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The Nation's Pulse
It’s Not Only About the Economy, Stupid
Prof. Robert George is a vast improvement on James Carville.
James Carville, Bill Clinton’s political strategist supposedly coined the now infamous: “It’s the economy, stupid.” This admittedly smart strategy, widely attributed to have won Clinton the Presidency, is now being chanted, mantra-like, by the mainstream media and the Washington political elite as they fundamentally misunderstand the brewing anger and frustration amongst everyday Americans.
They think this is all about dollars and cents. They think that it’s all about a $13-trillion debt and trillion-dollar annual deficits far into the future. Washington, in its arrogance, thinks this is all about spending the people’s money.
But that’s a somewhat superficial reading of the people’s discontent. The grassroots grumbling is not just about money. It’s about freedom. The people are justifiably annoyed that their pockets are being picked; however, they know that the loss of their God-given, constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms is as grave a concern.
The past eighteen months have seen a brutal assault on liberty. As government grows, personal freedoms shrink. The private industry buy-offs and bailouts, cap-and-trade, the government takeover of health care. The price tags are bad enough. But what’s truly frightening is how they diminish freedom.
Take religious liberty, the first among equals, so to speak. As Thomas Jefferson once defined it, “a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.”
When it comes to religious liberty, this Administration has vacillated between indifference and contempt — both of which are equally dangerous to this important and fundamental human right. For instance, only a few weeks after Obama moved into the White House, his Administration filed a rescission proposal to undo a Bush-era regulation protecting the conscience rights of health care workers. And the sweeping changes to American health care delivery just signed into law similarly include no real conscience protections.
The Obama Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reversed a previous EEOC ruling, accusing a small Catholic college in North Carolina — Belmont Abbey — of sex discrimination because it doesn’t cover contraceptives in its faculty health insurance plan. By this reasoning, what religious institution — be it hospitals, colleges, nursing homes — will not be forced to choose between upholding the doctrines of its faith and meeting its secular mission?
Some could argue that this is just as much an aversion to all things George W. Bush as it is the stereotypical liberal distaste for all things religious. But the Obama Administration has been equally disdainful of religious liberty activities championed by the Clinton Administration.
President Bill Clinton and his State Department signed the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act into law and aggressively executed its protections. However, President Obama did not nominate an Ambassador to fulfill that role for a year and a half, signaling that senior envoys for HIV/AIDS and Guantanamo took precedence over worldwide promotion of religious freedom.
But the American people are not contemptuous of or indifferent to religious liberty. Perhaps that is why Professor Robert P. George is emerging as a leader in today’s movement for freedom.
As the McCormick Chair of Jurisprudence at Princeton University; founder of the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative think tank; and founder of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, which is being emulated on college campuses from NYU to Williams, Professor George is best known in academic circles as a constitutional and legal scholar.
But George is equally respected amongst policy-makers and commentators, having pursued the practical application of his ideas as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the President’s Council on Bioethics.
Hailed as “this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker,” George was recently featured in a long profile in the New York Times. He is considered a bridge between academia, policy, and religion. Politicians, including several presidential contenders, seek his scholarly insight and religious leaders seek his political acumen. As Rev. John Myers, Archbishop of Newark, has put it, “Whenever I venture out into the public square, I would almost invariably check it out with Robby first.”
George does not shy away from the culture wars. In fact, he seems to relish confronting the “secularist orthodoxy” of today’s liberals. He sits squarely on the side of the so-called Religious Right, though that would be a far too simplistic characterization of his dogma.
At the center of George’s philosophy is the premise that the principles of morality are not necessarily divined through faithful revelation; they are born of right reason and natural law. In spite of this seeming dissociation with faith — or perhaps because of it — George passionately defends the right of every person to pursue his relationship with his Creator in the way that suits his conscience.
About the Author
Ken Blackwell, the former mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio is Vice Chairman of the Republican National Committee’s Platform Committee. He also serves on the boards of the Club For Growth and the National Taxpayers Union.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (42) | Leave a comment
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ggoblue| 7.15.10 @ 7:58AM
spot on....give us the freedom and we the people will take care of the rest...
110 days until the arse kicking
Alan Brooks| 7.15.10 @ 3:14PM
He's gullible; America is about productivity (i.e. its Great agriculture). America's arts are commercialized, for instance; in other words, we're virtually about business and nothing more.
