Archive [February 2000]

I am not going to pull any punches I here, folks. We have a problem. The other side never, never, not for a single second of a single day, not ever, loses sight of who they are fighting, and why. They are fighting us.

But so, on the other hand, are we. We pummel our own guys. The vitriol and anger and rage — yes, even hatred — we aim at those on the same side of the ideological fence is blistering beyond belief.

I have broached this subject again and again, reminding people that the point is to win. This is unarguable. It is Politics 101. But what is the result when I make this case? Conservatives become enraged at me. I’m a shill. A tool of my “handlers.” I’ve sold out. Blah, blah, blah.

My friends, winning is not possible when we are lobbing grenades at our own team. It has got to stop.

This is not an appeal to stifle normal discussion and debate and disagreement amongst ourselves. I am not asking that we hold hands and sing “Kum By Ya” around the campfire. Politics ain’t bean-bag. And besides, conservatism is an energetic, muscular, dynamic ideology — and the clash of wits is essential to sharpen our positions.

But it is a reminder that the entire purpose of all our internal jockeying is to defeat the other side.

We, unfortunately, tend to lose sight of this. In fact, some of us forget just who the opposition is. Thus any talk that involves any hint of (here come those dread words) “compromise” or “incrementalism” sends many of you completely over the edge.

Indeed, to read my e-mail, you’d think the new century’s greatest enemy is George W. Bush.

Wrongo. The enemy is liberalism. The left is fighting us on every front (even some we’re not aware of yet) because our success means their defeat. Our triumph means their ignominious loss of power. Our victory means their evisceration. They know full well that this is a war, a pitched battle, from which only one of us will emerge intact. They know it’s them or us. And they are determined to survive.

They are throwing everything they have into this fight. Every lie they can lie; every bit of dirt they can smear. Everything is below the belt. In their view, there are no rules. It is kill or be killed.

And while the enemy is throwing a punch to the gut, it makes no sense to have a friend throw one to the kidney.

This should not be a controversial statement among our team. But it is with many of you people. Time is running out. We cannot afford for you not to understand this. We cannot afford four more years of liberalism.

We do not need to weaken each other with endless sniping. None of the Republican candidates deserve our ire. Yes, we disagree on a variety of issues. But the relative differences among us pale beside our gargantuan differences with liberals. These are people who don’t even believe in freedom! The enemies are not George Bush or John McCain or Alan Keyes or Gary Bauer or Steve Forbes or any of the Republican field. The enemies are Algore, Hillary Clinton, Bill Bradley, Donna Brazile, Bob Shrum. And, of course, the Democrat sleaze triumvirate: James Carville, Larry Flynt and Al Sharpton.

It’s like all these people worried about the AOL-Time Warner deal. As soon as the $147 billion merger was announced, liberals lost their minds. They called it a threat to democracy and freedom of expression. The International Federation of Journalists declared that without new government regulations, “media companies will allow commercial decisions to control the news agenda.” (Much better to allow political decisions to control the news media.) “Privacy advocates” and consumers and academics worried that the merger might lead to some sort of Orwellian society with Big Brother controlling every aspect of people’s lives.

Let’s see. Registering guns; rifling through the FBI files of your political opponents; instigating IRS audits of your opponents; demanding all kinds of personal information on your income tax returns and census forms; attempting to regulate your home work environment via OSHA; limiting political free speech. Why haven’t I heard a single one of these self-appointed “privacy advocates” publicly condemn any of that?

Consumer groups, including the Consumers Union and the Consumers Federation of America warned that the concentration of media and Internet power could hurt the public. But I haven’t heard one of the consumer groups that called the AOL-Time Warner merger a “new dictatorship” publicly condemn the government’s imposition of its authority over the right of individuals to make their own choices.

The people who are panicked about this merger think that this company is just going to be way too big, with way too much power concentrated in the hands of way too few people. How come it’s always bad when big business gets bigger, but it’s never bad when government gets bigger? Why is it always bad when profits go up, but it’s never bad when government profits, i.e. taxes, go through the roof? It’s always wonderful when government expansion takes place. It’s always wonderful when more and more power gets concentrated in the fewer and fewer so-called experts, i.e. elected officials.

Why don’t these people warn us that the concentration of elected officials (and their power to tax and regulate) threatens the public? Why is the power to regulate and tax not looked at as detrimental to the freedom of the American people?

Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t care how big AOL-Time Warner gets. Gerald Levin and Ted Turner and Steve Case will never, ever be able to force you to use their service. They will never, ever be able to force you to part with your money and give it to them, so that they can “make the world a better place.” They will never have the ability to go to the Constitution of the United States and pretend the Second Amendment doesn’t exist, and then enforce that assumption. AOL and Time Warner and all its associated businesses will forever remain items of choice. You can log onto the Internet via AOL or you can choose another ISP. You can read Time magazine or you can flush it down the toilet and read U.S. News & World Report. (Better yet, The Limbaugh Letter.)

Time Warner and AOL do not have the power to make us do anything. They do not have the power to forcibly separate us from our money. But the government does — and few people express any fear about that. Few people seem concerned about the never-ending daily expansion of power and growth in the federal government, which has the power behind it, by virtue of the threatened jail sentence or criminal charge, to confiscate your money or compel you to comply with its dictates. What punishment can AOL or Time Warner hand out if we don’t choose to utilize their service? Nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. They’re totally dependent on satisfying consumers in order for this merger to work out. They are totally dependent on making sure their customer base is happy. The federal government doesn’t have to worry about whether we’re happy or not. They can still make us do what they want us to do because they have the power to deny us our freedom or our rights, and they have the power to take from us our money. None of this is within the power of AOL or Time Warner, no matter how big they get. This kind of fear really needs to be directed to the city of Washington, D.C., which houses the federal government, because it is there that all this power exists in reality.

You see what I mean about fighting the real enemy?

If you’re concerned about privacy, and concentrated power, and loss of freedom, do not, under any circumstances, waste one minute of your time fighting AOL and Time Warner. It will be utterly fruitless, and you will have missed the true villain.

Here’s the joint statement from the two consumer groups: “Consumers do not want to be beholden to a giant media Internet dictatorship, even if it promises to be a benevolent one.” Consumers are not beholden to Time Warner or AOL! Consumers are not being held prisoner by this outfit, no matter how big it gets. It’s not a dictatorship! It’s a corporate entity like any other that must be better than its competitors in order to survive.

Why don’t these consumer groups re-word this to say, “Citizens do not want to be beholden to a giant federal dictatorship even if it promises to be a benevolent one”? We’ve got our paranoia aimed in the wrong direction, our fear aimed in the wrong direction, our perspective totally out of whack.

Why fear AOL and Time Warner? If you’re going to fear anything, fear government. Fear the size of government. Fear the power of government concentrated in the hands of a few. Because they’re the ones who have the power to dictate how we should behave. Time Warner and AOL don’t have that power and never will.

But I’m telling you, folks, fighting the wrong enemy is extremely dangerous. Look what’s being created here: an Internet Crisis. Do you know what the solution to this is? We’ve got to have the government come in and save the net from all of these evil capitalists who want to dominate the domain.

I’m sorry, my friends, but I’ll go for any private sector dominance over public sector control of it any day of the week, any week of the month, any month of the year, any year of the century, any century of the millennium. This notion that the internet is now threatened because a couple of huge corporations have merged is just plain silly, and it sets everybody up to look for the knight on the white horse to come and save the day, the federal government, personified by Janet Reno and the Justice Department and regulation.

In fact, ladies and gentlemen, I have a story here from the London Register, “JANET RENO PROPOSES ONLINE POLICE SQUAD”: she wants something she calls LawNet to patrol the internet. I envision a network that extends from local detectives to the FBI to investigators abroad,” Reno said. She also proposed new interstate jurisdictional standards to simplify the execution of warrants pursuant to online investigations.

Now isn’t that reassuring? We’ve got “experts” claiming that the threat to the internet is corporate mergers, big oligopolies run by millionaires and billionaires, which sets up everybody for the obvious solution: we must have government regulation. “Oh, my gosh! Only the government can save us from these people. They’re going to take over our lives and take away our freedom on the internet and kill it, dominate our independence and take it away. Oh, no!”

