Herschel Walker gave the best concession speech I have ever heard —I paraphrase: There are no excuses, thank you, this is a time for reflection. So, I shall reflect on what happened in the disastrous Republican mid-terms and give an opinion about how we should move forward.
First, we don’t know who we are. For many in the conservative movement, our cause became more about a man than it did about our principles. Mr. Trump showed us that we are now the party of the family, the blue-collar worker, the farmer—in short, we are the party of the “doers” not intellectuals (theorists). We live lives of action and are not theorists with abstract ideas. We are stewards with a work ethic who respect and acknowledge God. Our reality and ethics are grounded in Christian-Judeo and Natural Law Principles. Thank you, Donald Trump, for teaching us that it is not enough to win the argument—we must start WINNING, period. We are a political movement based on ideas, not a person. We must move on and move forward with our movement.
Republicans in general and conservatives specifically have lost focus. We have tried to endear ourselves to the media and intellectual classes who not only despise our ideas, but they also despise us. Try saying Merry Christmas or God Bless You to a liberal progressive. They have already lost the argument many times over. Their ideas never work, so their only recourse is to attack us—homophobe, racist, bigot, or CHRISTIAN.
The predicate for their positions is the three cousins of “modernism—intellectualism—scientism” upon which socialist and Marxist movements have been founded. All the “isims” have been fathered by atheist ideas. Tolerance for the views of others is not the realm of the atheist. Look where atheists have ruled in just the last 150 years—Fascist Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao, and Xi’s China. There is one idea that is central to modernism in all its’ iterations and that is that one can separate actions from the result of actions, and that one can separate theory from practice. Tell that to a plumber, carpenter, auto mechanic, physicist, farmer, or fishermen. Only a college professor, media info person, welfare legit, or politician could believe such a thing.
As an aside one can see below two studies one done by Neil Nevitt in Research Gate and the other by Mitchell Langbert of the American Association of Scholars that show how religious and political views line up in the worlds of academia as compared to religious and political beliefs with the public. Certainly no “equity or equality” in academia regarding political or religious ideology. It is interesting to note that only in the disciplines of business, nursing, and the hard sciences—except for some reason mechanical engineering, do the religious views of those in the academy line up with the general public—those who pay most of their salaries with their taxes. It is just as important to note that there is almost a new awakening in the basic sciences—especially physics. Please take the time to read or at least Google Harold Schroeder’s GENESIS AND THE BIG BANG, written by an MIT PHD physicist who is also a Jewish Rabbi.
The difference in the end seems to be those with “skin in the game”, those whose ideas when tested have immediate ramifications, have a more Conservative Christian perspective. The baker who bakes a bad loaf of bread or the plumber who can’t fix your sink won’t survive for very long if he keeps practicing the same theories that don’t work. Only in the world of the modernist are theories allowed to go untested for generations, and when the reality of the theory is presented, it is rationalized away so that a political narrative and power will be allowed to support those who are in control of our political and economic futures.
Our message heretofore has been to those who are professionally slanted and whose only skin in the game is their own power, causing great harm without any accountability, holding on by their fingernails to their most important possession— a disproven political narrative. “There are those who teach and those who do and often times those who teach are afraid (take risks) to do”
Our message should be to families—mothers and fathers and their children, to entrepreneurs, small businesspeople, tradesmen, farmers, and ranchers. What do those groups all have in common? They have taken risks with their lives. Think about the risk of choosing to be a parent or starting a business or planting a crop or investing in livestock. It is the people who take risks with the hope but not the guarantee for a better future that we should be looking at to include in our Christian conservative tent. These are the people who by lifting their lives they lift everyone. These are the people that create goods and services that make our lives better but also jobs. Government transfer payments to individuals or large corporations (hospital systems for example) create nothing—they are a cost on the labor of those people who pay taxes (the group identified above). Politicians and those in the media and academia have controlled the debate for too long. We should stop trying to be “like them”. Democrat and many Republican progressive liberals fall into this trap.
My hope for our Idaho “Citizen Legislature” is that they remain true to Idahoans’ values. I hope they focus on “endearing themselves” to WE THE PEOPLE—those with “skin in the game” and not to the lobbyist corporatist like the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI), or the IHA (Idaho Hospital Association), IMA (Idaho Medical Association), or the IEA(Idaho Education Association).
I will believe it when I see it. “Those who talk should do, and only those who do should talk”. Isn’t that what a “citizen legislature” is all about?
Herschel Walker spent his adult life in sports and in two businesses. He is a “risk taker”. Many people didn’t listen, nor do they appreciate or understand the virtue of taking risks. His opponent was a “talker”, not a “doer”. Too many people don’t understand the difference.
