Constant Conservative

Many, many years ago when I was 23 (sorry, wrong story). Anyway, a number of years ago, I lived in New Hampshire–a physically beautiful place tucked in amongst Vermont and Maine and a few other New England states. That state’s motto has been “Live Free or Die” since 1945.

Mark Steyn takes up that cry in an extensive but well-worth-reading speech/essay brought to you by Hillsdale College. The following paragraph is the very beginning of the essay:

MY REMARKS are titled tonight after the words of General Stark, New Hampshire’s great hero of the Revolutionary War: “Live free or die!” When I first moved to New Hampshire, where this appears on our license plates, I assumed General Stark had said it before some battle or other—a bit of red meat to rally the boys for the charge; a touch of the old Henry V-at-Agincourt routine. But I soon discovered that the general had made his famous statement decades after the war, in a letter regretting that he would be unable to attend a dinner. And in a curious way I found that even more impressive. In extreme circumstances, many people can rouse themselves to rediscover the primal impulses: The brave men on Flight 93 did. They took off on what they thought was a routine business trip, and, when they realized it wasn’t, they went into General Stark mode and cried “Let’s roll!” But it’s harder to maintain the “Live free or die!” spirit when you’re facing not an immediate crisis but just a slow, remorseless, incremental, unceasing ratchet effect. “Live free or die!” sounds like a battle cry: We’ll win this thing or die trying, die an honorable death. But in fact it’s something far less dramatic: It’s a bald statement of the reality of our lives in the prosperous West. You can live as free men, but, if you choose not to, your society will die.

Sometimes, when I’m here and there on the interwebs, I find something which is so simple that I should have known it years ago (or maybe I did and just forgot it). At any rate, Mrs. Peel channels Chesterton beautifully:

There’s a Chesterton quotation I discovered recently (via the Anchoress):

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.

I’m heartbroken and appalled at how few people, especially in my birth cohort, understand that quotation.  Someone who doesn’t understand what Chesterton means, who doesn’t understand the meaning of freedom, from either a philosophical or a theological standpoint, is someone who is, for all intents and purposes, aiding in the destruction of what remains of Western civilization.  “Fascism with a smiley face,” as Jonah Goldberg calls it.

While the penultimate freedom is of the heart (and so can exist when the body has been completely immobilized and placed into a sensory deprivation tank), proper personal freedom does allow one sufficient rope to hang oneself, as it were, but insufficient rope to hang anyone else without penalty.

Here’s the latest functionality from GM’s OnStar system. In brief, their newest vehicles allow OnStar to control certain of the vehicle’s abilities remotely, slowing the vehicle down if it is stolen. Of course, how long before they also do it to keep you from breaking the speed limit, or because you didn’t pay your toll, or didn’t pay last month’s payment on time, or your wife just accused you of taking off with the kids, or  . . . ?

Personally, I just became less likely to buy a GM product with OnStar on board, not because I’m afraid I’ll do something wrong and get caught, but because I do not wish others to have such power to control my person (against my wishes) without going through due process.

It goes back to the the issue of safety vs. freedom: you cannot have all of each at the same time.

HT (The Liberty Digest)

It is nice to know that South Dakota is adept at ringing the bell of freedom (compared to the other states):

The Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a free-market think tank based in California, today released the U.S. Economic Freedom Index: 2008 Report, a ranking of economic freedom in the 50 states. Published in association with Forbes, the Index scores states based on 143 variables, including regulatory and fiscal obstacles imposed on businesses and residents.

South Dakota, which ranked 15 in 2004 (the last time the Index was published), has assumed the notable spot as the nation’s most economically free state, while New York consistently remains the most economically oppressed state, ranking 50 in all three editions of the Index.

The net migration rate for the 20 freest states was 27.36 people per 1,000, while it was a low 1.17 people per 1,000 for the 20 most economically oppressed states. “People are moving to the freest states and fleeing the least free states as our market-based migration metric of economic freedom predicts,” said Lawrence J. McQuillan, Ph.D., director of Business and Economic Studies at PRI and director of the project. “By measuring economic freedom and studying its effects, people will gain a fuller appreciation of the important imprint it makes on the economic and political fabric of America and will encourage new state legislation that advances economic liberty.”

[...]

As the most economically free state, South Dakota has no corporate income tax, no personal income tax, no personal property tax, no business inventory tax, and no inheritance tax. South Dakota’s business climate is thriving and companies are relocating and opening plants in the state. In 2007, the Small Business Survival Foundation ranked South Dakota as the best business climate for entrepreneurs. In 2008, Forbes magazine ranked Sioux Falls as the best smaller metro area for business and careers. Moreover, the state has faired well in other indexes measuring items such as inbound migration (United Van Lines) and the cost of doing business in the state (Milken Institute).

I like it. Perhaps it is time to change the state’s tourism tag line. May I suggest “A great place to live, a great place to die” as one freedom-loving alternative?

For those of us born in the 1970s and later, 1959 feels like a time of bobby socks and wings on American automobiles. We did not live through it, so we only see it through the lens of popular culture, the reminiscences of parents and uncles and aunts and others who remember it first-hand, if only imperfectly. Cuba, for  whom 1959 was a monumental year, is still struggling to get past it:

Roger Cohen, writing for the New York Times, describes the last gasp of Fidel’s revolution.  Cuba lives in a world where things run backwards. The Day of the Revolution began an irreversible entropy when cars started to run down, buildings began to crumble, homes began to decay and meals began to shrink. Inexorably, year by year. It was as if history ended in 1959 and began counting down to the 19th century. Now the 18th century is in view. The sea, once a highway, has become a prison.  It is illegal to own a boat. What naval forces exist are tasked with keeping the population in rather than keeping interlopers out. Even the all-powerful state has become a tatterdemalion: Cubans must navigate “a labyrinth of rations, regulations, two currencies and four markets” to eat, in a kind of Third Man Vienna where the scars of wartime never heal and the occupation never ends.

There is much that one could focus on in the above paragraph, but I’d like to draw your attention again to the one sentence that I’ve made bold. “It is illegal to own a boat.” Cuba is an island, and not a very large one at that. When I read this story, that sentence simply threw itself at me. If ever there were an example of the lack of freedom, it would be this. I am reminded of the The Truman Show. In it, the eponymous lead character is made (as in caused) to be afraid of boats, so that he will never leave the island and find out that all which he believes to be true is nothing more than an illusion. Others may come and go, but Truman cannot.

Let us hope that Cuba’s time of being stuck on the island may soon come to an end.

Quin Hillyer at The American Spectator has laid out one perspective on things:

Conservatives may not realize just how difficult it might be to recover from this week’s elections.

The day after the big defeat, the conservative chatter everywhere was about how the “movement” and the Republican Party (two different things) could finally unshackle themselves from the bad old habits that brought them down, and about how the ability to draw a sharp contrast with the Obama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate would allow us to focus attention, rally the faithful, and re-storm the castle in 2010 and 2012.

Fat chance.

Read the rest, which says that we’ve never seen anything like this before. Then calm down a bit and think through the probabilities that everything will go the administration’s way. Indeed, if you read through the various histories of the Great Depression and see what FDR tried to do (a good look at this is provided in The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes) you will realize that he was prevented (although sometimes after putting some part of a plan into place) from riding completely roughshod over the US Constitution by the courts and political fighting.

In this present day, when Barack Obama will no doubt try his best to implement many things which are far from the principles of conservatism, he will still need to work with people to get things done. One thing in our favor that was not true under FDR is that information flows so much more quickly once it is released to the public.

Key then to ensuring that we know what is going on and that we do everything within our power as citizens of these United States to ensure that laws are constitutional put in place via due process will be fighting to keep communication free and open. In the linked article, the author does point out that restraints on the 1st Amendment, particularly in reference to freedom of speech will be part of the overall approach. Given the track record of his campaign, I think that this is likely.

Conservatives, and any who love freedom above security, must be ready and willing to address any attacks on freedom of speech quickly and with great fanfare.

August 15, 1940. Paris, France. The city has fallen. The enemy has already banned all books written by Jews. Agnès Humbert is looking out the window of the Metro on her way home:

A little French soldier, shabby but clean, apparently free but doubtless in the service of the public cleansing department. Beside him a tall German soldier, big, beefy, and pink, tightly strapped into a spotless uniform. He is smoking a cigarette. They all smoke in the Métro precisely because it’s not allowed, as they well know from numerous signs in German. For a while he observes the Frenchman with a faintly condescending smirk, almost avuncular. Suddenly he whips out his cigarettes and offers him one. The little Frenchman is gasping for a cigarette, you can see it in his eyes; but without batting an eyelid, he refuses, simply, clearly and categorically, with an icy ‘non merci.’

That’s what freedom looks like, my friend. Choosing to do the right thing, the principled thing, even when it goes against personal self-interest.

The book from which this is taken (RÉSISTANCE: A Woman’s Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France) is the English translation of a first-person WWII narrative by Agnès Humbert. It is translated into the English by Barbara Mellor. My French is much to rusty (were I even to read the original) to know how the translation compares, but the passion and emotion coming through in this book tastes too real for it to be a poor likeness.

Normally, I do not write a review until finishing a book (and I’ll probably do a full review at that time), but this one is worth not waiting until the end to share. I know, it was originally published 52 years ago, what’s a few more days? You’ll just need to take my word on it.

Book to Read

• RÉSISTANCE at Amazon

The title of this article is borrowed from a little book called The Conscience of a Conservative written by the other Barry known to politicians: Barry M. Goldwater.

The author states the following, followed by the title of this article:

The Conservative looks upon politics as the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. The Conservative is the first to understand that the practice of freedom requires the establishment of order: it is impossible for one man to be free if another is able to deny him the exercise of his freedom. But the Conservative also knows that the political power on which order is based is a self-aggrandizing force; that its appetite grows with eating. He knows that the utmost vigilance and care are required to keep political power within its proper bounds

He was right in 1960; he is still right today.

The US Constitution was crafted by a handful, practically speaking, of individuals who were careful to establish and perpetuate that government which was best suited to ensuring that the freedoms of the majority and minority were both taken into account in such a manner to ensure that balance could be maintained. Yes, slavery was not addressed and proscribed, as it ought to have been. Surprisingly, the people who wrote the Constitution had to hammer out any number of compromises to come up with a document which they thought would be able to be ratified. The issue of slavery was therefore shelved for about 80 years, then pulled off the shelf for an extremely bloody review and revision. I’m not claiming perfection on part of those who are commonly called the Founding Fathers. I am claiming that they were interested in encouraging the practice of freedom; that they were conservatives at heart, by design, and by decree.

It is past time for some exercise of the “utmost vigilance and care . . . to keep political power within its proper bounds.”

Book to Read

• The Conscience of a Conservative at Amazon