How a Coalition of Conservative Student Groups (Including College Republicans) Should Work

Many conservative students are involved in partisan groups like the College Republicans and see non-partisan groups as redundant, unnecessary, and unimportant.

But in fact, non-partisan, conservative groups have several advantages over partisan groups:

Principle over Party or Person: Conservative groups are more likely to actually be and stay conservative. Their mission is to stay loyal to timeless, unchanging principles rather than to party platforms that may change over time or to politicians that will sacrifice principles out of fear and self-interest. What is the point of winning if you aren’t going to use your power and influence to promote conservative principles and policies?

Greater Dedication: Because non-partisan groups are explicitly and inherently about principle, the members of those groups are naturally going to be more dedicated. People who are more dedicated to a principled cause itself than to any party or person are the most dedicated people in the world.

Resources Available: The resources available to non-partisan, conservative groups are much greater than those available to partisan groups. There are a wide variety of conservative non-profits like the Leadership Institute that cannot and do not engage in or support partisan politics.

Click here to take a look at all the wonderful benefits that non-partisan student groups recognized by the Leadership Institute can take advantage of! Take notice of the publicity/media relations and fundraising assistance in particular.

Larger Pool for Recruitment and Support: More Americans identify as conservative than with any party affiliation.

But just because non-partisan, conservative groups have these advantages doesn’t mean that partisan groups are unnecessary or do not fulfill a vital role in a conservative coalition of campus groups.

In order to develop as many dedicated and effective young conservative leaders as possible and to win political battles on campus and beyond, a coalition of many conservative groups is necessary.

The more groups on any given campus the better, provided each has an effective leader-organizer. The left has tons of student groups on the typical campus, not just the College Democrats, and they are successful because of it. Conservatives should have just as many groups, if not more.

Specialization is key to movement success:

Quality: Specialized, single-issue groups usually attract and can harness students and non-student supporters with more dedication and enthusiasm.

Leadership Development: More groups means more opportunities for students to take leadership roles and develop as leaders.

Division of Labor: Specialized, single-issue groups can also do more regular, ongoing, and effective outreach and activism on their issue area than a general conservative group which must split its time, resources, and energy among many issues. Why have one group do everything and accomplish little when you can have many groups each focusing on their one issue and accomplish a lot?

Quantity: Specialization also brings more people into the movement overall than would otherwise join with only one general conservative group. It also helps diffuse tension among students on the center-right who don’t agree on every issue.

Here are eight groups that a complete conservative campus coalition would include:

• General conservative (e.g. Young Conservatives of America, Young Conservatives of Texas)
• Students for Life (pro-life)
• Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (pro-2nd Amendment)
• Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow (pro-free market environmentalism)
• Students for Love & Marriage (pro-marriage, pro-love, pro-chastity)
• Youth for Western Civilization (cultural conservatism; anti-racial preferences, anti-illegal immigration)
• Young Americans for Liberty (pro-free market and individual liberty)
• College Republicans

Partisan and non-partisan groups play different activism roles in the campus coalition.

Non-partisan, conservative student groups should focus their activist efforts on the campus, culturally and institutionally, and on Republican primary campaigns and elections. Partisan groups like the College Republicans should focus on general elections, hopefully after a principled conservative has won the Republican nomination. Non-partisan, conservative groups should help conservatives win Republican primaries; College Republicans should then help get those conservative Republicans elected.

The activism of non-partisan, conservative student groups should push the political culture, the collective political conversation on campus, as far to the right as possible. That way the College Republicans can occupy a more middle position on a political spectrum that has been shifted to the right. (Click here to learn more about this strategy called shifting the Overton Window!) College Republicans chapter leaders need to consciously understand this strategy and not join in on the left’s attempts to push back against and discredit this shift. Republicans should not throw conservative movement activists under the bus.

If both partisan and non-partisan groups understand the big picture of the coalition and how their role fits into that big picture, both the conservative movement and the Republican Party on campus will achieve more political victories.

How will this conservative coalition on campus come to be?

The general conservative group should be the foundation of the coalition. It should play a crucial role in establishing and maintaining the campus coalition. This group should become a permanent, established group on campus, serving as a human resources department for the movement on campus:

• Identifying, recruiting, and training new leaders to start the other coalition groups
• Educating about and instilling dedication for conservative principles
• Providing the other coalition member groups with manpower, research, training, and other guidance and assistance
• Directing the coalition on two crucial, mutually beneficial projects: a campus canvass and a donor/alumni canvass.

Working together, the members of the coalition can help each other identify the hot-button issues of students, donors, alumni, parents, and other supporters and channel them to the appropriate group where they will be most dedicated. Their time, energy, labor, resources, and funds are crucial to real change on a campus and beyond.