Conservatism is good, but not naive, smarmy conservatism.
I don't know if this guy is an improvement over SerpentHead, but he IS pollyannish.
Radegunda| 7.16.10 @ 1:05PM
You have an exceedingly shallow view of America and your fellow Americans. And I don't think you have the intellectual heft to determine Robert George to be "naive" and "smarmy."
Dean from Ohio| 7.17.10 @ 11:45PM
Alan Brooks dissing Robert George is the Beverly Hills Chihuahua attacking Mr. T.
vtwin| 7.17.10 @ 1:48PM
Warning: Ken Blackwell, the Family Research Council, and the Christian-right are looking to usurp American Democracy with a Christian Theocracy!
Dean Bruckner| 7.17.10 @ 11:43PM
This warning from the moronocracy. And learn how to use a hyphen too.
vtwin| 7.15.10 @ 8:30AM
“It's about freedom…The past eighteen months have seen a brutal assault on liberty. As government grows, personal freedoms shrink. “
Right-wing hyperbole, “it's the economy, stupid."
Brian Mc| 7.15.10 @ 9:06AM
So...on that note; what do you think of the Tenth Commandment?
gypsy| 7.15.10 @ 9:09AM
freedom is not "right wing hyperbole" you clueless retromingent reactionary, it is at the very heart of the American experience. It is also the reason our economy has functioned so well in the past: if you invent or build or own something, you won't have someone walk up, stab you with a broadsword and then take it away. This makes it a LOT more likely that people will work hard,invest, manage their assets and yeah, CREATE wealth. And then, oh yeah, HIRE people at wages to help them to keep on producing.
Our people and our economy will work a lot better when we have our freedom back, when the ObamaNazis get their boots off our neck. You, sir,need to either help us, help America, or to get the fuck out of our way
Maddox| 7.15.10 @ 11:12AM
Bravo Gypsy!
The time for appeasing liberals is long past.
We have work to do.
vtwin| 7.17.10 @ 11:49AM
“It [freedom] is also the reason our economy has functioned so well in the past.”
Financial crisis of begin: 2007 end: 20?? “Considered by most economists to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depressio,” collapse of financial institutions, bailout of banks governments and stock markets drops around the world. Results in the U.S. national debt 13 trillion, unemployed 16 +Million, millions, MILLIONS of Americans losing homes…
I think both of you might be confusing personal freedom with business freedom (unregulated.)
Pete| 7.15.10 @ 11:45AM
"retromingent" - That's a new one for me. Well done, and quite appropriate.
Purpleguy| 7.15.10 @ 8:37PM
Why? So you can globally outsource all our jobs and make money for the money-grubbing elite corporate types, while our middle class withers and dies? We're not dying by the sword, we're dying by a million computer bytes.
Radegunda| 7.16.10 @ 1:09PM
Maybe your lefty friends should stop imposing the taxes and regulations that contribute so much to driving businesses overseas.
We have the second highest corporate tax in the developed world, and you lefties think it isn't enough, because you 1) believe that all money is the government's money, and 2) don't understand that corporate taxes are paid by people, one way or another.
And now the lefties want all those oil rigs in the Gulf to go elsewhere and drill for other countries.
Nancy in NC| 7.15.10 @ 3:17PM
You really think so, uh?
Perhaps for you, but not for everyone. Some of us are awake and smelling the burning of the Constitution and our liberties. The health care bill being pushed through and passed, "so we could know what's in it" is one of the major examples of how the government is no longer of, by or for the people. Now we are learning how many things are in that bill that restricts our personal freedom.
It's also about a "stimulus" bill that is so whacky that it leaves most of us scratching our heads in wonder. For example, spend what amounts to $500,000 each to create 300 jobs. I'm thrilled to know that my taxes go for such brilliant ideas.
Then the disaster in the Gulf with Obama talking "bad" and accomplishing nothing. His solution is to hijack BP, and kill hundreds of jobs as he shuts down all off shore drilling.
