Purity v. Principle

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

One of the burning issues of the first two years of the Carter Administration was the wisdom of the proposed treaty to transfer sovereignty and control of the Panama Canal to Panama. It not only divided the political parties, but it also deeply divided Republicans and prominent conservatives. For instance, John Wayne, a public supporter of the treaty, vehemently and publicly disagreed with his old friend, Ronald Reagan, who was the most vocal opponent of the treaty. Another Reagan friend, William F. Buckley, Jr., strongly supported the treaty and challenged Reagan to a televised debate on a special two-hour edition of Buckley’s show, Firing Line, before the Senate ratification debate.

Anyone who watched that debate on TV, or listened to it on radio, in January, 1978, has a vivid memory of one of the greatest public debates of our lifetime. Not only was Buckley pitted against Reagan in an impressive debate when the oratorical skills of both were at their zenith, but their seconds were impressive, too: including George Will, Pat Buchanan, James Burnham, and Admirals Elmo Zumwalt and John McCain, Jr. (the father of Senator McCain). The moderator was Sam Ervin, who just a few years before had chaired the Senate investigation of the Watergate scandal. (As an aside, it amazed me during the 1980 campaign how many people believed either John Anderson or Jimmy Carter would beat Reagan in a debate, and how many people were shocked when he won both debates—I guess they either hadn’t seen, or had forgotten, his performance against Buckley.)

Though the Firing Line debate arguably ended in a masterful draw, the Senate ratified the treaty, and Reagan seemed to be defeated on the national stage for the second time in two years. As Buckley later wryly noted, however:

Reagan was, as a prophet, simply mistaken. And I, for my part, did not go on to be president.

In the meantime, they both remained the closest of friends—personally and politically—for the rest of their lives.

And that is the point of telling this story.

We Republicans—we conservatives—have become a rather schizophrenic lot over these last 33 years since Buckley and Reagan debated: we revere and promote principles of individualism and liberty for our country and for mankind; and yet, we demand a form of orthodox purity from each other on every conceivably important political issue. I don’t think we can have it both ways and still remain political friends and allies, let alone form a long-term, effective governing majority party.

Over the last few years, as I’ve taken public stands on issues and ruffled some feathers, I’ve been derided as a libertarian, a moderate, a Christian conservative, a RINO, a Tea Partier, a liberal, a social conservative, an economic conservative, a neo-conservative, a limited-government conservative, even a Democrat (just to list a few of the labels that are clean enough to post on this website)—and these labels came from fellow Republicans. My wife and I would always laugh about all of this, because what it really reflected was the independence of my spirit, and how hard it is for some Republicans now to deal with someone like me.

So, let me be clear—for the umpteenth time—what I am, and what I always have been, is a Republican. Because of my independence of mind and judgment, I, like you, think through each issue based on my core conservative principles and come to positions that I then strongly support. I, like you, care about some issues more than others. My pet issues are education and national defense, and my concern for these different issues leads me to want strong and effective local leadership to address education while wanting strong and effective national leadership to address our national defense. To some my desire for strong and effective government locally and nationally at the same time is inconsistent, but I can complete this circle because of my understanding of the Founders’ idea of federalism and the different spheres of responsibility for each level of government.

Whether we like to admit it or not, we all share commitments to different pet issues, and we all come to positions that, to others, might seem politically inconsistent. Over time, some of us have gotten our pet issues written into our party platforms at the state and national level. That’s not a problem; in fact, it’s a good thing, because the aggregate contained in these platforms reflects the broad consensus within the party at any given time on the issues of the day. It is important to document this consensus so our elected officials and candidates have guidance as to that consensus; and it is important to remind our elected officials and candidates that they should heed that guidance or explain pretty clearly to us what conservative principles they are using to deviate from it.

The problem comes when we try to read the planks of a platform, or impose fidelity to our own pet issues, as if they are the political equivalent of verses of scripture—like an inerrant political Word. As I’ve said in other posts over the years, Republicans aren’t sheep and we aren’t jackasses—that's the other party. Instead, we’re pretty ornery and independent-minded elephants, who are proud and stable beings who care for our herd, but who don’t want someone else’s political litmus test or pet issue imposed like a yoke upon us.

So, why do so many of us want to impose such rigid purity of thought on our fellow Republicans? Think about this—if each of our own pet issues and ideas must be considered as the scripture for the party that must be followed literally without deviation, can we ever really form a lasting and strong political party with those who disagree with some of our verses? Instead, aren’t we going to break-apart into smaller and smaller units with narrower and narrower agendas, until we can not elect anyone who will have the political support to make the fundamental and innovative changes we so desperately need? Isn’t this drive toward purity what is really behind the effort to label every Republican we disagree with as a RINO? If we are all RINOs to each other, are there any Republicans left?

To bring this post back full circle, will our future Buckleys and Reagans be allowed to hold opposing positions on the important issues of the day and still remain friends and allies, let alone be called “conservative” or "Republican"? Heck, will we even attract future Buckleys and Reagans to our party if we continue down this road?

The problem I am discussing is a problem Reagan and his generation foresaw, and it’s why they embraced principles, rather than orthodoxies or ideologies.

So, as our newly-elected representatives in Austin and Washington debate the issues before them, and as we start evaluating candidates for 2012, let’s not impose on them our own litmus tests, and let’s not call them “traitors” or threaten them with retaliation if they deviate from a platform plank. Instead, let’s tell them that it is alright to debate and disagree on how to use our conservative principles to solve the problems we face, and then let’s encourage them to debate the potential answers on immigration, the budget, ballot security, national security, the wars, foreign affairs, and many other issues guided by our platforms, but governed by our principles.

If we follow that path, I believe we eventually will get some great and innovative solutions based on our conservative principles—just like the solutions Buckley and Reagan worked together to give us a generation ago.

Renew the PATRIOT Act—all of it, now

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

Although many Americans are understandably weary of war after over 9 years of armed conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and against terrorist cells here at home and throughout the world, we need to remember that those of us, who have not served in combat (or who have not had loved ones serving in combat) during these years since we were attacked on 9/11, have had to sacrifice relatively little—other than inconveniences when we travel by air.

We haven’t been subject to a draft. We haven’t had to buy war bonds or pay a surtax to fund the war. We haven’t had to serve on local draft boards or civil defense teams. We haven’t been asked to turn our homes into boarding houses for soldiers and sailors awaiting deployment. We haven’t had tires, gasoline or groceries rationed, or had to turn in metal for industrial use. We haven’t been subject to movies and radio programs that were required to carry pro-war content in every film or broadcast. We haven’t been subject to blackouts, curfews, or air-raid drills. We haven’t been threatened with arrest for speaking against the war, or against either the Bush or Obama Administrations. We haven’t had our civil liberties suspended. We haven’t been gathered and placed in detention camps because our last names sounded Arabic.