This coalition only works when student leaders see the effectiveness of and embrace the necessity of movement politics and coordination. Little, if any, individual group’s self-interest is sacrificed, for the gains more than make up for the investment in teamwork. The coalition also requires leaders to get along with each other and work together even if they don’t agree 100% on all the issues. It will require dedication, but the rewards are immense and enduring!

A few organizational features of this coalition of groups will enable it to operate effectively in practice:

Interlocking Membership/Joint Group Meetings: Initially, if one is starting from scratch, a group of eight or fewer cadre conservatives could each become the leader of one conservative “group” in the coalition and be a member of the other coalition “groups.” These student groups could hold joint meetings to discuss their progress in building up the membership of their individual groups. Each leader could help the others recruit for their groups. Organization building should be the focus of the joint meetings.

Coalition Leaders Meetings: As the membership of each individual group grows, joint meetings should give way to separate meetings for each individual coalition group. The joint group meetings should transform into meetings for just the leaders of the individual coalition groups. Inter-coalition communication and coordination and joint canvass and activism projects should be the focus of these meetings.

To start a non-partisan, conservative group on your campus today, contact your Regional Field Coordinator for advice, assistance, and many kinds of support all along the way.

Abortion is in the Constitution (Indirectly)

The word “abortion” does not appear in the Constitution because the technology and pharmaceuticals that we have today that can kill babies in the womb did not exist. The very notion of killing a baby in the womb also would’ve been abhorrently immoral to the Framers. This act of murder was outlawed in the American colonies and continued to be illegal in each state until 1967.

But the Constitution does mention abortion indirectly because the Framers say in the Preamble that they created the new constitution for the sake of “Posterity” too, aka the unborn and unconceived:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to…secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” (emphasis mine)

How can the Constitution secure liberty to unborn posterity if it does not also secure their lives to them?

With all this in mind, how can the Supreme Court have found a “right” to kill the unborn in the Constitution?

Conservatism & Science: Why Politics is Not a Science

Science is conservative in some respects:

• It generally changes incrementally and gradually as new evidence comes to mind.
• It tests everything against experience. Results matter, not just theories or intentions.
• It inherently looks to the past. Past occurences and observations are the foundation of science. Without faith in the past, science could not function.
• It sees the world as inherently orderly, functioning according to certain reliably consistent laws of nature.

But science is not conservative with respect to the fact that science is fallibilistic. The foundations can and have been uprooted several times. The notion of science as the slow, steady, and conservative accumulation of knowledge was destroyed by a series of revolutions at the biological, cosmic, and atomic levels. Copernicus, Darwin, Einstein, and Heisenberg in partcular were instrumental in proving that science sometimes radically uproots the current paradigm of empirical/scientific knowledge. Strictly speaking, nothing is ever really “settled” in science.

True conservatism does not allow for epistemological revolutions in moral and political philosophy:

Conservatives do not deny the existence of undiscovered truths, but they make a critical assumption, which is that those truths that have already been apprehended are more important to cultivate than those undisclosed ones close to the liberal grasp only in the sense that the fruit was close to Tantalus…. Conservatism is the tacit acknowledgement that all that is finally important in human experience is behind us; that the crucial explorations have been undertaken, and that it is given to man to know what are the great truths that emerged from them. Whatever is to come cannot outweigh the importance to man of what has gone before. (William F. Buckley Jr. in Up from Liberalism)

Marxists and libertarians of almost all varieties think that politics is a science. But it isn’t, strictly speaking.

Conservatism is a more humane political philosophy because it recognizes the reality of human nature and the influences upon it. People are not mere physical material, mere combinations of atoms and molecules, who react in the exact same way to certain external stimuli, whether economic or political. Sure, human nature in general doesn’t change, but culture and nurture mould the raw material human nature. Also, people are individuals and thus sometimes deviate from nature, culture, or nurture by willful choice. No nation is perfectly virtuous, but some nations are more virtuous than others in certain respects. 

Thus, while there are certainly timeless political principles, their direct and pure application will not yield the same results for every single group of people under any and all circumstances. Prudence cannot be dispensed with, and thus politics should be considered an art ultimately. Of course, just because something is an art doesn’t mean that reason should be ignored. Orderly art requires reason, the faculty that creates order.

Moreover, it is actually the notion itself of politics as a science that has been so harmful to American politics. Science became largely about experimentation and knowledge for its own sake or for the sake of power, unhinged from moral considerations. Regressives applied hubristic, reckless, and immoral political experimentation in America, irrationally disregarding experience and time-tested experience (not to mention constitutional law). The consequences have been devastating.

Science in itself has no moral compass. To say that politics is a science is to introduce the element of amorality (or rather immorality) into politics.

Conservatives Donate Too Much to Think Tanks and Partisan Orgs

Conservatives will never actually halt and roll back the uninterrupted statist trend over the past century if conservative donors are not funding movement organizations that actually make American culture more conservative, get conservatives elected, and get conservative legislation passed. Think tanks and partisan organizations don’t do any of these things. The organizations that do accomplish these things focus on grassroots organizing, activism, legal action, media & communication, arts & entertainment, and training.

