PrintAugust 2, 2010
The Conservative Phoenix
It is so easy to yield to the counsels of despair. Debt drowns our national and state governments. California, for example, has a state deficit of about $19 billion, which appears impossible to pay. The federal deficit for Fiscal Year 2010 will be about $1.5 trillion. How big is that? The population of our country is about 300 million. The deficit, then, is equal to about $5,000 for every person in America -- not federal expenditures, mind you, just expenditures over revenue collections.
Four out of every ten new mothers are not married to the father of their child. The percentage of teenage girls giving birth to children is rising steadily. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies end in abortion. Half of all pregnancies in our country end in out-of-wedlock births or in abortion. Infanticide and illegitimacy are pure social corrosives. The family, the truest "social safety net," has been beaten black and blue by advocates of sexual amorality.
The ideological terrorism of federal judges, so recently exposed in the ruling of Arizona's immigration law by Judge Bolton, will grow more crushing when Elena Kagan becomes Justice Kagan. Those federal judges who feign guardianship of the Constitution are, instead, its quiet murderers.
All might be remediable if the dynamics of politics worked toward conservative political victories, but millions of future voters come across our borders in violation of our laws and in thrall, it would seem, to the overlords of Leftism. Is there hope? Seventy years ago, when Churchill defied a Hitler who seemed certain to win, hope flickered because good men failed to surrender. In the wake of that raw courage, allies came. I think we will see the same in America if we continue to rejoice in America. Where will our allies come from? Perhaps they will come from most unlikely places.
We have grown accustomed to ideological biases in sections of the American electorate. The gender gap -- women favoring leftist Democrats -- is real, and it influences elections. Black voters, overwhelmingly and almost reflexively, support radical leftist Democrats. Hispanic voters, less utterly and less automatically, do the same -- and they are the fastest-growing demographic group. Most Jewish voters, to the frustration of many conservative Jews, yield to the old talisman of socialism.
So it has been, but subtle changes are entering politics. As I have written, this is the Year of the Conservative Woman. Jan Brewer, Susana Martinez, Mary Fallin, and Nikki Haley are part of Sarah's Grizzlies -- confident, sure, conservative women set to change the balance of women in politics with a decisive turn to the right. After 2010, most female governors may be conservative Republicans. Most women in the Senate may be conservative Republicans. Could Michele Bachmann lead Republicans in the House? Conservatives would support her. The face of women in politics, increasingly, will be bright, strong, kind conservative women and not old sourpusses like Barbara Boxer.
The black votes may seem locked in iron manacles on the leftist plantation, but someone forgot to tell attractive black candidates like Tim Scott in South Carolina, or any of the 35 conservative Republicans who have sought House seats this election cycle, nearly all from districts with white majorities. The quasi-Marxist Congressional Black Caucus has 39 members, all Democrats. If those 35 conservatives won in 2010, that would almost be a majority of the caucus, if they were allowed to join. In one or two more elections, conservatives could rule the Black Congressional Caucus and could begin attacking the subtle, soul-destroying racism of leftist social welfare programs.
Hispanic voters are already conservatives, really: hard-working, religious, and family-oriented. The natural path for Hispanics in American politics is like Italian-Americans, who, after a stint in the Party of Slavery and Robert Byrd, wound up in the Party of Lincoln and LaGuardia. Mother Jones, a periodical hardly kind to conservatives, recently noted that out of the 74 races this cycle for governor or senator, no Democrat candidate was Hispanic. Conservative Republican Hispanics, by contrast, may win the governorships in New Mexico and Nevada, and a Senate seat in Florida. These candidates are also very attractive prospects for the national ticket.
The "diversity" of conservative Republicans stretches into other constituencies. There is one Native American in Congress: Tom Cole, a conservative Republican. Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley are both, as the left loves to tag people, "persons of color." Both are also razor-sharp smart, extremely pleasant, and articulate, conservative Republicans. Could these conservatives, children of immigrants, help dispel the fears of other immigrants? Sure they could.
The leftist tilt of American Jews has long bedeviled conservatives and bedeviled not the least politically conservative Jews, which is a growing group. This tacking to port, of course, makes no sense at all: Those dangerous "social conservatives" are simply listening to Jews read Torah and believing what they hear. "National security conservatives" want desperately what Israel wants -- a nuclear-free Middle East. "Fiscal conservatives," by and large, follow Jewish thinkers like Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand, whose libertarian views are in stark contrast to leftists like Hitler.
The left's deadening indifference to issues which profoundly affect the Jewish people is moving more and more Jews to the right. Conservatives urge zero tolerance for Iran, while leftists opine on the prudence of mild trade sanctions against the Iranian Führer. The catastrophe of Obamacare worries Jewish doctors as much as it does Gentile doctors. As conservatives conspicuously embrace Nikki Haley (the child of Sikh parents), Bobby Jindal (the child of Hindu parents), Susana Martinez (a Hispanic woman), and other true conservatives who come from diverse backgrounds, more and more Jews will find the happy, natural, and peaceful camp of conservatives the best place to be.
Conservatism is a phoenix. Grounded foremost in liberty, it never dies. Sometimes the means of its resurrection springs from places which seem unexpected, but in fact, it should not surprise us in the least: All mankind drinks from this same well.
Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie and The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.
