Immaturity, God, and the Root of Division in America

If I've been able to make any observations this last year about the current political climate in America, the most definitive relates to the dramatic polarization of opinion evident in the electorate. This claim is nothing new, here from Daniel Henninger's colum in the Wall Street Journal:

The Republicans' self-inflicted wounds, however, pale against the willingness of an American president to use his office to blow up the country itself. That, too, has a price. Drill down inside the details of that electoral map and its votes, and you find a nation severely divided. (emphasis added)

So why bother bringing this up? What can well-intentioned individuals hope to gain from this information?

In order to formulate the response we need to take our country back from President Demagogue, we need to see beyond the surface-level result of our country torn asunder and identify the cause of such radical fragmentation. It is not enough to identify blocs of voters (e.g. Hispanics, women, etc.) and attempt to beat the Democrats at their own game. We tried that. It doesn't work.

Part of the answer can be revealed in a little known story I read last week in the New Oxford Review (an excellent choice for wholesome, intelligent journalism). The lovely folks down at the United Nations Population Fund have now determined for us, based on their latest report, that family planning is a "human right" which must be provided for by the state. Most interesting is the fact that their premise  for advocating this newly-discovered right stems not from any sort of rational justification but rather from the need to bolster support for such agendas through rhetorical alignment with past efforts to secure human rights.

I couldn't help but scratch my head and wonder how the right to determine the size of one's family equates with "the state needs to fund my contraception." It wasn't long before the report indicated, however, that one of the principle causes of this gap in logic rests in their definition of reproductive health:

Reproductive health therefore implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so.

Here we begin to see the beginning of liberalism in its most deceptive incarnation: greed and pride combined into what we old-fashioned conservatives call "immaturity." Fundamental to this immature ideal is a selfish attitude of entitlement (where does that lead us?) and stubborn failure to see the consequences of our actions. This truth is evident everywhere, from the child who can't see why eating candy every day is harmful to the childlike politician who can't see why tens of trillions of debt is harmful. To put this in the context of the UNFPA's ridiculous worldview:

Even when services exist, social norms and practices can limit individual access to them.
The subordination of the rights of young people to those of their parents, for example,
can limit access to information and services and the capacity to act.

How dare we conservatives and our ancient social norms "subordinate" young people under the guardianship of their parents!

What this travesty boils down to is actually more simple than one might imagine: where do rights come from? According to our Founding Fathers, these rights were God-given and protected against the tyranny of any state or individual. Yet in the eyes of U.N. elites, man has become God, and the best way we can worship our own enlightenment is in the worship of the transcendant state.

You're pregnant? Why bother with familial love and mentoring, or (God forbid) responsibility when the state can save the day, destroy your "unwanted consequence," and all behind your parents' backs?

The state becomes our personal salvation; our all-loving parent and god, but at the price of our liberty, our relationships, and ultimately, our identity as people "endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights." Unfortunately for our friends at the UNFPA, they recognize that their utopia of unrestricted sex and secular statism isn't going to be recognized anytime soon, but they've charted a course of action that uses another perversion of truth to eat away at conservative resistance--a strategy we see working for their cause in too many other arenas of life:

Partnering with faith-based organizations can alleviate the religious and social pressures on women who practice child spacing.

Because, of course, religious guidelines for healthy living are nothing more than "pressures" trying to constrict our youthful and sacred desire for happiness as guarded by government.

I won't say that this report didn't scare me, especially considering that many of my friends would easily accept and advocate positions in line with this ideology. Having rupture the closest bond we have as humans, the family, the leftist political agenda has little difficulty severing the populace from our religion and then our neighbors (see the divisiveness of politics I referenced above). When politics becomes a selfish act, the state has already won. Tocqueville couldn't have put it better so many years ago when he wrote:

When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters.

The key to regaining these liberties, the key to regaining unity in American politics, has to be found in the family as a means to maintain God and godliness (that is, the renouncement of immaturity). The best tactic liberals have (and the key to so many of their arguments) is to renounce isolated examples of human failure and failed families (e.g. "If the Kardashians can 'marry' why can't gays?" or "Why not abort if the child is going to suffer anyways?") The logical response, and the one we as conservatives have failed to expound well enough, is to not throw the baby out with the bath water. Yes, families can fail! That is a reason to strengthen and support them, not redefine them with the opinions of statist elites.

Once we can regain our self-restraint, our faith, and our families, we can turn the page on division and reconnect with that age moderates and conservatives alike hold in nostalgia: the prosperity of the post-war generation. That was a people who, through the struggles of war and depression, proved themselves capable of relinquishing their selfishness and, in many cases, dying for what they believed in. Their blessed children took these things for granted, and in their immaturity have ripped so many communities and families asunder.