Think tanks don’t win policy battles. Throwing a policy paper at a politician and hoping he will change his mind is insane. Unless the politician is a true believer (and there are many more on the left than on the right) who is willing to lose an election to further an agenda, organized votes and money (or some really bad publicity) are the only thing that will change his mind.

Think tanks are most effective when conservatives are already in power. Then the policy analysis can be used and quoted by conservatives in power to lend an air of scientific accuracy and credibility to policies that common sense, reason, and basic principles already prove to be true. When conservatives are not in power, the policy papers and eggheads of the political right are ignored. These are the facts of history: the Heritage Foundation was riding high in being listened to during the Reagan years, the Gingrich years, and Republican dominance from 2002-2006. But when the Democrats gained power in 2006 and 2008, they couldn’t have cared less what the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, or American Enterprise Institute thought.

The very fact that the Heritage Foundation has now started Heritage Action, a 501(c)4 proves the limits of the think tank.

Partisan organizations are most effective when conservatives are already the Republican Party nominees. Why are conservatives giving so much money to partisan organs when there is no guarantee that the money will actually support conservative candidates (and when in fact the money has gone to RINOs in the past)? Conservatives should focus their money on primaries, and then the Republican hacks will have to follow.

Basically, 501(c)4s, legal foundations, and PACs of various sorts have the potential to make substantial contributions to the conservative movement because they organize votes, money, and/or legal action. 501(c)3s that focus on mass education do not have this potential and are largely useless, despite the media attention they may get or buy. But 501(c)3s that focus on youth culture, youth education, youth politics, and youth training do well. They sow deep and powerful seeds for the future.

But the budgets of think tanks and partisan organizations are much larger than those of the more effective organizations. Here are the annual budgets of various organizations:

Republican National Committee: $320 million (2008, revenue)

Think Tanks
Focus on the Family: $130.3 million (2009, revenue)
Heritage Foundation: $71.6 million (2009, revenue); $63.6 million (2008, revenue)
Hoover Institution: $36.7 million (2006-7, revenue; endowment worth $437 million)
Cato Institute: $20.4 million (FY 2010, revenue); $20.6 (FY 2009, revenue)
American Enterprise Institute: $20.2 million (2008, revenue)
Family Research Council: $12.1 million (2009, revenue)
Media Research Center: $11.3 million (2008, revenue)
Mercatus Center: $7.9 million (2009, revenue)
Acton Institute: $6.2 million (2008, revenue)
Competitive Enterprise Institute: $4.7 million (2009, revenue)
Claremont Institute: $3.3 million (2009, revenue)
Ludwig von Mises Institute: $2.7 million (2008, revenue)
Independent Institute: $1.9 million (2009, revenue)

Effective Organizations
Alliance Defense Fund: $30.1 million (2009, revenue)
Institute for Justice: $10.2 million (2009, revenue)
Federalist Society: $9.9 million (2009, revenue)
Americans for Prosperity: $7.5 million (2008, revenue)
Leadership Institute: $7.4 million (2009, revenue)
Institute for Humane Studies: $6.8 million (2009, revenue)
FreedomWorks: $4.2 million (2009, revenue)
National Organization for Marriage: $3 million (2009, revenue)
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education: $2.8 million (2009, revenue)
National Right to Life Committee: $2.6 million (2009, revenue)

And what do you think the left spends its money on? On organizations that mould young minds and that can get money and votes for liberal politicians. The left didn’t even start funding think tanks until recently. The left doesn’t need think tanks; it has colleges and universities! The left supplements the funding it gets from millionaires and billionaires with taxpayer money and union dues.

Here are the annual budgets of some top leftist organizations:

United Nations: $13.9 billion
National Education Association (NEA): $307 million
Service Employees International Union (SEIU): $300 million
Democratic National Committee: $260.1 million
AFL-CIO: $120 million
Planned Parenthood Federation of America: $106.4 million
ACLU: $73.1 million
Center for American Progress: $27 million ($2.5 million of which is devoted to Campus Progress, a youth outreach arm)
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN): $25 million
Center for Community Change: $17.7 million
Human Rights Campaign Foundation : $9.6 million
People for the American Way Foundation: $8.3 million
Greenpeace Fund: $7.6 million

There’s a ton of small, left-wing community organizing groups nationwide. They are decentralized, effective, and well funded.

Because the education system is largely monopolized by the state, taxpayers fund the left in our schools from kindergarten through college.

Because the arts & entertainment industry is a profitable enterprise, irresponsible parents and young adults are primarily funding the left in its artistic efforts against traditional moral values.

How do conservatives expect to win eventually when we are outspent and not even spending our own resources wisely?!

