OH, TO BE A CONSERVATIVE!

By Edwin Cooney

Once upon a time, a time too long ago, I was a very proud and even arrogant
conservative.  My creed came straight from the lips of Barry Morris Goldwater,
the Mr. Conservative of the late 1950s and early to mid-1960s as he accepted the
1964 GOP presidential nomination in San Francisco.  That creed was: “…Extremism
in the defense of liberty is no vice.  Moderation in the pursuit of justice is
no virtue.”  More about that later!

Although I have since rejected conservatism as my creed, occasionally I still miss the assurance of
conservatism.

Perhaps conservatism’s most compelling attribute is it’s
admonition to its disciples to preserve the great traditions of our society,
specifically home, family, private enterprise and freedom.  Like wide roads,
pure water and good beer it’s hard to be against conservative doctrine.  The
devil is in the details.  However, before getting to those details I must
mention some of the gifts that 21st Century conservatism offers.

First, conservatism stresses the importance of love for liberty, faith in God,
patriotism, and strong family ties, vital aspects of a sense of well-being. 
Next, conservatism celebrates risk, an essential aspect of accomplishment. 
Conservatives are right to insist that our society is more productively
dependent on the freedom to risk than it is on the security of safety.  All of
these elements of conservatism foster a mindset that enhances emotional,
socio/political and spiritual energy and stability which are essential for our
social, emotional and spiritual health.

What I miss most from my days of proud conservatism is that sense of certainty that gave license to my
indignation toward the advocates of social, political, financial, or spiritual
values that differed from my own values and conclusions.  Conservatives, and
only conservatives, many of them insist, truly believe in human liberty.

Even as they champion freedom, conservatives too often demonize those who dare to be,
or who are by race, ethnic background, and especially sexual orientation,
different from the norm.  Therein lies the great Conservative intellectual and
moral contradiction!

Twenty-first century conservatism’s sense of ownership, and self-righteous sense of 

social, and even religious superiority, especially
over the ideological opposition can only adequately be described as downright
“Liberal.”  Some conservatives even insist that liberalism is a mental illness. 
(Talk show host Michael Savage and author Anne Coulter have both openly
expressed this view.)  Modern conservatism’s sense of certainty and prerogative
seems to free one’s conscience to prosper whatever the cost to the environment,
to the health and safety of the worker, the well-being of the single family, and
especially to the sensitivities of those who struggle with mental, physical and
social drawbacks most people don’t face.  Today’s conservatives believe deeply
in Jesus Christ but they resist with all the fiber of their political, financial
and emotional might Christ’s insistence that society ought to reflect his
principle that we are our brother’s keeper.

Conservatives, like their liberal cousins, create their own inconsistencies.   

Conservatives pray that God will bless America even at the very moment they salute 

the Confederate flag that symbolizes racial bigotry and defied Abraham Lincoln’s leadership.  Deification
of the United States constitution through “strict constructionism”  which
justifies  “states’ rights” has too often been used by conservatives to justify
control over rather than freedom for other human beings.

When conservatives speak of freedom they invariably address America’s freedom from international
tyranny, the entrepreneur’s freedom to prosper in “the free market” (which never
has been, isn’t, and never will be free) and of course states’ rights which
historically has been more self-serving than socially enhancing.  Conservatives
believe in freedom, but they and they alone insist on the right to regulate
individual freedoms.  Therein lies the reason conservatism has lost its appeal
to me.

Back in 1964, most Americans were puzzled by what Senator Goldwater
meant when he asserted that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” 
In his personal autobiography Senator Goldwater told us that he’d explained the
phrase to General Dwight D. Eisenhower by pointing out to him that his military
crusade against Hitler was an extreme defense of liberty.  Fair enough, but what
about the rest of the creed, “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no
virtue.”  Whose justice are we talking about?  I don’t recall conservatives
championing Dr. Martin Luther King’s pursuit of justice.  As I recall, Dr.
King’s pursuit of justice drove many old line Dixie Democrats into today’s
Republican Party.  Most conservatives I’ve ever known preferred to advocate on
behalf of criminal justice as opposed to civil justice.  Even worse, many
conservatives regarded Dr. King’s struggle as being pretty close to criminal
activity.  As to who needs protection against tyranny most?  Conservatives
advocate most intently for the freedom of the powerful. While there is some
justification for that, it seems to me historically the rights of the well
healed have always prevailed.  Here’s a fascinating historical irony.  Although
the legitimate rights of the poor have been advocated in Holy Scripture for over
2000 years, they have been most ardently advocated in the halls of American
government by secularists than by the religious among us.

Here’s still another irony.  Government, the bane of all conservatives, has never been
administrated by the poor!   The administrators of Soviet government or fascist
government are always rich.  The struggle over Magna Carta between King John and
his nobles was a struggle among the noble rich for the ultimate foothold to run
the government.  The French, Russian, Chinese and even the American revolutions
were struggles to control rather than disassociate from government.

Both conservatives and liberals insist they have a monopoly on morality and that
adoption of their creeds will best enable you to be the master or mistress of
your and the nation’s fate.  What conservative and liberal ideologists too often
forget is that their creeds are mere strategies.  Their creeds are subject to
the nobility’s failings and limitations of all humanity.  Thus conservatism and
liberalism are legitimate tools rather than solutions to the challenges we face.
Like the Allen wrench and the socket wrench, the sledge hammer and the jeweler’s
hammer, ideological doctrines are mere tools to be administered interchangeably
for the benefit of free men and women.

As for me, I prefer liberalism. However, I am ever mindful that conservative principles are often 

applicable to our well-being.  Above all, freedom does not exist when only one way of thinking

and acting prevails.

Here’s the 21st Century political dilemma.  Argue with a liberal and the liberal 

wonders if you have a heart.  Argue with a conservative and that conservative 

wonders if you have a soul.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

OH, TO BE A LIBERAL!

By Edwin Cooney

Because I was once a conservative, some of my conservative friends often regard me as a liberal.  They often accuse me of being a liberal as though it were a crime or at least a misdemeanor…and despite the fact that I fall short of deserving that designation again and again.  I only wish I had the stuff to be a liberal.

To be a liberal requires a high-mindedness that I probably will never ever achieve.  Even more, it calls for an awareness of domestic social injustices and needs beyond my comprehension.  A liberal’s grasp of environmental issues and outcomes staggers my capacity to comprehend.

In the field of international affairs, liberals assert that their principles of understanding and tolerance are way too seldom applied. Thus war, rather than peace, prevails all over the world.  Liberals often stress human rights in both domestic and international affairs.  For a liberal, human or civil rights dwarf political or legal rules and obligations.  Even more, liberals insist that a law based merely on another law is a dead law, which is why constitutional law is less important than human needs.  For a liberal, law for the sake of a higher law is dead law.  The Constitution of the United States to be real must have life and life is lithe and flexible.  Hence, liberals possess a purity of intentions matched by no other ideologue.

Additionally, liberals favor inclusion as opposed to exclusivity or as the late great Governor of New York Al Smith used to put it, “the only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy!”

Perhaps the most astounding aspect of modern liberalism is that it responds to the conservatives’ second most important goal.  (Note: conservatism’s most important goal is freedom.)  The second most important goal, especially to the Christian Right, is Jesus’s admonition to love thy neighbor as thyself.  To a liberal, we are our brother and sister’s keeper.

Additionally, since our government was born “of the people,” people are responsible for mastering government.  Government as the tool of the people must occasionally protect them from each other, thus the need for civil rights legislation, gun control and safety requirements in the work place.

All of the above makes me long to be a liberal.  Liberalism, like its conservative cousin, possesses principle and rigidity.  Like conservatism, liberalism cherry picks the past and demands that you remember some events. It insists that you de-emphasize the significance of other historical events.

So, you might wonder, why don’t I declare myself a liberal and let the devil take the hindmost?  The stumbling block for me is that liberalism is based more on hope than it is on practicality.  America’s insistence that practicality is to be favored over idealism is probably the reason we haven’t had a liberal president since Lyndon B. Johnson.

Hubert Humphrey’s liberalism was buried by his support of LBJ’s war in Vietnam.  RFK was assassinated before he could apply his liberalism.  Ted Kennedy’s liberal effectiveness died in that tragic July automobile accident at Chappaquiddick.  Neither Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama have been true liberals.  Liberals spend too much time and receive too little credit for saving capitalism to achieve their goals.  That’s one of the aspects that make them so admirable.  They are always helping somebody out rather than paying attention to their own knitting.

To be a successful liberal requires tremendous energy.  As FDR asserted in an April 1938 Fireside Chat: “…The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to maintain the interests of the people and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.”

 Most important of all, liberalism demands that its disciples work as much for others as they do for themselves.  That’s a pretty tall order indeed.

To be a liberal, as Abraham Lincoln might put it, is to call on the “better angels of my nature.”  I’d like to be able to do that, but sometimes the little kid in me demands that I first take care of myself.

I try not to listen to that little kid because he’s the most devoted conservative I’ve ever met.  Occasionally, he makes me long to be a conservative once again.

