Yesterday I had a long conversation with a person who was trying to make sense of the Freddie Gray riots in Maryland and the Mike Brown riots in Ferguson. The person had moved from Baltimore to Utah in reaction to the high crime rate.
The point I tried to make in the conversation was that the political game being played between the left and right is not supposed to make sense.
The demonstrations prove that the left can get thousands of angry people marching in every state at the snap of a finger.
These protests are tempered by the fact that our Commander in Chief is a left wing community organizer.
The Alinsky model of community organization uses a network of activists and agitators to organize people into angry mobs. The community organizers occasionally flex their kollective muscle by marching mobs on the street. Scared politicians then give special favors to the people who control the machine.
The events that drive people to the street are unimportant. For that matter, community organization is most effective when the events really don't make sense.
Sadly, Mike Brown was acting like a thug on the day of his fatal encounter. Mr. Brown bullied a shop owner and was shot after bullying a police officer. Although I have a greatly concerned with the situation faced by black people in this nation, I don't find Mike Brown's case as compelling as say the case of Darien Hunt.
The Mike Brown case quickly became the catalyst for progressive protest precisely because the case was not compelling.
To understand this, one has to look back at the Alinsky Model. The Alinsky model is dependent on conservative reaction to a protest. When conservatives, and most objective viewers, look at the tape of Mike Brown robbing a store and pushing aside its owner, they see a thug. The investigation seems to show that Mr. Brown tried intimidating an officer during the arrest by taking his gun. This resulted in a fatal shooting.
Once conservatives are drawn into reaction, progressives can play off the reaction to deepen divisions.
This leads me back to an inherent problem with "conservatism."
"Conservatism" is a reactionary ideology that was created in England by the Tories in the early 1800s. Conservatives consolidate power by reacting to the actions of the progressive left.
This sets up an extremely dangerous system of action and reaction that can lead to societal break down and war.
The process of action and reaction in Europe led to two world wars in which hundreds of millions of people were killed.
The Ferguson and Baltimore riots were tempered by the fact that the Commander in Chief is a left wing community organizer who desperately wants to distance his administration from the riots.
The problem the GOP faces is that if we have a Republican who is aggressively promoting the label "conservative;" the left will be able to amplify the division until their protests are magnitudes greater than the current protests.
Progressivism had created a real problem.
IMHO, the first step to solving this problem is for Republicans to recognize "conservatism" for what it is. Conservatism is a partisan ideology developed by the Tories. The Conservative Party was created from the Tory Party in the 1830s. English Conservatives still call themselves Tories.
The Tories were the people who fought against the American Revolution. Both the US Founders and the GOP came from the Whig Party.
The really sad truth is that the term "conservatism" was popularized during the Civil Rights Movement. The GOP deployed the term "conservative" to attract Southerners who were disaffected by the Civil Rights Movement (The Dixiecrats).
Not only does the term "conservative" come from the Tories. The term "conservative" is directly associated with negative reaction to the Civil Rights Movement.
Looking back at the 2012 primary campaign we see that GOP candidates engaged in a shrill debate about which candidate was the most severely conservative. The Republican Party then lost the election.
The term "conservative" turned millions of voters from the GOP and handed Barrack Obama a second term.
Imagine the improvement that would take place if Republican candidates wholeheartedly rejected the label "conservative" and concentrated on the ideals of the United States and the liberating aspects of the Party of Lincoln.
Distancing the GOP from the term "conservative" would reduce the ability of the left to raise people in protest and it would soften the effects of action/reaction politics that occur within the left/right split.
The GOP has married a term that no only is diametrically opposed to the ideals of the US Founders. The GOP has married a term that amplified division in Europe until Europe was ripped apart by war. The GOP has married a term that directly undermines its century old tradition of supporting civil liberties and human rights.
The GOP has married a term that drives millions of people away from the Republican Party and its vision of liberty.
The GOP has married a term that causes the GOP to lose election after election and puts our nation into the hands of the worst elements of the progressive left.
The biggest improvement that the Republican Party could make in the lead up to 2016 would be to divorce itself from a term which was coined by the Tories in an effort to rebrand the Tory Party as modern.
In conclusion. The protests in Baltimore and Ferguson make little sense to Conservatives. The idiotic decision that the GOP made in turning its back on liberating history of the Party of Lincoln to accept the ideals of the Tories makes even less sense.
Left/Right politics is absurdity on steroids.