Conservatism, Libertarianism, and Children’s Positive Rights

Libertarians sometimes complain that Big Government treats its citizens like children (e.g. using the adjective “paternalistic” to describe govt.). They also denounce the notion of natural positive rights, which are rights that compel others to do something, and uphold negative rights only, which compel others to refrain from doing certain things.

The irony of all this is that many libertarians don’t see that these two concepts, children and positive rights, are related. The government should not treat its adult citizens like children because adult citizens have only negative rights and no positive rights. But the inherent logic of this sort of argument seems to dictate that children have positive rights, unless one wants to erroneously assert that no one has positive rights.

Adulthood, legally defined according to age as a matter of prudence, carries with it a moral responsibility to take care of oneself rather than demand others take care of you (which is what children and statists do). Thus one major reason why the welfare state is immoral: it forces some citizens to care for other citizens as if the former were parents and the latter were children when in fact everyone is an adult. Adults are expected to be mature, self-sufficient, cooperative with others, rational, independent. Thus they have no positive rights.

Children are irrational, dependent, and helplessly weak by nature. Yet they are still innocent human beings, persons with human dignity. It is children’s irrational, dependent, and helplessly weak nature that confers upon them natural, individual, positive rights. They have a right to attention and care for their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well being. It is an evil and an injustice for a child to be neglected or abused.

But upon whom do children have these rights to attention and care? Not upon everyone. Not upon the State. And not upon just any random person. It is parents who are obligated to provide attention and care insofar as they are able to; it is upon them that children have positive rights. Why upon parents? Because the parents gave their children life and existence and are thus responsible for their children and their children’s rights. One would think this would be self-evident but apparently not in this decadent era and culture.

It is the concept of children’s positive rights that separates conservatives and libertarians philosophically. From this concept springs the conservative’s commitment to pro-life and pro-marriage public policy. The inherent moral differences between adulthood and childhood cannot be ignored or glossed over when it comes to political philosophy.

The purpose of government is to protect people’s rights, both natural and civil, both positive and negative, as far as it is possible for government to prudently do so. Of course, this purpose assumes an accurate determination of what rights human beings actually have and what differences among human beings really matter.

Not only does the child in the womb have negative rights against being killed, but he or she also has positive rights upon the mother, a right to her body and the sustenance it provides. (However, if the baby actually does pose a threat to the life of the mother, which is extremely rare and usually means the baby would not survive either, one may save the life of the mother by infringing on the positive rights of the child but not the negative rights. One may remove the child from the mother but not actively kill the child through violence.)

The government has a duty to protect both the positive and negative rights of the unborn son or daughter as prudently as possible. Outlawing abortion and prosecuting abortionists seems very prudent. Because the preamble to the Constitution reveals that our founding document was meant for “posterity,” i.e. the unborn, and their rights too, I believe one can make a sound originalist, constitutional argument for federal involvement in protecting the rights of the unborn. But if not, I will take the states’ rights alternative as the next best thing. Even pro-life legislation has to be constitutional to be enacted, for the rule of law according to founding principles (e.g. federalism) is more important than any individual right or single issue.

Once born, how well these positive rights of children are secured is intimately tied to the character of the relationship between mother and father. The purpose of marriage as both a civil and religious institution is to ensure that the relationship between mother and father is best suited for the procreation and raising children. As a civil institution, it has no other purpose. Children are best raised by their biological mother and father (see here also). If the relationship between mother and father is unstable and unloving, the child’s positive rights will suffer in a variety of ways.  Because homosexual relationships are absolutely sterile by nature (not by dysfunction), they do not deserve any legal recognition whatsoever. (And the legalized separation of children from their biological fathers and mothers through sperm and egg “banks” is immoral and should be outlawed. No one has a “right” to a child and such “artificial” children suffer psychologically.)

The government has a duty to protect the positive and negative rights of children as prudently as possible. American society recognizes that children have negative rights, thus the laws against physical and sexual abuse. There are very few things that government can prudently do to secure the positive rights of children without causing greater evil. However, through prudent regulation of the institution of marriage, it can promote more stable, enduring marriages, which in turn will help secure children’s positive rights. Legally defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, repealing no-fault divorce, and treating marriage like a corporation are a few basic, prudent measures government should take to help strengthen marriages and thus better protect the positive rights of children. Because of the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution, I’m not sure how one can avoid a national marriage policy. But again, if the states’ rights alternative could work, I’ll take it as the next best thing. Even pro-marriage legislation has to be constitutional to be enacted, for the rule of law according to founding principles (e.g. federalism) is more important than any individual right or single issue.

Many libertarians like to say that “liberty is indivisible” and that conservatives are inconsistent for dividing economic and individual/social liberty. But in reality, conservatives absolutely agree that liberty is indivisible. We are not inconsistent; we just have a different view of human nature and rights. It is merely the case that many libertarians are unwilling to acknowledge the obvious and relevant differences between adults and children with regard to rights. This self-evident and empirical distinction among human beings is what libertarianism seems unable to handle morally and humanely.

