Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
"Let It Bleed"
U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter, Chair
House Republican Policy Committee
U.S. House Floor Special Order
December 12, 2007
Mister/Madam Speaker,
As my Republican party completes its first year in the minority since 1994, we find ourselves held in historically low regard by the sovereign American people.
To end this trend, Republicans must accurately assess our party’s past and present failings; and its future prospects of again providing Americans a meaningful choice between the major parties. This remains, after all, a party’s duty to the citizenry.
For my GOP to fulfill it, first we must bury our ideological dead.
Aftermath
Safely on this side of the cleansing mists of memory, it is chic to eulogize the late Republican majority. From the chattering class few insights emerge, for in the aftermath, only poetry is an apt epitaph:
The world is too much with us,
Late and soon;
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away –
A sordid boon!
Such was the Republican bathos: a transformational majority sinned and slipped into a transactional “Cashocracy” – promises, policies, principles, all bartered, even honor. The majority now is of the ages, may it rest in peace…
And be redeemed.
Dirty Work
Once, George Santayana cautioned: “Those who do not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them.” If our current Republican minority guilefully refutes or gutlessly refuses to admit, accept, and atone for the bitter fruits of its lapsed majority, it will continue to decline in the eyes of the American electorate. Thus, for the sake of our nation in this time of transformation, we must fully and frankly examine and understand the cardinal causes of the Republican majority’s recent demise; and, sadder but wiser, commence our Republican minority’s restoration as a transformation political movement serving the sovereign citizens of our free republic.
Through the Past Darkly
Big Hits and Fazed Cookies
To begin, we must retrace our steps down a darkened alley of broken hopes to glean the essence of our party’s headier times, big hits and fazed cookies.
Though many of its legislative leaders may moot the point, two Presidents caused the 1994 Republican Revolution: Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
The members of 1995’s new Republican Majority were Ronald Regan’s political children. From President Reagan, Republican Congressional revolutionaries inherited a philosophy of “politics as the art of the possible.” Cogently expressed by conservative intellectuals ranging from Edmund Burke to Russell Kirk, this philosophy’s central tenets held:
1. Men and women are transcendent children of God endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.
2. Government was instituted to defend citizens’ inalienable rights and facilitate citizens’ pursuit of the good and of true happiness.
3. Over the generations, Divine Providence has established and revealed through tradition, prescriptive rights and custom within communities how order, justice, and freedom – each essential, co-equal and mutually reinforcing – are best arranged and nurtured for humanity to pursue the good and true happiness.
4. Human happiness is endangered by every political ideology, for each is premised upon abstract ideas; each claims a superior insight into human nature not revealed through historical experience; each proffers a secular utopia unobtainable by an imperfect humanity; and, each demands an omnipotent, centralized government to forcefully impose its vision upon an “unenlightened” and unwilling population.
This is the political philosophy and resulting public policies a once impoverished youth from Dixon, Illinois, Ronald Reagan, engagingly articulated to America throughout his Presidency in the 1980s. By 1994, the American people who, having taken Reagan at Russell Kirk’s word that “conservatism is the negation of ideology” and remembering its beneficent impact upon their daily lives, yearned for its return. For self-described Congressional Republican revolutionaries, this formed fertile electoral ground (one shaped as well, it must be admitted, by a host of unheralded and immensely talented GOP redistricting attorneys). But like all revolutions, the piece required a villain.
Enter President Clinton.
Exuberant at having defeated an incumbent President George H. W. Bush, Clinton mistook a mandate against his predecessor as a mandate for his own craftily concealed liberalism. In his first two years in the oval office, this mistake led Clinton to over-reach on “kitchen table” issues, such as raising taxes and socializing medicine. Daily, the four-decade old Democratic Congressional majority abetted Clinton’s radical policies; and across the political spectrum voters seethed.
Congressional Republicans bided their time, planned their revolution, and seized their moment. Led by their spell-binding and abrasive guru from Georgia, Congressional Republicans unveiled their “Contract with America” to much popular – if not pundit – acclaim.
Though much mythologized, if it is to prove instructive for the present Republican minority, this Contract can and must be placed in its proper perspective. A musical analogy is most elucidating.
When a reporter once praised the Beatles for producing Rock’s first “concept album,” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, John Lennon curtly corrected him: “It was a concept album because we said it was.” Lennon’s point was this: yes, the Beatles had originally set out to produce a concept album; but early in their sessions the band dropped any conceits to creating a concept album and recorded whatever songs were on hand. Recognizing their failure, the Beatles tacked on a final song, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise), to engender the illusion they had, after all, created a “concept album.” Importantly, when the band later tried to produce a true “concept album” and accompanying film, Magical Mystery Tour, the lackluster result was one of the Beatles’ few failed artistic ventures.
Similarly, Congressional Republicans’ “Contract with America” was a collection of specific policy proposals and concrete grievances against the incumbent Democratic President and his legislative allies. It possessed merely an implicit philosophy (one obviously harkening back to Reagan). Even less than Sergeant Pepper, the individual tracks of which have (mostly) stood the test of time, today many of the Contract’s specific proposals sound dated. But like Sergeant Pepper, what endures about the Contract is the fact it was marketed as a revolutionary “concept” in governance. Of course, it is not. The Contract was a suitable period piece which served its purpose – the election of Congressional Republicans in sufficient numbers to attain our party’s first majority in forty years. Nevertheless the Contact’s lack of a clearly enunciated political philosophy with immutable principles sowed the seeds of the subsequent Republican Devolution.
Therefore, if the current Republican minority buys into the myth and makes the Contract the basis of a derivative “concept” agenda, the GOP will be condemned to another forty-year Magical Mystery Tour through the political wilderness.
Out of Our Heads
This is not to say the members of 1995’s new Republican majority lacked a political philosophy or immutable principles. Quite the contrary: these members were steeped in the Reagan tradition. But after an initial rush of laudable accomplishments, the members found themselves trapped by the Contract’s inherent pragmatism and particularity. Absent a philosophical anchor in the Contract, members drifted into the grind of governance, which distorted Reagan’s philosophical principles for public policy into non-binding precedents for political popularity. Exacerbating this process, the new majority’s leaders, exuberant at having defeated an incumbent Democratic Congressional majority, mistook a mandate against their predecessors as a mandate for their own finitely posited conservatism. In its first two years in control of the House, this led the majority’s leaders to erroneously conclude it could govern as a parliament, rather than as a Congress equivalent in power to the executive branch; and they over-reached on key issues, most notably in the shut down of the United States government over the issue of spending. Artfully framed by President Clinton with sufficient plausibility as an irresponsible Republican ideological attack on good government, this moment marked the beginning of the Republican majority’s end - in point of fact, from the government shutdown to the present the House GOP Conference has never had as many members as it did in 1995.
Some persist in too facilely dismissing this Republican debacle as being due to Clinton’s superior messaging of the issue from his bully pulpit. This analysis is errant. The reason Clinton succeeded is the kernel of truth he wielded on this issue: House Republican leaders had stopped governing prudently in accordance with Reagan’s political philosophy of politics being the art of the possible and, instead, started acting belligerently in an ideological manner against the public’s interest. It is no an accident this battle fundamentally affected Clinton’s thinking and spurred his reinvention from a liberal ideologue into a pragmatic problem-solver and proponent of “good government.” Unfortunately, Clinton’s publicly applauded posturing as a “centrist” incensed the Republican majority; and accelerated their efforts to differentiate themselves from an unprincipled President by being increasingly ideological, which they confuted with being principled.
As this ideological fever progressed through 1996, too late did the new majority’s members intuit the political cost to candidates considered “ideologues.” The Republicans’ majority did survive the partisan carnage of Clinton’s overwhelming 1996 re-election, but the cycle’s cumulative effect was lasting and damning. Without gawking at the gruesome minutia of each ensuing GOP ideological purge and internal coup instigated by this election, we can note it spawned the unseemly political perversion of the House Republicans’ transformational majority into a transactional “Cashocracy.”
Beggars Banquet
Hubristically deemed by its leading denizens as a “Permanent Majority,” the GOP Cashocracy was a Beggars’ Banquet at taxpayers’ expense. The Cashocracy’s sole goal was its own perpetuation; and its Cashocrats and High Priests of Money-theism myopically chased this aim through pragmatic corporatism and political machinations.
Obviously, the Cashocracy’s cardinal vice was its conviction to survive for its own sake. Curiously, this is not the height of arrogance; it is the height of insecurity. Aware it stood for nothing but election, the Cashocracy knew anything could topple it. This fear cancerously compelled the poll-driven Cashocrats to grope for ephemeral popularity by abandoning immutable principles. Materialist to their core and devoid of empathy, the Cashocrats routinely ignored the centrality to governmental policies of transcendent human beings.
A Bigger Bang
This Cashocracy’s first cardinal facilitated its second: pragmatic corporatism. Ensconced in insular power, the GOP Leadership lived the lives of the rich and famous, despite their middling personal means, due to their new-found friends in the corporate and lobbying community. Cut off from Main Street, these GOP leaders embraced “K Street.” The desire was mutual, and the corporatists’ influence grew gradually but ineluctably. Closed within a corporatist echo chamber, the GOP majority became deadened to the tribulations and aspirations of real Americans, and came to measure the “success” of its pragmatic policies by their reception on K Street. Reams of measures spewed forth prioritizing the interests of multi-national corporations over the needs of middle class Americans.
In fairness, even without the Cashocrats’ incessant inducements, blandishments and bullying, the majority of GOP members truly did feel they were promoting the interests of their constituents. This belief was insidiously sustained by the Cashocrats grafting their pragmatic corporatism onto the philosophy of economic determinism. It was not an unforeseeable development. Akin to their conservative brethren who after the fall of the Soviet Union proclaimed the “End of History,” House Republicans convinced themselves the ideology of democratic capitalism was an unstoppable deterministic force predestined to conquer the world; and, on their part, they viewed their job as hastening its triumph and preparing Americans to cope with its consequences. Combined with the Cashocracy’s insatiable need of corporate contributions for its sustenance, this adherence to ideological democratic capitalism reveals how the Republican House majority helped President Clinton (whom they had unknowingly come to emulate and, likely loathe ever more because of it) grant the Permanent Normalization of Trade Relations to Communist China. With this enact of this legislation, the Cashocracy reached its political zenith and moral nadir, for it did not shape globalization to suit Americans’ interests; it had shaped Americans’ interests to suit globalization.
Sticky Fingers
The handsome rewards for such “courageous” legislation fueled the Cashocracy’s third vice, avarice. The process was both seductive and simple, especially in a materialistic town forsaking the qualitative measurement of virtue for the quantitative measurement of money. While this temptation is to be expected in a city where politicians “prove” their moral superiority by spending other people’s money, it was equally to be expected Republicans would collectively resist it.
They didn’t.
Earmarks, which began as a cost-saving reform to prevent federal bureaucrats from controlling and wasting taxpayers’ money in contravention of express Congressional intent, spiraled out of control once the Cashocrats and their K-Street cronies realized the process could be manipulated to direct any appropriation, however undeserving, to any client, however questionable. In turn, political contributions materialized from the recipients of these earmarks for the members on both sides of the aisle who dropped them into legislation, often times without the knowledge of or the appropriate review by their peers. The passage of policy bills, too, increasingly mirrored the earmark process, as special interest provisions were slipped into the dimmer recesses of bills in the dead of night. The outcome of this fiscal chicanery was an escalation of the K-Street contributions the Cashocracy required to attain its aim of perpetuating itself in power; and of the illegal perks required to sate the more venal tastes of some morally challenged members who are now paying their debts to society.
Black and Blue
Cumulatively, in addition to rendering it morally bankrupt, these three vices left the Cashocracy intellectually impotent. Tellingly, within this less than subtle and manifestly sinister system of earmarks and contributions, the Cashocrats’ greased the skids for their legislative “favors” by relegating the majority’s younger members to voting rather than legislating; ignoring these members’ qualitative virtues, ideals and talents; measuring these members by the quantitative standard of how much money they raised; and, thereby, condemning these members to the status of highly paid telemarketers. Having squandered this infusion of youthful energy and insight, the Cashocrats hailed the election of Republican President George W. Bush and handed him the nation’s legislative agenda.
At first, the Cashocrats’ subordination of their separate, equal branch of government to the executive branch bore dividends. But by 2006, when the failures of the Iraq War’s reconstruction policy and Hurricane Katrina’s emergency relief torpedoed Bush’s popularity, the latent danger to the Cashocrats of hitching their SUVs to the fortunes of a President was evident. Precluded from tying its vicarious popularity to Bush’s coat tails, the Cashocracy teetered beneath the gale force invective of the Democrats’ campaign mantra the Congressional Republican majority was “a culture of corruption” slothfully content to “rubber stamp” the failed policies of an unpopular President. Panic stricken, the politically tone-deaf Cashocrats urged GOP members to tout America’s “robust economy” and attack Democrats on national security issues. The innately materialist economic argument was doomed to fail, because the “robust” economy was not to be found in regions like the Northeast and Midwest. The latter argument proved unconvincing to an electorate convinced Iraq and New Orleans were GOP national security fiascos. And, finally, nothing could persuade an outraged electorate to return a Republican majority which, in the interests of perpetuating itself in power, failed to protect House pages from predatory members of Congress.
By election day the public had concluded the Republican majority cared more about corporations than Americans; and, when the tsunami hit, the Cashocracy crumbled down upon many now former GOP members, who became the last, blameless victims of its stolid cupidity.
In hindsight, the Cashocracy would best have heeded President Theodore Roosevelt’s warning:
“The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”
Exile on Main Street
December’s Children
Straggling back to Washington for the Republican Revolution’s death vigil, the 2006 election’s surviving GOP members bid anguished goodbyes to defeated friends and struggled to make sense of it all. Dazed and confused, some members managed to grasp the reality of their newly minted minority, while some still grapple with it. Out of this former group, a distinct vision has emerged concerning how House Republicans can revitalize and redeem themselves in the estimation of their fellow Americans.