Our people will soon reap the harvest of Obama's America. I can only pray that our tongues are not so numbed by our media and our culture that we cannot taste refuse when it is forced down our throats.

Now What?

It's been far too long since I've had the opportunity to blog, and I blame no one but myself (maybe George Bush, but even that will go out of style soon enough). Given all the buzz filling conservative intellectual circles about our electoral defeat, my intent is not to add to the mix. We're all frustrated, discouraged, and a bit tired from all our efforts over the past four years. Why didn't things end up the way they did back in 2010? How could our country be so blind to the reality of the abject failure that is our current administration?

I'm not discounting the need to go back and retrace our steps. Learning from the mistakes we've made this last campaign cycle will be vital so we don't repeat our errors in 2014 or 2016. But to aggregate and analyse all the potential causes for Barack Obama's reelection would take far too much time for something I would do far more sloppily than the many other pundits currently on the job. So why am I back?


In the words of Gandalf the White from the Two Towers:
"I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.


So am I really saying there's optimism?

You said it.

This is by no means a guarantee that we can overcome the obstacles that brought us down this past election, but what I'm presenting now are several signs for hope that we didn't have going into November 6th:

1) Bush is Gone

Four years from now, Barack Obama will desperately try to find blame for the continued failure of his policies, but unlike this past year, George W. Bush will be another four years into the past and out of people's memory. The impact of the 2008 recession will have blurred with the continuous rise in unemployment and what now could potentially become a double-dip recession. Will Obama be able to spin a new excuse? Probably, but its credibility should be much easier to pick apart (hint: Romney should have done a better job of doing that this time around, but that's another story).

2) The Party of...No-resistance?

In a similar vein, John Boehner's recent comments regarding the potential for gridlock in the House have removed another falsehood Obama will no doubt try to expound down the road from now: the GOP is the party of "no." Boehner still has yet to clarify how far he will compromise in order to accrue new sources of "revenue" (read: taxes), but his acceptance of the political climate is not only genius in that it shows character but it will further center blame for the next 2-4 years on the man in the White House.

3) Benghazi STILL isn't done

As successful as the liberal media was in ignoring the disgusting cover-up that seems increasingly apparent in Libya, Hurricane Sandy isn't working as a top story anymore, and the Petraeus scandal has thrown fresh chum into the media waters here. The persistent questions about why so much information has been strangely witheld from Congress or the public are about to be answered, and don't be surprised if their magnitude would have changed the election were they transparent a mere few weeks ago.

4) Remember the Governors

Despite the majority of Americans (including those in Wisconsin) having missed the boat on what Obama means for the common worker, the battle between unions (and other liberal special interests) and conservative governors is long from over. Scott Walker's victory in Wisconsin may not have been predictive of the way in which his state turned out on election day, but it proves that a deep skepticism of unions is prevalent and waiting to be untapped. My home state of California may be under the yoke of organized labor for some time to come, but in battleground states, the rising cost of collective bargaining is beginning to weigh in on the minds of average citizens. This, alongside the immigration issue, can be cast as bipartisan measures to protect our budgets and force Democrats into a corner. Even New Jersey still has Christie.

5) Catholics are Waking Up

...slowly. Obama still won this demographic 50-48, but the gap is considerably closer from the 54-45 advantage he had in 2008. This trend is clearer when you look at white Catholic voters, who went for Romney 59-40 versus 52-47 for McCain four years ago. Latino Catholics are what threw a wrench in this pattern, holding out for Obama by a 3-to-1 margin. What does this mean for conservatives as a whole? The emerging outrage at the healthcare mandate covering contraceptives needs to be fanned into a flame as it begins to take effect all across the country. As lawsuits mount and slowly are resolved, we need to be lighting this issue up in the media to confront those Catholics who swung left with the grim reality that their faith is under direct assault from the current administration. The bishops have done as much as they can without outright endorsements, so it's up to the laity to keep this positive trend going while the hierarchy strips power from liberal dissenters like the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the so-called "Nuns on a Bus."


This battle is long from over, and the Democrats may very will win consistently for the foreseeable future. I've always said that there are three political archetypes I dislike:
-liberals
-disengaged citizens
-pessimistic conservatives

Guess which one I despise above all? PESSIMISTIC CONSERVATIVES. Why? Because comments like "America is doomed" or "Let's move to Canada" are nothing more than justifications to do nothing in the face of despair. This, above all else, is what our foes desire and what we must rebuke in every instance.

So yes, it's going to be a tough four years ahead. But here at thatotherconservative, you will be sure to find a mix of optimism and urgency that we will need to keep fighting the good fight as time wears on.

Stay tuned. God Bless. Good night.