Kathleen Parker’s recent article in Jewish World Review does a good job assessing the average American’s understanding of civics, and she was equally credible tying this lack of understanding in to our recent presidential elections. She does overlook one or two things, however. The first is that American education today is precisely where socialist educators wanted it to be from the beginning of their efforts ninety years ago. We cannot expect the American people to choose wisely (from a conservative point of view), when liberal educators have been busily dumbing down our children for more than three generations. I agree American voters did not choose wisely in the past election, but they do have a right under our Constitution to throw off the manacles of freedom in exchange “free” government programs. Our forefathers didn’t trust popular wisdom, and this explains why they created a republic, rather than a democracy.

Last week Victor Hanson wrote a typically exceptional essay, during which he reminded us, “Failure is not an option.” I had to laugh. Failure is most certainly an option. It has always been an option . . . just not one that we older Americans selected for our Nation, our families, or future generations. Failure is always possible, and perhaps even likely in the most difficult endeavors. But we should note the difference between the failure of men who tried to do well, but fell short, and those who failed because they were lazy, inept, or corrupt. Republicans failed when they promised us smaller government, when they reneged on their contract with America. One cannot achieve smaller government while maintaining massive spending, and I think spending less is the key to conservative, smaller government.

The other day, I watched a YouTube video with Mary Katherine Ham participating in a Heritage Foundation forum. The entire focus of the discussion surrounded the question of how to attract younger voters to the conservative camp. They discussed video presentations and ‘chic’ gadgets, and massive text messaging ala Barack Obama. I suppose that’s our direction these days. But I wonder how much substance one can possibly put in 140 characters of text messaging? Not much; but then, how much substance can younger people retain for more than thirty seconds? As I listened carefully to the discussion, it suddenly dawned on me these people were discussing almost everyone in the United States below my age bracket. The “new generation” consists of people content to know, rather than to understand . . . they would rather amuse themselves with video games than read a book.

The new conservative leaders are people like Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindel, and Mark Sanford . . . and while they may recall Ronald Reagan for his contributions, they speak of Reaganism as something that occurred in the “olden days,” somewhere around time when Davy Crockett “kilt his self a bar when he was only three.” I cannot help but wonder if Ham’s post-election discussion would have pursued a different track had John McCain not demonstrated how irrelevant or “out of touch” older people are.

I wish the new generation luck, of course. The new conservative leaders will be dealing directly with people who are the product of liberal education, who do not know the fundamentals of American government, and true to form, don’t really care. Liberals, of course, understand it is easy to lead the ignorant . . . and this is why I believe so much effort has gone into dumbing down the American people. Conspiracy theories always raise eyebrows, but I can find no other explanation why extraordinarily expensive school systems are only able to produce woefully uninformed people who lack the capacity of critical thinking. Well, it did seem to work well enough for socialists in Europe; we Americans just happen to be the last great society to trade government oppression for human dignity and liberty.

After the new generation of conservative political leader finds out how to send text messages, wrap themselves in attractive packaging, and learn how to speak to vast crowds in small sound bites, I hope someone will do something important for the American education system, if it isn’t too late. Since only thirty-four percent of the American electorate is conservative, the failure of our new political leaders to woo moderates toward traditional ideology can only mean one thing: the end of conservatism.

Cross-post: Conservative Convictions

Like the deserters who plagued General Washington’s Continental Army, we may never resolve our problem with politicians until we can shoot one of two of them. That concept, as attractive as it might seem to a few, is hardly practical and ignores political reality. American people elect politicians, so that if we are unhappy with their performance in the Congress or state legislatures, there is no one to blame than ourselves. The truth is that in spite of campaign rhetoric, most of these elected officials are pursuing their own agenda, they relish the power and prestige of their offices, and they realize that it is much more difficult to get elected than it is to be reelected. They understand that they only work for us on a, "kinda, sorta" basis.

While I blame voters for shoddy politicians, fairness requires that I also acknowledge the difficulty of maintaining interest in congressional activity when we hardly ever see an acceptable result. It is true that the information we need is “out there,” but how many of us have the time or inclination to research the Congressional Record — most of which is written in legalese — to find out how our representative voted? How many of us are inclined to write a letter to our Representative expressing concern, or to offer a viable suggestion? The answer to both questions is, “not many.” So we should not be surprised that elected officials will pursue their own agenda no matter what we think, and even in spite of our taking the time to write letters or make telephone calls. That was the intention of "representative democracy," after all.

Elected officials, particularly those in the House of Representatives, are supposed to represent our interests at the national level. They don’t. I might even suggest that with few exceptions, they cannot do that. Party politics does not employ “majority and minority whips” for nothing. A House maverick will not gain assignments to “choice committees,” and this means that ultimately, he or she will not have much to write home about. A “team player” will therefore focus more on making the party leadership happy than they will the folks back home . . . but of course, if the party succeeds, then so too will the individual representative. At least, that’s how it seems to work.