In short, we’ve had it pretty easy while our country has been defended these last 9 years, compared to the sacrifices imposed on earlier generations of Americans during wartime. In the meantime, the defense and intelligence apparatus that we built with our tax dollars after World War II has worked night and day to keep us safe against an army that wore no uniform and knew no boundary. Added to that defense after 9/11 were additional authorizations to conduct wartime surveillance and searches, which were contained in a statute known as the PATRIOT Act.

Thankfully, a solid majority of the U.S. House of Representatives understood that we are still at war, and that there is still a need to conduct the wartime surveillance and searches authorized by that act. Those representatives voted yesterday to fully reauthorize the PATRIOT Act. Unfortunately, a surprising number of Republicans voted against reauthorization, so now the bill will have to come before the House under rules that will allow for amendments, and many Republicans intend to offer or support amendments that will dilute or remove key provisions of the Act.

Although the implementation of such authority to wiretap or search personal conversations and conduct carries the risk of making mistakes that could embarrass or harass innocent individuals—and I am sure mistakes have been made—it is a testament to the professional work of the men and women in our defense, intelligence and homeland security establishment, that few if any of us have been, or know anyone who has been, subject to surveillance or search under this Act. In fact, the lawsuits that have been brought against the Act have been brought by people who thought they could have been, or could be searched or wiretapped, but who had no proof that they had been. This is a far different experience from those who, during past conflicts, really had their liberties trampled through arrests, mass suspension of civil liberties, or mass detentions.

However, there are those who say that it doesn’t matter how professionally the authority has been exercised, because any compromise of liberty—no matter how theoretical or attenuated, and regardless of the existence of a war—is indefensible. These people then love to spout the following quote in support of their position that the Founders would never agree to such limits on their liberties:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Those who use this quote in this way are just plain wrong. In fact, the circumstances that led to the making of that statement show it was never intended to address this type of issue.

This quote appeared in the preface to a work published in London by Benjamin Franklin in 1759, for the purpose of educating members of Parliament and other political leaders about the need to support the defense of the colonies against the French and their Native American allies during the Seven Years’ War (what we often refer to as “the French and Indian War”). Although the quote is often attributed to Franklin, its actual authorship is unclear, because it comes from a letter prepared in 1755 by the colonial Assembly of Pennsylvania and addressed to the colonial Governor.

In 1755, the colonists that had settled western Pennsylvania had come under constant attack from French forces, and the local tribes aligned with the French. The colonists' situation had become dire, so they asked for money from the colonial government to fund the purchase of arms for themselves, or to pay for arming local tribes that were loyal to the British, in order to defend their homes and settlements against further attack. The Assembly did not have the resources for such an expenditure, so it prepared the letter to the Governor, in which the Assembly asked the Governor to obtain funding from the Penn family for the defensive arms.

Remember that Pennsylvania contained a large number of Quakers and others who opposed armed conflict. Among these groups, opposition to such funding quickly arose. They advocated that peace could be achieved through negotiation and trade with the Native American tribes loyal to the French, rather than through armed aggression.

The sentence contained in the Assembly’s letter was meant as a derisive response to the pacifist. It was intended to challenge the notion that the survival of the liberty of the colonists could be allowed to hinge on the success of appeasing the enemy tribes. In fact, the proper way to read the quote would be to reconstruct it as follows:

Those who would buy temporary safety, and avoid defending their liberty, by appeasing the enemy, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Understood in this way, the statement by the Assembly is a declaration for the essential right or “liberty” of self-defense—individually and collectively—in a time of war. It is consistent with the position taken by Lincoln, FDR, and George W. Bush when our country has come under attack. Moreover, it is consistent with the swift, if not more extreme measures the Washington and Adams Administrations took in the face of potential civil war and war with France—and they were Founding Fathers. The statement does not defend neutering the ability of the country to defend itself, so some of us can rest at night believing that our phone calls to Europe, or our public library accounts, are secure from government surveillance to stop a wartime attack.

Just as I’ve said in prior posts that we need to grow-up and take responsibility for our selves and our communities if we are ever to dig ourselves out of the domestic whole we are in, we need to grow-up and realize that we are still at war. War requires sacrifice and a commitment to defend yourself, your neighbor and your country. That sacrifice and commitment means that sometimes you will need to take actions that would not be necessary or tolerated in peace time. If you are not willing to defend yourself, your neighbor or your nation in this way, then you deserve neither the liberty nor the safety you crave.

To those Representatives who voted to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act, and to those who support them, I say “thank you, and keep up the fight.” To those who oppose reauthorization to protect an international phone call or library check-out you might make someday, I say “grow-up, and thank your lucky stars that our parents and grandparents weren’t this selfish.”

Climate Change—What if the environmentalists are wrong?

This post originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

Yesterday, our EPA Administrator attempted, yet again, to justify the “science” of “man-made climate change,” and the need for regulations to protect us all from its consequences.

I’ve been concerned for some time about one question related to this issue:

What if the environmentalists are just fundamentally wrong?

I think we all need to take a deep breath and look at everything that is in motion and think about this issue, before we go so far down the path that the environmentalists are promoting that we can’t find our way back.

A generation ago our lakes were so foul that dead fish regularly washed-up on beaches, and at least one of the Great Lakes actually caught fire. The air in some cities was so dirty that skylines were shrouded from view. I don’t think anyone who remembers those conditions can seriously disagree with the fact that the environmental laws from the 1970’s, which were designed to reduce pollution in our water and air, have worked. The questions now are

• “Is there really a problem justifying the proposed regulation?”

• “Is the problem really within the competence of government to address?” and

• “How much, if any, more regulation is needed?”

Unfortunately, there has always been a tendency toward exaggeration among environmentalists—and some of the exaggerations have had disastrous results. For example, the lauded Rachel Carson talked about the dangers of an imminent “silent spring” caused by pesticides, such as DDT. The sensation caused by her report led to the banning of DDT use throughout the world. The problem is that, not only was the danger overblown, but DDT was the only effective killer of the mosquito that bred malaria. Literally millions of children died in Africa, and other Equatorial regions, over the last 40 years because of the DDT ban.

Now, the current debate has changed from cleaning our water and air, and keeping them clean, to protecting the entire planet from man. To be fair, the environmentalists aren’t the first people who’ve argued that man is going to destroy himself and the planet if he isn’t brought to heel, as promoters of Malthusian calculations, Eugenics, and anti-natilism have argued over the last two centuries that the growth of the human population was squeezing the life out of the planet. It’s just that the environmentalists seem to have been embraced by the mainstream of our society in a way that the other loony movements never were.

