Right Minded Online

I’ve long had the sick feeling that Mae Beavers was in her last term in the Tennessee General Assembly. That fear was confirmed last week when she announced that she would not seek re-election, and that she will instead run for Wilson County Mayor. At least we wouldn’t be losing her totally. But the State Senate will lose its most principled conservative.

Senator Beavers spent 8 years in the State House of Representatives, first winning election in 1994. She made a name for herself during the infamous years of Governor Don Sundquist’s second term. Beginning in 1999, the trinity of Governor Sundquist, then-Senator Bob Rochelle, and, later, then-Speaker of the House Jimmy Naifeh began a four-year full-court press trying to stick Tennesseans with an income tax.

Mae Beavers opposed the income tax from the outset, and, unlike many of her peers, stuck to her opposition. A frequent guest on Nashville talk shows hosted by conservatives Steve Gill and Phil Valentine, then-Representative Beavers became not only a critic of the income tax, but an outspoken one, and that’s how her name spread beyond District 57.

The odd thing about those years was that the Tennessee GOP was largely devoid of any male elected conservative leadership. The state’s most prominent Republican, Don Sundquist, was firmly in the tank for an income tax just weeks after his second inauguration, this coming after he campaigned against an income tax. Elected conservative leadership thus came from then-Senator Marsha Blackburn, and Representatives Mae Beavers, Donna Rowland, and Diane Black, while the male GOP caucus members were either cowering in their opposition or acquiescing to the income tax.

When the income tax ultimately failed to pass during the 2002 legislative session, conservatives claimed victory. Don Sundquist was on his way out, and, after Mae Beavers announced that she would challenge Bob Rochelle for the Senate in District 17, Rochelle bailed out, leaving Beavers to face off against an unknown Democrat challenger, Sherry Fisher, from Carthage. Mae Beavers won election to the Senate with 52% of the vote. What made her victory especially remarkable was that District 17 had heretofore been the Democrats’ turf. District 17 is Al Gore country, after all.

Mae Beavers won by simply being conservative: low taxes, limited government, pro-life, and pro-Second Amendment. That she had consistently voted conservative made her a credible conservative candidate. Not only did she articulate conservatism on the campaign trail, she voted that way in the General Assembly. (It’s what I call “principled conservatism.”)

Senator Beavers continued doing the things that had made her a conservative icon while in the House. She voted against budgets that exceeded the Copeland Cap, noting that it doesn’t make sense to vote against overriding the Copeland Cap, and then vote for a budget that overrides the Copeland Cap. She attempted to phase out the state’s sales tax on food, but couldn’t get her bill past the Democrats. She consistently made efforts to advance gun ownership rights. She defended the unborn.

Mae Beavers had illustrated that conservatives can win in yellow dog Democrat districts by winning them over as conservatives, and not by trying to out-Democrat the Democrats. This is how Ronald Reagan won landslides in 1980 and 1984. It really does work.

While serving her first term as a State Senator, Mae Beavers overcame a bout with cancer, and managed to still serve the voters of District 17 while taking chemotherapy. When 2006 rolled around, she was recovered and ready to run for re-election. That’s when Bob Rochelle announced that he would challenge Senator Beavers for his old Senate seat. By now, Senator Beavers was well-regarded for her principled conservatism. Voters knew that what Senator Beavers promised on the campaign trail, she would deliver in the Senate. And so she easily won re-election, this time getting 58% of the vote.

One of the frustrating things for conservatives is watching good conservatives go to Nashville, or go to Washington, D.C., get sucked into the political machine, and lose their conservatism. Don Sundquist is a prime example of an elected conservative gone bad.

Senator Beavers never went bad, never got corrupted by “the system.” She’s every bit as conservative now as the first day she set foot in the State Capitol in 1995. I wish she had run for governor, but I understand why she wants to spend her time here in Wilson County. Politics is often a cutthroat business that can easily corrupt elected leaders if they aren’t careful. By the time she leaves the Senate, Mae Beavers will have served the people of Wilson County (as well as the other counties in her district) for 16 years.

I’ll miss having her as my state senator, but should she become our next county mayor, the voters and taxpayers of Wilson County will be very well served by one of the most principle conservatives we’ll ever see in elected politics.

Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP presidential candidate, is credited with launching the modern conservative movement with his candidacy that year. Even though Goldwater lost the election, an up-and-coming politician named Ronald Reagan began shaping those conservative ideas into the platform that launched him to high office 16 years later.

