The American Spectator

— Gene Schmidt
Brooklyn, New York 

I detest journalists who refer to Mrs. Palin, the elected governor of one of the United States, without using her title. Biden is called Senator. She is not a schoolgirl, and the Democrats would like us to believe that she is.

— George Sauer

NOT A CREDIBLE SOURCE

Re: Larry Thornberry’s Did I Hear That Right?

Regarding Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama, based on his assessment of the evidence of his gravitas and ability: Isn’t this the same guy that swore that there were WMD of all sorts in great quantities in Iraq? Maybe his assessment this time, based on even less evidence, and a lot of evidence to the contrary, is just as far off, which is my guess. Why should anyone listen to Colin Powell?

— Kent Lyon  
College Station, Texas

HARD TO RECONCILE

Re: Roger Kaplan’s McCain’s Stagecoach:

Mr. Kaplan laments that “it is not impossible that self-described communists and America-haters will be in the highest circles of government in a few months” and asks “How can this be?” He answers his question by stating that “we took things for granted;” “there was too much money;” “all kinds of reasons.” He then expands his answer to blame a “leadership class” that doesn’t read Schumpeter and “lets everything pass” and further blames John McCain, who “seems to be letting” Obama, Pelosi, Frank and “the rest of the screeching, screaming pack of self-hating privileged incendiary rope-makers and rope-sellers pass” as well.

He is quite correct, I think, in attaching a portion of the blame to those in positions of leadership who haven’t read Schumpeter, for Schumpeter’s predictions are proving quite accurate. Prior to his death over 50 years ago, he forecast that capitalism would eventually fail because it’s success would give rise to a class of intellectuals opposed to it, and that these elitists, in turn, would ultimately impose governmental controls that would lead to the destruction of entrepreneurialism, the great economic engine of capitalism, and give rise to socialism in it’s stead. To my way of thinking, Schumpeter’s observations were right on target and, as a Harvard professor, he was certainly primely positioned to observe the development of the capitalism-hating intellectual class that now infests our government, our public schools, our national media and the minds of a considerable portion of our population as well.

Incongruently, Mr. Kaplan, on one hand, describes John McCain as “the best chance of a (Republican) party that fought, but not enough, to defend it’s record” and, in the next breath, he applauds him for “leading the cavalry charge” against, among other things, “over-regulation, excessively progressive taxation, constraints on choice, encroaching bureaucracies in education and everything else” and the “suffocating growth of government.” Frankly, I’m not sure I see much clarity in this assessment.

To be sure, the “Republicans, McCain in the lead, are finally leading the cavalry charge.” He is, in fact, finally “warning of socialism”, but he began doing so only recently, as the near-certainty of his electoral defeat began to sink in. Prior thereto, though, he was among the most liberal members of the Republican Party and frequently supported the legislation of his more socialistic counterparts. The real problem is not that the Republican Party has heretofore “fought, but not enough, to defend its record.” To the contrary, the root problem that the Republican Party now faces is that it has abandoned those social and economic principles upon which that record was historically built. In doing so, it has lost both the support and trust of its base. While Mr. Kaplan seems to use the terms “conservative” and “Republican” synonymously, the fact remains that the Republican Party has grown ever-less conservative since the days of Bush the first and, under Bush the second, it almost completely abandoned conservative principles. Mr. McCain, unfortunately, abandoned them long before that. John McCain may well be a Republican but, to those who transcend the myopia of party politics, he has a voting record that is most certainly not conservative. He warns of socialism and, at the very same time, actively promotes it through his past and present support of proposals that, among other things, restrict individual liberty (free speech) and advocate expansion of the federal government. His proposing a Federal buy-up of in-default mortgages to “keep people in their homes” is a prime example of that. While I do respect the man’s military service to the country, I have spent the last twenty years wondering if he has ever once studied the Constitution. If so, then he clearly does not understand it.

Let’s face the truth: the Democratic Party now advocates pure socialism and the redistribution of wealth whereas the Republican Party now advocates merely a more watered-down version of the same. 

— Thomas Donley