Culture War as Stigma War

Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.
— Alexis de Tocqueville

A friend of mine drew my attention to a very important article written by Jeff Schafer at the Alliance Defense Fund. It’s entitled “Stigma and Dogma, Revisited.”

This article re-echoes something that De Tocqueville (quoted above) observed early on about the dangerous tendencies of democratic culture. Stigma and social pressure rule the day in a democracy.

Yet stigma and social pressure were what kept the U.S. conservative and free for so long, esp. with regard to our current social issues. In the early history of America, abortion and deviations from traditional marriage were so powerfully and thoroughly stigmatized that they were not political issues at all. Not so anymore.

Stigma is the expression of moral outrage. The article reminds me of one of the Leadership Institute’s Laws of the Public Policy Process: “Moral outrage is the most powerful motivating force in politics.”

If conservatives are to take the long-term view of changing the culture in order to win (as the left did over a century ago), we have to be willing to publicly engage in the Stigma War. Big govt., govt. coercion, govt. dependency, promiscuity, sexual perversity, infanticide, etc. must all become shameful, stigmatized things again. Conservatives have to be willing to publicly denounce these things as immoral and shameful.

Why do you think the left likes to engage in name-calling? Racist, sexist, homophobe, bigot, etc. All these epithets are intended to stigmatize conservative views, whether the labels rationally apply or not. And they’ve done a pretty good job of it.

When people evaluate candidates or policies, it is moral factors that determine their choices; it is the elements of shame and guilt that convince people to be politically active and to hold certain political views with intensity.

We need not lose hope completely that the world is doomed to irrationality though. Feelings of guilt, shame, and moral outrage do not spring up spontaneously or irrationally; they are rooted in certain rational, though often false, paradigms and faith systems. The problem with the left is not that they aren’t rational; they are, assuming their faith-based assumptions to be true. It’s the fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality, human nature, and justice that separate us from them. (And these false assumption are inculcated into Americans through the cultural institutions of primary schools, academia, arts & entertainment, churches, and the media.)

We need to bring the reasons for our political faith and assumptions to the surface in the most clear, concise, direct, impactful, and thought-provoking ways possible. And this is where the necessity of activism comes in. And good activism is based on good organizational preparation beforehand that gathers the people and resources to make activism effective.

Moreover, activism should be directed not merely at challenging current leftist stigmas and dogmas but toward recapturing the cultural institutions mentioned above that inculcate these false stigmas and dogmas into American youth (and older).

What Your Campus Services Coordinator Can Do For You

Campus Services Coordinators (CSCs) offer so many benefits and services to students that sometimes it can be hard for students to grasp all of them and take full advantage of CampusReform.org staff and resources. We can turn your student group into an effective political machine.

Here’s what your CSC can offer you:

1. Understanding: We were in your shoes not very long ago. All of us CSCs recently graduated from college and were politically active as students. We know exactly what it’s like to be frustrated with leftist bias and abuse on campus. But we also know what it takes to fight back successfully!
2. Expertise: Well-run political campaigns have savvy political consultants, shouldn’t your student group have one too? Each CSC is an expert in political organization and activism, especially at the campus level. Drawing on our experiences in college and our own training through the Leadership Institute, we can help you navigate the stormy political seas of student activism!
3. Training: Your CSC can set up three different types of youth training for you and your group:
   1. Youth Leadership School: how to run a youth campaign and organize students politically in general
   2. Student Publications Workshop: how to start and run a student publication
   3. Campus Election Workshop: how to win student government elections
4. Fundraising Assistance: “You can’t save the world if you can’t pay the rent.” To be a successful student group, you’re going to need funding. Some universities may offer funds. Even so, it is important to organize your own independent fundraising operations. Your CSC can help your craft an effective fundraising strategy. We can help you draft an effective direct mail fundraising letter. find potential donors, and provide other assistance for top groups.
5. Media/Public Relations Assistance: “If the media didn’t cover it, it didn’t happen.” To be a successful group, you need a good PR operation. You have to develop a good message and get it out to your target audience and beyond. Your CSC can help you develop your message, write a press release, and distribute it to the major media outlets in your locality (and state).
6. Resource Materials: There are tons of resource materials on CampusReform.org. Your CSC can draw your attention to the specific materials you need and can send you supplementary materials.
7. Other Opportunities: CampusReform.org and other conservative organizations offer many special opportunities throughout the year: special nationwide initiatives, student activism awards, essay scholarships, internship opportunities, etc.

What you can do to help your CSC help you:

1. Communicate regularly with your CSCs! It’s hard for us to help you if we don’t know what is happening with your group and your campus.
2. Blog regularly on your campus subsite! In addition to publicizing and permanently recording what’s happening on your campus and your group’s activities, your blog posts are another way to inform CSCs about your situation. We read all the posts from our region.
3. Report incidents of leftist abuse and bias! We will evaluate the report and help you respond.