I’ll tell you more about that next week!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

POLITICS ONE, PRINCIPLE ZIP

By Edwin Cooney

As the late great GOP Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen used to intone in his deep melodious voice, “Sometimes we must all rise above principle.”  So, that’s exactly what Congressional Republicans have been doing.

It began in February when House Speaker John Boehner, without even consulting President Obama, invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of the United States Congress.  As prescribed by the distinguished Speaker (not that Mr. Netanyahu needed any priming), the topic would be the Israeli Prime Minister’s opposition to the international agreement that we and four other nations are negotiating with the Iranian government regarding its use of nuclear energy.

Obviously, neither the Israeli PM nor most Congressional Republicans trust the words or the intentions of the Iranian government.  Even worse, apparently, Congressional Republicans along with Mr. Netanyahu distrust either the intelligence or the judgment of President Obama and the leaders of four other nations who are involved in the negotiations with Iran, all of whom desire considerable leverage over Iran’s use of nuclear energy.

On the morning of Tuesday, March 3^rd, Prime Minister Netanyahu was received and heard by Congress.  Then came the second bomb in the GOP’s political arsenal, a letter composed on March 11th to the Iranians informing them that in the absence of an agreement acceptable by Congress, any such treaty could be abrogated by the United States with the stroke of a future president’s pen. (Note: That would, of course, be the pen of a future Republican President!)

Another aspect of this matter is that the American Republican elephant is sticking his long nose into the political affairs of Israel.  Such intervention is welcomed by candidate Netanyahu. However, should he be unseated in tomorrow’s election, hopefully the GOP would have the good sense to be just a little embarrassed.  I wouldn’t count on it though!

I find little principle in the GOP’s actions.  To begin with, if there is no agreement by March 31st, the negotiations are likely to stall and the status quo will remain in place.  On the other hand, if there is an agreement, it will be the kind of arrangement that automatically falls apart should Iran be caught violating its provisions.

Obviously, Prime Minister Netanyahu wants no agreement with the current Iranian government.  He wants the option to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity for energy as well as for creating nuclear weapons.

A less obvious reality is that even if GOP leaders are successful in assisting candidate Netanyahu in his re-election bid, they would ultimately be undermining their own potential authority should one of them soon wield the the presidential pen.

Both political parties have time and time again violated the idea that in foreign policy politics ought to cease at the water’s edge.  However, I can find no instance in history when the party held by Congress invited the head of a foreign government to address it, thus deliberately insulting the President of the United States.

What do you suppose would have been the Republican response had Congressional Democrats in 1987 invited Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to address it in the wake of the Iran Contra scandal?  While Democrats were sympathetic to the Ortega government, I’m guessing we might well have heard the “T” word invoked to describe Speaker Jim Wright had he extended such an invitaton. He was eventually driven from office by an outraged Newt Gingrich who in turn would himself be driven from office, guilty of Speaker Wright’s sin a decade later.  However, that’s another story for another time.

The real issue, however, is the tragedy of this Republican perfidy.  Eventually, we will elect a Republican president.  Due to the undeserved and outrageous treatment of, and contempt for, President Obama, Republicans have given permission to future presidential critics to humiliate every president from here on.

I heartily disliked Ronald Reagan and resented candidate George H. W. Bush for the way he and his minions treated Mike Dukakis during the 1988 campaign.  I felt disgust with Bill Clinton’s behavior although I voted for him twice.  I was disheartened with the election of George W. Bush.  Nevertheless, I believed then and I believe now that they deserved the inherited respect of the presidential office.

The leadership of today’s Republican party which is largely made up of the worst elements of the old Democratic Party (namely, the Sons of the old Confederacy and the Jim Crow South) is ill fitted to provide leadership to a multicultural American society.  It talks enterprise as it displays fear and loathing for almost anyone who doesn’t mirror its self-congratulatory values.  Now its treatment of President Obama is set to undermine all presidential authority, even the authority of a future Republican president.

Speaker Boehner and other Republican leaders think they’re merely showing up President Obama.  What they’re really doing is reining in the very authority they ask God to bless on every patriotic occasion -- and they don’t even get it!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED

EDWIN COONEY

CRISIS: AMERICA’S WAY OF LIFE

By Edwin Cooney

I’m trying to remember if there has ever been a time when America wasn’t in a domestic or international crisis.  Of course, one can always identify some less than satisfying social, political or human uncertainty and label it a crisis.  Since no one can predict what tomorrow will bring with any assurance that life will continue safe, prosperous and secure, uncertainty creates in the minds of millions a sense of ongoing personal crisis.

