Brain Lemon

Okay, America.  We've elected our first black President.  We've had countless minority cabinet secretaries, military leaders, judges, etc.  This is not to say we've solved every problem, but by and large most Americans have moved past race.  We all work with people of different races, we interact with each other on a daily basis, and we generally vote for the better candidate regardless of race.  Especially the younger generations, mine for example, have grown up with "multiculturalism" and generally been taught to have great disdain for even the slightest hint of racism.  So why have our politics stayed the same?

The latest example of our insane obsession with racial identity comes with the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, a committed judicial activist, socialist, and, if some quotes are to be believed, somewhat of a minor racist.  Sotomayor famously expressed how Latina women are inherently better judges than white males.  Of course, if this were another combination of races (say, someone stating whites are inherently better at something) it would be clear racism.  But that double standard is fodder for another article.  The real issue here is, that we're supposed to ignore her comments, ignore her actions, and just focus on her race and gender.  We're supposed to be terrified to criticize her because it will supposedly offend all Hispanics.

I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe that all Hispanics (or all blacks, or all any other group) are so stupid and ethnocentric as to blindly support anybody of the same skin tone, and be offended when anyone of the same race is attacked.  I refuse to cater to people who view any criticism of someone of the same race as an attack on the entire group.  That's just stupid, no matter who does it.  Was anyone scared to attack George W. Bush for fear of offending all whites, Texans, or Methodists?  Why should we be frightened of the PC police who will call us racist for just about any reason?  For God's sake, we're supposedly racist just for wanting border security, homophobic for opposing the redefinition of marriage, and misogynistic for being pro-life.  Why are we so scared of hateful bigots who see fit to slander us for expressing certain opinions?

Republicans should stand up to this and oppose Sonia Sotomayor's nomination.  We likely won't win, but we need to make a show of how out-of-step, discriminatory, and radical she is, and what that says about the man who nominated her.  Will we be called racists?  Probably.  But all we need to do to deflect that is to point out how Democrats fiercely opposed minority candidates who happened to be conservative, most especially Clarence Thomas, Miguel Estrada, and Janice Rogers Brown.  They did this in fact largely BECAUSE they were minorities who did not toe the appropriate line.  In truth any minority who does not consider themselves a proud liberal Democrat is attacked without restraint.  Republicans need to man up, ignore the attacks, and question Sotomayor about all the things she has said, from her above mentioned racist comments, to her statement about the courts role to make policy, her 2nd Amendment problems, and others.  Only by braving this fire and showing how nasty and anti-minority the liberals are will be put this viscious identity poltics to bed.  It is poison to our nation, it divides us constantly for political gain, and it must be stopped.  It's truly one of my passions and will surely be the subject of many blog entries to come.

It has been said, nearly to the point of nausea, that conservatism is having a bit of trouble lately.  A lot of this is owed to our longtime home, the Republican Party.  The GOP over the past decade or so completely lost touch with what are supposed to be its core values of limited government and fiscal restraint.  Thanks in large part to President Bush, Republican rule has been basically equated to the same type of government growth as Democrats offer, but with a few wars thrown in for good measure.  It is not hard to understand, then, that when offered all the goodies that big government allegedly provides while at the same time having the world theoretically like us more, voters chose the real thing.  It's hard to fault people too much when they are told that they can have the world, and the only people that will suffer are those damn rich people (who, of course, they do not think themselves to ever be).

The truth is, though, that the greatest benefit to conservatism may be to simply wait things out.  Right now liberal policies, as socialist and freedom-decreasing as they may be, seem like a good idea to a lot of people.  Obama is still very popular and a lot of folks have great faith in him.  We can sit and ponder this situation, we can shout from the rooftops how his spending will bankrupt us, we can constantly argue how bad universal health care will be.  All of these things are important and must be done.  But the reality of it is that our best friend may be Obama's policies themselves.

We know from experience they don't work.  We have faith in our ideas and our solutions.  After all, I'm not just a conservative because I'm heartless, evil, or whatever other reason liberals come up with.  I'm a conservative because I know that my ideas are good for people, and Obama's are bad for people.  I have faith that once these efforts are borne out, they will affect people's lives in a very negative way.  And when this happens, we need to be there not only to say "I told you so" but to offer real, dramatic differences in policy that will restore America's freedom and prosperity.

The most salient and important example of this truth, I think, is in health care.  Right now a lot of people have bought into the lie that Canada is essentially just as free as us, but they have free, quality health care on top of it.  Neither of those are true, but I will focus on the latter one.  Their health care is not free – it requires high taxes and the proximity of the US to not only protect them militarily, but provide easily accessed private health care as a sort of "release valve" for their system.  Hospitals near the border are inundated with Canadians who cannot get treated up north.  And they suffer from huge waiting lists, a lack of availability of things we take for granted like MRI machines, and difficulty even finding a primary care doctor or a dentist.  Similarly, Britain's national health care system has many of the same problems, including the inevitable cost-cutting measure of rationing that will surely take hold in our system as well.

In short, national health care, if it happens (it it likely will in some form) will hurt people in a real, tangible way.  People's doctors will move or not be able to see them.  They will have to wait for basic treatments.  They will be forced to deal with bureaucrats making their health decisions.  They will see the thriving research we are able to perform here screech to a halt.  In short, they will feel the effects on their daily lives and realize that the private solution might actually be not so bad.  The sad truth is that people will suffer real consequences here – some will endure sickness for a long time, others will be denied treatment, and some will even die.  But in the end, most will realize that the promise of free, quality health care provides neither of those adjectives.

Much like health care, the out of control spending will cause inflation.  Obama's moves will thoroughly destroy the domestic auto industry, forcing us to drive unsafe, pathetic little bubble cars.  Cap and trade will massively raise energy costs.  Union gifts like card check will increase unemployment and kill business.  We know these things will happen.  And they will have no other valid author than Obama himself.  There's no way any of them can be pinned on the Bush administration or the GOP.

When these policies fail, conservatives need to be standing there, having spent the last years proclaiming that they would.  We need to offer real solutions to get us out of Obama's mess.  The future can be bright for freedom-loving Americans.  It will just take some time.