The current argument goes something like this: the cumulative effect of decades of burning fossil fuels has led to an environmental “tipping point” (ah, another “tipping point”), and further fossil-fuel emissions are leading to drastic changes in the climate that will hasten a new “hot” age when the ice caps melt, the oceans rise, and life on our planet as we know it will disappear. In fact, proponents of this theory argue that their computer models show that these changes have been occurring since the middle of the 1800s, coinciding with the increase burning of fossil-fuels as the Industrial Revolution exploded across the Northern Hemisphere.

Of course many of these same researchers, or their mentors, argued in the late 1970s that fossil fuels were causing “global cooling” evidenced then by very harsh winters, and they recently have been caught discussing in emails how they have to continue manipulating the data to advance their cause. Moreover, they seem to ignore the possibility that the planet is still in the early stages of a natural warming period following several “cold” centuries that ended in the mid-1800s. But, we are supposed to forget all of that now (and ignore the colder winters we've been having lately in the Northern Hemisphere) and embrace the idea of “global warming” or “man-made climate change,” and all of the taxes, bureaucracies, and costs that will come with national and international regulations from the elites who are going to save us—whether we like it or not. I am sorry, but the skeptic in me has to ask: “Does anyone hear Chicken Little chirping?”

Unfortunately, the current rush toward regulations like “cap and trade” started when the Supreme Court added legitimacy to this nonsense a few years ago. In a 5-4 opinion, the Court ruled that the EPA must revisit its decision not to regulate the emission of greenhouse gases. Let’s just look at what the Supreme Court did and the evidence it relied upon, and I think it will become obvious that a review of the “evidence” discussed by the Court’s majority raises more questions than it answers.

To explain an opinion like this is always to oversimplify, but it is important to understand the general reasoning the Court used in order to understand the potential impact of this decision on future regulations. To get to its decision, the majority found that

• the EPA was provided with sufficient evidence of a probability that the theory of global warming is correct (which, by the way, is a lower threshold of probability required for the admission of scientific evidence in a court of law—but that’s a “whole ‘nother” issue);

• there was sufficient evidence of a probability that man-made CO2 emitted in car exhaust contributes to the cause of global warming; and

• a state (in this case, Massachusetts) could sue the EPA to require it to regulate car-emitted CO2 because that state’s coastline could be altered in the future if there is global warming.

The majority then construed the statutory definition of “air pollutants” to include greenhouse gases (which include CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and hydro fluorocarbons). The dissenters filed two dissents: Chief Justice Roberts challenged the state’s right to sue the federal government based on a hypothetical chance that its coastline could someday be lost; while Justice Scalia challenged the merits of the Court’s reasoning.

Three general propositions of the global warming theory were significant to the Court’s majority:

• CO2 is released from the surface and lower atmosphere faster than it is released from the upper atmosphere into space;

• as a result, CO2 accumulates in the upper atmosphere in greater quantities than the amounts being produced in the lower atmosphere at any given time; and

• the present rate of accumulation in the upper atmosphere adversely affects surface climate.

Now, before I go further, let me digress for a moment to discuss the upper atmosphere at issue. It is important to remember that the lower atmosphere is where you and I live, and it contains the air that we breathe. Meanwhile, the upper atmosphere at issue—specifically, the Thermosphere—is the portion of our atmosphere between 60 to 400 miles from the surface of our planet where our satellites and the Space Station orbit the Earth. It is the Thermosphere that traps greenhouse gases, naturally, in order to properly regulate our surface temperature and shield us from the sun’s ultraviolet rays and radiation. The density of the Thermosphere is affected by both its CO2 levels and solar activity, and there appears to be a relationship between those two variables.

Alright…back to the Court’s opinion. Based on the general propositions, the majority considered evidence of increasing levels of CO2 in the upper atmosphere measured since 1959 at an observatory in Hawaii, in comparison with samples of “ancient air” in the lower atmosphere taken from ice core samples in the Antarctic. Although measurements of CO2 in the lower atmosphere, including “ancient air,” had remained “fairly consistent” over time, a comparison of the highest of those measurements ever recorded to recent measurements of the Thermosphere from Hawaii showed that the recent measurements from the Thermosphere were greater than the highest measurements from the “ancient air” on the surface. Relying on this comparison of CO2 measurements, in conjunction with recorded surface temperature changes, the majority found that there was sufficient scientific evidence on which the EPA could determine that a causal link existed between CO2 increases in the upper atmosphere and increases in surface temperatures, so as to require it to regulate car-emitted CO2 as an air pollutant.

Does anybody else see any problems here?

If CO2 emissions have been increasing from cars and industry (and the respiration from an exploding human population has been increasing), than, all things being equal, the measurements in the lower atmosphere should have increased steadily over the last two centuries—rather than remain “fairly consistent”.

Based on the general propositions underlying the theory, how can “fairly consistent” measurements of CO2 on the surface cause an increased accumulation of CO2 in the Thermosphere?

If CO2 in the lower atmosphere has been “fairly consistent” while it has risen in the Thermosphere, the cause of any rise in the Thermosphere could be attributable to factors other than CO2 emissions from Earth, and such potential causes are not being properly addressed by the government scientists or agencies. For example, several organizations and universities in the U.S. and Europe are studying the apparent relationship between increased solar activity, the occurrence of the El Nino Southern Oscillation, and the increase in CO2 in the Thermosphere (which have tended to correlate closely over the last several decades--even more closely than the rise in industrial emissions), but the EPA appears not to be interested in addressing these other potential causes in its regulatory decision-making process. (Moreover, some scientists in the U.S. and Europe, believe that the climate issue is largely irrelevant, and are looking at whether the rising level of CO2 in the Thermosphere is changing the density of that atmosphere to the extent that the ability of our satellites and the Space Station to remain in their controlled orbits is being impacted.)

I don’t pretend to know more than any of these scientists, and I admit that the climate scientists could be right and that all my questions are either irrelevant or based on a misreading of the evidence. In fact, some people I know and trust believe that there is a significant link between man-made CO2 and climate change, especially as CO2 relates to the increase of water vapor in the atmosphere. Moreover, it does make some anecdotal sense that urbanization including the expansion of the footprint of concrete and steel over the surface of the earth over the last century, could have increased the earth’s temperature—at least in urban areas. Our inclination to believe such anecdotal evidence is reinforced by the physical changes to the icecaps, the sea levels, and the land masses, that are consistent with a process of planetary change. But the more I look at this evidence, the more skeptical I get that man is the root cause of the changes we are observing.