When life began for me on November 28th, 1945, World War II had only been over since Sunday, September 2nd -- a mere 87 days.  By the time I was 5 in November 1950, we had already passed through several national and international crises including a series of economically crippling strikes in 1946. Responsibility for rebuilding Western Europe became an American challenge in 1947. Next came the Soviet’s blockade of Berlin which lasted from April 1948 to May 1949.  The conquest of China by Mao Tse-tung’s Communists was complete on Saturday, October 1st 1949, and the explosion of Soviet Russia’s first atomic bomb in 1949 gave us a real sense of crisis. Finally, the Korean conflict technically remains with us 62 years later, because only a truce exists between North and South Korea rather than peace. The truth of the matter is that we Americans really and truly wallow in crises!

Take the situation brought on in 1957 when the Russians beat us into space with Sputnik 1.  Instead of taking it as a mere matter of fact, we panicked!  “How,” we wondered, “could the heathen hoards of Soviet Russia beat God-fearing America into space?”  What might be the ultimate result of Nikita Khrushchev’s triumph?  Surely there would soon be a “flying orbital Soviet bomb” soaring over our “…fruited plains!”   We’d better get off our behinds and get moving again!

Ah, and then the politicians swooped in!  Their names included Nelson Rockefeller (Republican of New York), Stuart Symmington (Democrat of Missouri), Henry (Scoop) Jackson (Democrat of Washington State), and, of course, John Kennedy from Massachusetts with all his youthful eloquence and sex appeal.  Despite the reassurances of that old soldier in the White House who told us that Russia wasn’t really that far ahead of us, we all chose to be afraid and so we were!  According to author Evan Thomas, in the spring of 1954, President Eisenhower had observed in a letter to Winston Churchill that “it is remarkable how men have so little concern with logic, statistics and even indeed for survival. We live by emotion, prejudice and pride!”

Some six years after Ike’s letter to Churchill, convincing his fellow citizens that there was a serious missile gap with the Soviets, JFK slid into the White House. His success was due in part to Mayor Richard Dailey’s well-lubricated Cook County, Illinois political machine thus creating a crisis in Richard Nixon’s psyche which would have repercussions a decade later.  The U-2 crisis had occurred earlier in 1960 followed by another Berlin crisis in 1961, and, of course, the Cuban crises of April 1961 and November 1962.

Crises kept coming on each other’s heels.  There was JFK’s assassination in November 1963 followed by Vietnam, Watergate, the American hostage crisis, Iran Contra, election 2000 and, of course, 9/11, Iraq and Hurricane Katrina.

Today, Americans find themselves chewing their proverbial fingernails up past their elbows over the danger posed by ISIS or, as President Obama prefers to call it, ISIL.  GOP firebrands, like their Democratic Party cousins once or twice removed from some 50 years ago, see our fear as their opportunity to take a firm hold over the fortunes of the great republic.  Easily spooked by barbarianism, we are sure that America is about to be gobbled up by an Islamic Caliphate.  Somehow Americans have come to believe that these radical Islamic rascals have demonstrated their ability to rule the whole world by merely chopping off a few heads in front of iPhones.

Having surrendered our ability to unite behind a president of either of our major political parties, we blame the presidents instead of blaming ourselves.  Feeling deceived by the politicians of both parties, we look to a new brand of national savior: the network talk show host armed with his or her ideological talking points but possessing no responsibility or accountability to the public.

Therein lies the real energizing force of today’s crisis-driven mentality.  We make too little time available for perspective.  Someone’s fate, whether trivial or significant, invariably stands in the balance.  Continuous crises numb our sensitivities.  Crisis for its own sake prevails at almost every point of our existence.

I confess that the older I get, the less I am overwhelmed by national political, social, and even spiritual, crises!  I’m even a little bored by them, primarily because history demonstrates that ideologically oriented politicians rather than statesmen take the lead in their solutions.     

As for most of my fellow citizens, I suspect they not only enjoy crises, they depend on them.  Ask yourself this question:  what is more alluring -- crisis or wisdom?

Come on, now - you know you’d rather be entertained by crisis than be bored by wisdom!

Oh, please don’t let this get out of the room, but I, too, would rather be entertained than bored! 

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

HOW CAN YESTERDAY’S ENEMIES BE TOMORROW’S ALLIES?

