Each Must Choose His Own Way to Serve Humanity

***

Another previously-lost Chefjef post, wherein he says that compassionate conservatives must strive to serve the little people. I serve mine with a tart lemon-caper sauce, usually complemented by a big oaky chardonnay.

--Monk

***

The Bush Administration is working hard to bring about more business friendly regulation in Washington. Such things as streamlined and more flexible pollution standards, chemical handling rules, and workers’ medical leave protections are on the horizon. It shouldbe remembered that U.S. manufacturing was hammered by recession and overseas competition during much of President Bush’s first term. Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a pro-consumer group that monitors the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), calls the latest efforts a new assault on anticompetitive rules that amounts to rewarding the President’s political supporters in the business world. OMB is leading the effort through its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The project is being coordinated by a former Harvard professor, John Graham, who has turned OMB’s regulatory arm into a voice for the Administration’s pro-business views on regulation. Clearly, Big Business interests have made headway in Washington on several fronts, including passage in Congress of the so-called class action reform. Passage of new consumer bankruptcy laws also points to the power and influence of Big Business in Bush II. The White House is now putting forward a new priority list of regulations for agencies. Some changes can be made administratively, with little or no input from Congress, which sets a very dangerous precedent. It appears that consumers will have almost no voice in what comes out of the White House over the next 3 years.

I hope and pray that the President, who claims to be a compassionate conservative, will develop a feeling and concern for little people who are really hurting today!

Chefjef

The Republican Party is Out of Control

***

This is a post of Chefjef's that got lost in the Great Purge. I will fisk it later. For now, suffice to say that the sentiment the title expresses seems to me to be something from Bizarro World -- Monk

***

It has long been established that the "Rockefeller Republican" has gone the way of the spotted owl in terms of its influence within the GOP.

There remains token representation from a band of northeast "liberal" Republicans, who represent states carried by John Kerry in the last election. The title of a recent book by former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, adequately describes the existing tension: "It's My Party Too."

But the latest version of Republican conservatism has also displaced notable right-wing luminaries such as Jack Kemp, William F. Buckley, George Will and Barry Goldwater.
The hallowed name of Ronald Reagan is used within contemporary Republican circles the way many fundamentalist Christians invoke the name of Jesus, something suitable for framing but bears little resemblance to the original orthodoxy.

I used to believe – back when I was a Young Republican in undergraduate school - that Republican conservatism was a philosophy that emphasized the individual, the free market and less government. That was the platform of Goldwater, the 1964 presidential nominee and author of "The Conscience of a Conservative." Such beliefs inspired a generation of conservative activists, including President Reagan.

Didn't conservatives believe that the U.S. Constitution set up a government of strictly limited powers? Wasn't the government supposed to protect us from foreign threats and deliver the mail, leaving other matters to the states or to the private sector?

Personally, I have found the Goldwateresque conservatism lacking when it came to moral questions. It allowed for Jim Crow segregation to fall through the cracks between justice and equality. It was indeed such thinking that led to Goldwater voting against the civil rights legislation of the 1960s; but through the process of evolution and self-reflection, Goldwater himself eventually understood the shortcomings of such positions.

This nouveau brand of conservatism, however, is less philosophical and more dogmatic. By advocating a one-size-fits-all private morality, it seeks not to replicate the shortcomings of the Goldwater variety. It embraces a more myopic approach that unabashedly believes that "right" is their sole possession.

However, the arrogance recently demonstrated during the emotional Terri Schiavo case raises serious questions about whether the brand of conservatism currently practiced on Capitol Hill and supported by the president is in line with mainstream America. Even Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio noted that every credible national survey found that 60 to 80 percent of Americans opposed Congress' Palm Sunday intervention in the Schiavo matter.

In writing about the Schiavo case, how could a leading conservative such as Bill Bennett suggest that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush break the law and willfully go to jail and risk impeachment to protect Schiavo's rights? Bennett considered such actions in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil disobedience, which he states "answered to a higher law than a judge's opinion. In so doing, King showed respect for the man-made law by willingly going to jail." Oh PALEEZE.

Such actions prompted former GOP Sen. John C. Danforth to write in a New York Times op-ed article, "Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians." The private face of nouveau conservatism is egregiously beholden to big business -- as the passing of the credit card industry-supported bankruptcy legislation restricting the ability of individuals to file bankruptcy, while easing the ability of corporations to claim bankruptcy, as well as Congress recently making it illegal for Automobile manufacturers to forcibly place arbitration clauses into adhesion contracts with auto dealers while at the same time maintaining the absolute right of auto dealers to forcibly place arbitration clauses in their adhesion contracts with consumers, while also denying a minimum wage increase, will attest. (see more on this issue in the next article).

Whether it is the ethical violations of House Majority Leader Tom Delay or the words of Texas Sen. John Cronyn, who rationalizes violence against judges, or members of Congress who suggest the ruling of activist judges killed Schiavo, the Republican Party is a political party that is completely out of control.

Chefjef

Back to the Future, Part 1, or Revenge of the Burrito

When Vita ab Alto died, I had a number of posts of my own and from others in the queue. I still have all those others sent me. Today seems like a good day to begin reposting them. I can blog between visits to the necessary to ralph--it seems that all in the Monk Cave have eaten something that disagreed with them. The Veep and oldest daughter, although queasy, were well enough to take part in end-of-school-year activities. Your ineluctable Monkster and youngest daughter are house-ridden. As I say, a good day to catch up on blogging.

I pray that this malady was contracted from the local magaburrito joint, and not from the meal that the Veep and I prepared for Youth Snack Supper at church last night. Poisoning the whole church: that's a Bad Thing. If you hear from the deep South of a couple run out of town while tied to a rail and covered in tar and feathers, accompanied by a cursing, puking mob of Methodists, you'll know what happened.



Monk