It would all seem crazy, except I've read Alinsky. Wonder when the real crisis will come? The one that will be the death knell to the country.
vtwin| 7.17.10 @ 11:21AM
The U.S. is the only wealthy, industrialized country that does not have a universal health care system. The result “Uninsured [Heath care] at 45.7 million for 2007” -- Census Bureau
“To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes” -- U.S. Constitution - Article 1 Section 8
“While the Right tries to pin the Gulf Oil Spill on Obama, the facts tell a different story. This is the story of rampant deregulation … as propagated by the Bush/Cheney administration across all sectors of our economy… Indeed, the deregulation scandals extend now to off-shore drilling in the form of the missing [remote shut-off device], a regulatory requirement in Norway and Brazil, two major oil producing countries.”
http://www.politicususa.com/en/dick-cheney-katrina
“U.S. Economy Gets Lift From Stimulus." -- Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/.....78087.html
Alan Brooks| 7.15.10 @ 3:29PM
George is a standup guy, however he is too airy-fairy a prof; the reason Will & Krauthammer are so respected is they are in touch with some sort of
reality, not the Cloud Nine of the academic cloister.
Religion is a necessary fiction, escapism; and spirituality is too idiosyncratic. But it is alright, as long as in the back of your mind you know this is a world of darwinist rewards, darwinist punishments, and that religion is merely a band aid.
You aren't chumps, are you? Fools Die.
Publius| 7.15.10 @ 9:06AM
Well ok, vtwin. Then why is your bunch hell bent on destroying it?
John II| 7.15.10 @ 12:06PM
The acronym VTWIN, as I believe I previously revealed, stands for Venereal Tangos With Inadvertent Nihilism. It's not just a single postor--it's a representative mind-set on display among the avatars of the Obamanation. It becomes particularly manic and twitchy over the topic of religion.
Alan Brooks| 7.15.10 @ 3:34PM
Religion is itself manic and twitchy.
You are not confusing religion with spirituality, are you? because one thing I like about Southerners (etc) is their heads are not up in the dreamlands of NE colleges and universities.
Alan Brooks| 7.15.10 @ 3:37PM
... that is to say: when a Southerner leaves his house of worship after the Service, he comes right back down to Earth.
John II| 7.15.10 @ 5:12PM
In which case, the Southerner's faith is not manic or twitchy. My point is merely that the lefty secularist of the Obamanation is ill-disposed toward ordinary religious faith, being a fanatic adherent of the faith called secular humanism--and not particularly humane about it either, I reckon.
If you were more familiar with the activities and writings of Robert George (see for example his "Clash of Orthodoxies"--or at least see a review of it: who knows? --there may be one somewhere in the TAS archives), you would be less inclined to dismiss him as an academic, I also reckon. Indeed, I plumb reckon, for I am myself an academic minutely and tediously familiar with the condition to which you allude. What's distinctive about George (and, of course, about me too) is that he doesn't fit the mold. In fact, he reminds me of the kinds of people I had for college teachers back when I was in college on the receiving end--quite a few years before the devolution of academe into a sandbox for lefty ideologues. Quite a few years back. Antecedent to the Second Punic War.
And now back to Groucho Marx.
Alan Brooks| 7.15.10 @ 6:59PM
Grouchy, yes, Marx, no (John, yes; Lenin [sic] no).
Here's where we disagree: "In which case, the Southerner's faith is not manic or twitchy".
Outside church the Southerner is savvy, carnivorous (unless he wants to be homeless); inside church? are you kidding? what, you think they meditate there?
At any rate ALL intellectuals (aside from many math & science profs) are con artists, especially academics; intellectuals are selling-- or attempting to sell-- their version of reality at the expense of yours, they are not charity officers. "Receiving end"? you got that one right.
John II| 7.15.10 @ 9:56PM
Well, Flannery O'Connor was a religious Southerner, and she wasn't manic or twitchy. She was an RC, pure and simple. . . . Okay, pure and complicated. She started every day the same way I do: by reading one Quaestio from the Summa of that great Southerner, Tommy Aquinas. I'm telling you, ain't no one in the South or elsewhere who can read St. Tommy and still twitch, even if some Bible-thumpers get a little manic now and then.
I believe you have the proposition reversed, Alan. All con artists are indeed intellectuals, but not all intellectuals are con artists. A rereading of Aristotle's treatise on propositions, in the second part of the Organon, would make this clear to you.
Now don't go and tell me you can't be a Southerner and a Catholic at the same time. Just ask Gerald O'Hara and his daughter Scarlet.
And now back to my Don Winslow serials.
Solon| 7.15.10 @ 9:33AM
while this article focused on religious liberty, all our liberties are under attack.I think for now the third amendment is safe, the others are up for grabs. As for the wise-crack about the 10 commandments I'll take them--especially the first.
If we put no other g-d be for g-d we wouldn't be worshiping the leviathan state!
Alan Brooks| 7.15.10 @ 7:07PM
Libertarianism is almost as much of a religion as Communism; there aren't enough responsible people; certain parents, for instance, who don't take care of their children. Libertarianism is premature, 22nd century. At this time, only the sovereign individual can be TRULY free, the rest just have to stumble through.
You know what would happen to America if the state (which might happen) went belly-up? the end of America; it wouldn't be like the '90s in Russia, the russians are used to massive suffering.
Becky| 7.15.10 @ 10:24AM
The Obama administration is the worst enemy America has faced on American soil. The military is fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have our own war right here in America. It is not a traditional war of weapons, but a war of ideology. The Obama assault is as deadly to America as any enemy on the battlefield. His latest weapon, I understand, is Bill Clinton. He has recruited Bill to go out and perpetrate a full-fledged assault on the Democrats to make sure they understand what great things Obama is doing. Remember, we are stupid, we just don't understand what is best for us. I only hope Americans remember, while Mr. Clinton is speaking, what an embarrassment he was when in office. He disgraced the Oval Office and this country. I do not need to name the reasons but Monica was one of them. You could compare his mission to Hitler sending Mussolini to speak to the Jews telling them it is alright, everything is just fine....but you will be asked to board a train to help the cause. We must open our eyes, open our mouths, and follow the Founding Fathers. Otherwise, we are headed for a long unhappy ride.
Alan Brooks| 7.15.10 @ 3:45PM
Then why the blatant mediocrity Steele as RNC today? he has stated he "is not going anywhere", and that is correct; he has no future, except as a token-- but it sure beats cutting cotton on Parchman Farm.
Doctor Right| 7.15.10 @ 10:43AM
May I be so bold as to propose the following slogan for the 2010 and 2012 elections?:
A picture of Obama, with the phrase:
"IT'S YOU, STUPID!"
Ned| 7.15.10 @ 12:10PM
... and be sure to photoshop the Hitler mustache off of all the old pictures of George, and slap them on the smug kisser of Barry Bullsh*t....
John II| 7.15.10 @ 12:14PM
Whoa. Spot on, Doc. I like the picture in which his chin is raised so that he's looking down his nose at us, his mouth shaped into a half-frown of delirious smugness. Not sure we could count on the establishment Republicans, though, to print up a few million and start passing them out.
Pete| 7.15.10 @ 12:45PM
Are you kidding? He would love to see his image plastered everywhere, even if altered. I think the best thing I have seen is a simple sticker that says IdiOt with the Osama "O." Simple, accurate, and doesn't feed his narcissism.
John II| 7.15.10 @ 9:58PM
Oh. Never thought of that. Damn. I never get to have any fun.
Joe D| 7.15.10 @ 1:17PM
WELL SAID MR BLACKWELL. It is both and it is definitely not just the theft (unless you count the banks, auto co. and health care) and over spending.
Alan Brooks| 7.15.10 @ 4:14PM
You people go extremely easy on Gramps, though.
But it makes sense; he climbed the beach at Iwo Jima, now he gets to climb the stairs of a government office.
Purpleguy| 7.15.10 @ 8:50PM
The founders expected a wall of separation of church and state. Morality changes over time, sure, and that has it place in the modern world, but as Thomas Paine said " My own mind is my own church", and "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
Also, remember, the founders were not against government, they were against monarchy, with all it's injustices. James Madison said in Federalist Papers #51, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. " They were not against government, their goal was to enable the people to control the government... And, so we do, the Obama bashers not withstanding.
John II| 7.15.10 @ 10:02PM
Alan? That's not you, is it? I'm beginning to think there are only three or four posters on this site--you know, the way there are really only three or four full-time actors working for the BBC. Dozens and dozens of noms-de-internet, but only three or four players. As Napoleon Dynamite would say, "Gosh!"
supra skytop | 7.15.10 @ 10:45PM
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