But the ideas espoused by conservatives are not that new. Simply stated, conservatism is rooted in the concept of individual liberty. A full half-century before Goldwater’s unsuccessful run for president, a Massachusetts politician named Calvin Coolidge articulated those ideas in a speech “Have Faith in Massachusetts” that he delivered on January 7, 1914.

Even though the term “conservatism” didn’t really exist back then, you can trace the concepts of conservatism all the way back to the Declaration of Independence, which states that we are endowed by our Creator with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thus, if you’ve ever wondered (or hoped) that conservatism might go the way of the Edsel, not to worry. As long as the ideals of our founding document remain a part of the American culture, conservatism will remain alive and well.

With that in mind, here’s some of what Calvin Coolidge had to say 95 years ago: “The suspension of one man’s dividends is the suspension of another man’s pay envelope.”

This is more or less a definition of trickle-down economics that provided the basis for the Reagan tax cuts that sparked a sustained period of economic growth in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Coolidge also observed that “Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness.”

The future president also noted that “Courts are established, not to determine the popularity of a cause, but to adjudicate and enforce rights.”

This is completely opposite the view held by many on the left today that courts exist to adjudicate causes such as abortion and same-sex marriage, rather than make objective rulings based on the Constitution.

Coolidge further articulated that “The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve.”

He similarly observed “Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self government means self support.”

Indeed, the message we hear today from the Democrat Party is completely opposite, that we should look to government to solve our problems, ensure our livelihood, and guarantee our happiness.

Coolidge: “Ultimately, property rights and personal rights are the same thing. The one cannot be preserved if the other be violated.” “…[I]t may be that the fostering and protection of large aggregations of wealth are the only foundation on which to build the prosperity of the whole people. Large profits mean large pay rolls. But profits must be the result of service performed. In no land are there so many and such large aggregations of wealth as here; in no land do they perform larger service; in no land will the work of a day bring so large a reward in material and spiritual welfare.”

We instead live in an age today where government has replaced the concept of equal opportunty with equal outcome. Politicians seek equal outcome by pillaging aggregations of wealth through punative, confiscatory taxation, such as the ”windfall profits tax” Democrats have threatened to impose on oil companies.

Coolidge: “Do the day’s work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that.”

Compare this to Michelle Obama, who, a year ago, instructed a group of women in Zanesville, Ohio “We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do. Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.”

Calvin Coolidge wisely instructed his audience “Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”

And, finally, “Recognize the immortal worth and dignity of man.”

You won’t find a major party candidate, at least on a national level, who is willing to articulate conservatism the way Calvin Coolidge articulated it nearly a hundred years ago. It’s not that conservatism has gone out of style. As long as the concept of individual liberty remains alive, conservatism will be relevant. Unfortunately, politicians today pander to the American voter, promising government largess and government solutions to almost every problem imaginable.

Fellow right-wing extremists and bitter clingers, the American Family Association is sponsoring a new round of Tea Parties set for Independence Day.

Tea party ‘extremists’ rock and reload July 4.

Despite the national election results in 2006 and 2008, conservatism is alive and well in the United States. The Tea Parties of April 15 proved it. The tax day demonstrations, organized and advertised on a grass-roots level, were very well-attended, and are proof that many Americans aren’t buying the fawning admiration being heaped on the Obama administration by the mainstream press.

Mainstream conservatives are infuriated by the generational theft being foisted on future taxpayers who haven’t even been born yet, the rapid expansion of government, the explosive growth in the federal deficit, and the nationalization of the private sector.

On April 7, just eight days before the planned Tea Parties, the Department of Homeland Security issued a perfectly-timed ten-page memorandum warning of potential right-wing extremism. (A copy of this memorandum can be found at http://wnd.com/images/dhs-rightwing-extremism.pdf.)

Remember, Americans were warned of potential violence by right-wing extremists on Inauguration Day, but we ended up not hearing a peep. Despite this, the DHS now warns that “Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.”

The term “right-wing extremist” conjures up stereotypical images of machine-gun-wielding Grizzly Adams-types who live in remote cabins in Montana, refuse to pay their taxes, build explosives, and call for the overthrow of the U.S. government. Granted, such individuals do exist, and right-wing extremists have committed a smattering of crimes over the years, but given the acts of terrorism committed by, say, Islamic militants, it’s odd that the Obama administration would elevate the largely-phantom threat posed by right-wing extremists.

Traditional stereotypes notwithstanding, the DHS memorandum more or less expands the definition of right-wing extremist to cover mainstream conservatives.

Indeed, the DHS defines right-wing extremism in the United States as ”those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

So if you were a Tea Party attendee who opposes the federal government’s usurpation of state or local authority, you could become a right-wing extremist. By this definition, the Framers were right-wing extremists. The Framers, after all, gave us a Constitution that delegated limited, specific powers to the federal government, and broad powers to the states and to the people.

If you oppose abortion or illegal immigration, you might also become a right-wing extremist, according to the DHS.

If you are a military veteran, you could become the next Timothy McVeigh. According to the memorandum, “DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists — including lone wolves or small terrorist cells — to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.”

If you believe in Biblical end-times prophecies, you could become a right-wing extremist. According to the DHS, “Antigovernment conspiracy theories and ‘end times’ prophecies could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition, and weapons. These teachings also have been linked with the radicalization of domestic extremist individuals and groups in the past, such as violent Christian Identity organizations and extremist members of the militia movement.”

If you support the Second Amendment, or recently bought a firearm, you could become a right-wing extremist. According to the DHS, “Many rightwing extremist groups perceive recent gun control legislation as a threat to their right to bear arms and in response have increased weapons and ammunition stockpiling, as well as renewed participation in paramilitary training exercises. Such activity, combined with a heightened level of extremist paranoia, has the potential to facilitate criminal activity and violence.”

And if you fear the loss of American sovereignty, you could become a right-wing extremist. Again, the DHS: “Rightwing extremist paranoia of foreign regimes could escalate or be magnified in the event of an economic crisis or military confrontation, harkening back to the ‘New World Order’ conspiracy theories of the 1990s. The dissolution of Communist countries in Eastern Europe and the end of the Soviet Union in the 1990s led some rightwing extremists to believe that a ‘New World Order’ would bring about a world government that would usurp the sovereignty of the United States and its Constitution, thus infringing upon their liberty.”

So the Obama administration is attempting to marginalize mainstream conservatives by setting them up as straw men and targeting them for possible violence. Those who adhere to the concept of limited government and oppose the expansion of the federal government and those who are pro-life and oppose illegal immigration have been so labeled. Military veterans and “Left Behind” readers have been labeled. Gun-rights supporters and those who fear the loss of American sovereignty are also targets of the DHS memorandum. These are positions held to a large degree by mainstream conservatives, which means that the Obama administration is warning that your typical Tea Party attendee has the potential to become a right-wing extremist.

 Obama slammed: ‘Chains we can believe in’.

Since I couldn’t attend one of my own, here are some links to other posts by those who were there:

Hear ItFrom.us (Knoxville)

Poor Richard’s News (Nashville)

Tom Guleff (Memphis)

An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings (Nashville)

Rustmeister’s Alehouse (Memphis)

Bob Krumm (Nashville)

Webutante (Nashville)

I did not get to attend a Tea Party today, unfortunately. Would have loved to sneak out and photoblog one of the gatherings, but, alas, it was not to be. Michelle Malkin is offering extensive coverage of the tax-day Tea Parties on her blog, and describes how it all got started.

Michelle Malkin » A Tax Day Tea Party cheat sheet: How it all started.

I have to give credit to Govenor Phil Bredesen. When he campaigned for re-election in 2006, he insisted that he would not pursue a state income tax. Of course, that’s what Don Sundquist said when he was running for re-election in 1998, and we Tennesseans have a track record of getting burned by second-term governors running against a state income tax.

Governor Bredesen has stuck to his promise, even though the state budget is in worse shape now than it was eight years ago when a failure to pass a state income tax meant certain Armageddon.

The state government is expecting about $4.5 billion in federal stimulus money over the next two years, although only a small portion of that money can actually be used to plug holes in the budget. The rest will have to come from — are you ready for this? — cuts in the budget. No, we aren’t talking about cuts in proposed increases. We are talking about cuts, as in spending less money next year than this year.

Governor Bredesen says a total of about $750 million in cuts will have to be made by 2011 in order to keep the budget balanced. Under his proposed budget that would take effect on July 1, the state government would have to get by on $29.34 billion, which is about $430 million less than the current year budget. That’s a cut of about 1.4%.

Folks, this almost never happens in government. Regardless of the state of the economy, government is never forced to do with less. Lawmakers would much prefer to force the taxpayers to do with less than government. But there are no calls for higher taxes (so far). The state government is going to bite the bullet this time.

The education budget will be spared. The remaining departments will see their budgets reduced by an average of 12 percent — cuts that will be phased in over three years. The federal stimulus money will help the state government avoid what would have been 1,700 layoffs. Instead, there will only be 80, although more may become necessary in future years.

Says Governor Bredesen, “It is important to me not to leave my successor — or the next General Assembly — a budgetary cliff to fall off.”

Elizabeth, this is the big one.

Really, how refreshing is that? While the national government is spending our children’s future earnings as fast as they possibly can, Governor Bredesen is determined to clean up messes that happen on his own watch. If only that kind of responsibility and pragmatism would rub off on our politicians in Washington.

Furthermore, Governor Bredesen is warning local governments and school districts to avoid getting hooked on the stimulus money, reminding them that ”You have a windfall for the next two years. If you create obligations with it that go beyond two years, do not look for the state to bail you out.”

Tennesseans really do benefit from operating with a relatively small state government and light tax burden. We have also benefited by fighting off the attempt to enact a state income tax during Governor Sundquist’s second term. Had we given in to the demands of income tax advocates then, our tax burden would be heavier, our government would be larger, and next year’s budget shortfall would likely be deeper.

Take California, for example, which relies heavily on an income tax (and every other tax you can think of). Their budget deficit is a whopping $42 billion — larger than the entire Tennessee state budget. Given that state expenditures ran $145 billion in 2008, that’s a shortfall of 29 percent. It’s gotten so bad that the governor is threatening to furlough 20,000 state employees.

In New York, which also relies heavily on an income tax, the budget deficit has grown to $16 billion, and lawmakers are responding by following the path of least resistance: trying to raise taxes on the rich.

In Tennessee, which does not have a state income tax (thank you, Mae Beavers, Phil Valentine, fellow protesters, et al), our budget problems are minuscule, especially when compared to other states, and most especially the federal government, where President Obama’s proposed $3.6 trillion budget for FY2010 leaves a budget deficit of $1.2 trillion.

Stopping the state income tax dead in its tracks back in 2002 helped guarantee future fiscal restraint. Only now, with the U.S. economy in recession and tax receipts dropping, are we Tennesseans fully coming to realize the fruits of having a relatively small government and low tax burden. Indeed, conservatism works every time it’s tried.

Since I began subscribing to the Rush Limbaugh podcast about three years ago, I have not missed a single minute of any broadcast. There are times that I run a few days behind, such as today, when I finally got around to listening to Tuesday’s program. Limbaugh gives so many great monologues that I could never give recognition to them all. I’m so accustomed to great Limbaugh monlogues that they have become routine. But on Tuesday’s show, hour three, I believe, he gave one that stands above the rest. I’ll call it the Treatise on the Individual, where he declared the individual as the smallest minority on earth. Here’s an excerpt:

When any of you decide to do away with pursuing what you want in your best self-interest, you are sacrificing who you are. You are giving up control of your essence, and you are saying, I would rather be a member of a group that is approved by people so that I don’t get criticized or so that I’m thought of as enlightened or so that I’m thought of as advanced. In the process, you are helping to destroy the very foundational building blocks of the greatest country on earth, the country in which you happen to be born and the country in which you happen to live. So giving up your individual identity, giving up who you are, sacrificing your passions and your desires and your own self-interests for the so-called common good, who gets to define the common good? I would define the common good as everybody acting as an individual, born as he or she is, pursuing self-interest. That’s the common good. That built cities; that built a great country; that built railroads and engines. It built airplanes. It built everything. People denying who they are did not.

The Smallest Minority on Earth.

Michelle Malkin » Liveblogging the Lexington KY Tea Party; Ridgefield CT Tea Party protesters say “DUMP DODD;” 3k in Orlando; Raleigh NC represents.

Gosh, I haven’t see a groundswell of capitalists take to the streets with this kind of vigor since the Tennessee Tax Revolt.

Michelle Malkin » Going Galt, continued.

My research assistant sent along the link to a short video from 30 years ago of Milton Friedman explaining the virtues of capitalism to the thoroughly outclassed Phil Donahue.

Heritage New Media Partners, Inc. – NMA TV – Milton Friedman and Phil Donahue – 1979.

It would be nice to see this BEFORE Election Day instead of now, but I guess it took a heavy dose of liberalism to bring people to their senses. Anyway, tea parties have spread to even more cities across the U.S., many of them in blue Obama states. Even liberal icon Whoopi Goldberg went on an anti-tax rant last week.

The Maha Rushie spoke at CPAC Friday evening, and brought the house down, which is pretty much what he always does.

Michelle Malkin’s latest column involves the grassroots rebellion against porkulus, and she makes a point I made yesterday: “Why aren’t you hearing about it in the MSM? Because it doesn’t fit the victim mentality/government savior narrative. We don’t exist, remember?”

Michelle Malkin » Rebel Yell: Taxpayers Revolt Against Gimme-Mania.

Less than one month into his presidency, the Great Unifier has pushed conservatives over the edge. I’ve already documented a couple of anti-porkulus protests. Rush Limbaugh led off the show yesterday documenting even more.

Earlier this morning on CNBC reporter Rick Santelli reporting from the Chicago Board of Trade, I don’t even need to describe this for you. I’m just going to let you hear the audio sound bites. It was on the program Squawk Box. The coanchors Becky Quick and Joe Kernen, Carl Quintanilla talking with reporter Rick Santelli on the Chicago Board of Trade floor. Here is Santelli’s message for President Obama.

SANTELLI: The government is promoting bad behavior. How this, president and new administration, why didn’t you put up a website to have people vote on the Internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages or would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give ‘em to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road and reward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water. This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills? Raise their hand. (boos) President Obama, are you listening?

FLOOR TRADER: How about we all stop paying our mortgage? It’s a moral hazard.

The Pulse of Revolution Has Begun.

Perhaps we should call it the era of hype and change, instead. The protest against porkulus has found its way to Mesa, Arizona. If I were a betting man, I’d wager that the mainstream press won’t cover these. Or if they do, the protesters will be portrayed as “bitter clingers,” to use an Obama term. Of course, if you get two liberals together somewhere to rally about one of their stupid causes, the camera crews trip over each other trying to give coverage.

Michelle Malkin » Mesa, Arizona: Anti-porkulus protesters raise their voices.

This reminds me of our old Tennessee Tax Revolt days. Ah, the memories.

Hundreds of taxpayers took time out of their busy day to protest President Obama’s “stimulus” bill-signing in Denver today. Jim Pfaff of Colorado Americans for Prosperity, Jon Caldara and the Independence Institute, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, and several GOP officials and state legislators spearheaded the event. Count us all among the “chattering classes” appalled at the massive pork and the short-circuited process that paved the way for the trillion-dollar Generational Theft Act.

Why bother? It’s for posterity’s sake. For the historical record. And, hopefully, it will spur others to move from the phones and computers to the streets. Community organizing helped propel Barack Obama to the White House. It could work for fiscal conservatism, too.

Michelle Malkin » “Yes, we care” Porkulus protesters holler back Updated.

A victory for conservatism. The U.S. House passed a $1.1 trillion bailout bill yesterday. It’s also called the “Generational Theft Act of 2009.” Not one Republican voted for it. Not one. The GOP even peeled off 11 Democrats. But the bill still passed, and because the GOP was willing to take a stand on conservatism, President Obama and the Democrats didn’t get the bipartisanship they wanted. This mess is entirely on their hands.

Afterwards, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin poured out her praise for the House GOP. She writes:

…the GOP held the line this evening in a remarkable, powerful way. They may have lost the vote, but they sent a lasting message. They took a stand for principle and posterity. They took a stand against generational theft. They reclaimed their brand as the party of small government, low taxes, and fiscal responsibility. They restored their damaged credibility.

And guess what? It didn’t take a lot of fancy new slogans or flashy, high-tech tools or slick, high-priced strategists. They simply united and said “NO.” They slammed their foot on the brakes in a Congress full of reckless, panicky drivers. They peeled off 11 Democrats in the process. They forced the Obamedia to cover the excessive pork and dubious stimulative value of this monstrosity. They made conservative values count.

There’s no mystery in how best to rebuild the party and energize the base: Talk like conservatives. Walk like conservatives. Vote like conservatives.

Senate Republicans, take note. Don’t squander this opportunity for redemption. Make no apologies for principled obstructionism. Counter the inevitable liberal overreaching with plain facts and free-market alternatives.

Stop licking boots. Start kicking a**.

Michelle Malkin.

Michelle Malkin dedicated her weekly column yesterday to self-reliant Americans. She begins this way:

In The Year of Bottomless Bailouts, I am most grateful this Thanksgiving for Americans who refuse to abandon thrift, personal responsibility, and self-reliance. When the moochers and entitlement-mongers drive you mad, remember that our nation still serves as home to millions of citizens who do for themselves. Like our Founding Fathers, they are God-fearing people – the ones elitist pundits deride as “oogedy-boogedy” – who will never put their faith in The Cult of You Owe Me.