Because of this skepticism, I want to raise this issue—we need to all stop and think with some humility about what will happen over the next few decades if the environmentalists are wrong. What if the sky is not falling? What if the Earth is simply in the midst of a general warming period that will last for several centuries?

Here are the potential problems I see:

• We are expanding the role of a federal agency beyond its original statutory mandate, and the government’s competence to regulate.

• We are expanding the role of government exponentially, which could radically change our lives over the next few decades.

• We are increasing significantly and artificially the cost of living, which could significantly lower or slow the standard of living throughout the world over the next century.

• While we focus on regulating all activity creating CO2, what issues won’t we be addressing—like energy independence, national security, and protection of future generations and coastal areas from real long-term climate changes?

But from an even broader perspective, the havoc we may wreak upon the future won’t be just economic, legal, or political—mankind has survived those "dark ages" before. What I am most concerned about is the ultimate “unintended consequence”--we could damage the very planet we think we are saving:

• What if the release of these greenhouse gases periodically has to increase, in order to keep the life-sustaining capacity of the planet in balance as it orbits the sun, and as the shape of that orbit changes over centuries and millennia?

• What if the “consistency” in CO2 measurements while man-made CO2 has increased is actually evidence that man-made production has moderated an otherwise more significant decline in natural CO2 production over the last century?

• How will we know what the proper amount of each gas should be at any given time to keep the planet in some desired, long-term balance?

• How will we ever know when to stop regulating, so that we don’t deprive the atmosphere of enough gas to protect us from the sun?

• Do we really trust man with the power to make these types of decisions?

Man has never displayed the type of wisdom necessary to acquire or properly use this type of information. Won’t man try to keep the Earth in a type of temperate moderation—or in a suspended state as he now knows it—which will make his life happy, rather than allow the natural environmental changes that the planet needs to sustain life?

Could we now be giving in to our deepest vanity--to think we have damaged the world, and now we must correct it by controlling its very essence?

At the very least, with so much going on across the world right now, let’s think this issue through very carefully before we take actions for which our children will pay dearly if we are wrong.

The Middle East—What can we do?

This post originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

I am convinced that our lives inhabit three dimensions of history at the same time: the dimension of our daily lives and decisions; the dimension of the lives of our community, nation and world during the time in which we live; and the dimension of history that started long before we were born and will continue long after we pass. Once in a while, all three dimensions reach a crossroad or tipping point at the same time, and with such force, that literally the entire course of history is susceptible of changing.

With everything we’ve been through over the last few years, it sure seems that we may be careening toward one of those rare moments when everything could change.

For instance, when I saw the news coming from the Middle East over the last few weeks—first, Tunisia, then Lebanon, then Yemen, then Egypt, and now, possibly, Jordan—I began to think that we may (and I stress the word “may”) be seeing a glimpse of a true moment in history when everything is changing: the way we live our daily lives; the structure of our communities, nation and world; and the forces of history that have slowly moved for decades, if not centuries.

If this is happening, how do we make sense of what has started in the Middle East? I don’t pretend to be an expert in this area, and talking heads abound on cable and the internet who are, but I want to share some very general guide-posts with you about how us novices can process what we are seeing and be informed when our politicians and the experts talk about what American policy should be going forward.

Let’s start with the basics—what is the “Middle East”? In many ways we use the term “Middle East” to describe the area of the world containing those nations where the state religion or the culture of the society is dominated by the practice of Islam—with one key exception, Israel. If we use the term “Middle East” in this way, it covers a contiguous region of the Earth running from the Atlantic side of Africa, around the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and across the Indian Ocean to the end of the land masses of Asia and Australia. It is virtually self-contained between the Prime Meridian (0 degrees longitude) going east to the International Date line (with the sole exception of Morocco, which lies to the west of the Prime Meridian), and between 15 degrees latitude south of the Equator to 45 degrees latitude north of the Equator.

Ethnically, the region can be divided into a Western region, which is dominated by Arab peoples, but which also includes Kurds, Turks, and some non-Arab African peoples; and an Eastern region, which is made up of many different ethnicities, including Persians, and the many indigenous peoples of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the former Soviet Republics that border those countries, Northern India, Western China, and Indonesia.

Religiously, except for Israel, the nations that comprise this “Middle East” recognize Islam as either a state religion, or as the dominant religion practiced by its people. Many of these nations have adopted Islamic or “Sharia” law, generally or specifically, as the law of the state.

Although the dominance of Islam unites all of the nations of this region (again, except for Israel), no one state has ever governed the entire area at the same time. However, as late as World War I, much of this region was ruled by the Ottoman Empire under a Caliphate, which could be described roughly as the Islamic equivalent of both a feudal King and a Pope. Most of the modern political nation states of this region were created by four events in the 20th Century: the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Caliphate as part of the negotiated settlement of World War I; the creation of the State of Israel, and the partition of India in the late 1940s; and the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Politically, most of the territory (other than certain non-Arab African states) can be described as being split among the following groups: The secular governments of Turkey, Bosnia, Albania and Kosovo; and the remaining monarchies that were created by the settlement of World War I; those governments run by pan-Arab, nationalist, or Islamist movements, which overthrew some of the monarchies created after World War I; and the governments that arose in Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the former Soviet Republics.

It appears that what we are witnessing is an attempt to dismantle the remnants of the monarchies created after World War I, and the authoritarian regimes that formed the first-generation of nationalist movements after World War II. To put this into perspective, let me digress for a moment.

About 70 years ago, during the early months of our country’s involvement in World War II, FDR sent Wendell Willkie, the 1940 Republican Presidential nominee, on a fact-finding tour of the Britain, the Middle East, Russia and China. After that tour, Willkie wrote an account of his tour and his observations about the current situation and the post-war challenges America would face, entitled One World. In his chapter about his Middle East tour, Willkie discussed the growing discontent with the monarchies that had been imposed on the region and with the continued outside supervision by the European powers, which also led to a leeriness of embracing the U.S. because of its close ties to the occupying European powers. He also discussed the emerging nationalist sentiments that were driving many people opposed to the monarchies and continued British and French occupation to support Germany. Toward the end of the chapter, he made the following observation:

…these newly awakened people will be followers of some extremist leader in this generation if their new hunger for education and opportunity for a release from old restrictive religious and governmental practice is not met by their own rulers and their foreign overlords. The veil, the fez, the sickness, the filth, the lack of education and modern industrial development, the arbitrariness of government, all commingled in their minds to represent a past imposed upon them by a combination of forces within their own society and the self-interest of foreign domination.