Campus Services Coordinators are at your service. Just shoot us a message or give us a call. Together we can take back American campuses from the left!

Why Catholicism is Distinctly Conservative

The Catholic faith teaches that grasping the truth about God, His Church, and His moral precepts is not an ongoing process that never ends. The Holy Spirit led the apostles and the Church built on their hand-picked successors “to all truth” (John 16:13).

While it may take some time for the individual to learn and humbly submit to all these truths, these truths have already been revealed and “handed down once for all” (Jude 1:3). The Christian faith was established with certainty and infallibility long before Martin Luther; it cannot be changed, no matter how scrupulously one studies the Bible. Nothing substantive or fundamental can be added to or subtracted from the early deposit of faith.

Personal Scriptural interpretations and younger, man-made Protestant traditions cannot possibly carry greater weight or be more accurate than the Scriptural interpretations of the early Church fathers and councils long before the Protestant Revolution and its “progressive” and innovative doctrinal additions to and subtractions from the one, traditional Faith handed down by the apostles, the foundation of the Church (Eph 2:20).

However, grasping these fixed, traditional Christian truths as they apply to our individual lives and our striving to live out those truths (i.e. sanctification) is indeed an unending, life-long process. We need constant reminders of the truths that have already been revealed to us and constant reflection on how to apply them to our own lives. We need constant prayer for the grace and strength to practice and live out the fixed truths we already know, so that our faith may not be dead, useless, and in vain.

Therefore, Catholicism is distinctly conservative while all other denominations, to a greater or lesser extent, are necessarily liberal, relativist, fallibilist, and egocentric.

Though he’s talking about politics and conservatism, the following quote by William F. Buckley, Jr. (himself a Catholic) in Up from Liberalism applies very similarly to religion and Catholicism:

Conservatives do not deny the existence of undiscovered truths, but they make a critical assumption, which is that those truths that have already been apprehended are more important to cultivate than those undisclosed ones close to the liberal grasp only in the sense that the fruit was close to Tantalus…. Conservatism is the tacit acknowledgement that all that is finally important in human experience is behind us; that the crucial explorations have been undertaken, and that it is given to man to know what are the great truths that emerged from them. Whatever is to come cannot outweigh the importance to man of what has gone before.

With regard to epistemology, i.e. “critical assumption[s],” Protestantism and modern American liberalism are two sides of the same coin.

Bayou Bobby for Vice President

“My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived,” quipped John Adams of the vice presidency over 200 years ago.

Not much has changed since the late 1700s (Dick Cheney is quite an anomaly historically), but the VP slot is surely more important the older the presidential nominee is. Thus, more so than Barack Obama, John McCain had better choose well his VP and that choice should be Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a real up-and-comer in the party.

Why? First of all, the guy can talk. Just look him up on YouTube and listen for yourself. Jindal speaks quickly and powerfully on his feet. His is not the fluffy eloquence of a pre-packaged Obama speech, but he can do that too. He is just the kind of talent the McCain camp is going to need if it is to exploit the hypnotic change-mania that has gripped much of the country.

If there was ever a state that needed change, it is Louisiana, and he has capitalized on the change rhetoric in his own campaigns. “I suspect that some of those who oppose making big changes in Louisiana government will try to mount a counter-offensive…. But before we can change the direction of our state, we all have to change our current mindset. We have to defeat cynicism…. We can change. We must change. We will change…. [C]hange is not just on the way: Change begins tonight!” declared Jindal upon claiming victory for the governorship.

Next, McCain can’t win the election without a better outreach to the conservative base, and he has done a poor job thus far. If anybody can excite the base and get them out to the polls for McCain, Jindal is the one to do it. He has a 100% pro-life voting record and an “A” from Gun Owners of America. He campaigned for governor on cutting taxes among other issues. Rush Limbaugh has gone so far as to call him “the next Ronald Reagan.” The battle against Obama for independents will be formidable, so finding a way to win over staunch conservatives is a must.

At 37, Jindal is even younger than Obama by about a decade (helping McCain diffuse the age issue) yet has a much longer and more impressive resume than the Democratic nominee. Brace yourself for a deluge of experience: He graduated with honors from Brown University in biology and public policy and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford who turned down admission to medical and law schools at both Harvard and Yale. At McKinsey and Company, Jindal consulted Fortune 500 companies. Two years later he was appointed the Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and another two years later appointed Executive Director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. Jindal’s particular background in health care, which is sure to be an important issue this election, couldn’t be more timely.

From there he went on to serve as the president of the University of Louisiana System and then the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in 2001. Only then did he begin a career as an elected representative to Congress serving two terms and winning his reelection with an incredible 88% of the vote! As governor of Louisiana, his approval ratings have reached as high as a whopping 77%.

And to top it off, no matter how hard we try to ignore it, race will likely be an issue in the presidential campaign. It can only help to have a person of color on the Republican ticket when campaigning against an historic opponent, an African American. Don’t expect much of a shift in the black vote, but it will be much easier to deflect the perennial accusations of Republican racism with an Indian-American at McCain’s side.

In short, Jindal is the youthful, articulate, reforming, conservative, and accomplished rock star that the Republican Party desperately needs in the fight against the predicted blue political tide this November and in the effort to bring the party itself back to its winning principles.

Help us Bobby Jindal, you’re our only hope.

Fascism is Merely Heretical Communism, Like Liberalism

How many times have you heard a liberal call a conservative a “fascist” or “neo-fascist”? The Left apparently thinks that only right-wingers can be fascists. But the truth is that fascism is wholly a product of the Left, not the Right, side of the political spectrum. Only liberals can be fascists because modern American liberalism is a product of communist and fascist ideology.

This can be most clearly and immediately seen by examining the term “Nazism,” which is actually short-hand for National Socialism in German. The Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Socialism is an ideology of the Left! Communism is global socialism, and fascism is national socialism. The ONLY real difference between the two is one of scope and geography.

Mussolini: Communist Heretic
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini, dictator of fascist Italy and conventionally labeled the father of fascism (the term “fascism” is Italian in origin), was a lifelong socialist and follower of Karl Marx. He was named after two socialists: Amilcare Cipriani and Andrea Costa. His father was a stalwart socialist who was a member of the First International and served on the local socialist council. His father read him passages from Das Kapital (I know that’s what I read when I want to put myself to sleep, haha). Benito started early in his socialist activism: he called himself a socialist while in high school and became the secretary of a socialist organization at Forli at the age of 18.

In his youth, he carried a medallion of Karl Marx. He also became close friends with Angelica Balabanoff, a longtime colleague of Lenin. In fact, Lenin and Mussolini were mutual admirers. Lenin wrote, “Mussolini? A great pity he is lost to us! He is a strong man, who would have led our party to victory.”

Mussolini seriously began his political career as a left-wing journalist and intellectual. He was very well read in socialist theory. He wrote countless socialist tracts and articles that both examined and translated socialist literature. In 1911, he became the editor of La lotta di classe (Class War), which served as a mouthpiece for the Italian Socialist Party. In 1912, he attended a Socialist congress.

Leading socialist Olindo Vernocchi said, “From today you, Benito, are not only the representative of the Romagna Socialists but the Duce of all revolutionary socialists in Italy.” This was how he received the nickname Il Duce, literally “the leader.” He was the Duce of Socialism!

Leda Rafanelli, an anarchist intellectual, wrote “Benito Mussolini…is the socialist of heroic times.”

Mussolini joined the formal leadership of the Italian Socialist Party and became editor of its paper called Avanti! , which would become socialist gospel for a whole generation of socialists. Lenin would comment approvingly of Mussolini’s efforts in Pravda.

Mussolini’s break with strict, dogmatic socialism would begin with the outbreak of World War I. His support of the war contravened the principle of international solidarity and the elimination of national borders (nationality itself to be precise). He saw it as a practical necessity, but he received a backlash from hardline believers. He responded, “You hate me today because you love me still. Whatever happens, you won’t lose me. Twelve years of my life in the party ought to be sufficient guarantee of my socialist faith. Socialism is in my blood.” Again, he countered, “You think you can turn me out, but you will find I shall come back again. I am and shall remain a socialist and my convictions will never change! They are bred into my very bones.”

Mussolini did not move to the right or radically change his political philosophy. He merely rejected one tenet of orthodox Marxism: class must come before nationality or any other group identity. “I saw that internationalism was crumbling,” Mussolini later observed. “The sentiment of nationality exists and cannot be denied.” He thought it was “utterly foolish” to believe that class consciousness could trump national loyalties and culture. Thus was born national socialism, a modification from traditional socialism only in the sense that it was less ambitious in scope and recognized that the natural power of nationalism could be harnessed as a means to socialist ends. Thus Mussolini said that its was “necessary to assassinate the Party in order to save Socialism.” It was this little heresy that would divide Europe’s socialists. And the Italian people would choose national socialism (fascism) over international socialists and communists.

And thus Mussolini came to power as a very popular dictator. He proceeded to create a totalitarian state (a term that he coined) as communism requires: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” There was hardly a difference between it and the Soviet Union with regard to policy. The State would control everything and had the final authority.

Before his death, he selected a socialist journalist to record some of his last thoughts and wishes: “I bequeath the republic to the republicans not to the monarchists, and the work of social reform to the socialists and not to the middle classes.”

Hitler: Man of the Left
Hitler wrote approvingly of Italian fascism in Mein Kampf: “The appearance of a new and great idea was the secret of success in the French Revolution. The Russian Revolution owes its triumph to an idea. And it was only the idea that enabled Fascism triumphantly to subject a whole nation to a process of complete renovation.” He realized the necessity of having an idea that would arouse the masses.

For years historians have tried to portray Nazism as the polar opposite of Communism. The role of industrialists has been exaggerated while the clear and substantial socialist aspects of Nazism have been ignored or downplayed. Nazism did not destroy the communist Left in Germany; it merely replaced the communists on the Left side of the spectrum in Germany. The fact of the matter is that the working classes (the bloc that typically supported the communists) comprised a substantial part of the Nazis electoral base. German Nazism and Italian Fascism were both populist movements that attracted support from all levels of society. Moreover, the industrial sector came to support Hitler much later than the working masses. Businesses hopped on the band wagon when they saw it was in their best interests.

Like any good leftist, Hitler was a revolutionary and exploited anti-capitalist rhetoric in his rise to power. He despised the bourgeoisie, traditionalists, aristocrats, monarchists, and all believers in the established order. Because he wished to remake German society entirely, he was no conservative! He wrote in Mein Kampf, “Either the German youth will one day create a new State founded on the racial idea or they will be the last witnesses of the complete breakdown and death of the bourgeoisie world.” He rejected traditional Christianity; he wanted to revive Germany’s so-called pre-Christian authenticity, or in other words, to create a modern paganism. He was well read in German mythology and pseudo-history. His idols were Georg Ritter von Schonerer and Dr. Karl Lueger.

He rhetoric mirrored Lenin’s: “Our bourgeoisie is already worthless for any noble human endeavor.” Once he was entrenched in power he clarified his opposition to communism thus: “Had communism really intended nothing more than a certain purification by eliminating isolated rotten elements from among the ranks of our so-called ‘upper ten thousand’ or our equally worthless Philistines, one could have sat back quietly and looked on for awhile.” Hitler didn’t disagree with the German communists in principle or policy, especially with regard to economics; he was enraged at their undermining of Germany with strikes during WW I and antiwar mobilization. He thought they were part of a coalition that had stabbed Germany in the back. Indeed, Hitler often spoke with grudging admiration of Stalin and the communists. Hitler studied Marxism, which both fascinated and repulsed him, appreciating its ideas but becoming utterly convinced that Marx was the architect of some Jewish plot.

Hitler entered the Nazi Party because of a talk given by Gottfried Feder entitled “How and by What Means is Capitalism to be Eliminated?” The party stood for everything he believed in, and thus started his career as the party’s best salesman. The Nazis campaigned as socialists.
What exactly did the party stand for? Its platform included:

“We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the total population of the State, then the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.” Sounds like nanny state liberalism.

“Abolition of unearned (work and labor) incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery.” Can you say death tax and rent control?

“We demand the nationalization of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).” That doesn’t sound free market.

“We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries” Hmmm, a “windfall” profits tax?

“We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.” Sounds like FDR’s Social Security, no?

“The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program…. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State….” Sounds like a government monopoly on the schools. Isn’t that what Democrats are for?

“The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.” Hmmm, you think Hitler would have banned trans fats?

“…a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: The good of the state before the good of the individual.” This is what liberals mean when they say “the common good.”

“For the execution of all of this we demand the formation of a strong central power in the Reich.” Centralization of power in the national government? Does that sound right-wing to you?

Read the platform for yourself. There is nothing conservative about it.

Racism was not an element of fascism originally in Italy. Anti-Semitism was an innovation of Hitler’s. Mussolini considered it a silly distraction. But Hitler’s identity politics was powerful and successful (hmmm, which modern American political party practices identity politics?). Of course, anti-Semitism is by no means a right-wing phenomenon. We should not forget that Stalin and Karl Marx himself hated Jews. Jews were seen (and are still seen today to some extent) as the archetypal capitalists. Thus it was only natural that the Left, including Hitler, should hate them!

Nationalism isn’t inherently right-wing at all either. Consider Stalin, Castro, Arafat, Hugo Chavez, Che Guevara, Pol Pot, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. The only reason nationalism came to be seen as right-wing is because the communists, who were internationalists, labeled the fascists as right-wing. Why the heck should we be adopting the political lens of communism in order to find out what fascism really is?!

Nazi ideologist Gregor Strasser was straightforward about it: “We are socialists. We are enemies, deadly enemies, of today’s capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, its unfair wage system, its immoral way of judging the worth of human beings in terms of their wealth and their money, instead of their responsibility and their performance, and we are determined to destroy this system whatever happens!”

Hitler dedicates an entire chapter in his Mein Kampf to how the Nazis can appropriate socialist and communist imagery, rhetoric, and ideas to attract leftists to the party. The Nazis made use of the color red deliberately: “In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man.”
Hitler would often exaggerate his identity as an “ex-worker”: “I was a worker in my youth like you, slowly working my way upward by industry, by study, and I think I can say as well by hunger.”

Fascism and communism are kindred spirits. As communist ideologue Karl Radek noted, “Fascism is middle class Socialism….”

(Reference Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg)