A Proposal for Republicans

I've always thought of myself as a Democrat, though my wing of the party -- the originals -- is largely dead. Republicans haven't been much good except for Reagan, not in office; some of them were good in uniform. But it's a difficult time, and perhaps reform is possible.



It's a three point plan.

1) Insist on absolute equality under the law: everyone has exactly and only the same rights. "A colorblind meritocracy."

2) Defend freedom of speech, and not just in terms of the First Amendment but broadly. "Americans have the absolute right to tell the truth."

3) Serve the interests of normal, ordinary people.

Number three is an interesting one; Jimbo has been bending my ear about it for years. It's true that as early as Woodstock -- earlier, I suppose, since the easy reference implies it had been in common usage -- it was ordinary for the American left to define themselves as "freaks." They've marched through a mainstreaming of a lot of what used to be considered freakish behavior: drugs, especially marijuana; radical feminism -- just last week the SCUM manifesto was in the news again; homosexuality, which is now as normal as being a married couple of any kind; currently they're running up on the rocks of the transgender problem, which is a thorny one because it is objectionable to both the feminists and the kind of gays who really did want to be accepted as ordinary married folks.

What if you just wanted to be a cowboy? Or just a guy who raised his family -- you know, the kind of family you produced naturally, with a real man and a real woman bringing forth ordinary children? Maybe you adhere to one of the ancient faiths that don't support all this freakishness, of which there are some several?

I personally have a soft spot for the freaks; I don't dislike them. They probably aren't the right people to have power, though, if indeed anyone is. The best thing is to reduce the incidence of power so that people are left minding their own business by default -- and if they choose freakish business, well, that's theirs and not mine.

Still I think there's something to be said for the proposal of defending normality, though it's a slippery philosophical project and needs limits. It's good to have left/right limits and freedom to maneuver at will between them; it's not good to have any sort of crushing conformity. The project to make people mind their business leads to room for the freaks, but also for the ordinary people who just want to do what they learned from their ancestors. Just let 'em be. They know what they're doing; they're doing the thing that worked for a thousand generations. They'll be all right.

The freaks probably won't be, frankly, because they're running against the received lessons of generations. But that's their lookout. If we can just get them to the place where they stop butting into everyone else's business, they can go run their hazards as they please.