Got Live if You Want It
“Restoration Republicans” are best considered Reagan’s grandchildren. Like their Reagan-Democratic parents, Restoration Republicans were attracted to our party by the intellectual, cultural, and moral components and proven practical benefits of philosophical conservatism. Transcending talking points and political cant, these Restoration Republicans’ are devoted to restoring human soul’s centrality to public policy decisions; and focusing these policies on preserving and perpetuating the permanent things of our evanescent earthly existence which surpass all politics in importance.
The enduring ideals of Restoration Republicans are succinctly enumerated by Russell Kirk in his book, The Politics of Prudence:
1. The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order.
2. The conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity.
3. Conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription – that is, of things established by immemorial usage.
4. Conservatives are guided by the principle of prudence.
5. Conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety.
6. Conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability.
7. Conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked.
8. Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.
9. The Conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passion.
10. The thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.
Given how the Cashocracy repeatedly violated these principles during its descent into oblivion, and how the Democrats’ 2006 consequent rallying cry was “change,” this tenth ideal merits deeper contemplation. For to understand it fully is to fully understand why Restoration Republicans, who are convinced we live amidst a crucible of liberty, proclaim our minority must emulate and implement the philosophical conservatism of Ronald Reagan and the fiery integrity of Theodore Roosevelt in the cause of empowering Americans and strengthening their eternal institutions of faith, family, community and country. Again, Kirk:
“Therefore the intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression. He [or she] thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise. The conservative, in short, favors reasoned and temperate progress; he [or she] is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old.
“Change is essential to the body social, the conservative reasons, just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceases to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host. The conservative takes care that nothing in a society should ever be wholly old, and that nothing should ever be wholly new. This is the means of the conservation of a nation, quite as it is the means of conservation of a living organism. Just how much change a society requires, and what sort of change, depend upon the circumstances of an age and a nation.”
Love You Live
Kirk’s words compelled Restoration Republicans to empathetically assess our nation’s age and circumstances; and ponder the direction and scope of the changes our American community requires.
In making these determinations, Restoration Republicans draw parallels between and inspiration from America’s “Greatest Generation.”
Our Greatest Generation faced and surmounted a quartet of generational challenges born of industrialization:
1. Economic, social, and political upheavals;
2. A second world war against abject evil;
3. The rise of the Soviet “super-state” as a strategic threat and rival model of governance; and
4. The civil rights movement’s moral struggle to equally ensure the God given and constitutionally recognized rights of all Americans.
Today, our generation of Americans must confront and transcend a quartet of generational challenges born of globalization:
1. Economic, social and political upheavals;
2. A third world war against abject evil;
3. The rise of the communist Chinese “super-state” as a strategic threat and rival model of governance; and
4. Moral relativism’s erosion of our nation’s foundational, self-evident truths.
The critical difference between the challenges conquered by the Greatest Generation and the challenges crises confronting our generation of Americans is this: they faced their crises consecutively; we face our crises simultaneously.
In response to these generational challenges to our free republic, Restoration Republicans have drawn upon the roots of their philosophical conservatism to affirm the truth America does not exist to emulate others, America exists to inspire the world; and to advance the policy paradigm of American Excellence, which rests upon a foundation of liberty, and the four cornerstones of sovereignty, security, prosperity and verities.
Individually and collectively, American Excellence’s foundation and four cornerstones are reinforced by these policy principles:
1. Our liberty is granted not by the pen of a government bureaucrat, but is authored by the hand of almighty God.
2. Our sovereignty rests not in our soil, but in our souls.
3. Our security is guaranteed not by the thin hopes of appeasement, but by the moral and physical courage of our troops defending us in hours of maximum danger;
4. Our prosperity is produced not by the tax hikes and spending sprees of politicians, but by the innovation and perspiration of free people engaged in free enterprise.
5. Our cherished truths and communal virtues are preserved and observed not by a coerced political correctness, but by our reverent citizenry’s voluntary celebration of the culture of life.
Restoration Republicans conclude, therefore, we must be Champions of American Freedom in challenging new millennium to keep our America a community of destiny inspired and guided by the virtuous genius of our free people; and forever blessed by the unfathomable grace of God.
Metamorphosis
It will not be easy, given the root public policy question of our times. In the Age of Industrialization, President Theodore Roosevelt empathized with Americans’ feelings of powerlessness in the face of the economic, social and political forces radically altering or terminating their traditional, typically agrarian, lives. Writing years later in his book A Humane Economy, the economist Wilhelm Ropke examined the impacts upon human beings by these forces, which he collectively termed “mass society”:
“(T)he disintegration of the social structure (generates) a profound upheaval in the outward conditions of each individual’s life, thought, and work. Independence is smothered; men are uprooted and taken out of the close-woven social texture in which they were secure; true communities are broken up in favor of more universal but impersonal collectivities in which the individual is no longer a person in this own right; the inward, spontaneous social fabric is loosened in favor of mechanical, soulless organization, with its outward compulsion; all individuality is reduced to one plane of uniform normality; the area of individual action, decision, and responsibility shrinks in favor of collective planning and decision; the whole of life becomes uniform and standard mass life, ever more subject to party politics, ‘nationalization,’ and ‘socialization.’”
In that epoch, the root public policy question was how to protect Americans’ traditional rights to order, justice, and freedom from being usurped by corporate or governmental centralization. Aware of this quandary, T.R. responded by taming an emerging capitalist oligarchy which considered itself above the laws and, thereby, soothing the economic, social, and political anxieties of urban industrial workers which threatened the stability of our free republic. Over time, from T.R.’s seminal efforts arose the industrial-welfare state which, in a tenuous detente, divided solutions to Americans’ economic and social upheavals between and within both centralized corporations and government.
No Security
In this Age of Globalization, however, while Americans are vexed by their seeming inability to influence the potent economic, social and political forces radically reshaping their lives, American corporations are busy decentralizing into “virtual corporations” reliant upon the outsourcing of jobs to other nations to obtain lower labor costs and evade cumbersome domestic laws and regulations. Such “rootless capital” being sent around the world in a keystroke to more “competitive markets” has cost Americans their livelihoods; reduced their wages and employer provided benefits; diminished their unions’ memberships; eclipsed their optimism regarding our economy’s continued vitality; and, in cases of extreme economic distress and angst, destroyed their marriages and dreams for their children.
The failure to realize the seismic ramifications to normal Americans of this tectonic economic shift was a primary cause of the Cashocracy’s collapse. As rising corporate profits and Wall Street bull markets became increasingly divorced from working Americans’ prosperity, the Cashocrats clung ever more tightly to their corporate benefactors without grasping Americans had concluded what is “good for GM” is no longer necessarily good for them.
The advent of virtual corporations and transient international capital has ended the old industrial-welfare state model of governance, wherein solutions to Americans’ economic and social anxieties were the shared burdens of centralized corporations and government. The stark choice is now between increasing the centralized power of the federal government or decentralization power into the hands of individuals, families and communities.
Steel Wheels
In their urgency to replace their lost or slashed corporate benefits, Americans will be sorely tempted to further centralize federal government to do it. But expanding the authority and compulsory powers of the federal government will be injurious to the American people. Big government doesn’t stop chaos; big government is chaos. By usurping the rightful powers of individuals beneath its bureaucracy’s steel wheels, highly centralized government alienates individuals and atomizes communities. Once more, Ropke speaks to the heart of the matter:
“The temptation of centrism has been great at all times, as regards both theory and political action. It is the temptation of mechanical perfection and of uniformity at the expense of freedom. Perhaps Montesquieu was right when he said that it is the small minds, above all, which succumb to this temptation. Once the mania of uniformity and centralization spreads and once the centrists begin to lay down the law of the land, then we are in the presence of one of the most serious danger signals warning us of the impending loss of freedom, humanity, and the health of society.”
Only liberty unleashes Americans to establish the true roots of a holistic American order – the voluntary and virtuous individual, familial, and communal associations which invigorate and instruct a free people conquering challenges. In contrast, centralized and, thus, inherently unaccountable government suffocates liberty, order and justice by smothering and severing citizens’ voluntary bonds within mediating, non-governmental institutions; and, thereby, stifles our free people’s individual and collective solutions to challenges. In consequence, the temptation for more centralized government must be fought to prevent turning sovereign Americans from the masters of their destiny into the serfs of governmental dependency.
Hot Rocks
Fully versed in this verity, Restoration Republicans have made their decision – power to the people. Thus, in this Age of Globalization, Restoration Republicans vow to:
1. Empower the sovereign American people to protect and promote their God-given and constitutionally recognized and protected rights.
2. Promote the decentralization of federal governmental powers to the American people or to their most appropriate and closest unit of government.
3. Defend Americans’ enduring moral order of faith, family, community and country from all enemies.
4. Foster a dynamic market economy of entrepreneurial opportunity for all Americans.
5. Honor and nurture a “humanity of scale” in Americans’ relations and endeavors.
Further, while these Restoration Republicans will be releasing a more detailed program in the future, the above will form the basis of their concrete policy proposals.
Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out
Mister/Madam Speaker,
My constituents are honest, hard-working, and intelligent people who are bearing the brunt of the generational challenges facing our nation. They have lost manufacturing and every manner of jobs due to globalization and, especially, the predatory trade practices of communist China. Throughout these economically anxious times, they spend sleepless nights wondering if they will be able to afford to keep their jobs; their houses; their health care; their hopes for their children. In the War for Freedom, they have buried, mourned, and honored their loved ones lost in the battle against our nation and all of civilization’s barbaric enemies. And, every day, they struggle to make sense of an increasingly perverse culture disdainful of and destructive to faith, truths, virtue and beauty, if the existence of these permanent things is even admitted.
True, they differ on specific solutions to their pressing issues. But they do agree Washington isn’t serving their concerns. They agree this storied representative institution is increasingly detached from the daily realities of their lives. And they remind me that when we enter this House – Their House – we enter as guests, who must honor the leap of faith they took in letting us in and allowing us to serve them.
With my constituents, I utterly agree. While it is not my purpose here to discuss the majority party, let me be clear as to my own: House Republicans have no business practicing business as usual. My constituents, our country, and this Congress deserve better.
And we will provide it!
Our Republican minority has members who know America isn’t an economy, America is a country.
Our Republican minority has members who know the only thing worth measuring in money is greed.
Our Republican minority has members with the heart to put individuals ahead of abstractions; people ahead of politics; souls ahead of systems.
Our Republican minority has members who have seen sorrow seep down a widow’s cheek and joy shine from a child’s eyes.
Yes, our Republican minority has members who know our deeds on behalf of our sovereign constituents must accord with Wordsworth’s poetic prayer:
“And then a wish: my best and favorite aspiration mounts with yearning toward some higher song of philosophic truth which cherishes our daily lives.”
It is these Republicans whose service in this Congress will redeem our party by honoring the sacred trust of the majestic American people who, in their virtuous genius, will transcend these transformational times and strengthen our exceptional nation’s revolutionary experiment in human freedom.
With these Republicans, I hereby throw in my lot and pledge my best efforts on behalf of my constituents and our country.
May God continue to grace, guard, guide and bless our community of destiny, the United States of America.
House Republican Policy Committee
U.S. House Floor Special Order
December 12, 2007
Mister/Madam Speaker,
As my Republican party completes its first year in the minority since 1994, we find ourselves held in historically low regard by the sovereign American people.
To end this trend, Republicans must accurately assess our party’s past and present failings; and its future prospects of again providing Americans a meaningful choice between the major parties. This remains, after all, a party’s duty to the citizenry.
For my GOP to fulfill it, first we must bury our ideological dead.
Aftermath
Safely on this side of the cleansing mists of memory, it is chic to eulogize the late Republican majority. From the chattering class few insights emerge, for in the aftermath, only poetry is an apt epitaph:
The world is too much with us,
Late and soon;
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away –
A sordid boon!
Such was the Republican bathos: a transformational majority sinned and slipped into a transactional “Cashocracy” – promises, policies, principles, all bartered, even honor. The majority now is of the ages, may it rest in peace…
And be redeemed.
Dirty Work
Once, George Santayana cautioned: “Those who do not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them.” If our current Republican minority guilefully refutes or gutlessly refuses to admit, accept, and atone for the bitter fruits of its lapsed majority, it will continue to decline in the eyes of the American electorate. Thus, for the sake of our nation in this time of transformation, we must fully and frankly examine and understand the cardinal causes of the Republican majority’s recent demise; and, sadder but wiser, commence our Republican minority’s restoration as a transformation political movement serving the sovereign citizens of our free republic.
Through the Past Darkly
Big Hits and Fazed Cookies
To begin, we must retrace our steps down a darkened alley of broken hopes to glean the essence of our party’s headier times, big hits and fazed cookies.
Though many of its legislative leaders may moot the point, two Presidents caused the 1994 Republican Revolution: Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
The members of 1995’s new Republican Majority were Ronald Regan’s political children. From President Reagan, Republican Congressional revolutionaries inherited a philosophy of “politics as the art of the possible.” Cogently expressed by conservative intellectuals ranging from Edmund Burke to Russell Kirk, this philosophy’s central tenets held:
1. Men and women are transcendent children of God endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.
2. Government was instituted to defend citizens’ inalienable rights and facilitate citizens’ pursuit of the good and of true happiness.
3. Over the generations, Divine Providence has established and revealed through tradition, prescriptive rights and custom within communities how order, justice, and freedom – each essential, co-equal and mutually reinforcing – are best arranged and nurtured for humanity to pursue the good and true happiness.
4. Human happiness is endangered by every political ideology, for each is premised upon abstract ideas; each claims a superior insight into human nature not revealed through historical experience; each proffers a secular utopia unobtainable by an imperfect humanity; and, each demands an omnipotent, centralized government to forcefully impose its vision upon an “unenlightened” and unwilling population.
This is the political philosophy and resulting public policies a once impoverished youth from Dixon, Illinois, Ronald Reagan, engagingly articulated to America throughout his Presidency in the 1980s. By 1994, the American people who, having taken Reagan at Russell Kirk’s word that “conservatism is the negation of ideology” and remembering its beneficent impact upon their daily lives, yearned for its return. For self-described Congressional Republican revolutionaries, this formed fertile electoral ground (one shaped as well, it must be admitted, by a host of unheralded and immensely talented GOP redistricting attorneys). But like all revolutions, the piece required a villain.
Enter President Clinton.
Exuberant at having defeated an incumbent President George H. W. Bush, Clinton mistook a mandate against his predecessor as a mandate for his own craftily concealed liberalism. In his first two years in the oval office, this mistake led Clinton to over-reach on “kitchen table” issues, such as raising taxes and socializing medicine. Daily, the four-decade old Democratic Congressional majority abetted Clinton’s radical policies; and across the political spectrum voters seethed.
Congressional Republicans bided their time, planned their revolution, and seized their moment. Led by their spell-binding and abrasive guru from Georgia, Congressional Republicans unveiled their “Contract with America” to much popular – if not pundit – acclaim.
Though much mythologized, if it is to prove instructive for the present Republican minority, this Contract can and must be placed in its proper perspective. A musical analogy is most elucidating.
When a reporter once praised the Beatles for producing Rock’s first “concept album,” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, John Lennon curtly corrected him: “It was a concept album because we said it was.” Lennon’s point was this: yes, the Beatles had originally set out to produce a concept album; but early in their sessions the band dropped any conceits to creating a concept album and recorded whatever songs were on hand. Recognizing their failure, the Beatles tacked on a final song, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise), to engender the illusion they had, after all, created a “concept album.” Importantly, when the band later tried to produce a true “concept album” and accompanying film, Magical Mystery Tour, the lackluster result was one of the Beatles’ few failed artistic ventures.
Similarly, Congressional Republicans’ “Contract with America” was a collection of specific policy proposals and concrete grievances against the incumbent Democratic President and his legislative allies. It possessed merely an implicit philosophy (one obviously harkening back to Reagan). Even less than Sergeant Pepper, the individual tracks of which have (mostly) stood the test of time, today many of the Contract’s specific proposals sound dated. But like Sergeant Pepper, what endures about the Contract is the fact it was marketed as a revolutionary “concept” in governance. Of course, it is not. The Contract was a suitable period piece which served its purpose – the election of Congressional Republicans in sufficient numbers to attain our party’s first majority in forty years. Nevertheless the Contact’s lack of a clearly enunciated political philosophy with immutable principles sowed the seeds of the subsequent Republican Devolution.
Therefore, if the current Republican minority buys into the myth and makes the Contract the basis of a derivative “concept” agenda, the GOP will be condemned to another forty-year Magical Mystery Tour through the political wilderness.
Out of Our Heads
This is not to say the members of 1995’s new Republican majority lacked a political philosophy or immutable principles. Quite the contrary: these members were steeped in the Reagan tradition. But after an initial rush of laudable accomplishments, the members found themselves trapped by the Contract’s inherent pragmatism and particularity. Absent a philosophical anchor in the Contract, members drifted into the grind of governance, which distorted Reagan’s philosophical principles for public policy into non-binding precedents for political popularity. Exacerbating this process, the new majority’s leaders, exuberant at having defeated an incumbent Democratic Congressional majority, mistook a mandate against their predecessors as a mandate for their own finitely posited conservatism. In its first two years in control of the House, this led the majority’s leaders to erroneously conclude it could govern as a parliament, rather than as a Congress equivalent in power to the executive branch; and they over-reached on key issues, most notably in the shut down of the United States government over the issue of spending. Artfully framed by President Clinton with sufficient plausibility as an irresponsible Republican ideological attack on good government, this moment marked the beginning of the Republican majority’s end - in point of fact, from the government shutdown to the present the House GOP Conference has never had as many members as it did in 1995.
Some persist in too facilely dismissing this Republican debacle as being due to Clinton’s superior messaging of the issue from his bully pulpit. This analysis is errant. The reason Clinton succeeded is the kernel of truth he wielded on this issue: House Republican leaders had stopped governing prudently in accordance with Reagan’s political philosophy of politics being the art of the possible and, instead, started acting belligerently in an ideological manner against the public’s interest. It is no an accident this battle fundamentally affected Clinton’s thinking and spurred his reinvention from a liberal ideologue into a pragmatic problem-solver and proponent of “good government.” Unfortunately, Clinton’s publicly applauded posturing as a “centrist” incensed the Republican majority; and accelerated their efforts to differentiate themselves from an unprincipled President by being increasingly ideological, which they confuted with being principled.
As this ideological fever progressed through 1996, too late did the new majority’s members intuit the political cost to candidates considered “ideologues.” The Republicans’ majority did survive the partisan carnage of Clinton’s overwhelming 1996 re-election, but the cycle’s cumulative effect was lasting and damning. Without gawking at the gruesome minutia of each ensuing GOP ideological purge and internal coup instigated by this election, we can note it spawned the unseemly political perversion of the House Republicans’ transformational majority into a transactional “Cashocracy.”
Beggars Banquet
Hubristically deemed by its leading denizens as a “Permanent Majority,” the GOP Cashocracy was a Beggars’ Banquet at taxpayers’ expense. The Cashocracy’s sole goal was its own perpetuation; and its Cashocrats and High Priests of Money-theism myopically chased this aim through pragmatic corporatism and political machinations.
Obviously, the Cashocracy’s cardinal vice was its conviction to survive for its own sake. Curiously, this is not the height of arrogance; it is the height of insecurity. Aware it stood for nothing but election, the Cashocracy knew anything could topple it. This fear cancerously compelled the poll-driven Cashocrats to grope for ephemeral popularity by abandoning immutable principles. Materialist to their core and devoid of empathy, the Cashocrats routinely ignored the centrality to governmental policies of transcendent human beings.
A Bigger Bang
This Cashocracy’s first cardinal facilitated its second: pragmatic corporatism. Ensconced in insular power, the GOP Leadership lived the lives of the rich and famous, despite their middling personal means, due to their new-found friends in the corporate and lobbying community. Cut off from Main Street, these GOP leaders embraced “K Street.” The desire was mutual, and the corporatists’ influence grew gradually but ineluctably. Closed within a corporatist echo chamber, the GOP majority became deadened to the tribulations and aspirations of real Americans, and came to measure the “success” of its pragmatic policies by their reception on K Street. Reams of measures spewed forth prioritizing the interests of multi-national corporations over the needs of middle class Americans.
In fairness, even without the Cashocrats’ incessant inducements, blandishments and bullying, the majority of GOP members truly did feel they were promoting the interests of their constituents. This belief was insidiously sustained by the Cashocrats grafting their pragmatic corporatism onto the philosophy of economic determinism. It was not an unforeseeable development. Akin to their conservative brethren who after the fall of the Soviet Union proclaimed the “End of History,” House Republicans convinced themselves the ideology of democratic capitalism was an unstoppable deterministic force predestined to conquer the world; and, on their part, they viewed their job as hastening its triumph and preparing Americans to cope with its consequences. Combined with the Cashocracy’s insatiable need of corporate contributions for its sustenance, this adherence to ideological democratic capitalism reveals how the Republican House majority helped President Clinton (whom they had unknowingly come to emulate and, likely loathe ever more because of it) grant the Permanent Normalization of Trade Relations to Communist China. With this enact of this legislation, the Cashocracy reached its political zenith and moral nadir, for it did not shape globalization to suit Americans’ interests; it had shaped Americans’ interests to suit globalization.
Sticky Fingers
The handsome rewards for such “courageous” legislation fueled the Cashocracy’s third vice, avarice. The process was both seductive and simple, especially in a materialistic town forsaking the qualitative measurement of virtue for the quantitative measurement of money. While this temptation is to be expected in a city where politicians “prove” their moral superiority by spending other people’s money, it was equally to be expected Republicans would collectively resist it.
They didn’t.
Earmarks, which began as a cost-saving reform to prevent federal bureaucrats from controlling and wasting taxpayers’ money in contravention of express Congressional intent, spiraled out of control once the Cashocrats and their K-Street cronies realized the process could be manipulated to direct any appropriation, however undeserving, to any client, however questionable. In turn, political contributions materialized from the recipients of these earmarks for the members on both sides of the aisle who dropped them into legislation, often times without the knowledge of or the appropriate review by their peers. The passage of policy bills, too, increasingly mirrored the earmark process, as special interest provisions were slipped into the dimmer recesses of bills in the dead of night. The outcome of this fiscal chicanery was an escalation of the K-Street contributions the Cashocracy required to attain its aim of perpetuating itself in power; and of the illegal perks required to sate the more venal tastes of some morally challenged members who are now paying their debts to society.
Black and Blue
Cumulatively, in addition to rendering it morally bankrupt, these three vices left the Cashocracy intellectually impotent. Tellingly, within this less than subtle and manifestly sinister system of earmarks and contributions, the Cashocrats’ greased the skids for their legislative “favors” by relegating the majority’s younger members to voting rather than legislating; ignoring these members’ qualitative virtues, ideals and talents; measuring these members by the quantitative standard of how much money they raised; and, thereby, condemning these members to the status of highly paid telemarketers. Having squandered this infusion of youthful energy and insight, the Cashocrats hailed the election of Republican President George W. Bush and handed him the nation’s legislative agenda.
At first, the Cashocrats’ subordination of their separate, equal branch of government to the executive branch bore dividends. But by 2006, when the failures of the Iraq War’s reconstruction policy and Hurricane Katrina’s emergency relief torpedoed Bush’s popularity, the latent danger to the Cashocrats of hitching their SUVs to the fortunes of a President was evident. Precluded from tying its vicarious popularity to Bush’s coat tails, the Cashocracy teetered beneath the gale force invective of the Democrats’ campaign mantra the Congressional Republican majority was “a culture of corruption” slothfully content to “rubber stamp” the failed policies of an unpopular President. Panic stricken, the politically tone-deaf Cashocrats urged GOP members to tout America’s “robust economy” and attack Democrats on national security issues. The innately materialist economic argument was doomed to fail, because the “robust” economy was not to be found in regions like the Northeast and Midwest. The latter argument proved unconvincing to an electorate convinced Iraq and New Orleans were GOP national security fiascos. And, finally, nothing could persuade an outraged electorate to return a Republican majority which, in the interests of perpetuating itself in power, failed to protect House pages from predatory members of Congress.
By election day the public had concluded the Republican majority cared more about corporations than Americans; and, when the tsunami hit, the Cashocracy crumbled down upon many now former GOP members, who became the last, blameless victims of its stolid cupidity.
In hindsight, the Cashocracy would best have heeded President Theodore Roosevelt’s warning:
“The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”
Exile on Main Street
December’s Children
Straggling back to Washington for the Republican Revolution’s death vigil, the 2006 election’s surviving GOP members bid anguished goodbyes to defeated friends and struggled to make sense of it all. Dazed and confused, some members managed to grasp the reality of their newly minted minority, while some still grapple with it. Out of this former group, a distinct vision has emerged concerning how House Republicans can revitalize and redeem themselves in the estimation of their fellow Americans.
Got Live if You Want It
“Restoration Republicans” are best considered Reagan’s grandchildren. Like their Reagan-Democratic parents, Restoration Republicans were attracted to our party by the intellectual, cultural, and moral components and proven practical benefits of philosophical conservatism. Transcending talking points and political cant, these Restoration Republicans’ are devoted to restoring human soul’s centrality to public policy decisions; and focusing these policies on preserving and perpetuating the permanent things of our evanescent earthly existence which surpass all politics in importance.
The enduring ideals of Restoration Republicans are succinctly enumerated by Russell Kirk in his book, The Politics of Prudence:
1. The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order.
2. The conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity.
3. Conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription – that is, of things established by immemorial usage.
4. Conservatives are guided by the principle of prudence.
5. Conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety.
6. Conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability.
7. Conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked.
8. Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.
9. The Conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passion.
10. The thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.
Given how the Cashocracy repeatedly violated these principles during its descent into oblivion, and how the Democrats’ 2006 consequent rallying cry was “change,” this tenth ideal merits deeper contemplation. For to understand it fully is to fully understand why Restoration Republicans, who are convinced we live amidst a crucible of liberty, proclaim our minority must emulate and implement the philosophical conservatism of Ronald Reagan and the fiery integrity of Theodore Roosevelt in the cause of empowering Americans and strengthening their eternal institutions of faith, family, community and country. Again, Kirk:
“Therefore the intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression. He [or she] thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise. The conservative, in short, favors reasoned and temperate progress; he [or she] is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old.
“Change is essential to the body social, the conservative reasons, just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceases to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host. The conservative takes care that nothing in a society should ever be wholly old, and that nothing should ever be wholly new. This is the means of the conservation of a nation, quite as it is the means of conservation of a living organism. Just how much change a society requires, and what sort of change, depend upon the circumstances of an age and a nation.”
Love You Live
Kirk’s words compelled Restoration Republicans to empathetically assess our nation’s age and circumstances; and ponder the direction and scope of the changes our American community requires.
In making these determinations, Restoration Republicans draw parallels between and inspiration from America’s “Greatest Generation.”
Our Greatest Generation faced and surmounted a quartet of generational challenges born of industrialization:
1. Economic, social, and political upheavals;
2. A second world war against abject evil;
3. The rise of the Soviet “super-state” as a strategic threat and rival model of governance; and
4. The civil rights movement’s moral struggle to equally ensure the God given and constitutionally recognized rights of all Americans.
Today, our generation of Americans must confront and transcend a quartet of generational challenges born of globalization:
1. Economic, social and political upheavals;
2. A third world war against abject evil;
3. The rise of the communist Chinese “super-state” as a strategic threat and rival model of governance; and
4. Moral relativism’s erosion of our nation’s foundational, self-evident truths.
The critical difference between the challenges conquered by the Greatest Generation and the challenges crises confronting our generation of Americans is this: they faced their crises consecutively; we face our crises simultaneously.
In response to these generational challenges to our free republic, Restoration Republicans have drawn upon the roots of their philosophical conservatism to affirm the truth America does not exist to emulate others, America exists to inspire the world; and to advance the policy paradigm of American Excellence, which rests upon a foundation of liberty, and the four cornerstones of sovereignty, security, prosperity and verities.
Individually and collectively, American Excellence’s foundation and four cornerstones are reinforced by these policy principles:
1. Our liberty is granted not by the pen of a government bureaucrat, but is authored by the hand of almighty God.
2. Our sovereignty rests not in our soil, but in our souls.
3. Our security is guaranteed not by the thin hopes of appeasement, but by the moral and physical courage of our troops defending us in hours of maximum danger;
4. Our prosperity is produced not by the tax hikes and spending sprees of politicians, but by the innovation and perspiration of free people engaged in free enterprise.
5. Our cherished truths and communal virtues are preserved and observed not by a coerced political correctness, but by our reverent citizenry’s voluntary celebration of the culture of life.
Restoration Republicans conclude, therefore, we must be Champions of American Freedom in challenging new millennium to keep our America a community of destiny inspired and guided by the virtuous genius of our free people; and forever blessed by the unfathomable grace of God.
Metamorphosis
It will not be easy, given the root public policy question of our times. In the Age of Industrialization, President Theodore Roosevelt empathized with Americans’ feelings of powerlessness in the face of the economic, social and political forces radically altering or terminating their traditional, typically agrarian, lives. Writing years later in his book A Humane Economy, the economist Wilhelm Ropke examined the impacts upon human beings by these forces, which he collectively termed “mass society”:
“(T)he disintegration of the social structure (generates) a profound upheaval in the outward conditions of each individual’s life, thought, and work. Independence is smothered; men are uprooted and taken out of the close-woven social texture in which they were secure; true communities are broken up in favor of more universal but impersonal collectivities in which the individual is no longer a person in this own right; the inward, spontaneous social fabric is loosened in favor of mechanical, soulless organization, with its outward compulsion; all individuality is reduced to one plane of uniform normality; the area of individual action, decision, and responsibility shrinks in favor of collective planning and decision; the whole of life becomes uniform and standard mass life, ever more subject to party politics, ‘nationalization,’ and ‘socialization.’”
In that epoch, the root public policy question was how to protect Americans’ traditional rights to order, justice, and freedom from being usurped by corporate or governmental centralization. Aware of this quandary, T.R. responded by taming an emerging capitalist oligarchy which considered itself above the laws and, thereby, soothing the economic, social, and political anxieties of urban industrial workers which threatened the stability of our free republic. Over time, from T.R.’s seminal efforts arose the industrial-welfare state which, in a tenuous detente, divided solutions to Americans’ economic and social upheavals between and within both centralized corporations and government.
No Security
In this Age of Globalization, however, while Americans are vexed by their seeming inability to influence the potent economic, social and political forces radically reshaping their lives, American corporations are busy decentralizing into “virtual corporations” reliant upon the outsourcing of jobs to other nations to obtain lower labor costs and evade cumbersome domestic laws and regulations. Such “rootless capital” being sent around the world in a keystroke to more “competitive markets” has cost Americans their livelihoods; reduced their wages and employer provided benefits; diminished their unions’ memberships; eclipsed their optimism regarding our economy’s continued vitality; and, in cases of extreme economic distress and angst, destroyed their marriages and dreams for their children.
The failure to realize the seismic ramifications to normal Americans of this tectonic economic shift was a primary cause of the Cashocracy’s collapse. As rising corporate profits and Wall Street bull markets became increasingly divorced from working Americans’ prosperity, the Cashocrats clung ever more tightly to their corporate benefactors without grasping Americans had concluded what is “good for GM” is no longer necessarily good for them.
The advent of virtual corporations and transient international capital has ended the old industrial-welfare state model of governance, wherein solutions to Americans’ economic and social anxieties were the shared burdens of centralized corporations and government. The stark choice is now between increasing the centralized power of the federal government or decentralization power into the hands of individuals, families and communities.
Steel Wheels
In their urgency to replace their lost or slashed corporate benefits, Americans will be sorely tempted to further centralize federal government to do it. But expanding the authority and compulsory powers of the federal government will be injurious to the American people. Big government doesn’t stop chaos; big government is chaos. By usurping the rightful powers of individuals beneath its bureaucracy’s steel wheels, highly centralized government alienates individuals and atomizes communities. Once more, Ropke speaks to the heart of the matter:
“The temptation of centrism has been great at all times, as regards both theory and political action. It is the temptation of mechanical perfection and of uniformity at the expense of freedom. Perhaps Montesquieu was right when he said that it is the small minds, above all, which succumb to this temptation. Once the mania of uniformity and centralization spreads and once the centrists begin to lay down the law of the land, then we are in the presence of one of the most serious danger signals warning us of the impending loss of freedom, humanity, and the health of society.”
Only liberty unleashes Americans to establish the true roots of a holistic American order – the voluntary and virtuous individual, familial, and communal associations which invigorate and instruct a free people conquering challenges. In contrast, centralized and, thus, inherently unaccountable government suffocates liberty, order and justice by smothering and severing citizens’ voluntary bonds within mediating, non-governmental institutions; and, thereby, stifles our free people’s individual and collective solutions to challenges. In consequence, the temptation for more centralized government must be fought to prevent turning sovereign Americans from the masters of their destiny into the serfs of governmental dependency.
Hot Rocks
Fully versed in this verity, Restoration Republicans have made their decision – power to the people. Thus, in this Age of Globalization, Restoration Republicans vow to:
1. Empower the sovereign American people to protect and promote their God-given and constitutionally recognized and protected rights.
2. Promote the decentralization of federal governmental powers to the American people or to their most appropriate and closest unit of government.
3. Defend Americans’ enduring moral order of faith, family, community and country from all enemies.
4. Foster a dynamic market economy of entrepreneurial opportunity for all Americans.
5. Honor and nurture a “humanity of scale” in Americans’ relations and endeavors.
Further, while these Restoration Republicans will be releasing a more detailed program in the future, the above will form the basis of their concrete policy proposals.
Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out
Mister/Madam Speaker,
My constituents are honest, hard-working, and intelligent people who are bearing the brunt of the generational challenges facing our nation. They have lost manufacturing and every manner of jobs due to globalization and, especially, the predatory trade practices of communist China. Throughout these economically anxious times, they spend sleepless nights wondering if they will be able to afford to keep their jobs; their houses; their health care; their hopes for their children. In the War for Freedom, they have buried, mourned, and honored their loved ones lost in the battle against our nation and all of civilization’s barbaric enemies. And, every day, they struggle to make sense of an increasingly perverse culture disdainful of and destructive to faith, truths, virtue and beauty, if the existence of these permanent things is even admitted.
True, they differ on specific solutions to their pressing issues. But they do agree Washington isn’t serving their concerns. They agree this storied representative institution is increasingly detached from the daily realities of their lives. And they remind me that when we enter this House – Their House – we enter as guests, who must honor the leap of faith they took in letting us in and allowing us to serve them.
With my constituents, I utterly agree. While it is not my purpose here to discuss the majority party, let me be clear as to my own: House Republicans have no business practicing business as usual. My constituents, our country, and this Congress deserve better.
And we will provide it!
Our Republican minority has members who know America isn’t an economy, America is a country.
Our Republican minority has members who know the only thing worth measuring in money is greed.
Our Republican minority has members with the heart to put individuals ahead of abstractions; people ahead of politics; souls ahead of systems.
Our Republican minority has members who have seen sorrow seep down a widow’s cheek and joy shine from a child’s eyes.
Yes, our Republican minority has members who know our deeds on behalf of our sovereign constituents must accord with Wordsworth’s poetic prayer:
“And then a wish: my best and favorite aspiration mounts with yearning toward some higher song of philosophic truth which cherishes our daily lives.”
It is these Republicans whose service in this Congress will redeem our party by honoring the sacred trust of the majestic American people who, in their virtuous genius, will transcend these transformational times and strengthen our exceptional nation’s revolutionary experiment in human freedom.
With these Republicans, I hereby throw in my lot and pledge my best efforts on behalf of my constituents and our country.
May God continue to grace, guard, guide and bless our community of destiny, the United States of America.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
A Message from Representative McCotter
Dear Friends,
I hope this finds you and your family doing well and getting ready for a wonderful Thanksgiving. As one of your humble public officials - I continue to fight for our conservative principles and values in Michigan, our nation’s capitol, and around the world.
I am writing you today to tell you about legislation affecting your job and your family’s safety. Recently, a House bill tried to ensure communist China’s products could keep coming into our country. I opposed this bill, because I oppose trade with communist China. No amount of money can make communist Chinese imports absolutely safe; and none of your hard-earned money should be spent trying to do it. We must keep communist China’s products out of America, so we can keep our jobs and our kids safe in America.
Importantly, you should also know I introduced legislation, last week, (H. Res. 821) condemning Communist China's discrimination, harassment, imprisonment, torture, and execution of its prisoners of conscience.
I have included a link to a radio interview I did with Frank Beckman on WJR, in which I talk about this and other crucial issues facing Michigan and America. click here to here the interview
Additionally, Human Events published an article I wrote, entitled The Liberty Alliance: Championing Liberty and Dignity in our Human Community. You can read this article online by clicking here.
Finally, an exciting new organization - The Big Red Tent - is dedicated to generating grassroots support through new and innovative ideas, and I am pleased to introduce them to you click here to visit their site.
Thank you for your continued help and support as we face critical challenges to our state and our country. May you and your family enjoy the blessings of liberty during this holiday season.
Sincerely,
Congressman Thaddeus McCotter
I hope this finds you and your family doing well and getting ready for a wonderful Thanksgiving. As one of your humble public officials - I continue to fight for our conservative principles and values in Michigan, our nation’s capitol, and around the world.
I am writing you today to tell you about legislation affecting your job and your family’s safety. Recently, a House bill tried to ensure communist China’s products could keep coming into our country. I opposed this bill, because I oppose trade with communist China. No amount of money can make communist Chinese imports absolutely safe; and none of your hard-earned money should be spent trying to do it. We must keep communist China’s products out of America, so we can keep our jobs and our kids safe in America.
Importantly, you should also know I introduced legislation, last week, (H. Res. 821) condemning Communist China's discrimination, harassment, imprisonment, torture, and execution of its prisoners of conscience.
I have included a link to a radio interview I did with Frank Beckman on WJR, in which I talk about this and other crucial issues facing Michigan and America. click here to here the interview
Additionally, Human Events published an article I wrote, entitled The Liberty Alliance: Championing Liberty and Dignity in our Human Community. You can read this article online by clicking here.
Finally, an exciting new organization - The Big Red Tent - is dedicated to generating grassroots support through new and innovative ideas, and I am pleased to introduce them to you click here to visit their site.
Thank you for your continued help and support as we face critical challenges to our state and our country. May you and your family enjoy the blessings of liberty during this holiday season.
Sincerely,
Congressman Thaddeus McCotter
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
The Liberty Alliance: Championing Liberty and Dignity in our Human Community
U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter,
Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee
The poster-child of failed hopes, today’s United Nations (UN) is a global Tammany Hall lethal to the liberty and dignity of our human family.
First, the UN’s membership is stacked against free people. According to Freedom House, of 192 UN member states, 89 are “fully free” and 103 are not. Thus, a solid majority (54%) of member states know liberty directly threatens their survival, which requires the suppression of their own peoples and, through their UN membership, the entire human community.
Yet, since 1945, the U.S. has been the UN’s largest annual contributor. In 2006, American taxpayers forked over $423.5 million in dues (or 22% of the UN’s regular budget) and over $5.3 billion in total to the UN. Still, we and all free people remain the UN’s tyrants’ favorite targets.
Two statistics gauge this dysfunction: Only 46% of the UN’s members are free nations; but the UN’s top ten financial contributors are all free nations.
In our global age, wherein a world condensed by an internet cannot endure half-slave and half-free, we can no longer rely on a debased UN for collective security. With our survival at stake, all free nations must prudently diminish their participation in the UN; and unite in the cause of human dignity and liberty.
We must create a Liberty Alliance.
Transcending the “Community of Democracies,” the Liberty Alliance must be founded upon the self-evident truth all human beings are endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and it must be steeped in the wisdom extending liberty to the enslaved will ensure liberty for ourselves.
The Liberty Alliance’s members must free nations. Observer nations must domestically expand their people’s liberty before admission as members. Importantly, member nations diminishing their people’s liberty must be demoted to Observer status and, when necessary, expelled from the Alliance.
The governing structure of the Liberty Alliance shall be determined by its member nations with the objective being the maximization of transparency, equity, and democracy in accordance with the effective expansion of human liberty and dignity. The Alliance, in President Truman’s words, “must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.” Thus, through diplomatic, political, economic, and cultural initiatives, the Alliance will empower and emancipate individuals, communities, and emerging free governments from dictatorial rule. Further, the Alliance must not have a military component; and must never infringe upon a member nation’s rights.
The Liberty Alliance’s headquarters shall be sited on the free soil once scarred by colonialism, communism, fascism, world wars, and the Holocaust – Eastern Europe, where, cradled in the intrepid human sprit, liberty’s lamp triumphantly pierced these benighted recesses of evil.
Finally, the Liberty Alliance would not invite the Free World to exit the UN. The U.S. and all free nations should remain in the UN to keep a wary eye on liberty’s enemies. But we must stop paying through the nose to get kicked in our assets. Instead, we and other free nations will pay the UN just as much as does a free-loading tyrant. Free nations’ monies and personnel spared from the UN shall be dedicated to the Liberty Alliance.
Discombobulated global sophisticates will decry the Liberty Alliance as undesirable and impossible. They are overwrought and wrong. Within the Alliance, Americans and all free peoples will remain cemented and steeled by the harmonic bonds of liberty, comity, and duty; and, like our greatest generations of all free nations, we, will not bend, we will not break in our reasoned faith in a future graced by free nations.
Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee
The poster-child of failed hopes, today’s United Nations (UN) is a global Tammany Hall lethal to the liberty and dignity of our human family.
First, the UN’s membership is stacked against free people. According to Freedom House, of 192 UN member states, 89 are “fully free” and 103 are not. Thus, a solid majority (54%) of member states know liberty directly threatens their survival, which requires the suppression of their own peoples and, through their UN membership, the entire human community.
Yet, since 1945, the U.S. has been the UN’s largest annual contributor. In 2006, American taxpayers forked over $423.5 million in dues (or 22% of the UN’s regular budget) and over $5.3 billion in total to the UN. Still, we and all free people remain the UN’s tyrants’ favorite targets.
Two statistics gauge this dysfunction: Only 46% of the UN’s members are free nations; but the UN’s top ten financial contributors are all free nations.
In our global age, wherein a world condensed by an internet cannot endure half-slave and half-free, we can no longer rely on a debased UN for collective security. With our survival at stake, all free nations must prudently diminish their participation in the UN; and unite in the cause of human dignity and liberty.
We must create a Liberty Alliance.
Transcending the “Community of Democracies,” the Liberty Alliance must be founded upon the self-evident truth all human beings are endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and it must be steeped in the wisdom extending liberty to the enslaved will ensure liberty for ourselves.
The Liberty Alliance’s members must free nations. Observer nations must domestically expand their people’s liberty before admission as members. Importantly, member nations diminishing their people’s liberty must be demoted to Observer status and, when necessary, expelled from the Alliance.
The governing structure of the Liberty Alliance shall be determined by its member nations with the objective being the maximization of transparency, equity, and democracy in accordance with the effective expansion of human liberty and dignity. The Alliance, in President Truman’s words, “must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.” Thus, through diplomatic, political, economic, and cultural initiatives, the Alliance will empower and emancipate individuals, communities, and emerging free governments from dictatorial rule. Further, the Alliance must not have a military component; and must never infringe upon a member nation’s rights.
The Liberty Alliance’s headquarters shall be sited on the free soil once scarred by colonialism, communism, fascism, world wars, and the Holocaust – Eastern Europe, where, cradled in the intrepid human sprit, liberty’s lamp triumphantly pierced these benighted recesses of evil.
Finally, the Liberty Alliance would not invite the Free World to exit the UN. The U.S. and all free nations should remain in the UN to keep a wary eye on liberty’s enemies. But we must stop paying through the nose to get kicked in our assets. Instead, we and other free nations will pay the UN just as much as does a free-loading tyrant. Free nations’ monies and personnel spared from the UN shall be dedicated to the Liberty Alliance.
Discombobulated global sophisticates will decry the Liberty Alliance as undesirable and impossible. They are overwrought and wrong. Within the Alliance, Americans and all free peoples will remain cemented and steeled by the harmonic bonds of liberty, comity, and duty; and, like our greatest generations of all free nations, we, will not bend, we will not break in our reasoned faith in a future graced by free nations.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Congress Thaddeus McCotter Interview by Jill Warren on Big Red Tent TV
Big Red Tent TV promotes Republican candidates and issues and political news. In this interview, host Jill Warren interviews Congressman Thaddeus McCotter about his core principles and his vision for conservative leadership.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Olbermann: McCotter the Worst Person In the World
WASHINGTON D.C. – Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (MI -11), Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, today commented on last night’s MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann show (aired 11.13.2007).
Mr. Olbermann called Congressman McCotter “the worst person in the world,” because he defended himself against attacks by Catholics United.
“Better to glory in his denunciations than be damned by his praise,” said Congressman McCotter.
To see a clip of the show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw30j9uuNxs
###
Mr. Olbermann called Congressman McCotter “the worst person in the world,” because he defended himself against attacks by Catholics United.
“Better to glory in his denunciations than be damned by his praise,” said Congressman McCotter.
To see a clip of the show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw30j9uuNxs
###
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Press Release: McCotter to Communist China
“No Good Government Denies God’s Presence”
Congressman denounces China’s ban on Athletes’ Bibles and All Religious Symbols during Olympics
WASHINGTON D.C. - Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (MI), Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, today denounced Communist China’s ban on Bibles during the 2008 Olympics. He introduced a Congressional Resolution condemning the Communist government attack on Christianity and all religions.
Speaking today on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman McCotter said:
“As the world stumbles toward the communist propaganda extravaganza labeled the Beijing Olympics. Somewhere Chairman Mao is looking up at us and laughing.
“According the Catholic News Agency Bibles and all other religious symbols are among Communist China’s list athlete’s prohibited objects due to security concerns.
“Since the leader of the free world, President Bush has articulated his eagerness to attend the Communist China’s Olympics; I am compelled to ask three questions.
“Mr. President how many bibles will you be taking to Beijing? Will you visit the 5 bishops and 15 priests imprisoned for opposing the Communist regime’s official church? And will you tell China’s Communist tyrants this fundamental truth, No good government denies God’s presences.”
McCotter also calls upon the Communist government to allow the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) or other international human rights organizations unrestricted access to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to “ensure the protection of Christians and other religious persons.”
The Catholic News Agency recently reported the Bible among the “prohibited items” banned at the Olympic village citing “security reasons.” Other banned items include video cameras and cups.
There are between 40 million to 100 million Christians currently living in China. An estimated four to 10 million follow the Catholic faith.
In September 2007 Congressman McCotter joined by several colleagues authored a letter to President Bush urging him to reconsider his attendance at the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympics.
To see the Congressman’s floor speech click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3sR6WZVPKs
###
Congressman denounces China’s ban on Athletes’ Bibles and All Religious Symbols during Olympics
WASHINGTON D.C. - Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (MI), Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, today denounced Communist China’s ban on Bibles during the 2008 Olympics. He introduced a Congressional Resolution condemning the Communist government attack on Christianity and all religions.
Speaking today on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman McCotter said:
“As the world stumbles toward the communist propaganda extravaganza labeled the Beijing Olympics. Somewhere Chairman Mao is looking up at us and laughing.
“According the Catholic News Agency Bibles and all other religious symbols are among Communist China’s list athlete’s prohibited objects due to security concerns.
“Since the leader of the free world, President Bush has articulated his eagerness to attend the Communist China’s Olympics; I am compelled to ask three questions.
“Mr. President how many bibles will you be taking to Beijing? Will you visit the 5 bishops and 15 priests imprisoned for opposing the Communist regime’s official church? And will you tell China’s Communist tyrants this fundamental truth, No good government denies God’s presences.”
McCotter also calls upon the Communist government to allow the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) or other international human rights organizations unrestricted access to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to “ensure the protection of Christians and other religious persons.”
The Catholic News Agency recently reported the Bible among the “prohibited items” banned at the Olympic village citing “security reasons.” Other banned items include video cameras and cups.
There are between 40 million to 100 million Christians currently living in China. An estimated four to 10 million follow the Catholic faith.
In September 2007 Congressman McCotter joined by several colleagues authored a letter to President Bush urging him to reconsider his attendance at the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympics.
To see the Congressman’s floor speech click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3sR6WZVPKs
###
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
S-CHIP and the Politics of Principle
Democrats and like-witted pundits claim the S-CHIP reauthorization is a defining issue which will seal the GOP's electoral fate next fall. Unscrupulously using children as props in a soulless script replete with ironic appeals to an apparently socialist Almighty, these Denizens of Governmental Dependence gleefully assert the "politics" of S-CHIP will mask their policy's fiscal irresponsibility and trump Republicans' foundational principles.
If this were the case, the Democrats and their Left-wing smear groups wouldn't be threatening to spend millions to intimidate Republicans into abandoning our core beliefs and over-riding a promised Presidential veto. We must and will resist; and, so doing, we will triumph.
First, the S-CHIP bill (H.R. 976) must be vetoed. This politically motivated bill advances a government run health care system by arbitrarily spending $35 billion over the next five years to expand a social program originally targeted at poor children to now include children and adults in families making over $100,000 a year and people who already possess private health care insurance. In consequence, over 2 million people will be crowded out of their existing private health insurance and ensnared in this social welfare program. Moreover, despite purporting otherwise, this bill ensures many of these new enrollees will also be illegal immigrants, who need only show a valid driver's license to join. (Remember: in some states, most recently New York, one need not prove citizenship to receive a driver's license).
Compounding these problems, the bill refuses to prioritize federal spending and, instead, imposes a regressive tax disproportionately impacting the poor. Even with the new tax hike, the new S-CHIP program is unsustainable beyond 2013 and, thus, is fiscally irresponsible. This insult to the taxpayers is exacerbated when one takes into account the Democrats' Budget Resolution's promise of massive personal tax increases, many of which will be slated to fund S-CHIP or worse in future years.
At its core, then, the S-CHIP debate provides the following stark contrasts between the two parties' guiding principles:
1. Republicans believe Americans are sovereign citizens. Democrats believe Americans are hapless victims.
2. Republicans believe the federal government must serve sovereign Americans. Democrats believe Americans must serve a sovereign federal government.
3. Republicans believe in reducing people's taxes. Democrats believe in raising people's taxes.
4. Republicans believe social programs exist to make poor people self-reliant. Democrats believe social programs exist to make all people state dependents.
5. Republicans want poor people to escape the welfare state. Democrats want all people inside the welfare state.
6. Republicans believe America needs a fiscally sound social safety net that temporarily helps poor people and respects taxpayers. Democrats believe America needs a big government trampoline that permanently traps poor people and impoverishes taxpayers.
7. Republicans believe a social program's success is measured by how many people have escaped from it. Democrats believe a social program's success is measured by how many people have been added to it.
8. Republicans believe government should not use taxpayers' money to unfairly compete against taxpaying businesses. Democrats believe government should use taxpayers' money to unfairly compete against taxpaying businesses.
9. Republicans believe in free enterprise and our citizenry. Democrats believe in the welfare state and its bureaucracy.
If our Republican Party is daunted by the politics of S-CHIP and shrinks from reaffirming its defining principles, social welfare programs will never help poor Americans escape governmental dependence. Instead, the Democrats will continue their push to shackle Americans with a bureaucrat-centered health care system and other insidious forms of governmental dependence; and our Republican Party – the party of the Great Emancipator – will not only lose the next election.
It will lose its soul.
by Representative Thaddeus McCotter (MI-11)
Chairman, Republican House Policy Committee
If this were the case, the Democrats and their Left-wing smear groups wouldn't be threatening to spend millions to intimidate Republicans into abandoning our core beliefs and over-riding a promised Presidential veto. We must and will resist; and, so doing, we will triumph.
First, the S-CHIP bill (H.R. 976) must be vetoed. This politically motivated bill advances a government run health care system by arbitrarily spending $35 billion over the next five years to expand a social program originally targeted at poor children to now include children and adults in families making over $100,000 a year and people who already possess private health care insurance. In consequence, over 2 million people will be crowded out of their existing private health insurance and ensnared in this social welfare program. Moreover, despite purporting otherwise, this bill ensures many of these new enrollees will also be illegal immigrants, who need only show a valid driver's license to join. (Remember: in some states, most recently New York, one need not prove citizenship to receive a driver's license).
Compounding these problems, the bill refuses to prioritize federal spending and, instead, imposes a regressive tax disproportionately impacting the poor. Even with the new tax hike, the new S-CHIP program is unsustainable beyond 2013 and, thus, is fiscally irresponsible. This insult to the taxpayers is exacerbated when one takes into account the Democrats' Budget Resolution's promise of massive personal tax increases, many of which will be slated to fund S-CHIP or worse in future years.
At its core, then, the S-CHIP debate provides the following stark contrasts between the two parties' guiding principles:
1. Republicans believe Americans are sovereign citizens. Democrats believe Americans are hapless victims.
2. Republicans believe the federal government must serve sovereign Americans. Democrats believe Americans must serve a sovereign federal government.
3. Republicans believe in reducing people's taxes. Democrats believe in raising people's taxes.
4. Republicans believe social programs exist to make poor people self-reliant. Democrats believe social programs exist to make all people state dependents.
5. Republicans want poor people to escape the welfare state. Democrats want all people inside the welfare state.
6. Republicans believe America needs a fiscally sound social safety net that temporarily helps poor people and respects taxpayers. Democrats believe America needs a big government trampoline that permanently traps poor people and impoverishes taxpayers.
7. Republicans believe a social program's success is measured by how many people have escaped from it. Democrats believe a social program's success is measured by how many people have been added to it.
8. Republicans believe government should not use taxpayers' money to unfairly compete against taxpaying businesses. Democrats believe government should use taxpayers' money to unfairly compete against taxpaying businesses.
9. Republicans believe in free enterprise and our citizenry. Democrats believe in the welfare state and its bureaucracy.
If our Republican Party is daunted by the politics of S-CHIP and shrinks from reaffirming its defining principles, social welfare programs will never help poor Americans escape governmental dependence. Instead, the Democrats will continue their push to shackle Americans with a bureaucrat-centered health care system and other insidious forms of governmental dependence; and our Republican Party – the party of the Great Emancipator – will not only lose the next election.
It will lose its soul.
by Representative Thaddeus McCotter (MI-11)
Chairman, Republican House Policy Committee
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Fiscal Predators: The Seduction of Governmental Dependency
U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter, Chair
The Republican House Policy Committee
The Left claims the Bush Administration manufactured a bogus war on terrorism to scare Americans into ceding their civil liberties to a police state. In reality, however, the Left is seducing Americans into surrendering their sovereignty, liberty, and prosperity to the welfare state.
Breaking their promise to provide fiscal responsibility to federal spending, every week the House floor echoes with the Democrats’ siren paeans to whatever slice of “social justice” du jour will ostensibly excuse hiking taxes and spending. By now taxpayers should be versed in the Left’s tricks of their trade: refusing to reduce government spending; refusing to prioritize government spending; and sweetly alleging only to be taxing a targeted group they’ve unfairly demonized to purportedly “help” a targeted group of vulnerable individuals - the poor, the sick, the kids (excepting the unborn). But in truth, the Left has only helped themselves in the near and long term to more of your prosperity, liberty and sovereignty.
Bent to feast upon the taxpayers’ money needed to sate their craving for social and electoral engineering, in the 110th Congress these Fiscal Predators have already:
• Passed five-year authorizations of $887,473,870,000, of which $25,476,250,000 is mandatory spending.
• Passed over $80,000,000,000 in NEW TAXES.
• Budgeted for the largest tax increase in American history – between $217,000,000,000 and $392,500,000,000.
• Raised the federal statutory debt limit by over $850,000,000,000 from $8.965 trillion to $9.81 trillion.
• Refused to devote a dime of deficit or debt reduction in their legislation.
• Refused to enact real earmark reforms.
• Refused to propose any entitlement reforms to defuse the ticking fiscal time-bombs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
• Ignored the fact economic growth – not tax hikes and Keynesian spending sprees – increased federal revenues by approximately $6,000,000,000 and will decrease the federal deficit by 36.2% at the end of FYO7.
Yet despite these alarming acts of fiscal irresponsibility, it appears the Left’s seductive spending is enticing the American electorate.
Earlier this year, in the Christian Science Monitor analyst Gary Shillings reported 52.6% of Americans receive “significant income from government programs… That's up from 49.4% in 2000 and far above the 28.3% of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within ten years to pass 55%, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President Reagan's move to scale back the size of government.” Future attempts will prove even more difficult. En masse, the aging baby boomers are hitting “entitlement age,” and beginning to receive Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Compounding the problem, under the “progressive” federal income tax, a full 50% of the lowest earning Americans provide only 3.5% of federal tax revenues. In consequence, soon over half of all Americans will view future tax hikes and massive spending increases as bargain, if not a boon. And, by the way, since the Republican Party strayed from its root principle of fiscal discipline, the electorate empowered a new Democratic majority to handle America’s treasury. Combined, these events conspire to supplant free enterprise with wealth redistribution as Americans’ unifying economic philosophy and system.
The fiscal tipping point is passing. Like it or not, in our capitalist system money is not only a measure of your prosperity; money is a measure of power and, thus, your liberty and sovereignty in relation to the subservient national government. Thus, whenever Washington’s Fiscal Predators raise taxes, it reduces your prosperity and your liberty; and whenever Washington’s Fiscal Predators increase spending, it expands their power and diminishes your sovereignty over it. If nothing is done – and done quickly – to tether the Fiscal Predators and reaffirm the historic fact our free people engaged in free enterprise are the foundation of our national prosperity, Americans, who were once the masters of their fate, will be fated to be mastered by their once subservient government.
For the sovereign citizens of a free republic conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition government only exists to protect our God-given rights, this portends a less than divine descent into Hell.
The Republican House Policy Committee
The Left claims the Bush Administration manufactured a bogus war on terrorism to scare Americans into ceding their civil liberties to a police state. In reality, however, the Left is seducing Americans into surrendering their sovereignty, liberty, and prosperity to the welfare state.
Breaking their promise to provide fiscal responsibility to federal spending, every week the House floor echoes with the Democrats’ siren paeans to whatever slice of “social justice” du jour will ostensibly excuse hiking taxes and spending. By now taxpayers should be versed in the Left’s tricks of their trade: refusing to reduce government spending; refusing to prioritize government spending; and sweetly alleging only to be taxing a targeted group they’ve unfairly demonized to purportedly “help” a targeted group of vulnerable individuals - the poor, the sick, the kids (excepting the unborn). But in truth, the Left has only helped themselves in the near and long term to more of your prosperity, liberty and sovereignty.
Bent to feast upon the taxpayers’ money needed to sate their craving for social and electoral engineering, in the 110th Congress these Fiscal Predators have already:
• Passed five-year authorizations of $887,473,870,000, of which $25,476,250,000 is mandatory spending.
• Passed over $80,000,000,000 in NEW TAXES.
• Budgeted for the largest tax increase in American history – between $217,000,000,000 and $392,500,000,000.
• Raised the federal statutory debt limit by over $850,000,000,000 from $8.965 trillion to $9.81 trillion.
• Refused to devote a dime of deficit or debt reduction in their legislation.
• Refused to enact real earmark reforms.
• Refused to propose any entitlement reforms to defuse the ticking fiscal time-bombs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
• Ignored the fact economic growth – not tax hikes and Keynesian spending sprees – increased federal revenues by approximately $6,000,000,000 and will decrease the federal deficit by 36.2% at the end of FYO7.
Yet despite these alarming acts of fiscal irresponsibility, it appears the Left’s seductive spending is enticing the American electorate.
Earlier this year, in the Christian Science Monitor analyst Gary Shillings reported 52.6% of Americans receive “significant income from government programs… That's up from 49.4% in 2000 and far above the 28.3% of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within ten years to pass 55%, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President Reagan's move to scale back the size of government.” Future attempts will prove even more difficult. En masse, the aging baby boomers are hitting “entitlement age,” and beginning to receive Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Compounding the problem, under the “progressive” federal income tax, a full 50% of the lowest earning Americans provide only 3.5% of federal tax revenues. In consequence, soon over half of all Americans will view future tax hikes and massive spending increases as bargain, if not a boon. And, by the way, since the Republican Party strayed from its root principle of fiscal discipline, the electorate empowered a new Democratic majority to handle America’s treasury. Combined, these events conspire to supplant free enterprise with wealth redistribution as Americans’ unifying economic philosophy and system.
The fiscal tipping point is passing. Like it or not, in our capitalist system money is not only a measure of your prosperity; money is a measure of power and, thus, your liberty and sovereignty in relation to the subservient national government. Thus, whenever Washington’s Fiscal Predators raise taxes, it reduces your prosperity and your liberty; and whenever Washington’s Fiscal Predators increase spending, it expands their power and diminishes your sovereignty over it. If nothing is done – and done quickly – to tether the Fiscal Predators and reaffirm the historic fact our free people engaged in free enterprise are the foundation of our national prosperity, Americans, who were once the masters of their fate, will be fated to be mastered by their once subservient government.
For the sovereign citizens of a free republic conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition government only exists to protect our God-given rights, this portends a less than divine descent into Hell.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
McCotter Demands Ahmadinejad Apologize at Ground Zero
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 7, 2007
WASHINGTON D.C. -Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee, today released the following statement on Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s upcoming visit to the United Nations and Ahmadinejad’s request to visit Ground Zero during his trip to New York City.
“The irrational ruler of Iran, which is reported to shield Al-Qaeda members from the full measure of justice, should only be allowed to view Ground Zero in order to apologize and pledge to atone by opposing terrorism.
“If Ahmadinejad does not, he will be going to gloat over the site where his terrorist cohorts invaded American soil and killed over three thousand American souls. To those who naively claim we can ‘negotiate’ with Ahmadinejad, his actions belie the sanity of your proposed diplomacy.”
McCotter issued his statement just as it was reported Coalition forces arrested a corps of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force officer in Sulimaniyah, who was involved in training foreign terrorists in Iraq and transporting explosive devises into Iraq responsible in the lethal attacks against the our soldiers, Iraqi Government, and all Coalition Forces.
NOTE: Ahmadinejad is scheduled to arrive September 24 to speak to the U.N. General Assembly, as the Security Council decides whether to increase sanctions against Iran for its uranium enrichment program.
###
September 7, 2007
WASHINGTON D.C. -Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee, today released the following statement on Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s upcoming visit to the United Nations and Ahmadinejad’s request to visit Ground Zero during his trip to New York City.
“The irrational ruler of Iran, which is reported to shield Al-Qaeda members from the full measure of justice, should only be allowed to view Ground Zero in order to apologize and pledge to atone by opposing terrorism.
“If Ahmadinejad does not, he will be going to gloat over the site where his terrorist cohorts invaded American soil and killed over three thousand American souls. To those who naively claim we can ‘negotiate’ with Ahmadinejad, his actions belie the sanity of your proposed diplomacy.”
McCotter issued his statement just as it was reported Coalition forces arrested a corps of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force officer in Sulimaniyah, who was involved in training foreign terrorists in Iraq and transporting explosive devises into Iraq responsible in the lethal attacks against the our soldiers, Iraqi Government, and all Coalition Forces.
NOTE: Ahmadinejad is scheduled to arrive September 24 to speak to the U.N. General Assembly, as the Security Council decides whether to increase sanctions against Iran for its uranium enrichment program.
###
McCotter to Democrats: “Match Rhetoric with Results on Earmark Reform”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 20, 2007
WASHINGTON D.C. - Today Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), Chairman of the House Policy Committee, signed a discharge petition which, if it acquires 218 Congressional signatures, will help put full transparency and disclosure into House tax and authorizing bills. If the discharge petition is successful, House Democrats would be compelled to bring Minority Leader John Boehner’s H. Res. 479 to the floor for an up-or-down vote. H. Res. 479 would require taxpayer-funded earmarks in all authorizing and tax bills to be publicly disclosed and open to House debate.
“This isn’t Washington’s money. It is the taxpayers’ money, born of their hard-work’s perspiration and shorn from their hard-earned prosperity,” said McCotter, an original co-sponsor of H. Res. 479.
“Any and all attempts by politicians to imprudently spend the people’s money must be publicly exposed and immediately stopped.”
“I call on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to match their rhetoric with results on fiscal discipline and earmark reform. If not, they will be signaling their intent to continue wasting the people’s money and breaking the public’s trust,” said McCotter.
###
September 20, 2007
WASHINGTON D.C. - Today Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), Chairman of the House Policy Committee, signed a discharge petition which, if it acquires 218 Congressional signatures, will help put full transparency and disclosure into House tax and authorizing bills. If the discharge petition is successful, House Democrats would be compelled to bring Minority Leader John Boehner’s H. Res. 479 to the floor for an up-or-down vote. H. Res. 479 would require taxpayer-funded earmarks in all authorizing and tax bills to be publicly disclosed and open to House debate.
“This isn’t Washington’s money. It is the taxpayers’ money, born of their hard-work’s perspiration and shorn from their hard-earned prosperity,” said McCotter, an original co-sponsor of H. Res. 479.
“Any and all attempts by politicians to imprudently spend the people’s money must be publicly exposed and immediately stopped.”
“I call on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to match their rhetoric with results on fiscal discipline and earmark reform. If not, they will be signaling their intent to continue wasting the people’s money and breaking the public’s trust,” said McCotter.
###
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Iraq: A Quartet of Critical Inquiries
By Rep. Thaddeus McCotter
As a person’s word is their bond, a nation’s word is its bond. Once broken, “its word is no good.”
In 2002, with the world – and especially our enemy – watching, America gave its solemn vow to the oppressed Iraqi people we would emancipate them from a tyrant to experience their God-given right to liberty. Over four years later, in Iraq our soldiers and civilians continue striving and sacrificing to honor America’s pledge; but, on the home front, the Left is bent upon breaking America’s promise to liberate the Iraqis, in particular, and forsaking America’s dedication to liberty, in general.
Before acquiescing to this execrable outcome, Americans must demand the Left answer this quartet of critical inquiries regarding Iraq :
1. If America breaks its vow and abandons the Iraqis to be slaughtered, who in the region or the world will trust our word?
2. If America belies its professed commitment to liberty, what can we possibly offer the Middle East ’s – indeed, the world’s – oppressed to turn them away from the enemy and toward us?
3. After Iraq is abandoned, how soon will the Left demand America ’s immediate retreat in the other “war without end” – Afghanistan ?
4. What are the consequences to America if we are defeated in Iraq and Bin-Laden is proven right: “ America is definitely a great power, with an unbelievable military strength and a vibrant economy, but all of these have been built on a very weak and hollow foundation”?
These questions and others will not and can not be answered by the Left. Offering constructive alternatives to and measuring the consequences of national security policies is neither their goal nor inclination. Their contempt for America as the greatest threat to “world peace” precludes it.
Possessed of our sanity, let us provide the answers to these questions.
1. No one.
2. Nothing.
3. Immediately.
4. A war without end.
Should the Left prevail and these answers become bitter realities, present and future generations of Americans will be faced with the dark specter of nuclear armed terrorist states in a war without end against an implacable enemy bent upon our destruction; and, our just God so disposed, the Left will be held to account for betraying the integrity of America’s word in this crucible of our nation’s War for Freedom.
And, make no mistake, we will not escape the history’s inquiry of us:
What did you do to win it?
United States Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter is the Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee
As a person’s word is their bond, a nation’s word is its bond. Once broken, “its word is no good.”
In 2002, with the world – and especially our enemy – watching, America gave its solemn vow to the oppressed Iraqi people we would emancipate them from a tyrant to experience their God-given right to liberty. Over four years later, in Iraq our soldiers and civilians continue striving and sacrificing to honor America’s pledge; but, on the home front, the Left is bent upon breaking America’s promise to liberate the Iraqis, in particular, and forsaking America’s dedication to liberty, in general.
Before acquiescing to this execrable outcome, Americans must demand the Left answer this quartet of critical inquiries regarding Iraq :
1. If America breaks its vow and abandons the Iraqis to be slaughtered, who in the region or the world will trust our word?
2. If America belies its professed commitment to liberty, what can we possibly offer the Middle East ’s – indeed, the world’s – oppressed to turn them away from the enemy and toward us?
3. After Iraq is abandoned, how soon will the Left demand America ’s immediate retreat in the other “war without end” – Afghanistan ?
4. What are the consequences to America if we are defeated in Iraq and Bin-Laden is proven right: “ America is definitely a great power, with an unbelievable military strength and a vibrant economy, but all of these have been built on a very weak and hollow foundation”?
These questions and others will not and can not be answered by the Left. Offering constructive alternatives to and measuring the consequences of national security policies is neither their goal nor inclination. Their contempt for America as the greatest threat to “world peace” precludes it.
Possessed of our sanity, let us provide the answers to these questions.
1. No one.
2. Nothing.
3. Immediately.
4. A war without end.
Should the Left prevail and these answers become bitter realities, present and future generations of Americans will be faced with the dark specter of nuclear armed terrorist states in a war without end against an implacable enemy bent upon our destruction; and, our just God so disposed, the Left will be held to account for betraying the integrity of America’s word in this crucible of our nation’s War for Freedom.
And, make no mistake, we will not escape the history’s inquiry of us:
What did you do to win it?
United States Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter is the Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Back by popular demand...McCotter Bowl 3
YOU ARE INVITED TO ATTEND OR PARTICIPATE!
BYOFA (Bring Your Own First Aid)
Friday, September 14, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Is Petraeus correct that Iraq surge is working?
If you missed my oped in the Detroit News on Thursday, Sept. 13th.....
Is Petraeus correct that Iraq surge is working?
Iraq becomes more stable as U.S. starts winning 'War for Freedom'
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter
Critics whose foreign policy expertise fits on an eco-friendly foreign car's fender allege Iraq is a "bumper sticker war without end." This slogan is false. Finally, if fitfully, this integral theater in our nation's War for Freedom is becoming a free, stable state opposed to terrorism; and the Iraq war is ending because we are winning.
This news was obscured amid the repugnant partisan attempts to spin the congressional testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker as dishonest or erroneous. While it will arrive neither quickly nor cheaply, the truth will emerge as our troops succeed in their mission and start coming home.
Incorporating Crocker's diplomatic initiatives, Petraeus' new counter-insurgency strategy's goal in Iraq is to eradicate insurgents and place reconstruction efforts into local Iraqis' hands. This strategy is succeeding. Due to increased security and economic opportunity, Iraqis are choosing liberty instead of the insurgency.
Iraqi shift to liberty
In his Sept. 7 letter to the Multi-National Force-Iraq, Petraeus stressed the importance of Iraqis' political shift to liberty:
"We are also building momentum in an emerging area of considerable importance -- local reconciliation. Local Iraqi leaders are coming forward, opposing extremists and establishing provisional units of neighborhood security volunteers. With growing government of Iraq support, these volunteers are being integrated into legitimate security institutions to help improve local security. While this concept is playing out differently in various areas across Iraq, it is grounded in a desire shared by increasing numbers of Iraqis -- to oppose extremist elements and their ideologies.
"This is very significant because, as many of you know first hand, extremists cannot survive without the support of the population. The popular rejection of al-Qaida and its ideology has, for example, helped transform Anbar Province this year from one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq to one of the safest. The popular rejection of extremists has helped Coalition and Iraqi Forces take away other areas from al-Qaida as well, and we are seeing a spread of this sentiment in an ever-increasing number of Sunni areas. Now, in fact, we are also seeing a desire to reject extremists emerge in many Shia areas."
Iraqi security participation up
This critical local reconciliation has increased Iraqi participation in their security; hastened the day they will be solely responsible for it; and, as in the early days of American independence, Iraqi local reconciliation will precede, facilitate and dictate national reconciliation. But most important for Americans, Iraqis' local reconciliation is the reason Petraeus proposed commencing troop reductions this month and continuing them through July 2008, when nearly 30,000 of our citizen-soldiers will have departed harm's way for home.
Perversely, critics decry this good news as a "token" political stunt. Demanding our immediate retreat in Iraq, these detractors ascribe their own misdeeds upon others -- namely, playing politics with our troops.
A strategic retreat is a dangerous maneuver for a fighting force, which gets smaller as the advancing enemy grows stronger. When rushed, disaster results, as happened to the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. Petraeus and Crocker refuse to repeat this mistake. Thus, American troop reductions are based upon progress in Iraq, not politics in Washington.
This responsible nexus for our troops' return threatens the radical left because it mutes its propaganda claims that a "war without end" has somehow already ended in America's defeat. Instead, every American has a concrete "benchmark" to measure our progress to victory in Iraq: witnessing and welcoming the return of our triumphant troops.
True, our troops can't come home quickly enough. No, this does not mean the war is won, as arduous and dangerous work remains. Yes, our nation must vigilantly monitor the facts on the ground to ensure the Iraqis' local political shift to liberty proceeds with requisite speed.
But let those who won't unite behind the cause of victory at least welcome the news that our troops -- because of progress in Iraq -- are coming home with their "mission accomplished." Now that will look good on the grille of a Michigan-made SUV.
Is Petraeus correct that Iraq surge is working?
Iraq becomes more stable as U.S. starts winning 'War for Freedom'
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter
Critics whose foreign policy expertise fits on an eco-friendly foreign car's fender allege Iraq is a "bumper sticker war without end." This slogan is false. Finally, if fitfully, this integral theater in our nation's War for Freedom is becoming a free, stable state opposed to terrorism; and the Iraq war is ending because we are winning.
This news was obscured amid the repugnant partisan attempts to spin the congressional testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker as dishonest or erroneous. While it will arrive neither quickly nor cheaply, the truth will emerge as our troops succeed in their mission and start coming home.
Incorporating Crocker's diplomatic initiatives, Petraeus' new counter-insurgency strategy's goal in Iraq is to eradicate insurgents and place reconstruction efforts into local Iraqis' hands. This strategy is succeeding. Due to increased security and economic opportunity, Iraqis are choosing liberty instead of the insurgency.
Iraqi shift to liberty
In his Sept. 7 letter to the Multi-National Force-Iraq, Petraeus stressed the importance of Iraqis' political shift to liberty:
"We are also building momentum in an emerging area of considerable importance -- local reconciliation. Local Iraqi leaders are coming forward, opposing extremists and establishing provisional units of neighborhood security volunteers. With growing government of Iraq support, these volunteers are being integrated into legitimate security institutions to help improve local security. While this concept is playing out differently in various areas across Iraq, it is grounded in a desire shared by increasing numbers of Iraqis -- to oppose extremist elements and their ideologies.
"This is very significant because, as many of you know first hand, extremists cannot survive without the support of the population. The popular rejection of al-Qaida and its ideology has, for example, helped transform Anbar Province this year from one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq to one of the safest. The popular rejection of extremists has helped Coalition and Iraqi Forces take away other areas from al-Qaida as well, and we are seeing a spread of this sentiment in an ever-increasing number of Sunni areas. Now, in fact, we are also seeing a desire to reject extremists emerge in many Shia areas."
Iraqi security participation up
This critical local reconciliation has increased Iraqi participation in their security; hastened the day they will be solely responsible for it; and, as in the early days of American independence, Iraqi local reconciliation will precede, facilitate and dictate national reconciliation. But most important for Americans, Iraqis' local reconciliation is the reason Petraeus proposed commencing troop reductions this month and continuing them through July 2008, when nearly 30,000 of our citizen-soldiers will have departed harm's way for home.
Perversely, critics decry this good news as a "token" political stunt. Demanding our immediate retreat in Iraq, these detractors ascribe their own misdeeds upon others -- namely, playing politics with our troops.
A strategic retreat is a dangerous maneuver for a fighting force, which gets smaller as the advancing enemy grows stronger. When rushed, disaster results, as happened to the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. Petraeus and Crocker refuse to repeat this mistake. Thus, American troop reductions are based upon progress in Iraq, not politics in Washington.
This responsible nexus for our troops' return threatens the radical left because it mutes its propaganda claims that a "war without end" has somehow already ended in America's defeat. Instead, every American has a concrete "benchmark" to measure our progress to victory in Iraq: witnessing and welcoming the return of our triumphant troops.
True, our troops can't come home quickly enough. No, this does not mean the war is won, as arduous and dangerous work remains. Yes, our nation must vigilantly monitor the facts on the ground to ensure the Iraqis' local political shift to liberty proceeds with requisite speed.
But let those who won't unite behind the cause of victory at least welcome the news that our troops -- because of progress in Iraq -- are coming home with their "mission accomplished." Now that will look good on the grille of a Michigan-made SUV.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Rep. McCotter speaks on the House Floor about Gen. Petraeus' Testimony on the progress in Iraq.
Tonight I spoke on the U.S. House floor to discuss Gen. Petraeus' Testimony. Below is a video of my remarks.
Remarks to the "Fight for Victory" Rally
United States Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter
Upper Senate Park, United States Capitol
September 10, 2007
Good morning, sovereign citizens of our free republic: we unite today as the latest generation of Americans duty-bound to defend freedom in an hour of maximum danger; and, undaunted and determined, we affirm our full measure of devotion to our troops; their families; and American victory.
It is fitting we do so this morning, as on the morrow we observe the fateful date three thousand of our fellow Americans were murdered; and, so heinously invaded, our nation was thrust into an unsought struggle – the War for Freedom – against the butcher Bin-Laden’s death cult and Middle-Eastern fascism.
To our free people, who were errantly told the Soviet implosion was the “end of history” and liberty’s enemies, September 11, 2001, was a harsh truth told anew: As the world’s beacon of freedom and bastion of hope for the enslaved and oppressed, our nation is the target for every tyrant and terrorist bent upon usurping God’s dominion over humanity. In consequence, the enemy seeks to kill us for the “sin” of being free.
For some of our fellow citizens, the shock of events has proven overwhelming; and they deny the present danger’s gravity and/or the enemy’s reality. For example, some claim Iraq is not part of the “real war on terror,” though even the butcher Bin-Laden disagrees with them. My friends, it is clear: Al Qaeda is in Iraq. American troops are defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Iraq is part of the real War for Freedom!
Thankfully, this is well understood by General Petraeus and our intrepid forces – who as we speak are being despicably smeared by the less than grateful in our nation. Yet, despite the radical Left shooting at these messengers, the heartening news is General Petraeus’ counter-insurgency strategy is providing the local security and reconstruction efforts sufficient to permit the Iraqi’s “local political shift” to liberty and away from the insurgency. This separation of the population from the enemy will be the foundation upon which is built a stable and free Iraq that captures terrorist instead of creating them.
Once America has won in Iraq, this “grassroots-up” unleashing of liberty will equally bear fruit in Afghanistan. Ultimately, as a sea of free peoples comes to envelope the despotic, terror-sponsoring Iranian regime, it will, like the Soviet Union before it, be propelled by its own people into the trash can of history.
So to those desperate for surrender who claim the United States has been defeated in Iraq, let us unequivocally reassert the principle our free people have historically and heroically championed to defeat our enemies: To ensure liberty for ourselves, we must extend liberty to the enslaved.
Thus, to retreat in the face of the Al-Qaeda death cult and Mid-East fascism now, would condemn Iraqis by the tens, perhaps the hundreds of thousands for the “capital crime” of believing in our professed commitment to their freedom;
To retreat in the face of the enemy now would betray our own revolutionary commitment to and inherited legacy of liberty;
To retreat in the face of the enemy now would ideologically disarm us for, if not liberty, what can we offer the people of the region to turn them away from the enemy and toward us; and
Truly, to retreat in the face of the enemy now would dishonor the sacrifices of American and coalition citizen-soldiers who gave the last full measure of their devotion to emancipate millions of Muslims from slavery and servitude so their region and our world could experience a new birth of freedom.
To this deplorable prospect of retreat and surrender, we say: Never!
My fellow Americans, through this crucible of liberty, our course is tough; our cause is just. Our enemy is the sire of tyranny; we are the children of liberty. We cannot co-exist. A world condensed by an internet will not endure half-slave and half-free.
Thus, with prudence and courage, we must prove our devotion to liberty transcends our enemy’s obsession with death; and, united amongst ourselves and with other free peoples, we can, we must, and we will win!
May God continue to grace, guard, guide, and bless the steps of our troops and their families; and of the majestic American people who, for the sake of generations yet un-named, walk and widen the path of human freedom.
Upper Senate Park, United States Capitol
September 10, 2007
Good morning, sovereign citizens of our free republic: we unite today as the latest generation of Americans duty-bound to defend freedom in an hour of maximum danger; and, undaunted and determined, we affirm our full measure of devotion to our troops; their families; and American victory.
It is fitting we do so this morning, as on the morrow we observe the fateful date three thousand of our fellow Americans were murdered; and, so heinously invaded, our nation was thrust into an unsought struggle – the War for Freedom – against the butcher Bin-Laden’s death cult and Middle-Eastern fascism.
To our free people, who were errantly told the Soviet implosion was the “end of history” and liberty’s enemies, September 11, 2001, was a harsh truth told anew: As the world’s beacon of freedom and bastion of hope for the enslaved and oppressed, our nation is the target for every tyrant and terrorist bent upon usurping God’s dominion over humanity. In consequence, the enemy seeks to kill us for the “sin” of being free.
For some of our fellow citizens, the shock of events has proven overwhelming; and they deny the present danger’s gravity and/or the enemy’s reality. For example, some claim Iraq is not part of the “real war on terror,” though even the butcher Bin-Laden disagrees with them. My friends, it is clear: Al Qaeda is in Iraq. American troops are defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Iraq is part of the real War for Freedom!
Thankfully, this is well understood by General Petraeus and our intrepid forces – who as we speak are being despicably smeared by the less than grateful in our nation. Yet, despite the radical Left shooting at these messengers, the heartening news is General Petraeus’ counter-insurgency strategy is providing the local security and reconstruction efforts sufficient to permit the Iraqi’s “local political shift” to liberty and away from the insurgency. This separation of the population from the enemy will be the foundation upon which is built a stable and free Iraq that captures terrorist instead of creating them.
Once America has won in Iraq, this “grassroots-up” unleashing of liberty will equally bear fruit in Afghanistan. Ultimately, as a sea of free peoples comes to envelope the despotic, terror-sponsoring Iranian regime, it will, like the Soviet Union before it, be propelled by its own people into the trash can of history.
So to those desperate for surrender who claim the United States has been defeated in Iraq, let us unequivocally reassert the principle our free people have historically and heroically championed to defeat our enemies: To ensure liberty for ourselves, we must extend liberty to the enslaved.
Thus, to retreat in the face of the Al-Qaeda death cult and Mid-East fascism now, would condemn Iraqis by the tens, perhaps the hundreds of thousands for the “capital crime” of believing in our professed commitment to their freedom;
To retreat in the face of the enemy now would betray our own revolutionary commitment to and inherited legacy of liberty;
To retreat in the face of the enemy now would ideologically disarm us for, if not liberty, what can we offer the people of the region to turn them away from the enemy and toward us; and
Truly, to retreat in the face of the enemy now would dishonor the sacrifices of American and coalition citizen-soldiers who gave the last full measure of their devotion to emancipate millions of Muslims from slavery and servitude so their region and our world could experience a new birth of freedom.
To this deplorable prospect of retreat and surrender, we say: Never!
My fellow Americans, through this crucible of liberty, our course is tough; our cause is just. Our enemy is the sire of tyranny; we are the children of liberty. We cannot co-exist. A world condensed by an internet will not endure half-slave and half-free.
Thus, with prudence and courage, we must prove our devotion to liberty transcends our enemy’s obsession with death; and, united amongst ourselves and with other free peoples, we can, we must, and we will win!
May God continue to grace, guard, guide, and bless the steps of our troops and their families; and of the majestic American people who, for the sake of generations yet un-named, walk and widen the path of human freedom.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter speaks to the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County Fashion Show
This Afternoon I spoke to the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County in Annapolis, Maryland, at their Fashion Show Fundraiser. Here is video of my speech. Enjoy.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Fighting the Spin on Petraeus Report...Rep. McCotter on Hill Tube
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) said he's fighting the spin on the upcoming Petraeus report
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Battle of "The Bums"
During their mutual month-long August recesses, wherein public confidence in each has plummeted to record lows, the American Congress (“Our Bums”) is denouncing the Iraqi Parliament (“Their Bums”) as “do nothings.” Further, despite American military progress on the ground in Iraq, Washington claims Baghdad’s failure to meet political benchmarks will doom General Petraeus’ plan for victory.
The premise of this claim is absolutely backwards.
Along Iraq’s bloody path to freedom, the greatest obstacle has been the average Iraqi’s wary neutrality in the battle between the United States’ “Coalition of the Willing” and the insurgents. Today, a nihilistic insurgency has been revealed to offer average Iraqis nothing but subjugation and extermination; in stark contrast, General Petraeus’ counter-insurgency strategy is delivering both the eradication of the insurgents and localized reconstruction efforts – i.e., a palpable hope for security and prosperity. Consequently, the true measure of political progress in Iraq is NOT found in its national Parliament; the true measure of political progress in Iraq is occurring in local tribes, towns and provinces where Iraqis are choosing liberty instead of the insurgency.
This Iraqi “election for freedom” is not an intrinsically military development. It is fundamentally a political development complementing and speeding military progress; and hastening the day such individual and local “grassroots” political wins collectively dictate political progress in Baghdad.
Let us, as the sovereign citizens of our free republic, ever remember how in representative democracies Parliaments and Congresses do not dictate to sovereign citizens; sovereign citizens dictate to Parliaments and Congresses. Thus, in Iraq each citizen in his or her respective tribe, town and province must inform and consent to federal laws being enacted, implemented, and honored; and, when this consent is individually granted in sufficient numbers, Iraq will complete its transformational emancipation from tyranny to liberty.
Further, let us, as the sovereign citizens of our free republic, ever remember how we cannot abandon Iraq’s fledgling democracy – or any democracy – under terrorist attack. The War for Freedom must be won through ideological, political, economic, diplomatic and – as an ultimate resort – martial means. If the U.S. abandons Iraq’s democracy, we will also abandon our and the entire free world’s inherited legacy of and professed commitment to freedom. If this betrayal of ourselves and the Iraqis occurs, our enemies will be empowered and we will be ideologically disarmed in the face of the enemy. If not liberty, what political principle will a discredited and defeated U.S. promote to turn the Middle East’s oppressed away from Al Qaeda’s extremism?
Come September 15th then, Americans must focus on the true measure of political progress in General Petraeus’ initial strategic assessment – tribal, local, and provincial support for liberty instead of the insurgency; and we must do so cognizant of the truth expressed and proven by prior generations of Americans who, in times of national trial, preserved and promoted our nation’s revolutionary experiment in human freedom: The only way to ensure liberty for ourselves is to extend liberty to the enslaved.
Of course, it would help too, if the collective bums in both the Iraqi Parliament and the American Congress remembered all power in a democracy is vested in its sovereign citizens, not its subservient government.
United States Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter is the Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee and one of “Our Bums”
The premise of this claim is absolutely backwards.
Along Iraq’s bloody path to freedom, the greatest obstacle has been the average Iraqi’s wary neutrality in the battle between the United States’ “Coalition of the Willing” and the insurgents. Today, a nihilistic insurgency has been revealed to offer average Iraqis nothing but subjugation and extermination; in stark contrast, General Petraeus’ counter-insurgency strategy is delivering both the eradication of the insurgents and localized reconstruction efforts – i.e., a palpable hope for security and prosperity. Consequently, the true measure of political progress in Iraq is NOT found in its national Parliament; the true measure of political progress in Iraq is occurring in local tribes, towns and provinces where Iraqis are choosing liberty instead of the insurgency.
This Iraqi “election for freedom” is not an intrinsically military development. It is fundamentally a political development complementing and speeding military progress; and hastening the day such individual and local “grassroots” political wins collectively dictate political progress in Baghdad.
Let us, as the sovereign citizens of our free republic, ever remember how in representative democracies Parliaments and Congresses do not dictate to sovereign citizens; sovereign citizens dictate to Parliaments and Congresses. Thus, in Iraq each citizen in his or her respective tribe, town and province must inform and consent to federal laws being enacted, implemented, and honored; and, when this consent is individually granted in sufficient numbers, Iraq will complete its transformational emancipation from tyranny to liberty.
Further, let us, as the sovereign citizens of our free republic, ever remember how we cannot abandon Iraq’s fledgling democracy – or any democracy – under terrorist attack. The War for Freedom must be won through ideological, political, economic, diplomatic and – as an ultimate resort – martial means. If the U.S. abandons Iraq’s democracy, we will also abandon our and the entire free world’s inherited legacy of and professed commitment to freedom. If this betrayal of ourselves and the Iraqis occurs, our enemies will be empowered and we will be ideologically disarmed in the face of the enemy. If not liberty, what political principle will a discredited and defeated U.S. promote to turn the Middle East’s oppressed away from Al Qaeda’s extremism?
Come September 15th then, Americans must focus on the true measure of political progress in General Petraeus’ initial strategic assessment – tribal, local, and provincial support for liberty instead of the insurgency; and we must do so cognizant of the truth expressed and proven by prior generations of Americans who, in times of national trial, preserved and promoted our nation’s revolutionary experiment in human freedom: The only way to ensure liberty for ourselves is to extend liberty to the enslaved.
Of course, it would help too, if the collective bums in both the Iraqi Parliament and the American Congress remembered all power in a democracy is vested in its sovereign citizens, not its subservient government.
United States Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter is the Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee and one of “Our Bums”
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Rep. McCotter tells Midwest peers: Start acting like Republicans
INDIANAPOLIS -- Making an unabashed case for "American exceptionalism," Michigan Representative Thad McCotter told a gathering of Midwestern Republicans that their party's congressional members must re-embrace bedrock Republican principles of limited government, lower taxes and expanding liberty.
Calling Democrats "the party of redistribution, regulation and retreat," McCotter said Republicans in Congress must "remember that they are Republicans and act like it." The Livonia Republican, who chairs the House Republican Policy Committee, spoke to activists from a dozen states on the final day of the Midwest Republican Leadership Conference here.
Comparing Americans today to those who suffered the Great Depression and won World War II, McCotter said the United States today faces similarly daunting challenges -- and unlike that previous generation, faces those challenges simultaneously.
The "greatest generation," McCotter said, faced the Depression, World War II, the rise of the Soviet Union and the need to extend civil rights to all Americans regardless of race. Today's challenges, he said, are globalization, the fight against extremist terrorism, the rise of "a communist Chinese super-state" and the question of whether "moral relativism and violent secularism" will undermine America's moral order.
"I believe, like previous generations, we will meet these challenges and overcome them," he said, encouraging Republican activists
He had tough words for China, saying during a question-and-answer session that "I don't think the communist Chinese are fooling anybody except the people making millions of dollars there."
And he got laughter and applause when answering a question about immigration policy. Calling illegal immigration a threat to U.S. sovereignty and the rights of American citizens, McCotter said, "The good news is that your House Republicans are very strong on this issue. Talk to your senators."
You can reach Gordon Trowbridge at (202) 662-8738 or gtrowbridge@detnews.com.
Calling Democrats "the party of redistribution, regulation and retreat," McCotter said Republicans in Congress must "remember that they are Republicans and act like it." The Livonia Republican, who chairs the House Republican Policy Committee, spoke to activists from a dozen states on the final day of the Midwest Republican Leadership Conference here.
Comparing Americans today to those who suffered the Great Depression and won World War II, McCotter said the United States today faces similarly daunting challenges -- and unlike that previous generation, faces those challenges simultaneously.
The "greatest generation," McCotter said, faced the Depression, World War II, the rise of the Soviet Union and the need to extend civil rights to all Americans regardless of race. Today's challenges, he said, are globalization, the fight against extremist terrorism, the rise of "a communist Chinese super-state" and the question of whether "moral relativism and violent secularism" will undermine America's moral order.
"I believe, like previous generations, we will meet these challenges and overcome them," he said, encouraging Republican activists
He had tough words for China, saying during a question-and-answer session that "I don't think the communist Chinese are fooling anybody except the people making millions of dollars there."
And he got laughter and applause when answering a question about immigration policy. Calling illegal immigration a threat to U.S. sovereignty and the rights of American citizens, McCotter said, "The good news is that your House Republicans are very strong on this issue. Talk to your senators."
You can reach Gordon Trowbridge at (202) 662-8738 or gtrowbridge@detnews.com.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Compassionate Communism
Due to the devotion of Lev Dobriansky and Dr. Lee Edwards of the Heritage Foundation, on Tuesday, June 12, 2007, the Victims of Communism Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. The memorial is modeled on the statute of Lady Liberty which inspired the Chinese students and their fellow citizens in Tiananmen Square, and symbolized their hope to realize their God-given and inalienable right to freedom. And, as is indelibly etched in the most ignoble annals of history, it was beneath this statue of Lady Liberty the communist Chinese government’s totalitarian stranglehold tightened and these human beings’ cries to breathe free were choked from their throats.
Truly, then, the dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial was a fitting forum for the President of the United States – the leader of the Free World – to help commemorate the event. Inexplicably, especially since the communist killers who executed the slaughter in Tiananmen Square remain firmly enthroned upon the shoulders of those students and citizens’ corpses – the President did not call for America and the entire Free World to finish the job and liberate those who still suffer and die under communism.
Instead, the President took a victory lap replete with historical and ideological pitfalls portending a perilous present and future for all free people.
First, the President made a curious and ridiculous distinction between communist regimes: “Yet, until now, our Nation's Capital had no monument to the victims of imperial communism, an ideology that took the lives of an estimated 100 million innocent men, women and children.” [Bold italics mine.] Was the President wrongly implying “imperial communism” is distinct from some new brand of “compassionate communism?” Was the President wrongly implying the Memorial is not also a testament to those killed by that parochial politician Pol Pot or by Stalin when he was content to bloodily build socialism in one country? Was he also wrongly implying the current butchers of Beijing are acceptable communists because they are not “imperialists”? (Just because a regime is utilizing means other than overt martial aggression to attack our national security – like, say Iran – does NOT mean the regime is no longer a threat to our national security.) So too, was the President further wrongly implying the Castro’s barbarous regime is no longer bent upon exporting communism throughout the world and allying with our mortal enemies?
This leads to the President’s egregious omission. Yes, the President does partially list the nations where communism has murdered innocent victims (although he neglects to mention Cuba in anything but a passing passive reference to “Cuban balseros who drowned escaping tyranny,” as if Castro’s communist regime never actively killed Cubans). But the President does NOT list those nations where communism still oppresses our fellow human beings. Why? Because the President evidently feels communism is no longer a threat to the United States of America and every free human being.
To wit, this characteristically past tense remark about, one must assume, “imperial communism” and its twentieth century victims: “She [Lady Liberty] reminds us of the victims of communism, and also of the power that overcame communism…and she reminds us that when an ideology kills tens of millions of people, [the ideology] still ends up being vanquished…”
Uh, Mr. President, as you spoke, communism was alive and subjugating over a billion people. And the victims of communism keep mounting. (As the Falun Gong/ Falun Dafa members protesting communist China at the event tried in vain to convey to him.)
So what did the President have to say to the current victims of communism when, at the tail end of his speech, he ever so diplomatically admitted communism still might exist? To wit: “May those who continue to suffer under communism find their freedom.” So this is how the West leaves the field when the Cold War is only half finished, and our victory is daily endangered by former KGB Lt. Col. (nee communist?) Putin. Given his nation’s affinity for such occasions, President Chirac would at least have proffered a more stately surrender.
Still, in fairness, the President does not argue all is well, because terrorism has replaced communism as a grave threat to our existence. This argument errantly equates the advent of a new danger with the end of an old danger. It would be akin to President Franklin Roosevelt asserting fascism was for all intents and purposes finished after D-Day, and the nation should focus only on imperial Japan. And, in fact, it is the mistake made by the Greeks who, after defeating Persia and fighting amongst themselves, only remembered Macedonia was a menace upon becoming one of their conquests.
For those who think this a trifling matter, consider these historical contrasts. First, President Lincoln endured a civil war to emancipate the slaves and lead our nation to a new birth of freedom; this Republican President articulates to the remaining slaves of communism, “Good luck, Tiger, you’re on your own.” Secondly, while President Reagan told the “evil empire” to “tear down this wall,” our current leader of the Free World cannot tell the (communist) Chinese to stop manipulating their currency. One can go on citing similar historical comparisons, but it would be sadistic.
Suffice to say, upon this noble and necessary commemoration of the victims of communism, I am appalled the President failed to issue a clarion call for the American and all free peoples to summon the courage and moral clarity to end the communist regimes extant in our midst, and from North Korea to Cuba to China emancipate a billion people from the spiritual and material shackles of this contemptible lie.
Why? Because it is obviously too easy for people to delude themselves into hoping we have reached the end of history and, thus, to view communism as no longer a danger to our free republic and every democracy. Because it is imperative to recognize the West has but won the European theater of the Cold War’s battle between freedom and communism. Because it is a matter of our own national survival to remember we as a free people were, are, and must remain a beacon of hope to all humanity; and how, as a free people, we bear the burden to expand liberty to our fellow human beings, for they are as equally God's children as are we.
So I humbly suggest to the President of the United States how “the bitter twilight struggle” between freedom and communism is not over. How it is not time for a victory lap, but a time for the reaffirmation we – a free people housed in a nation conceived in liberty – will continue our historic moral mission to emancipate all humanity from this evil ideology. How America is a revolutionary country by birth, and must ever so remain. And how, if we ever forget this verity of and our duty to liberty, we will meanly lose our legacy and betray its promise to our posterity and all humanity.
Finally, I further submit for the President’s consideration the truth we can only nobly and fully honor the memory of the victims of communism by remaining champions of human freedom until tyranny – be it communist, terrorist, or any other malignant manifestation of man’s inhumanity to man – is eradicated from our earth; our world experiences a new birth of freedom; and a future President is spared the pain of commemorating a memorial to the victims of twenty-first century communism.
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