But now we can rest easy because Janet Reno has proposed her online police squad. We’re going to make sure these capitalists don’t take over and dominate and take away our freedom. But we’ll sit back and we’ll even encourage, and we’ll even help the government take away our freedom, while we are misled into believing that that’s what happens when capitalists gain power.

Speaking of this sort of hyped-up hysteria — remember about five years ago when the news was filled with stories of middle-aged white-collar workers who were being laid off via downsizing? Remember the trauma associated with that? People felt it was the end of the world. They were in their 40s and 30s and were being let go. Did we participate in the mass hysteria? No. We provided three straight broadcasts of inspiration and instruction demonstrating how you don’t have to participate in this mass hysteria. We took phone calls from people who were laid off, who had rebounded from it. They basically told how their lives improved after they were laid off and made a fresh start. Many of them had been let go from circumstances they didn’t like anyway. It allowed them to — or made them, because of the necessity of it — go pursue their true passions. And they ended up more productive and happier as a result. Those programs are still among the most requested “best of” shows in the history of this program. Had not a word to do with politics.

So there was a classic example there of mass hysteria and how it was irrelevant; you needn’t participate in it. The same thing is happening now — mass hysteria with this AOL/Time Warner merger. Just don’t take part.

We had a similar hyped-up story from the Census Bureau: “America will be a bit older and much more diverse a century from now, and there will be twice as many of us. New population projections from the Census Bureau … called for the population to jump from the current 275 million to 571 million by 2100. The median age will rise, according to the Census Bureau, above 40. And there will be larger proportions of minorities.”

Now there are two ways of looking at this news. You could react to the information that America’s population’s going to double and we’re going to get older with fear: “Oh, good grief, are we in trouble? Oh, gee, are there going to be enough government programs to help everybody?”

Or, you could greet the news with all the optimism Ronald Reagan would have: “Man, oh, man — look how many free people there will be! With the opportunities this country affords, just imagine how much innovation, how many entrepreneurs, and how much achievement will take place! What kind of great country is this going to be?”

Now, which of those two possibilities do you think the media is focusing on? You’re right.

Here’s what the Associated Press saw when they looked at the year 2100 with 571 million Americans in the median age over 40: they saw abject horror. Read this sentence: “An older America could mean profound social and economic changes, such as an increased demand for nursing home care, an increased demand for prescription drugs, and greater demands on the country’s social security system.”

Now, why would you look at 571 million free Americans in that light? Where in the world do prescription drugs come into this? They only enter into it because that’s a fashionable liberal cause now.

Obviously, if it’s bad now, it’s going to be worse later. To liberals, everything bad today defines America — and you can count on it being twice as bad a hundred years from now.

Do you want to be led by people like that? Do you want to get your news from people like that? Do you want to have your daily information quota filled by people whose view of the future is that gloomy? Or would you rather instinctively look at this kind of news and imagine what kind of great country this is going to be with 571 million free Americans.

Well, let me tell you, in order for that scenario to take place, in order for there to be 571 million free Americans, we had better get serious right now about defeating socialism. Because if we don’t defeat socialism now — if we don’t defeat the liberals now — we are in dire straits as a nation. We’ve simply got to make sure that a liberal does not become President in the year 2000; we’ve got to make sure that liberals do not end up populating the federal bureaucracy with more of their cronies; we’ve got to make sure that the liberals don’t end up populating the judiciary with more of their judicial activists.

Because if socialism isn’t tamed or defeated, then by the year 2100 we are going to be a nation of people who are demanding, moaning, whining, crying for their free prescription drugs. For their free nursing home care. For their expanded social security benefits.

And who will provide that for those who will demand it? If the workforce is younger, and all these older people demand all of this, do you think the younger generation is going to work and pay taxes at an effective rate of 75 or 80 percent? There’s no way.

So when you hear news like this, it’s time to try to get your mind focused toward the positive. 571 million free Americans! And what a great country the freedom of those Americans could mean.

But they’re not going to be free if they’re dependent. They’re not going to be free if all that’s on their mind is who’s going to pay for their prescription drugs or their nursing home care.

It all depends, my friends, on whether we’re able, together, to focus our energies on defeating the real enemy: liberalism. Not each other. One, two, punch.