A libertarian take on the SC primary- A triumph of ideas over identity, principle over purity

{I've been a little coy about this in the past over on my Multiply blog since more than a few of my friends viewed Rev. Huckabee as the great white hope of the GOP, but I posted this there too. }

I'm very pleased- ebullient even- that Senator McCain won and Rev. Huckabee lost in South Carolina.

I'm even more so by the way that this broke down.

On the one hand: Rev. Huckabee has been pretending that he is the true blue Reagan conservative (yeh, and I'm the Easter bunny... only Senator Thompson can claim that mantle, and it served him sooooo well!), that he has appeal outside the Evangelical circles.

On the other hand: He's been campainging in churches, preaching in them even, and his lead issue has always been "values." That's Orwellian doublespeak for "Christian faith." If ethical values were really the issue, then Mitt Romney should have had the advantage because -what ever you think of the story of how the Book of Mormon came about, the LDS' early experiments with polygamy, etc.- the LDS church today walks the walk better than most any Christian church body. Their young people are expected to do service for both church and community, they take care of the poor and needy of their community, and so forth. None the less, consider how much anti-Mormon rhetoric has been thrown around in this campaign by so-called Christians. For pity's sake people, we're electing a PRESIDENT here, not a pope or a pastor!

Even in the [in]famous episode of South Park "All About Mormons" where the story of the Book of Mormon is told with a chorus humming "dum dum dum dum dum" in the background, the point that for most Mormons their church provides them the encouragement to be good people, love their family, etc. is made. From the Wiki article linked above...

Stan's anger doesn't much upset anyone in the Mormon family other than Gary, who confronts Stan and the other boys the next day, pointing out that he believes his religion does not need to be factually true, because it still supports good family values. Gary condemns their bigotry and ignorance, stating: "All I ever did was try to be your friend, Stan, but you're so high and mighty you couldn't look past my religion and just be my friend back. You've got a lot of growing up to do, buddy. Suck my balls." He walks away, and the episode ends as Cartman (with a new-found respect for him) says, "Damn, that kid is cool, huh?"

Finishing off on my critique of Rev. Governor Huckabee. His appeal can be summed up and paraphrased thusly: Vote for me because I'm like you. I share your social and religious values. He's running on his social and religious purity more than political experience, principles, or policies. He's so afraid of being shown to be impure in any way that he's even refused to give straight answers to questions which might show that he's less than a purely "small government, low taxes" Republican. SO WHAT?! Be different, be your own man, and be PROUD of it. I'd rather hear straight from a candidate what they believe, what they've done, and what they want to do, than have them try to tickle my ears with what they think I or some core constuency wants to hear.

I find the way he's conducted his campaign and the source of his support as small minded and divisive as if Senator Clinton were to go around saying "Vote for me, I have ovaries!" or if Senator Obama were to say, "Vote for me, I'm black." Not that I don't expect one or both of them to sink to this level... while I've been typing this, I heard a report that Oprah Winfrey's been getting hate mail because she supported a male candidate over a female candidate.

A humorous aside: Were I to be the same way, then I'd be chairman of "Alice Cooper '08".

Senator McCain, on the other hand, has focused his appeal on his qualifications to be president, and his long standing record of telling people what he believes, not what they want to hear.

I was impressed with his victory speach. He was well spoken, gracious, and did speak a lot to the "responsible, small, fiscally conservative" libertarian values which I hold most dear. He said something along the lines of "The government shouldn't be doing for us what we can better do for ourself." Amen and Amen! (Yes, that's me being funny.)

To be fair, I should also say that I was also impressived with R-G- Huck's concession speach. Were he not running on "values" and preaching in churches while running for president, the kind of things he said in his speach were ones I find generally acceptible.

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On to the Dems, and a summation of the issues of my subject line

Most of my critiques of Rev. Governor Huckabee have parallels in how Senator Clinton has comported herself, going back to her initial election to the Senate from New York. She's from Chicago, but she made herself out be a pure New Yorker. Then there were the times she went around the country trying to affect the accent and style of each place she went. More recently, she's been backpeddling and obfuscating about her support of the initial war resolution as much as RGH has done about his tax record.

Both of them have been trying to run more on identity and purity than ideas and principle.

I don't know what to make of Senator Obama yet. His win in Iowa and his continued viability are historic. They suggest that the day may yet come in our life time when we see and live Rev. King's dream of people being judged not on the color of their skin but the quality of their character. The problem is... I don't know much about his character, I don't know what kind of president he'd make. When he's gotten specific on issues I've disagreed with most all of them, they're about as far from the classic/Jeffersonian liberal idea of "The government which governs best governs least" as you can be. But again, he's a great speaker, he's broken through a barrier which should be been destroyed long ago, and he could well be a great man. His presence in the race and his success are a good thing for America.

In summary, a bit of a history lesson, since those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it (extra points if you can ID the source of that paraphrased quotation.)

We throw around the term "fascist" in a very loose and inaccurate way. The blog "morpheme" has an excellent and extensive discussion of the word, of which I will quote only a small part.

It comes from both the Italian fascio and the Latin fasces. Both words mean “bundle”; the latter specifically refers to ““bundle of rods containing an axe with the blade projecting” (pl. of fascis “bundle” of wood, etc.), carried before a lictor, a superior Roman magistrate, as a symbol of power over life and limb: the sticks symbolized punishment by whipping, the axe head execution by beheading” (from the Online Etymology Dictionary) Similar to the Chinese tale of a father demonstrating to his sons that one chopstick is easily broken but a bundle is stronger than the sticks that compose it, this etymology implies that Fascism is an ideology concerned with the collective and opposed to the individual.

Identity and purity politics of the sort I've spoken above are a form of this in its original etymological sense. The word has come to gain such a range of meanings and negative connotations that this denotation is now meaningless, so I shan't be applying it to any given person or group.

Rather what I'm on about is this: The original and true motto of our country was not "In God We Trust" as the revisionists would have us believe, it is the Latin phrase "e pluribus unum" as seen on the Great Seal of the United States. Varying translations are given, but it means basically "from many, one" and is often and aptly compared to the adage "United we stand."

Politics of purity and identity divide us, they break us into little groups which are set in constant conflict- men vs. women, blacks vs. whites, nascar vs. indycar, red state vs. blue state, and so forth. (Extra points if you can find the one bit of almost subliminal humor there.)

I'm alarmed when any candidate tries to peel off a section of the electorate for the sake of political advantage, be it by demonizing Mormons, homosexuals, environmentalists, homeschoolers, people on welfare, wed mothers, unwed mothers, creationists, or anyone else.

I don't know that we'll ever be able to "all just get along" but I sure would like it were we to look beyond the tips of our noses when electing the president who will lead all 300,000,000 of us in all 50 states.