Of republicans and third parties...

Once upon a time, I would have cringed to know that a 3rd party candidate was running in any election cycle. As a republican, many times the 3rd party candidate would only siphon off votes and keep the conservative out of office. Then I realized that many of the "top republicans" were moderates (quasi-liberals in my book), and the republican party seemed to be overrun with them. Thus began my alienation from the Grand Old Party. So, what's a conservative girl to do? Where do we go in order to elect conservative candidates? I always depended upon the republican party to throw up a conservative candidate, and now that they've stopped I am lost.

RushGal, a blogger on a conservative women's network site called "Smart Girl Politics," has a blog that echos those same feelings. She inspired me to write this short essay. Thanks, RushGal! I, like her, believe that a 3rd party is inevitable. I just hope that the country isn't so ruined by 2010 that we have trouble firing 1/3 of the Congress!!!! Each congressperson, no matter now nice you think him or her to be, has been a part of the problem to this point. They must be replaced by true conservatives.

The republican party is no longer the party of conservatives, and the conservatives have not yet migrated to a 3rd party. I look at the "republicrats" and "democrans" as two wings of the same bird (not an original phrase for me, I stole it from my friend Arlene Wright). It is sort of like being on a one-lane country road with the democrats being one ditch, and the republicans being the other. No matter which way you fall, you'll land in a ditch and get bruised and dirty.

I don't think the republicans are aware that they took such a "credibility hit." Then there's the Michael Steele gaffes. Boy he sure rallied the party, didn't he? NOT!! I had already aligned myself with America's Independent Party before Steele's election and his gaffes. It appears that I made the right choice. AIP is now the 3rd largest party in the nation, and our grassroots efforts are taking the country by storm. This Conservative Chick is the vice-chairman for the state of Kansas, and proud to serve. How many times have I gotten involved like this? Zero, zilch, nada. Does it take a lot of my time? Yes, but the invigorating effect it has on me is worth the sacrifice of a few TV shows. We have some of the most wonderful conservatives in the nation in our party.

AIP is a party like no other. Why? Well, mostly because we WANT to be a grassroots organization, thus staying in touch with "we the people" on a daily basis. We are commited to backing the true conservative in any election, no matter what party he/she is from. Folks, it isn't really about parties, is it? It is about beliefs, individual core beliefs. If those aren't lined up with Scripture or morals, then the battle to turn our country back to its conservative roots is already lost. I think President John Adams said it best, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Therein lies the key...remember that ours is a democratic republic, not a democracy. Our nation is a "self government" form of government. I don't think that ever sank in until this past election cycle, when I realized what we had was "mob rule" instead of self governance. President John Adams also said, hitting the nail on the head again (it is almost prophetic), "Democracy...while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide." I would say that we're in the suicide phase right now. At least that's how it seems to me. Also consider what President Thomas Jefferson said, "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

I love Thomas Jefferson quotes...he is so pithy. Please indulge me...these are all quotes from President Jefferson:

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."

"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."

"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion."

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."

"Never spend your money before you have earned it."

"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves."

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." [Could we substitute "main stream media" for the word "newspapers?"]

"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."

Will you allow me two more quotes? All my adult life I have attributed the following quote to Thomas Jefferson, or at least one of our past presidents. Not so, my friends, not so. It appears the origin of the quotes are undetermined. Never-the-less, I like the sentiment of the quotes, and so I pitch them to you in the hopes that you will catch the idea that if we cannot stop voting ourselves "largesse" from the public treasury, we are sunk.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."

The above phrase appears to have originated with one Professor Tytler. The next phrase seems to have originated in a speech written by the owner of a cork company, Henning Prentis:

"Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security. The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.

"At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies. Under such circumstances, the competent citizen is certainly not a fool if he insists upon using the compass of history when forced to sail uncharted seas. Usually so-called new remedies are not new at all. Compulsory planned economy, for example, was tried by the Chinese some three milleniums ago, and by the Romans in the early centuries of the Christian era. It was applied in Germany, Italy and Russia long before the present war broke out. Yet it is being seriously advocated today as a solution of our economic problems in the United States. Its proponents confidently assert that government can successfully plan and control all major business activity in the nation, and still not interfere with our political freedom and our hard-won civil and religious liberties. The lessons of history all point in exactly the reverse direction. ~Henning W. Prentis

Dearest Readers, I hope you get a sense of purpose from the quotes, as they have given me much insight into our current problems. How to drag our dependent class out of selfishness and dependence? I do not know. Perhaps it is for people like us to keep sounding the clarion call, encouraging the people of our nation to return to the moral principles, both of our governing documents and of the founders themselves.