The question that Willkie kept hearing was “which side will Americans take when the people finally seek change: the side of the foreign and domestic overlords; or the side of the people?” He foresaw that the consequence of inaction or the wrong choice would be a rise of extremist leaders that would continue to impede the progress of the people of the region.

Alas, what Willkie foresaw came to pass. Either the monarchies continued with our support, or they were overthrown by extremists. The first wave of extremists were pan-Arabists in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, whose leaders had been aligned with Germany during World War II. Mubarak is the third leader from Nasser’s pan-Arab movement, which has controlled Egypt since it overthrew the monarchy in 1952. In Jordan, where protests have just led to the dismissal of the Cabinet, the King is one of the last monarchs left from the monarchies imposed after World War I.

So, what appears to be happening now is an attempt to overthrow remnants of either the monarchies, or the first wave of pan-Arab extremists who succeeded them. Unfortunately for our interests, though, the only indigenous organizations capable of assuming political power appear to be the second wave of extremists who have been waiting in the wings. This second wave of extremists are the Sunni and Shiite Islamists that have terrorized the region since the late 1970s, and which now control all or some of Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their strength also is reflected by the moves that the first-wave extremists in Syria (the Baathists) have made to survive by forging an alliance with Iran.

Now engraft on to this whole mess the geopolitical social issues of

• Oil;
• the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians;
• the proliferation of nuclear technology and weapons in the region;
• international terrorism spawned from failed nation states and non-state organizations in the region;
• our continued military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan;
• our debt being held, in part, by sovereign funds of some of the remaining monarchies in the region; and
• the growing use of the cable TV, internet and social media;

and we can see that the U.S. has very few good choices that it can make that will directly lead to a future for the people of this region free of extremist leaders, who will continue to impede freedom, education and opportunity.

But, we have to start somewhere, sometime to heed the advice that Wendell Willkie gave to America 70 years ago—we need to find a way to be on the side of the dreams of people of this region for freedom, education, and opportunity, rather than being perceived as siding with their monarchs or their extremists. We can not impose freedom, education, and opportunity like we tried in Iraq, and like foreign powers tried, to one degree or another, for centuries. Instead, we need to find a way through a mixture of trade, engagement, and security to help the people of that region build their own future.

I don’t know what the mix of right choices should be for this country right now, but I do know that if we are looking at one of those rare moments in history when everything changes and we make the wrong choices, the happiness and security of generations could be in peril.

On that note, I’ll end this post with a quote from John Adams that has kept me awake at night at times over the last 10 years.

Not long after September 11th, 2001, I was reading my self to sleep one night with David McCullough’s John Adams, when I started a short passage about the Barbary Pirates. McCullough recounted an episode that occurred shortly after Adams became Ambassador to Great Britain in 1785. At that time American shipping was being harassed by the pirates loyal to the Barbary States, and Adams was instructed to negotiate with their representatives. Adams engaged in discussions with the envoy of the Sultan of Tripoli, including a visit to the envoy’s home one evening in London. During their fireside discussion, the Sultan’s envoy told Adams that a state of war existed between America and Tripoli. This assertion took Adams by surprise, asking “how this could be, given there had been no injury, insult, or provocation of either side.” The next day the envoy visited Adams and told him that if a treaty were delayed, “a war between Christian and Christian was mild, prisoners were treated with humanity; but, warned His Excellency, a war between Muslim and Christian could be horrible.” In 1787, the United States signed a treaty with Morocco and paid protection money to the Barbary States to avert war, for, as Adams told Jefferson at the time, “[w]e ought not fight them at all, unless we determine to fight them forever.”

Whatever choices we make, we can not bequeath to our children a perpetual war with the Middle East.

We can not wait to re-organize--the time is now!

This post originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

This past Tuesday was an active and interesting day. First, I attended the Greater Houston Pachyderm Club’s weekly luncheon and heard the CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership discuss issues related to the future of our community. Immediately after work, I visited with some friends at a fundraiser for a local official, where the key topics were redistricting, the initial proposed budget out of Austin, and the state of our mental-health system. Next, I attended the meet and greet for prospective GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain in Webster. Finally, I got home in time to see the end of the State of the Union speech and the responses. After absorbing all that I heard I have some thoughts to pass along.

Charles Dickens summarized the era of the French Revolution as follows:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way …

He then went on to say,

in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

I think Dickens’ summary could apply to this moment in our history, too. If we are to avoid the consequences of that time, figuratively and literally, we need to keep in mind some critical points:

• We indeed are at a “cross-roads” (or “tipping point,” or whatever metaphor you want to use to describe it this moment) in our history, and we are going to have to choose a turn in direction—staying on the same path is no longer a viable option;

• The problems we currently face with the current path have been in the making for over 100 years, and will not be fixed by making a quick turn in direction;

• There is no Golden Age or Dark Age in our country’s history, the narrative for which will give us absolute guidance in making our choice of direction, but the principles that helped guide the settlement and creation of this nation are still the most effective guardrails for the continuation of our journey;

• We must be bold and courageous in facing and making our choices, while avoiding reckless decisions that could imperil our future.

With these points in mind, I want to pull together some thoughts I have written about recently into a proposal for action in Texas for each of us to consider. But before I lay out that proposal, I want to digress for a moment to something our Founders said.

Immediately after the reference to our inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote the following sentence:

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Unfortunately, because the Declaration was written in the context of a revolution, whenever this sentence is quoted in the context of a policy debate, some people begin to fear that the speaker is advocating violent action against our government. But the Founders’ own use of this quote tells of a different intent. In at least three of the Federalist Papers, Madison and Hamilton both refer to this right “to alter or to abolish” the government, or even the Constitution itself, as a basic political right essential to republican government. In Federalist Paper No. 39, Madison discusses the provision in the Constitution providing for amendments as creating a blended process for altering or abolishing the Constitution involving both the people and the States. In Federalist Paper No. 40, Madison cites this right “to abolish or alter their governments” as providing the Philadelphia Convention with the authority it needed to draft a new Constitution, rather than just amend the Articles of Confederation. In Federalist Paper No. 78, Hamilton explains that, while the right to alter or abolish the Constitution rests with the people, neither the legislature, nor the courts can make laws that would violate the Constitution even if they say they are acting on behalf of a majority of the people.

Consistent with what the Founders said, I believe it is time for the people to demand that their elected representatives alter and re-organize government at all levels in a manner consistent with the original federal framework provided in the Constitution, which emphasized the primacy of local governance. This demand must be made knowing that the process will not be easy, and that it will take years—but it must start now. And Texas is the best laboratory in which to start the process.

