Dear GOP: A Call to Arms by an Old Friend

This guest post is by first-time blogger DKS, a very dear friend.

Where have you gone, Old Conservatives? Are you sleeping through this dark time? This new GOP is not worthy of you, and it is certainly an unfit adversary for intelligent, liberal-minded people. It is reactionary, meddling, fiscally profligate and blatantly theocratic. And frankly, it bears no resemblance whatever to the party it used to be. I look back with nostalgia at those fiscally conservative, well-educated, Libertarian-ish and Federalist folks who used to make up the heart of the GOP. The Conservatives I knew were patrician and polite, and above all, firm in the belief that small, intelligent government was the way to avoid all possible ills.

Politics used to be more fun, and more civil. Like a good chess match, where you both realized that you had made some smart moves and went away from a game more enlightened and more engaged. Now, imagine if your worthy, long-time chess opponent suddenly began chucking the pawns at your head, randomly calling you a Satanist, and declaring that unless you agreed to his rule changes, he’d tell everyone that you cheat, and no one would ever play with you again.

That’s exactly how I feel: Like I’ve been betrayed by someone I thought I knew. And I do know them well. At least I used to.

I learned how Conservativism lives, thinks, and breathes at Hillsdale College in Michigan, which is nothing short of a beautifully manicured shrine to all things GOP. And as such, is frequented by the uber echelons of the Party. They come to bask in the reflective glow of the super-duper whiteness. Bleached, sanded and serene. Treed and flowered within an inch of its life. And, like the current GOP, it is getting worse all the time, and will soon be beyond the reach of amendment: More rabidly “Christian,” more likely to pander to the worst impulses of humanity, and more isolated from the rest of the world in its already-rampant superiority complex than at any time in recent memory. When I was at Hillsdale from 1990 to 1994, it was a tiny, Reagan-loving, Rand-reading champion of small government and old-fashioned 'heartland' America. They were just kicking off a fundraising campaign when I started. And so the dignitaries flowed in: William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk, Jeane Kirkpatrick, even an up-and-coming Newt Gingrich. I must say that I was utterly elated when I shook hands with Charlton Heston (this is before his heinous stint as NRA president). He is a huge man. Squared-off and towering, and his handshake was brief, but strong, and his eyes looked right into mine as I blanched and said stupidly, “. . .Hi.”

Yeesh.

In retrospect, I recall thinking *nothing whatsoever* at first about the prominent people with whom I was socializing. I had never heard of any major Conservatives (C.H. notwithstanding, and even then I didn’t know his political leaning). Previous to college, I had spent the better part of my waking life painting sets, singing and dancing, and basically living completely immersed in musical theater with my very favorite people on earth. I came to Hillsdale unlearned in politics, but as I observed this world up-close, I grew very uneasy with its basic principles of denial and superiority. By the time of the ‘92 election, I had gotten the scent of the wind, and I knew where I was: Behind enemy lines.

But still for the most part it was an enemy I could respect. I talked openly with friends and dignitaries at dinners, watched them at lectures, and engaged in the usual drunken debates, which always ended good-naturedly with mutual sardonic eye-rollings and slaps on the back. I could eye them warily but affectionately over the gulf of politics. But, as disparaging as I became of their world view, it was never incomprehensible. It is the undeniable change in both the tenor and the substance of the current GOP message that I cannot bear.

The old ideas of Von Mises, Hayek and even Rand have been abandoned in favor of intrusive, theocratic crap. And I watch this creeping plague with one Hillsdale-trained eye on the Old Guard: Where are they? Why are they silent? If the GOP becomes merely the party of the backward and reactionary, where do the likes of Buckley, Kirkpatrick, and even poor George Will fit in? (I say “poor” because lately he has seemed quite ill-at-ease on TV in his given role as the answer-guy for the Bush Agenda.) If the New Right start berating anyone who has traveled —and read books and genuinely attempted to understand other cultures— as the enemy, then who are they really? I tell you this: They are not the heirs of Lincoln, TR, or even Reagan anymore. And they know it.

And so I implore the old GOP to come to its senses: Take back your Party! Remember who you are!! Even Hillsdale had its share of ridiculous, camo-wearing losers, but at least they were generally acknowledged as such. No politician would have embraced them as their “base,” and they certainly would not have continually brandished them like some kind of collective mascot!! The Old Guard would have gone out of its way to *clearly separate* its views from those of the party's least informed and most extreme. Now, the silent cowardice of these same men and women is sickening to me. Better to start your own Bull Moose Party than queasily adopt the new rabid Right manifesto. The nervous, subordinate stance of the old GOP is truly beneath most of them. And I can’t figure out why they don’t realize that it is ultimately they who will cease to exist if this commandeering of their party by the lunatic fringe is allowed to persist. The GOP is already becoming synonymous with Big Meddling Government. Russell Kirk is flipping in his grave.

I want my old adversary back! You can’t reason with people who refuse to read more than one Book, and when not quoting blindly from it, are quoting the likes of Fox News. And if you dare attempt to pull off their new-found mantle of Sanctimonious Deflection they squinch their eyes shut, put their hands over their ears, and bellow some hymn to “ole tyme religion” rather than hear your argument. You would discipline a child who acted like such a brat, but a growing movement of brats must be shaken from within. Give me back the grown-ups who can debate the issues! I know you are in there somewhere! And you need to get cracking!

The truth is that we are simply not armed to fight an enemy who adopts the actions of a stupid, petulant child. And we should not have to be. At least the old GOP could speak in complete sentences.

And in retrospect, I love them for that!