two George W. Bush Whitehouse victories. One should note however, that he met early defeat in the seventies and eighties but slowly refined his approach and has achieved numerous victories since. Karl Rove’s genius lay in polished, tactical execution.

When I heard him speak I sensed immediately his purpose, to energize a reluctant base around its presumptive nominee. Look at his words though, and it is an issue he never explicitly outlines. Karl Rove reconciled his objectives within the context of his audience and the transitions of his speech threaded the needle to his desired outcome. Rather than issue the cliché and chafing calls for “party unity” and “supporting the nominee” Rove skirted those phrases sketching an implication in the minds of the delegation bearing the likeness of McCain.

In a technically flawless display of sustained oration Karl Rove moved efficiently through the outline of his speech taking the audience slowly to his preconceived conclusion. He shirked the friction and blowback of explicit diction by first acquiring the audience’s confidence and then compelling them to fulfill his interests on their own accord. It is a faintly Socratic approach that has been spectacularly successful both at the convention and on the campaign trail. The lessons of recent history tell us though that it is a tactic which certainly cannot be trusted.

Heading Home!

The Washington Post declared today that the vast majority of criminal aliens may just be heading home! Citing a drop in job availability, a sagging economy, and fear of deportation, many illegals are beginning the long trek home. It is expected that up to ten million aliens will partake in this mass exodus. April 1st, 2008.

Michelle is Missing

Well it looks like it's three strikes and you're out with Michelle Obama. She seems to have disappeared after separate occasions of admitting that she has never before been proud of the United States of America, calling America downright mean, and telling poor minorities to forget about college because it's just too much of a hassle.

Perhaps the Obama campaign thought is was best to keep her muzzled, but then again, she could just be out procuring some dynamite for William Ayers for the struggle against the white oppressor.

Criminal Alien Gangs

Are these the people that John McCain thinks we need to reach out to? The earnest "undocumented workers" we can woo to our party with Amnesty? For some reason I doubt it.

Watch Here

And Here

Oh, and don't forget this

Beyond Individualism

Carousing about the internet, I stumbled across a comical website. It is a group of Anarchists planning on disrupting the RNC convention. The futility of what they are doing verges on the comical simply due to the fact that they are organizing; quite an oxymoron to say the least. It appears they gathered into autonomous "consultas" which would come up with internal plans then meet externally with other consultas. Hmmm, sounds like a half-baked form of representative democracy to me. I've never found internal consistency to be incumbent in the left, but this takes it to a different level. Not only are they straying from their professed beliefs by organizing at all, they are permanently uncommitted to a superior and more effective method of achieving their goals by holding(loosely as they do) on to an impossible ideal.

Before I go any further I'll say I'm a rather introspective person, I enjoy my own company and often prefer to be left alone. However, I recognize the need to associate with people and often enjoy social company. I also believe needs are a function of wants and only imply what is necessary to achieve a goal. I'll also say that ideologies like Anarchism and ultra-individualism fly in the face of human inclinations and will forever be stuck in the doorways by trying to reconcile their ideals with reality.

Science is not formulating a preconceived notion and seeking out evidence to support it. Science is the observation of natural occurrences, following that observation is the isolation of variables until one can observe a direct cause/effect and determine how something works. By this method, science is simply the description of reality.

The reality we have learned in regards to human nature cannot be ignored when discussing philosophy and ideology. We know that every single human being has separate DNA (even identical twins have different RNA). We also know that although everyone has separate DNA we all have exceedingly similar DNA. We also know that by virtue of quantum law everyone has different experiences, although many of them are similar. People are naturally inclined to preserve their existence. They then naturally associate with those who are perceived to be similar. The levels of society reflect this, first there is the individual, then there is the family, the greater family, friends, then the nation. It should be noted that this structure is very elastic and is changed by who the individual perceives to be more similar (such as a teenager preferring to hang out with his friends than family).

When there is association there will be a natural sorting of people with proper authority. In a chaotic situation, natural leaders will inevitably emerge. These occurrences are natural. The problem with Anarchism is implied with their name. Anarchy is a composite Greek word. It comes from the word "Archon" which means a ruler or king. "Archy" is then the concept of power. This is then modified with prefixes to describe the source of power, Monarchy (one ruler), Oligarchy (rule by a few). Anarchy implies that there is no power. Now I don't expect to get angry e-mails from Anarchists solely because I doubt anyone actually reads this site, but usually they would argue something along the lines of "Anarchism isn't like that, you idiot! It's a voluntary collective with no true leader."

The thing about voluntary associatism is that it hinges on basic contracts. First there must be recognized an individual sovereignty. Then there must be some sort of recognition on what will bar you from this recognition. This is the establishment of law, and even if theoretically there was no conditions to lose individual sovereignty, that would still be a function of law. To have these contracts the "Archy" must come from somewhere. Here in America we believe in Demarchy, that the authority for all laws comes from the will of the people.

The reality is that all of society is ruled by all the individuals that compose it, Pandemarchy. Like a pointillist painting, these individual elements compose a larger picture. Since there is an inherent disparity of all people, similar groups bind together and splinter. Throughout the long march of history it has been designed for the individual to surrender his power to the nation to in turn receive its protection. How this power has been exercised is known as the "ocracy." A theocracy channels this power through religion; democracy channels the surrendered pandemarchy into the hands of the majority of people.

What makes the American system so unique is that it was not formed on the premise of surrendering power to the state. Through a willing association and contract (the Constitution) the pandemarchy is voluntarily invested into a representative democracy for the preservation of the individual. It will only be through the recognition of how this power is formed and for what purpose that this system can continue to work. It will only be through the willing association of those who share these basic beliefs that America can be preserved.

Right/Left Activism

I've been hearing word recently about different plans by Ron Paul supporters to march either on Washington or at the Republican National Convention right here in St. Paul. I find it quixotic as to why people would find this course of action so appealing. Thinking about why this idea appeals so much to people led me to realize a greater disparity of methodology between the right and the left.

While contrasting in my head the methods I've seen used by the Right and the Left I came to the conclusion that the courses of action follow along a pattern of separate objectives. The left operates under the ideology of control. From the most horrible excesses of Mao and Lenin, to the misguided and backwards causality of John Maynard Keynes, leftist economic policy is built on the premise of power. To achieve the ostensible ideal of equality, leftists imply upon themselves enormous powers to dictate human action. Thus liberal activism will always pertain to the accumulation of this power and the mobilization of sympathetic forces. Since absolute power is an all or nothing goal, liberal activism is tenacious and omnipresent.

On the other hand we have the Right wing. The essential objective of the Right wing is freedom, not lawless license, but freedom to live one's life free of illegitimate abuses of power either from thugs on the street, or thugs in the White House. This goal makes the right wing by nature a reactionary movement, live and let live, but if you mess with me, I'll mess with you. The problem with this mentality is summed up succinctly by the Declaration of Independence which says "mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

What all this means is that while the left assumes various levels of authority and aggressively seeks more power, the right is more inclined to let the situation deteriorate until they are roused to significant but oh so few acts of protest. Fortunately it has worked out enough times that the people have supported us solely due to our relative inactivity in the face of a too coarse and radical left. Unfortunately it has happened enough times that the left has learned how to veil and refine their message and gain establishment positions under the radar.

George Washington stated that the price of liberty is constant vigilance. I say that the path to power is endless persistence. The leftists are on the right track but we in the conservative movement seem to be completely missing the mark. Our goal is to live happy lives, raise our families' and live in peace. Paradoxically, in order to achieve this we must be willing to abandon our comfort and leisure to secure our political system from those who would subvert and abuse it. More importantly, we cannot as conservatives simply be content to hold the presidency and a congressional majority. We must bear the continual burden of staying true to our principles and shun the power we hold once we achieve it rather than become entangled in the vain raptures of authority.

First we must achieve the power, and doing so will take a lot more than a one time rally, no matter how many people show up. We must strengthen our own resolve to work persistently. We do not simply put forth our beliefs as correct, we hold our beliefs because we our convinced they are right. Do we have the strength of character to hang tough and follow through?

Pointing the Finger

It is difficult some times to be a Ron Paul supporter. All the other supporters I have ever met are rather level headed and are attracted by the message of small-government and the restoration of constitutional principles. However, there does seem to be a small number of people magnified by hostile media that are ardent conspiracy theorists.

The other day I heard one on the radio while driving to work. He waited ninety minutes solely to chastise Sean Hannity for not exposing the Bohemian Grove. Of course Sean gave him a brief rebuke and hung up, furthering the aura of a "cover up" in his mind and the aura of lunacy in everyone else's'. The thought that this course of action, even if the theories are true, could make sense only in the mind of some disciple of David Icke or Lyndon LaRouche.

Of course, I don't bring this up as an issue in an of itself. I find it as a more extreme indication of a larger problem on the right. The problem, as I see it, is that conservatives get stuck in a hole of simply pointing out problems. We grumble a bit about taxes, bad mouth about this liberal or that, and use problems as talking points.

This is a dead end in and of itself, conspiracy theories are simply more inefficient as they spend their effort in outlining a far-fetched cause of the problem, without ever coming to a solution. A lesson that should be learned from the Democrats in the 2004 presidential elections(if you're not going to learn from conservative failures) is that complaining doesn't electrify the masses. The far left showed up in droves to vote for John fish-out-of-water Kerry and John Edwards the Poverty Pimp. Karl Rove managed to electrify and motivate the Republican base in many key rural areas and keep open arms to Democrats turned off by leftist vitriol.

Now I'm not saying we shouldn't attack the left, I'm not even saying I would have voted for George Bush in 2004. What I am saying is that to win elections we have to maintain a set of principles and values, attack our opponents where they are weak, but above all we must outline a clear and distinctive plan of action. This is why people are attracted to Ron Paul in the first place.