To start this process, I urge the legislature to consider taking the following steps before the General Session ends in May:

• Adopt a budget based on the $72.2 billion revenue projection and on the current structure of our state and local governments through the next biennium; and, then,

• Begin the process of re-organizing the role of state and local governments from the bottom-up.

To accomplish the re-organization, I propose that the House and the Senate appoint a joint committee for re-organization, with sub-committees to address physical and mental health care, education, infrastructure, and the judicial and penal systems. Then, each sub-committee should work with a task force constituted as follows:

• For health-care, the task force should be comprised of county government officials, public hospital district administrators, and administrators of key charitable and educational hospital systems; and its focus should be on creating or maintaining community-centered hospitals and clinics as the primary vehicle for providing all public health care and financial assistance for health care in this state, and for establishing a local revenue stream for such a system to be administered at the county or regional level;

• For education, the task force should be comprised school board trustees and district superintendents, and community college trustees; and its focus should be on re-structuring the educational delivery system from the classroom up, on streamlining the school district network by breaking-up districts that are too large and combining those that are too small, on establishing a fair revenue stream derived from local or regional taxes to be collected and administered by the local governing bodies for the schools;

• For transportation, the task force should be comprised of city and county officials and transportation and flood control administrators; and its focus should be on streamlining the process for identifying local infrastructure needs and providing the local revenue streams and administration for such projects, and for the coordination of such projects with the transportation and infrastructure needs for the entire state; and

• For the judicial and penal systems, the task force should include county officials, judges, sheriffs, and jail administrators; and its focus should be on streamlining the appellate judiciary, reforming judicial selection, creating innovative monitoring systems for first-time offenders, and other issues to reduce the overall cost and increase the overall efficiency of the systems.

Then, based on the work of these sub-committees, a blueprint should be created for the next biennium that would redirect the administration, costs and taxes to as local a level as possible with as little state involvement or administrative overlap as possible. Each school district and county, as well as the state, should then be encouraged to create zero-based budgets based on this new blueprint, while the proper legislative committees should prepare enabling legislation or constitutional amendments that may be needed to implement the blueprint. This legislation should include a new sunset-review process that requires zero-based budgeting for each biennium at the state level, and zero-based budgeting at all levels of government.

I know, you’re now probably thinking that this can’t be done, so why even consider what I’ve just outlined. Well, consider this—three years ago, did you ever think we would win back the U.S. House of Representatives and gain a 101-seat majority in the Texas House? You see, the improbable can be accomplished if we have the will to do it.

If we don’t choose a path this bold, another path—the path of continued muddled, expensive and ever-expanding government—will destroy our economic future. The status quo is not only unacceptable, it is no longer viable. We must start down another path now. If we in Texas take this lead and show it can work, the nation will follow.

On the other hand, if you think we shouldn't take the path I’ve proposed, then what do you propose?

Some Perspective about Electability and Consistency

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

Well, we now are getting mercifully closer to the beginning of the voting in the Republican caucuses and primaries to choose our next Presidential Nominee. As I pointed out in a recent post about a focus-group we conducted at the last meeting of the Clear Lake Area Republicans, we Republicans share a lot of anxiety about this approaching election, because we sense that we are at a real tipping point in our history for many reasons. For this reason, we all are concerned about choosing the right candidate who will not only win in 2012, but who will lead a transformation of our political system based on conservative principles to fix the mess we face.

So, the concern of the moment, as Newt Gingrich sustains his improbable rise to the summit of the polls, is whether Newt can sustain the discipline he is showing, and whether he will be accepted by enough independent voters if he wins the GOP nomination to beat Obama and sweep other Republicans into Washington with him. With each passing day, we are being told that he can’t—by the media, by pollsters, by Democrats, and by virtually every Republican who considers themselves to be a leader within our party—while he keeps surging in the polls of GOP primary voters. Two recent images emerged from columns by Jonah Goldberg which aptly portray the anxiety many Republican leaders feel, when he described Newt as both a wild beast re-introduced to his natural habitat, and the re-incarnation of Godzilla (“Newtzilla”). It is this image of Newtzilla that is driving some pundits to start to encourage consideration of a third-party candidacy for Ron Paul, that is driving other pundits to beg voters to take a second look at Rick Perry and the rest of the field, and that is driving fundraisers to shovel money to Mitt Romney. “Newt hysteria” is the psychosis of the season for the Republican establishment.

With all this hyperventilation going on around us, it’s hard to maintain some perspective. But, with just a few weeks remaining before the voting begins, it’s time for all of us to take a deep breath for a moment, and then to remember that many of us have seen and heard all of this at least once before—and, when the dust settled that time, conservatism not only survived, it thrived for a generation.

As I wrote in my last post, it’s so hard now to objectively recall how Reagan was perceived at the end of 1979. When he gave the closing speech of the 1976 Republican Convention, most Republican leaders believed that they had finally vanquished the idea of a Reagan Presidency, and of a conservative ascendency within the party. Although Reagan’s ideas for a “New” Republican Party in 1977 were tolerated as they helped to mobilize conservatives for the mid-term elections, the party establishment believed he could be managed as an elder statesman. Even when he announced that he would seek the Presidency again in 1980, the party establishment did not take him seriously.

I encountered this attitude first-hand during my senior year of college in Rockford, Illinois. John Anderson was the local Congressman, and he had announced that he would run for the Republican nomination. At that time one of my mentors was the co-chair of John Anderson’s Presidential campaign, and he asked me to join the campaign to manage the national recruitment of college-student voters. I’ll never forget the reaction I got when, at the end of a meeting to discuss the offer, I told him and the others in attendance that I could not accept the position because I didn’t agree with Anderson and I was supporting Reagan. The incredulous, smug, and derisive reaction was something I will never forget, and not only my relationship with my mentor soon ended, but not long after that meeting I was asked to stop my work for Lynn Martin’s campaign to succeed Anderson in Congress (Martin later became Secretary of Labor under George H.W. Bush).

In the meantime, I recruited a handful of classmates to block-walk for Reagan, and to work for Reagan at polling places on the day of the Illinois primary in 1980. I’ll never forget one afternoon when I was at a grocery store wearing a Reagan pin, and one of the cashiers—a middle-aged woman—asked if I would wait a minute. She then gathered several of her co-workers and asked if I had more buttons, which I did, and I handed them out. She said her manager said it was “ok” to wear them, and they all put them on the lapels of their uniforms. As I left the store, she thanked me, and said they were praying that now was finally the time for Reagan. I knew that day that something extraordinary might happen that fall.