I believe Americans give too much attention to the White House, and not enough are paying attention to what happens in the House of Representatives. As it happens, our founding fathers did intend for the House of Representatives to be our primary link to national politics. Sadly, the power of the people only exists on one day every two years, and only then for a period of twelve hours. Once we cast our vote, our job is over for another two years. Overall, it isn’t very much power, is it? Maybe if “we the people” began to assert more power over our Representatives, we’d actually gain more power.

So far, in the past 48-hours, we heard president-elect Barack Obama vow his commitment to all Americans and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gloat about the overwhelming numbers of Democrats ready to assume power in the next sixty days. How Democrats wield their new political power will be at least interesting, emphasizing the word “power” of course, over that of say . . . governance. All of our nation’s resources are in the hands of those seated in the People’s House; the newly won increased-majority of Democrats is enough to convince Ms. Pelosi that that body has achieved a national mandate to implement its vision for America. She’s probably right about that.

Make no mistake; national sovereignty no longer rests within the grasp of the American people. Our one chance (every two years) of exercising imperium occurred and expired on November 4th. Whether the American people exercised that power wisely is another question, and yes, time will tell. We will soon learn whether the “new direction” is where Americans really wanted to go, and in another four years we can once again ask the tired question, “Are we better off now than we were in 2008?”

For his part, Barack Obama did exercise tremendous imperium over the American people. As political scientist Ian MacMillan explained, “Power is the capacity to restructure actual situations, and influence is the capacity to control and modify the perceptions of others.” If we believe that Mr. Obama implemented the Saul Alinsky rulebook, then we can possibly argue that he did a fair job “restructuring actual situations” as it applies to the so-called financial markets crisis; it is certainly true that Mr. Obama successfully modified the perceptions of voters about who he is, and what he represents.

And yet I wonder if most Americans do not comprehend their true power lies in a modestly sized document we call the Constitution of the United States; it is the one document (outside case law) that limits the power of government, and it occurs to me that limiting power is in fact the greatest power of all. The problem is that the Supreme Court decides matters of constitutionality, and until someone or an organization sues the federal government alleging unconstitutional behavior, Congress and presidents are free to run roughshod over the rights of the people.

Of course, we have all witnessed examples of such lawsuits in the past eight years involving such questions as the right and manner of interrogating prisoners, the emphasis being on the rights of prisoners, rather than the right of the people to remain secure in their homes. It would seem to me that if the Congress or administration truly believed in upholding the Constitution, this country would not have to contend with such issues as twenty-million illegal aliens.

According to the policies of Bill Clinton, terrorism was a law enforcement matter. This explains why we lost good people in the first attack on the World Trade Center, Khobar Towers, two embassies, and a ship of war, the second attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and passengers on Flight 93. How Barack Obama and the Congress intend to pursue “the war on terror” will be interesting to most of us, but it could also be deadly to some of us. We should wonder about the direction Democrats would now take us in such matters; I suspect we all know the answer.

In matters of society, a new direction is likely to take us further into government control of our so-called free enterprise system. I use the term “so-called” because government has asserted itself in this area for the past eighty years. Hardly anyone alive today can recall what it was like to live in the pre-Great Depression era. What we know from history, however, is that greedy people caused the stock market crash, government didn’t do anything about it, the phenomena expanded to worldwide proportions, and only a world war brought us out of it. No, not the economic policies of Franklin Roosevelt — he actually made matters worse; many today argue that Herbert Hoover actually had the right idea. But since government regulation of financial markets hasn’t worked very well since 1977, Congress now wants to re-regulate the industry and intend to use hundreds of billions of dollars of our money to do it. Based on the election results, we have to assume that it is okay with most people that government will give mortgage defaulters “a second chance” at our expense. It is, after all, the humane course — much akin to redistributing income.

Increased spending means one, or all of three things: increased debt, increased taxes, or both. As Congress and the new Obama administration begin to deal with such matters, we should perhaps note Congress does not have the constitutional authority to meddle in free market activities, but also that no one has ever sued the federal government for this transgression. We should also wonder if the Congress has the right to impose national health care — particularly if it entails involuntary participation; we might wonder if the costs outweigh the result. It is certainly true that government has a rather poor track-record providing “services” to the American people; we need look no further than education as our case in point.

Our founding fathers saw government as an evil force, but a necessary one. It is why they gave us the Constitution; it protects us from government excess. The tragedy is that most Americans do not know this, or forgot, or don’t even care. Any of these three possibilities should lead my reader to conclude that the genesis of Neo-imperium is our ignorance and our apathy. Under these conditions, what direction do we honestly think our government will take us?