As the discussion on the recent election continues, and as the angry voices die down slightly, I am still baffled by the response of many Republicans and 'conservatives.'
Much of their anger (and there is considerable anger) is directed against fellow Republicans and conservatives who are believed to have let the side down; to have turned coat and voted for the Evil Party just to punish the Republicans, or the President. 'The Democrats will force amnesty on us! They'll open the borders! The terrorists will have free run of the country now!'
My response to that, after a moment of being dumbstruck is, well, what do you think the Republicans and the President have been doing lately, if not forcing amnesty on us, opening the 'borders' to one and all, and giving angry Moslems the run of our country? But it falls on deaf ears. These unhappy campers are unable to direct their anger at the GOP or any of their favorite politicians; no. It's the Democrats, the liberals, who are the cause of all this. I suppose this particular fixation is the result of years of listening to Limbaugh and Hewitt and Hannity, and reading Mark Steyn.
Among the clearer-minded conservatives, who are able to recognize the leftward tilt of the GOP, I've heard a variety of explanations for why this shift has happened. The open borders mania is explained by the supposition that Big Business wants cheap labor, hence the demand for amnesty and millions more immigrants. Fair enough. I accept that this is part of the story. And there is the explanation that Bush has a personal attachment to Mexico and Mexican people, because of his family's longstanding ties there (just as with the Bush family ties to Saudi Arabia) and because of his brother Jeb's marriage to a Latina woman. And then there's the rumored plan to groom George P. Bush, the President's half-Latino nephew, for the Presidency. That may be true too, for all I know. But I still think it's more complex than any of these single-factor explanations. The multicultural, open-borders agenda is not confined to America only, but to all Western, traditionally white, Christian countries. So it cannot all be explained by one family's attachments to Mexico.
Then there is the overall leftward trend in the GOP (and in all 'conservative' parties in Western countries): the acceptance of liberal policies on race: Political Correctness still reigns supreme, and it seems a racial/ethnic/ gender quota system applies in political appointments. Bush's cabinet seems more 'diverse' than even Clinton's. And the interventionist policies, the utopian belief in democratization of the Arab world, the 'Religion of Peace' smarm, the cozying up to Moslem leaders in America. The skyrocketing spending. The expansion of government. Let's be honest: if all this was happening under a Democrat president, the GOP would have been raising a ruckus for the last 6 years. But let a Republican president do all these things, and scarcely a peep is heard, except from the 'far right', and those voices are condemned as 'Bush bashers' and 'wingnuts'. So we have a party, which lays claim to conservatism, marching in lock step with a very liberal agenda. All in the name of being loyal to 'my President', as Hannity loves to phrase it. All in the name of 'party unity'.
The conclusion that keeps popping into my mind is that there are Gramscians busily at work in the GOP. The ideas put forth by Antonio Gramsci, of gradually bringing America under leftist control by infiltrating all key institutions, seem to be confirmed by the constant trend leftward in Western countries. It seems to be following the patterns prescribed by Gramsci and Lukacs.
So now, we have the 'neoconservative' faction within the GOP; the liberalized agenda that has been put in place in the last 6 years follows their template. And it's generally acknowledged that many of these neos are former leftists: Trotskyites, socialists, liberals, what have you. Many of them are open about their history as leftists.
I suppose the benign explanation would be that these ideologues (that is what they are, regardless of label) are just people who have unconsciously held on to certain of their original leftist beliefs and preconceptions. It's true that sometimes we all hold certain beliefs out of longstanding habit; unless we really examine the presuppositions we work from, we can find ourselves clinging to ideas that are incongruous with the outward identification we profess. I know of many people who profess to be liberals, while they hold some very 'conservative' principles. Most people are not entirely consistent in their beliefs. This is often true in people who are not particularly reflective or introspective, or not inclined to deal much in ideas. But it's hard to believe, in the case of many of these professional politicians and thinkers that they are not being disingenuous. I'm more inclined to think that there is a conscious effort by the leftist/globalist movers and shakers to essentially place operatives in both parties, so that they have their guys in place, whichever party wins. It would be foolish to try to work with only one party; why not cover all the bases?
And maybe I am getting close to tinfoil-hat territory, but given the strange turn of world events these days, and given that truth indeed is stranger than fiction, what other explanation is plausible?
Those of us who are old enough to remember the 1970s remember a saying that dates to that time: 'Only Nixon could go to China.' President Richard Nixon, back in 1972, made a historic trip to Communist China; this was a groundbreaking event, because China was thought to be one of our two most formidable enemies, and because the trip risked alienating our ally/client regime in Taiwan, who viewed Red China as their mortal enemy.
Now if any Democrat President had dared to go to Red China, and establish normal relations with the Communist regime, he would have been denounced as 'pro-Communist' or at least 'soft' on Communism. In those days, that was political poison. But Nixon, with his record of staunch anti-Communism, could make the overtures to China that would have been disastrous politically for anyone else.
It should be obvious where I am going here: Bush, who has established a popular image as a 'right-wing' Republican, is the only one who can promote a liberal agenda, and have it accepted by much of the GOP's conservative base. The segment of the population which is the most resistant to liberal policies like open borders, amnesty, and racial liberalism is the 'hard right', mostly rural, Southern, white, Christian, traditional voters. For these people, all the above policies are anathema -- but George Bush is perceived by many, rightly or wrongly, as one of them; a good ol' Texas boy who cuts brush on his ranch down in Crawford, who drives a pickup truck, and whose favorite song is Ernest Tubb's 'Waltz Across Texas'. I admit I was gulled into believing that image, too, but at least I know I am not the only one, and not the only one whose eyes have since been opened. We've been had. And it's hard for many of us to face that.
Bush, who carefully cultivates an image as a 'Bible-believing Christian', has praised Islam as a religion of peace, and baldly stated that Moslems worship the God of the Bible. At first, though taken aback by this behavior, most Christians were willing to accept these otherwise unacceptable words , because 'the President is a man of God, a Christian, a brother in Christ.' Still they were troubled that he seemed to care little about Roe v. Wade or about supporting the restoration of Christian symbols in public places and other issues that Bible-believing Christians care deeply about.
And while many conservatives are unhappy about the Politically Correct feminizing of the military, and the curbs on Christian chaplains in the military, (no mention of the name of Jesus) they silently gave assent to these things because they trusted the President, and after all, they reasoned, 'he's the president of all the people', or 'he's just playing a good poker game; he's got a secret plan, a strategery.' Talk about blind faith.
Only Bush could do the things he has done, and not arouse an enormous backlash from the conservative wing of the party.
Only Nixon could go to China, and only George W. Bush could move the GOP and the recalcitrant party base to the left.
So now we have a Republican Party which in many respects is just a variation on the Democrat party; it represents a disguised form of liberalism/leftism, flavored especially to make it palatable to the more conservative Americans.
And as they are fed on this diet of thinned-out liberalism, these conservative Americans begin to acquire a tolerance for it, if not an outright taste for it.
Overall, if there is a plan to thoroughly saturate both parties with some brand of liberalism, it looks as though it's been effective. We now have two parties which seem to be disconnected from the constituency they pretend to serve and represent. The differences between the parties are mostly superficial; both parties will lead us in the same direction, but by slightly different routes, and at slightly different paces.
But we will end up at the same destination, it seems, regardless of which vehicle we choose.
Still, our fellow Americans continue to squabble over party labels and petty differences, oblivious to the fact that a bait and switch has been pulled on us.