And, my gut was right—something extraordinary did happen that fall, as Reagan swept the nomination, swept the election, and swept in a Republican Senate for the first time since the Eisenhower years. But that process was not easy or pre-ordained. As much as no one wanted Carter re-elected—even Democrats—there was a lot of apprehension about Reagan until the very last week of the campaign when he debated Carter on national TV. It is hard to remember this now, but Ted Kennedy was leading all candidates of both parties in the polls at this time in 1979. The polls throughout 1980 would reflect a dissatisfaction with Carter, but a real apprehension of Reagan—which fueled Anderson’s ego enough to get him to run as an Independent. The following editorial cartoon reflects the mood and viewpoint of the country toward both Carter and Reagan as the election approached:

Look familiar? Today, in place of the Frankenstein image of Reagan from a generation ago, we are given the images of a wild beast and Godzilla from a fellow conservative to portray the current GOP frontrunner in an election cycle where most voters don’t want to re-elect the incumbent Democrat.

So, before we work ourselves into a frenzy of fear and anxiety, let’s step back. I don’t know if Newt will, or even should be, our nominee, but I don’t fear his candidacy. Nor will I allow myself to be torn with anxiety as the polls move all over the place next year. If he wins this nomination, he has a very realistic chance to win the race as the electorate evaluates his candidacy throughout the next year—even up to the eve of the election. I believe that we will not lose this election if Newt is nominated, but we will lose this election if we let the establishment’s concern over his electability pre-ordain the outcome. We didn’t let that happen in 1980, and we can’t let that happen now.

That reflection leads me to address my final point for this post—the current attack on Newt’s alleged failure to be a “consistent” conservative. The new label of “consistent conservative” is nothing more than a new version of the tired old label of “true conservative,” which typically is trotted out in a final, desperate attempt to differentiate a candidate from his or her opponent when all substantive arguments have failed, and to set the opponent up for the final Scarlett Letter of “RINO” or “moderate.” The use of the label is intended to foreclose serious thought and discussion, and to trigger a Pavlovian response of support for the candidate who invokes it to describe herself and of revulsion toward the opponent. Using labels like “consistent” or “true” underscores a triumph of ideology over principle in conservative debate.

As I tried to subtly point out in another recent post, the battle between libertarians and religious conservatives over the extreme ideological future of conservatism is really hurting this party. This battle focuses on the worst of both extremes—a misreading and misapplication of Adam Smith, and an over-application of the literal Word to secular politics. Russell Kirk, Bill Buckley, Whitaker Chambers, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan roll in their graves as this battle intensifies.

Framing the debate within the Republican field as being about who is the “consistent conservative” necessarily judges conservatism ideologically, which is the antithesis of Kirk's view that conservatism is based on principles, not ideology. It reminds me of Reagan’s favorite philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous discussion about the problem with “consistency” in his essay on self-reliance. In that essay, Emerson observed that the consistency that matters is that of character, and that character only reveals itself over time from the cumulative evaluation of actions and statements, not from a foolish adherence to rigidity of action and thought moment by moment, day by day:

• The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. …


• … A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. … To be great is to be misunderstood.


• I suppose no man can violate his nature. … A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; — read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. … Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.


• … The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor.

Are we going to continue to live in a time dominated by “foolish consistency”? Are we going to continue to vote for men and women who choose to be “little statesmen” in order to satisfy the test of consistency driven by the 24/7 news cycle, the “Meet the Press” gotcha quotes, and the Internet. In such a world nothing fades into the haze of memory in order to give us the breathing room to think deeply, evaluate our positions based on new facts and information, and apply our principles with imagination over time.

In such a world, men and women like Gingrich, who have served in the Arena over decades, and who have had to think about many issues and ideas over many years as data and circumstances have changed, would naturally be foreclosed from higher office because considerations they discussed 20 years ago no longer meet the test of consistency. If that is to be our world, then our politics will be dominated by those who either have never thought about or discussed the pressing issues of the day, have been too timid to ever deviate from orthodoxy in their consideration of what is the best course of action based on enduring principles, or have been in the Arena too short a time to ever have had to consider the impact of new data or circumstances on the application of conservative principles.

In thinking about this issue, I found the most revealing moment from last Saturday night’s debate on ABC to be when Rick Santorum—a very self-professed “consistent” conservative—said it was Newt’s GOPAC CDs on conservatism that attracted him to politics. Does Santorum really think that the Newt he admired no longer exists? Isn’t it more appropriate to reflect on how Newt has tried to think about and apply conservative principles to the issues he has faced over 40 years, and how he has matured through that process, than to judge him based on whether he said the same thing over and over again for 40 years no matter what the issue was or what experience had taught him?

Say what you will about Newt’s flaws, he’s closer to the Emerson ideal of a leader whose “[g]reatness appeals to the future” than most of the others up on that stage last Saturday night. I don’t know about you, but I’m looking for a leader in 2012, not someone who is trapped by his or her own “foolish consistency”.

Reflections: What will we do the morning after?

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

Summer is over, another birthday has passed, and another of my daughters has struck-out on her own-in Austin. The Astros never really competed this summer-and said "good-bye" to some good veterans along the way-but they've ended the season showing signs of life for the future. My White Sox flirted with a pennant race long enough to make reading the morning box scores fun through Labor Day, and have since settled into their usual, second-place position. And the Cubs oh, well, there's always next year!

With fall upon us, politics is back.

I know for many of you it never left, but after the State Convention in June, I needed a break to re-charge my batteries after nearly 2 ½ years of campaigning: in September, 2007, I jumped head-long into what now seems like a continuous campaign that lasted more than 2 ½ years-first for a seat on a 10-county appellate bench; then to revitalize the local GOP; then to formally run for chairman of the Harris County Republican Party; and finally to help elect a new state chairman for the Republican Party of Texas. Even though I entered those campaigns with the support of my family and colleagues, and I believe my team, my supporters, and I made a positive long-term impact on our local party through these efforts, the shear length and depth of such a continuous commitment took a toll on my family and my work, because I hadn't structured and planned my life with an eye toward running for public office. As a result, I've needed to address this toll over the last few months with some long-needed vacation time and then a re-involvement in the practice of complex litigation. With the exception of giving a talk to a local club in August as a favor to fill-in for a speaker who had cancelled, and attending a few committee meetings, I've purposely stayed away from politics for a while to attend to family and work.

But, I haven't stopped thinking about politics completely. So, here are my reflections from a summer's rest...

First, we must finish the task at hand and win this election. There are only a little more than three weeks until the start of early voting, and six weeks until Election Day. While we still have a lot of work to do between now and November 2nd in order to win this election-locally and nationally-a momentum is behind the GOP and conservative candidates this year that I don't think there is time to derail. The biggest enemy now could be our own over-confidence (remember "President Dewey"?), so we need to complete the mission and get the vote out.

