'Told them to shove their offer'

The hall at the Marriott DTC held 1500, and there were that many more outside in an overflow room, for Monday night's kickoff event on the Battleground States Talkers' Tour, sponsored by 710 KNUS and featuring Salem national radio hosts Michael Medved, Dennis Prager, and Hugh Hewitt. Lacking the time to write a full report -- I'm too busy inventorying shoes for Palin, ogling feet in mouth for Biden, and enjoying the ever-peeling layers of Obama's hard-left taped pronouncements -- I offer only these jottings to give an idea of the rollicking 90 minutes that sent Denver-area Republicans home ready for a final push to Nov. 4

** Navy Captain Charlie Plumb, who had John McCain as a flight instructor and was later in a Hanoi prison with him, recalled McCain's defiance of torture and psy-war tactics by their captors. When given a chance for early release in violation of honor code, Plumb said, Mac "told them to shove their offer." Such is the strength of character, the ex-POW added, that we need in the next president.

** Bob Schaffer spoke eloquently about his vision for serving Colorado in the US Senate, quoting a long passage from the earlier part of Patrick Henry's famous "Give me liberty" speech in 1775 and joking Elway-style that adverse polls mean "we've got Mark Udall right where we want him."

** Secretary of State Mike Coffman pitched his congressional candidacy with a pledge to resist, if necessary, spineless Republican colleagues as strongly as Tancredo has done. Odd angle to take in front of a party gathering, but such are the times we live in.

** "Politics come and go, but entitlements are forever," Medved warned. If Obama and the Dems win a sweep next week, taking back Congress in 2010 or the White House in 2012 won't suffice to stop all kinds of economic redistribution and moral rollbacks that will become untouchable even when the GOP returns to power.

** Prager said it's no wonder liberals want to change America - they view it as an unjust society and a warmonger, a negative force in people's lives both here and abroad. Since in fact it's just the opposite, Dennis said, we reject their prescription of fundamental change. He also remarked, "Christians are the backbone of America. You can't say it about yourselves, so here's this Jewish American saying it for you."

** Hewitt, tasked with closing the sale and motivating the faithful, spoke to the question, "Are you all in?" To illustrate "all in," he related the story of Benjamin Franklin, well over 70, about to sail for France to represent the newborn and embattled United States, liquidating his investments and giving every dime to the US treasury. Let that be the standard, said Hugh, for GOP efforts, donations, and morale from now until the last vote is counted.

Fred Eshelman, a North Carolina businessman, took the stage briefly to talk about his new conservative website and TV ad campaign, RightChange.com. Salem Communications CEO Ed Atsinger was present but didn't speak. He's funding the talkers tour, with help from Eshelman, as it rolls on from here to Minneapolis, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and two stops in Florida.

His moral relativism discredits Obama

Democrats like Obama the Intellectual like to denigrate "folksy" and "unintellectual" Republicans as "clinging to guns or religion," but what they really abhor about their "lowbrow" Republican counterparts is the willingness to stand in moral judgment. I am not in any way arguing that every time a Republican uses a moral argument it is a correct application. However if we are not willing to even engage in moral discourse, we will travel a very dangerous path. Only a moral realist holds that there are right and true moral universals that exist across all cultures, nations, languages and time, regardless of human comprehension or behavioral conformity to these moral truths. Only a moral realist can believe, for example, that slavery or murder is objectively wrong and was never right despite cultural norms that once permitted it.

A moral relativist, on the other hand can assert, as does Dr. Richard Shweder, respected professor at the University of Chicago where Obama taught, “…even the presumption that infanticide is immoral is too presumptive and provincial to count as a moral universal.”

Only a moral realist truly affirms human rights. Yet the conviction that we all occupy one moral universe is not "high-minded" enough for elite universities, and unless one manages to escape higher education with one's moral compass unadjusted, what was abhorrent before exposure to postmodern deconstructionist thought will afterward be considered benign or even commendable.

Lest we forget, imprisonment of innocents, human experimentation, slavery, murder, and even genocide were legal in Germany during WWII, and it was the educated who formed the Einsatzgruppen “intervention groups” tasked with carrying out systematic mass murders of Jews, gypsies, and others. If there existed no moral realists during that time, there would have been no one willing to risk their own lives to protect society's outcasts. Meanwhile, many "good" German people chose to do nothing. Moral relativism instantiates what Martin Luther King referred to as "the appalling silence of the good people" and produces indifference - or at best diffidence - in the face of evil.

"We must face this challenge. We can face this challenge. We must totally defeat it, and we're in a long struggle." says McCain.

Says Obama the Intellectual, without a hint of irony, "Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil, because a lot of evil's been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil."

As Edmund Burke wrote, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing." Yet Obama the Intellectual represents a perspective that is not merely morally diffident, but posits moral equivalences between actions that should be easily recognized as morally unequal. He additionally manages to associate with people who would be (correctly) unambiguously identified as racist (Wright and Farrakhan), felonious (Rezko) and terrorist (Ayers and wife, Dohrn) if they were evangelical, white, and “unintellectual.”

Cries of “we gotta be careful of guilt by association” and “these are attempts to connect Obama with events that happened when he was eight years old” obfuscate the real issue: how can we trust the judgment of someone who found none of his “controversial associates” beyond the pale? Even in condemning Ayers, Obama follows with “But…” and describes unrepentant Ayers as simply “a professor of education at the University of Illinois.”

Have we become so numb to the word "terrorist" that it has no effect when used to accurately describe FBI Most Wanted former fugitives, Ayers and Dohrn who helped blow up over 20 buildings (including one in which Ayers' former girlfriend accidentally blew herself up with a nail bomb)? Dohrn reportedly commended Charles Manson's followers while exhorting her compatriots to be “less wimpy” and was allegedly involved in the 1981 Brinks armed robbery in which two men were injured and three were murdered, leaving nine children fatherless.

Dohrn spent seven months in jail for refusing to cooperate with authorities. When two of their dear friends were sent to prison for murder and armed robbery, Ayers and Dohrn became guardians of the convicts' baby son whom they raised to be an intellectual - like themselves. When interviewed by Slate regarding his Rhodes scholarship in 2002, Yale graduate Chesa Boudin claimed he was dedicated to the same principles as "all" his parents.

It was in their living room that Obama the Intellectual’s breathtaking political ascent had its genesis in 1995, and seven years later, Ayers sat on a panel with Obama entitled, “Intellectuals in Times of Crisis.”

Intellectualism guarantees neither good judgment nor sound moral principles. One need only look at Colorado’s own Ward Churchill. But Churchill merely raved about terrorism. Ayers and Dohrn actually delivered. Churchill has at least one thing in common with the dynamite duo, though: Both Ayers and Dohrn are also university professors.

Come to think of it, “folksy and unintellectual” doesn’t sound so bad.

Dr. Pamela Zuker received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Psychology from the University of Chicago where she performed research at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). She also holds degrees in Anthropology and Clinical Psychology, and practiced marriage, child, and family therapy before focusing on positive psychology. Her current research is on the role of meaning in adult life. She lives in the Roaring Fork Valley with her husband and two children.

Talk radio stars headed here

Conservative radio hosts Michael Medved, Dennis Prager, and Hugh Hewitt, my colleagues on 710 KNUS, will speak at a voter turnout rally next Monday, Oct. 27, at the Marriott DTC Hotel, I-25 & Belleview, starting at 7pm. It's free and open to the public. I'll be there, hope you will too. It's the first stop of a five-state fly-in for the righty talkers trio during the final week of election 2008, sponsored by Salem Communications, their syndication company. From Denver, Medved, Prager, and Hewitt will barnstorm at additional battleground stops in Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

Townhall.com, Salem's political site where all three also write columns, has more details about the Oct. 27 rally and the whole tour, linked here.

It doesn't take a crystal ball to predict that here in Colorado they'll draw a sharp contrast between McCain and Obama, and between Schaffer and Udall, maybe just slightly leaning toward the Republican in each case.

And the tour will probably draw extra motivation from the on-air admission by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) this week that Dems will reinstate the (Un) Fairness Doctrine next year if they can, effectively muzzling conservative talk radio.

Republicans know what to conserve

"What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?" So said Abraham Lincoln.Those words are from his Cooper Institute Address on February 27, 1860, in the City of New York, one of Lincoln's most important stepping stones to the Republican presidential nomination and ultimately the Presidency.

The Republican Party had been formed in 1854 in opposition to the plan of the Democratic Party to spread slavery into the western territories. It did so on the basis of the principle enshrined in the Declaration of Independence "that all men are created equal." That principle was, and is, revolutionary in its conception and its application.

It is no small thing to proclaim the equality of all human beings when the existence of oppressive governments and rigid class structures in so much of the world would suggest otherwise. Kings and nobles, warlords and priests, have ground down the liberties of the human race for thousands of years. Yet the human mind can look upon this condition and conceive of the freedom of man based on his natural faculties rather than his political situation.

These comments may seem odd and maybe even ironic as Republicans have been understood as more conservative than the Democrats, their chief rivals for public office. But what is conservative about a principle which has been responsible for overturning monarchies and aristocracies, beginning with British colonial rule in North America, next bringing about the abolition of chattel slavery in the United States, and finally defeating totalitarian regimes in the 20^th century?

Even the most revolutionary regimes are established to last, so their future is always more conservative than their past. The United States is a democratic republic which has survived for more than two centuries. Yet because it is a nation founded in revolutionary principles it has undergone considerable reform, the chief cause of its periodic upheavals and wars.

The current challenge is the threat of socialism at home and terrorism and despotism abroad. The Republican party seeks to conserve our constitutional form of government and our free way of life, to be sure, but its principles are as revolutionary as they ever were. Freedom and equality need a stable and energetic government for their security, even as they are a reproach to governments that overreach.

Just now the Democrat party is actually the more conservative of the two parties as its leaders wish to preserve and extend the modern welfare state. Not satisfied with a federal government that manages the retirement and health care of the elderly, Democrats today seek to usurp all private alternatives in the most expensive federal program yet, universal health care (AKA socialized medicine).

Republicans long ago reconciled themselves to the modern welfare state, but fear its tendency to undermine personal initiative, encourage public dependency and transfer wealth from working to non-working people. They understand that today’s health care crisis is mainly caused by a government/private network which shifts the burden of costs from the consumer to third parties, continually driving up costs and limiting availability.

The purpose of our form of government is to secure everyone’s rights, not to assume the responsibilities which rightfully belong to each of us. Republicans know that America’s combination of freedom with responsibility is revolutionary but wish to conserve it against reactionary and elitist Democrat attempts to turn back the clock to the feudal era, when the common people depended upon the generosity of their supposed "betters."

As revolutionary as free enterprise is in the world, it is the "tried and true" method for promoting prosperity and enhancing human dignity. Democrats believe that the cure for the evils of the welfare state is more of the same. Popular majorities are perpetually tempted to use their political power to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, but the Republican party exists to conserve the free institutions which enable people to prosper without recourse to socialism.

The federal government is now so big–and so costly ($3 trillion annual budget, $10 trillion national debt)–that it may require more than just a holding action to avoid despotism. The Republicans need to "think anew and act anew" (Abraham Lincoln’s phrase) in order to conserve freedom and equality. John McCain’s proposal to encourage individuals, through federal income tax credits, to pay for their health care is a good start.

What we need is the return of limited government and free enterprise, a radical undertaking given the formidable obstacles that stand in the way. But just as Republicans pledged themselves to the ultimate extinction of slavery, so they now would be wise to aim at the withering away of the welfare state. Therein lies the return of our liberty.

Disgustingly cheerful, still

Time for another few thoughts of glee. It has been a beautiful morning. I want to sing along with the cast of Oklahoma! My permasmile turned on full blast, I will never turn it off. (Unless the batteries run out) 1. McCain proceeds unto his doom, doom. Two more weeks of impending doom.

2. Likewise the GOP. It now abides in rigor mortis while preparing for actual decomposition.

3. What shall it fertilize?

4. McCain's loss must not be blamed on Palin. Keep an eye out for those who will attempt such.

5. Does anyone now know what "Conservatism" means? Well... How'd things slip away? Perhaps Neoconservatism has proved fatal to Conservatism.

6. Christopher Buckley has just been purged from National Review. Thus enhancing NR's irrelevance.

7. Not that Christopher didn't deserve it, after endorsing Obama and all.

8. Buckley Junior recently wrote: "Eight years of 'conservative' government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance."

9. Ouch. WFB couldn't have said it better himself. And he surely would have tried.

10. Interesting question: If WFB had supported Buchanan in 92 and 96, where would the conservative movement be today? And the nation?

11. Colin Powell endorses Obama at a key juncture. Why? Powell will forever seethe over his February 2003 UN speech which started the Iraq War. A bold betrayal written for him by key Neocons: Scooter Libby, Douglas Feith, John Hannah, William Luti. Powell had deep misgivings beforehand, but ultimately decided to "trust" and do his "duty." Turned out the whole heap of "evidence" was false. Whoops on all counts.

12. As for the markets... There are no guides for the road ahead. No signs, no taillights. Maybe even no pavement. Hence Norman's permasmile!

Well chaps, so much for today's inspiration. Remember, the thoughts make the man -- Let us keep on the sunny side!

Respectfully Yours, Norman Vincent Peale

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But Dave Crater begs to differ...

Norman, Norman. Sigh. Your basic instincts have always been good, but you continue to disappoint in some aspects of your conscious judgment. When you are slightly to the left of Colin Powell on national security, perhaps second thoughts are in order. And when glee is your reaction at the demise of the world's strongest conservative party, perhaps third and fourth thoughts are in order.

4. Agreed. Many will dish blame everywhere but where it belongs, including Palin and other Christian social conservatives. One can hear it now: "the GOP needs to abandon these social cavemen that are holding it back and focus on issues that Americans really care about" blah blah blah.

5. Perhaps the failure to observe and follow conservatism, particularly by "conservative" intellectuals like Peale or Christopher Buckley, and by actual policy makers like GWB and John McCain, has been fatal to conservatism.

6-9. Quoting as authority on conservatism someone who has endorsed Obama -as I say, poor judgment, Amigo.

Reach him at crater@wilberforcecenter.org