In my home state of Idaho, during the recent primary and at the Republican State Convention, a phrase kept coming up again and again: “This fight is for the heart and soul of the Party!” The various factions in conflict within the Idaho Republican Party thought that gave special emphasis for their faction’s case. Actually, that thinking is pretty small potatoes (excuse the pun but this is Idaho). The fight we have going on is really for the heart and soul of America and the people of the world.
Everywhere we turn these days the various struggles here and around the world are between those that love freedom and liberty and the tyrants, dictators, narcissistic megalomaniacs and every day statist, a-hole controller-types that seem to inhabit almost every nook and cranny of every culture one could name. The biggest conflict of our existence is the never-ending struggle between those who want (or demand) to control every one else and those who reject the various attempts at control.
The natural tendency of the vast majority of individuals is to be free to live their life as they choose in a peaceful manner without interference and without interfering with others. However, that tendency always runs headlong into the 1-2% who, by golly, believe they were put here to tell everyone else how to live those lives. Or, they are the violent malcontents who create the problems within every civil society.
What most fail to recognize is that the controllers inhabit every portion of the political spectrum including that portion of so-called “anarchists.” The only difference is that the proportion of controllers that inhabit the opposite end, the Social Democrats to Communists, is much higher than the anarchy end of the spectrum. They are larger in number because the mass tends to go along with their schemes due to belief in the “Six Political Illusions.”
Compounding the convenience of negligent attachment to various liberal utopias, the vast majority of individuals also tend not to engage in the various political struggles of their time. That flows from the hope to avoid all the apparent nastiness and drudgery that comes with being active, involved citizens. Instead, they prefer to believe that a Republic somehow runs largely on autopilot and that somehow their complacency will be a ‘free lunch’ of good governance.
That leaves the various types of loathsome personalities free to occupy the space with open-field running in front of them. At best the electorate gets a mixed bag of benignly incompetent, statist-narcissists as candidates, then electeds, to carry water for the status quo. That leaves the field open for a small number of controllers to run the show. And the damage done continues to pile up, unresolved.
There will be no change as long as this “comfort paradigm” is maintained. Change only comes as an explosive series of reality checks which overcome the long held status quo. Those explosive realities began going off on 9/11/2001, politically, financially, fiscally and culturally ever since. With the center of both major parties failing to act to repair any of the damage done, they have instead proceeded to make it much worse. As our state GOP is learning it’s an evolutionary process, a “back-to-the-future” re-establishment of principles that have been corrupted or forgotten over decades. It’s not reliance on the same ol,’ same ol’ candidates, nostrums and the re-emergence of the Chamber of Commerce Republicans that’s going to fix ANY of this mess, they created.
Some will argue, as they drone on in various corners of the Republican Party, that the current compromised principles represents the “new reality.” They argue, very ineffectively but with passion, that it is they who recognize “reality” for the Republican Party of 2014. It’s amazing they do it with a straight face given the mess the entire country is in, largely because of the compromise and outright ignorance of principles by many on the right for more than 85 years. To them, a President such as Calvin Coolidge was an extremist, even though he was light years ahead in understanding the importance of a much toned-down presidency. Many Republicans and Conservatives have grown to promote the ‘modern’ imperial presidency as much as the Democrats and Progressives.
The one reality that the old guard establishment seems to fail at recognizing is that their time is running out, fast. All one has to do is to look at the graying visages of any Republican Central Committee. Virtually none of the youngest Republicans and conservatives coming on board right now have any solid connection or agreement with the old guard, Nixon-Bush Republicans. The younger ones see the failures of those Republicans as readily as they see those of the Democrat Progressives. They are smarter, more knowledgeable and very passionate on the Constitution and the Republic than their elders were at the same age or many of them are, even now. They’re wired and wireless and share information lightening fast. The short of it is; they scare the hell out of the old guard and, so, the establishment reacts with contempt and attempts to restrict and control them while smiling to their faces and pretending to welcome them.
However, the old guard/establishment cannot stop them. Hence the current travails of many state GOPs, around the country, just like Idaho’s. Can Idaho, or any other, Republicans mend their rifts? Or will the Republican controllers continue the slow disintegration and marginalization? At this point the answer, my friend, seems to still be “blowing in the wind.”