Then, when we wake-up on November 3rd, we must be prepared to lead, to govern, and to recruit strong candidates for the next election cycle. Let me give you my thoughts on each of these points:

We must be prepared to lead, with a vision that encompasses our cherished principles.

In my posts on this blog in May, June and July, I discussed an approach called "Renewing the American Community" with a focus on re-capturing a sense of Neighborhood and re-building our communities based on our conservative principles of limited and local government. I won't re-hash what I said in those posts, but I will recap this fundamental point: the original settlers from Europe established neighborhoods and congregations before they established governments. Successive waves of settlers governed their lives by being good and caring neighbors, and then later generations, culminating with the Founding Fathers, created governments to protect the society and culture the settlers had established. Were they perfect? No. Did they fail to apply their principles to all men and women? Yes. But, they built something unique in history, and the following generations fought amongst themselves to eventually apply those principles to all who lived here and came here. The story of the settler's creation, of the founder's vision, and of the following generations' struggles, is our heritage.

That heritage provides the vision we need to use to lead our communities, our state and our nation starting November 3rd. The men and women I've gotten to know over the last 2 ½ years in every corner of this region of the state, in every Tea Party group, and in every Republican organization, crave leaders who understand this heritage, who understand governments' proper role in preserving this heritage, and who are committed to work every day to preserve this heritage for our children and grandchildren. The men and women working hard to get conservatives elected this November need to hear of our party's commitment to this heritage, and of a plan for action consistent with our heritage. If we lead, these men and women will support us and work with us; if we don't, they will throw us out of office as soon as they can.

"The Pledge" that the Republican Congressional leadership presented last week is a good start, but doesn't go far enough. Republicans need a vision of action for not just the next two years, but for the next generation. To find it, we need to stop looking for new slogans, or trying to co-opt the slogans of the Tea Parties-we need to re-commitment to our heritage of Neighborhoods-of local action and limited government-and then fashion an agenda around that commitment. If we truly believe in the primacy of the individual and local government, that agenda must be built from the foundation of local government first. Continually focusing on the national agenda, though momentarily necessary because of the dire straits created by Obama's administration, is self-defeating to our cause in the long-run. Eventually, the national agenda must be drawn to complement and protect our local agendas.

We must turn from critics to problem-solvers and administrators, prepared to turn our principles into action and results.

In my last post on this blog on July 11th, I wrote about the "Tupelo Formula" for local action, which I broke down as follows:

•The community faced a problem that appeared intractable, and that had been confounded by multiple events-not unlike the confounding factors of under-education, under-employment, chronic crime and poverty, and the impulse to be "left alone", which exist in many of our neighborhoods today;

•One person, followed by a group of civic leaders, saw a strength within the community that created an opportunity that could be exploited to help the community address its problem;

•These citizens had the courage to take a risk with their own resources to take advantage of the opportunity and to share the gain with the community;

•These citizens involved businesses, private organizations, and local government in both the planning and the implementation of their plan; and

•The gains to the community were both short-term, and long-term, and were broadly shared-e.g., businesses were created and expanded, employment grew, per capita income grew, and schools improved.

I propose to our local conservative leaders on our school boards and city councils, and to our Republican officeholders at the county and state levels, that we sit-down after the election with other civic leaders, and begin to analyze and address our communities' needs through the prism of this formula. These needs should include at least the following:

•Our educational system, including the type of citizen we want to emerge from an elementary, secondary and college education in this state; the proper curriculum and delivery system needed to produce that citizen; and the most efficient and cost-effective mechanisms needed to pay for, account for, and administer that delivery system;

•Our transportation system and physical infrastructure, including a vision of where our citizens will live and work over the next 25 years; an understanding of how and where our goods and services will need to move; the maintenance cycle for all capital investments; an appreciation for the property rights of all Texans; and the most efficient and cost-effective mechanisms for paying for the needed infrastructure improvements; and

•Our criminal-justice and mental-health systems, including the effectiveness of such systems to protect victims, the public, and the person being held and/or treated within the systems; and alternatives that can reduce recidivism and improve the educational opportunities and long-term economic viability of the families and neighborhoods affected by the incarceration or mental-health treatment.

If we can address these issues, and create long-term strategies for addressing them at the most local level possible, we can begin to make government live by our principles while addressing urgent problems; and we can begin to address some of the most vexing structural pressures on our public budgets, which put upward pressure on our taxes and downward pressure on job growth.

Obviously, other problems, like the looming public-sector pension issue, will have to be addressed soon-but we need to start somewhere and show the public that our principles are relevant to modern life and modern problems.

To be the majority party, we must recruit and support strong conservatives to run for local, state and national offices over the next two years, who share our principles and are committed to use them to govern.

As I often said during my campaign for Chair of the HCRP, if we are the party that believes in local government, we must get involved in local government. This means fielding candidates now for the elections of 2011 and 2012. Remember, that in 2012 the local GOP will be the challenging party for countywide offices for the first time since 1996. Included among these offices will be between 30 and 40 local judgeships that will be open for Republican challengers, and we need to start finding competent, conservative members of the legal community to run for these offices.

But in 2011, many of the 416 local city council and school board seats will be up for election, including Houston's Mayor and Controller offices. Moreover, Utility and Emergency Services Districts hold elections each year. From just a rough review of the current holders of these offices, Republicans or Republican-voting independents hold already hold at least 40% of these offices. We need to talk with those officeholders, determine how we can help them keep their offices and how we can support them after they win. Most importantly, we need to determine who holds the other offices and recruit candidates who share our principles to run for those offices. Given the number of offices spread-out over 24 school districts, 34 cities, and many Utility and Emergency Services districts, this process must start now.

Finally, we need to continue the recruitment of new GOP precinct chairs-especially in communities where we need to re-introduce ourselves. For example, once this election cycle ends, those activists who have helped candidates like John Faulk, Fernando Herrera, Sarah Davis, Jim Murphy, and Steve Mueller, need to be actively recruited to stay involved by becoming precinct chairs.

If we can expand our presence in local offices and precincts before the 2012 election cycle starts in earnest, we will start that cycle with the army we will need to win that election and retake Harris County.

Although I have committed to my family that I will not run again for a public office myself, I am committed to the plan of attack I have outlined in this post, and will do all I can over the coming years to work with our party, our candidates and our elected officials to make the GOP the majority party in every part of this county and this state; and to not just cherish our conservative principles, but to use our conservative principles creatively to govern effectively. Will you help in this effort beginning November 3rd?