By Edwin Cooney

This year, as a dwindling number of former inmates of Nazi German death camps gather to celebrate the 70th anniversary of their liberation, those of us who have never experienced their horror wonder to ourselves: why should this old terror matter to us?  Even as we face the uncertainties of a struggle with radical Islam, we may legitimately wonder if there might be something instructive about Adolf Hitler’s terrorism. Although there are vast differences between the Nazi and the ISIL threats, they have one vital factor in common: a socio/political structure or, if you prefer, anatomy.

Both movements were born out of the anguishes of history. As I see it, the Nazi leaders of yesteryear and those who now seek to establish an Islamic Caliphate perhaps harbor more resentment than they do ambition. Note that leaders of democratic or republican movements by contrast are more likely to possess pretty equal amounts of ambition and enlightened idealism.  Fortunately, Adolf Hitler’s vile empire was led by a group of men whose only strength lay in their ability to run a bigoted police state.  Eventually, its leadership either committed suicide or went on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The trial of the top living Nazi leadership held at Nuremberg, Germany opened on Tuesday, November 20th, 1945 and lasted through Tuesday, October 1st, 1946. One of the most revealing books written on the trial is entitled “Nuremberg Diary” and it is authored by Dr. G. M. Gilbert.  It’s a fascinating look into the temperaments and attitudes of the twenty-one men on trial for their lives.  Dr. Gilbert, an American-born German-speaking psychologist, was with the defendants from the time of their indictment through the sentencing and executions of eleven of the men. For approximately a year, Dr. Gilbert observed as these 21 men answered for their alleged crimes.  They included:

Hermann Goering - Reichsmarschall Luftwaffe-Chief, president of the Reichstag and second in command of the Third Reich

Rudolf Hess - Deputy of the Nazi Party

Joachim von Ribbentrop — German Foreign Minister

Ernst Kaltenbrunner - Chief of German Intelligence Operations

Hans Frank - Hitler’s personal lawyer and Governor-General of Poland

Wilhelm Frick - Interior Minister

Alfred Rosenberg - Chief Nazi philosopher and Reich Minister for the Eastern-occupied territories

Fritz Sauckel - Chief of Slave Labor Recruitment

Albert Speer - once Hitler’s personal architect and, later, Reich Minister of Armaments

Hjalmar Schacht - Reichsbank President and Minister of Economics

Walter Funk - who succeeded Schacht

Franz von Papen - Reich Chancellor before Hitler and Vice Chancellor during the first two years of the Third Reich

Baron von Neurath - Hitler’s first Foreign Minister

Baldur von Schirach - Hitler youth leader

Arthur Seyss-Inquart - Austrian Chancellor and Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands

Julius Streicher - Nazi Germany’s number One “Jew-baiter” and editor of Der Sturmer

Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel - Chief of Staff of the High Command of the Wehrmacht

Alfred Jodl - Chief of Operations of the High Command

Admiral Karl Doenitz - Grand Admiral of the German Navy and Hitler’s successor following his suicide

Hans Fritzsche - Radio Propaganda Chief of Joseph Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry Erich Raeder - Commander of Germany’s U-boat squadron.

Some of the factors that motivated these 21 defendants included the treatment of Germany via the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I, fear of aggressive Communism and, most notably, indoctrinated fear of Judaism. Driving personal ambitions enhanced these fears and prejudices.

Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal lawyer and Governor-General of Poland, eventually converted to Catholicism. He told Dr. Gilbert that the trial was a “God-willed world court” established to bring out the truth regarding the sins of the Third Reich.  To demonstrate his sincerity, Frank turned over his 41-volume diary documenting his crimes against humanity.  “I had servants, possessions, and power at age 30 that blinded my perceptions,” he asserted.

Albert Speer, who had once been Hitler’s friend and architect before being appointed Armaments and Munitions Minister in 1942, attempted to assassinate Hitler after learning of Hitler’s willingness to destroy Germany if it couldn’t win the war.

Still, many of the defendants, Frank included, found themselves drawn to Hitler as they viewed him on film during the trial.  These Nazi gangsters earned their ultimate fate in large part due to the blindness of the victors of World War I who sought to redress their grievances in a revengeful spirit.  Winston Churchill once described Adolf Hitler as “the repository of past wrongs and shame.”  

As I see it, the more we learn about the motives and personalities of past political extremists, the better we will be prepared to overcome the threats of enemies yet unborn.  Recently I heard it observed that as much as we learn from the legitimate testimony of the victims of crime, we learn even more by taking into account the motives and circumstances of those who act against us, not as a mitigating excuse for their deeds, but as instructive causes for their actions.

That is precisely why the motives and forces compelling yesterday’s enemies may be among our best allies as we seek to master today’s conflicts.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY