Tyranny and Terror

I’ve been going through the online course offered by Hillsdale College called Public Policy from a Constitutional Viewpoint. Last week was week six. The lecture, given by Will Morrisey, professor emeritus of politics at Hillsdale, was on “Terrorism and Foreign Policy.”

Professor Will Morrisey
screen shot

What caught my attention was how he defined terrorism, using the concepts of tyranny and civilization. There are three interrelated ideas: political freedom versus tyranny, economic freedom versus coerced or controlled economy, and civilization versus savagery. That sounds like we’re describing the Spherical Model. 

The half-hour lecture is coherent, so it’s hard to pull out quotes without missing some of the flow of the argument (which is why I spent the day transcribing the whole thing, as a starting point, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything). So I recommend the entirety. [It may require signing up for the class in order to view, but there is no fee.] 

Here’s a key: as it says in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal,” and “they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights”: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Morrisey uses the word regime to mean, “the most authoritative form of ruling in a political community.” He calls the type of regime we have in America a democratic republic—democratic because it is not based on any right by birth to rule, but all citizens are equal; republic because, rather than directly ruling ourselves, we elect representatives. He also calls us a commercial republic, a term I hadn’t heard before:

In addition to being a Democratic Republic, we’re also a Commercial Republic. And on the same natural rights foundation. Commerce, or trade, is the practice of self-government in the realm of economic life. Commerce and trade operate by persuasion, not command and coercion. In both our political life and our political economy, Americans rule themselves by consent.

Consent isn’t mere assent, or acquiescence. Consent means reasoned assent. Whether it comes to selecting a congressman or buying a house, either way we’re comparing and contrasting; we’re thinking about the choice we’re about to make.

A regime consisting of a tyrant or of an oligarchy, commanding a military and a secret police, enforcing edicts on who is to rule us and on what we buy and sell, with most of the profits going to the tyrant or the oligarchs, would leave a people with very different habits of mind and heart than a people that had established a democratic and commercial Republic.

To live in a tyranny or an oligarchy is to have a different mental and moral environment. And the founders of tyrannical and oligarchical regimes know that.

Both political and economic freedom require consent, as opposed to coercion. This is background to the “what is terrorism” question. Here’s the simple definition:

Terrorism is savagery deployed as a technique by rulers or would-be rulers.

He adds more detail later, in describing the definition that has been with us since the Declaration of Independence.

Terrorism, a form of warfare and of ruling that refuses to distinguish ages, sexes, and conditions, aims at ruling not by reason, but by fear. Terrorists attack civilians. This is true of terrorist organizations that don’t control territory—the old Irish Republican Army, Al-Qaeda, for example—and those that do control territory, and indeed control sovereign states—the Nazis in Germany, the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, the Maoists in China. 

But more than that, terrorism is anti-civilian in a much deeper sense; terrorism attacks civility itself, the habits of self-government by reasons persuasion. It seeks command with no backtalk. And it does so because, whether it’s deployed against civilians and against civility, by the Nazis and Communists of yesterday, or the jihadis of today, it denies the principle of the American founding that “all men are created equal.”

Alternatively, it may deny that all those we call men are really men, really human at all.

His definition is broader than I would have used. I would have called the Nazi and Soviet regimes unjust wars, but their attempt at gaining territory was mostly military. However, where they purposely targeted civilians, including people living in their own countries, Morrisey and I agree on definition.

So, terrorism, committed by either a state or a group, is a war crime; it attacks all ages, sexes, and conditions. It is savage, not civilized. It intends to rule, not according to the will of the people, but by coercion. It intends to impose and enforce tyranny, both political and economic tyranny.

He notes that those who claim “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” are usually Americans—and they are Americans who fail to remember what their regime is: a way of protecting life, liberty, and property. More than that, terrorists who claim to be freedom fighters or soldiers of God are nevertheless terrorists if they fail to value life—and fail, even to view all humans as human.

He tells this story from shortly after 9/11.

An Arab television station aired a film in which a three-year-old girl was asked, “What are the Jews?” “The Jews,” she answered dutifully, “are apes and pigs.”

Such a catechism of contempt flows from the rejection of natural right. It forms habits of mind and heart consistent with the regime of tyranny. Tyranny enshrines not the natural rights to life, but the right to kill.

The Islamic version of terrorism is new, but tyranny—and its refusal to value all lives as equally human—has been around all along.

Either you value all lives equally, or you don’t. In America we do. One example Morrisey shares is about the natives of the continent:

When fighting the American Indian nations during and after the Revolutionary War, George Washington and the other founders distinguished between what they understood as the savage nations and the civilized ones. For example, they referred to the Cherokee Nation, the Chickasaws, the Choctaws, the Creek, and Seminole Nations as the five civilized tribes. Civilized Indian nations that were not allied with the British Empire against us were not the enemy. Some of them even fought on our side.

The early Americans settled land for these civilized tribes, gave them farming implements, and intended to live peaceably together. Morrisey acknowledged, later in the lecture, that there were unfortunately times the nation failed to follow its own policies, as in the Trail of Tears. It isn’t, of course, a matter of race the determines who is savage, but the behavior.

Early on, during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, he faced, not terrorism, but piracy, sponsored by the Muslim states of Morroco, Algiers, and Tripoli. Jefferson was no isolationist when it came to keeping our trade lanes clear.

But Jefferson fought, not all Muslims, but those whose savage behavior was intended to ruin the democratic and commercial republic that was the fledgling United States of America.

While there were very few Muslims in America early on, we can see how the founders treated various religions in general.

There were few if any Muslims in the United States in the 1790s when he was president. But we do know the way Washington thought about religious congregations generally. Among his first acts as president were his letters to the major American religious congregations, his own Episcopalians, but also Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, Quakers, and perhaps most importantly Jewish congregations in Newport, Rhode Island.

Although European regimes had reestablished one or several types of Christianity as politically privileged, Washington’s America was having none of that. The government of the United States, he told all of them, “welcomes members of any religious confession insofar as they conduct themselves as good citizens of the United States.” [from “Letter to the Hebrew Congregation,” August 18, 1790]

Although many American protestants had looked with asperity at Catholics, and peoples around the world had persecuted Jews, Washington and the other founders cared only that citizens act like citizens, obeying the laws respecting the civil and natural rights of their fellow citizens. “No set of religious practices consistent with American constitutional law will be grounds for denial of civil rights by the American federal government.”

The simple way was the best way—don’t judge the religious people on their beliefs, but look at whether they live as good citizens. They need to support our laws, and value and respect the natural rights of their fellow citizens.

The lecture was, on the whole, about developing policy, so it ends with this:

Any American foreign policy must first understand what America is, what we stand for. Confusion on that basic point can only yield confused policy.

After clarifying who we are, the next priority for American citizens who think about our foreign policy must be to identify the primary enemies of our regime and rank them in order of danger…. In dealing with the terrorists we must take care not to exhaust ourselves, leaving our country vulnerable to more formidable powers.

The third and last priority is the strategic one. Setting a strategy, choosing allies, calibrating diplomatic, economic, and military actions to weaken and eventually defeat the terrorists. No simple rule can guide us in that strategy, because it’s a matter of practical judgment on the spot.

In such judgments we should take care to guard our sovereignty, our self-government, by recurring to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which can and should both animate our actions and restrain.

So, to summarize, we need to have confidence in who we are: the people who believe in freedom, free enterprise, and civilization—because we have God-given rights to life, liberty, and property. We live in peace with those who believe those same things. Those who want to impose some other regime on us must be resisted to the fullest extent.

Benghazi Boondoggle

I’m trying to make sense of this chain of confusion surrounding the attack on our ambassador in Libya on September 11, 2012. You’d think after more than a month we could get a basic story. Instead we get obfuscation.

The President's Rose Garden Speech 9-12-2012
photo found here

In the debate on Tuesday, Romney got the President to go on record as saying he knew within 24 hours of the event that it was a terrorist attack—the President even claimed he had said so at the time in his speech in the White House Rose Garden and suggested checking the transcript. As if moderator Candy Crowley was keeping a spare copy in a capacious handbag (she did step in and incorrectly support the President, which she had to walk back later).

Finding both a transcript and the 5-minute speech on video of the Rose Garden speech was no problem. I missed the word “terror” the first two times I listened. Finally I found it with a careful reading. It is, as the conservatives have been pointing out since, in reference to the original 9/11 attack and terror attacks in general, which he brings up in the previous paragraph, near the end of the speech, not, by my reading, in reference to the Benghazi attack. What a silly thing to be arguing about. Even when he calls something terrorism, he talks of it as simply a more heinous crime than most crimes, and refers to bringing the specific perpetrators to justice; he doesn’t recognize terrorism as an act of war perpetrated by our nation’s enemies. So, even if he called it terrorism, which he didn’t, he didn’t use the term the way the rest of us use it. But there’s still the obfuscation.

Throughout the Rose Garden speech he talks about the anti-Muslim video that supposedly set off the spontaneous protest, a video that logged only 17 YouTube views between being uploaded July 2^nd and September 10^th, the day before the attack. Except—now we know there was no spontaneous protest. We also know that Charlene Lamb, National Security agent under Hillary Clinton, was able to see video surveillance of the attack in real time, so it was instantly known that there was no protest springing up from a video. Unlike the same day in Egypt, there was only a pre-planned thoroughly executed targeted attack—on the anniversary of 9/11. There are reports that the administration had been warned of a possible attack 2-3 days ahead. And there are arguments about who had failed to provide additional security, which may have been directly requested. So, no video-related protest. Nor did intel ever suggest the obscure video was related in any way; someone in the administration put that out without any supporting evidence.

Hillary Clinton denounces the video on September 13^th, and repeats the claim September 14^th. White House Spokesman Jay Carney puts forward the video-protest story in a press briefing also on September 14^th. UN Ambassador Susan Rice (an odd choice of spokesperson, since she wasn’t in any chain of command in intelligence or national security) is sent out to do the rounds of Sunday talk shows on September 16^th, with the instruction that she should insist the Benghazi attack was the result of this obscure video. September 18^th the President repeats the claim on David Letterman’s show.

On September 19^th, finally someone in the administration admits they know it was an act of terrorism: National Counterterrorism Director Matthew Olsen, to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, says, “I would say yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy.”

But then, on September 25^th, yet another six days later, a full two weeks after the event, Obama makes the claim six times in his speech to the UN.

If he knew it was a planned terrorist attack (as we all knew within 24 hours, so presumably the President was aware as well), why did he insist on bringing up the irrelevant video at all, and why cling to that story so relentlessly for so long?

More speculation and stories come out daily, so we don’t really know the answer yet, but here are some of the speculations I’ve seen:

·         The President has a stake in putting forth the idea that Islam ought to be protected (with many sub-speculations on why he would take it upon himself to do that).

·         “Being hit with the worst terror attack since 9/11—in a city we saved—would have exposed Obama's boasting about his Libya triumph and al-Qaida being "on the run" and "on the path to defeat" as absurd propaganda.  Al-Qaida is now in Libya, Mali, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Pakistan….But we can't let folks find that out until after Nov. 6.” (Pat Buchanan’s theory)

·         There was no security leak about Ambassador Stevens’s location, his travel to Benghazi and a safe house; President Obama himself had arranged for Stevens to meet with Libyan rebels to negotiate for the recovery of weapons the US had provided to them (during the Arab Spring uprising?), and these rebels turned out to be his attackers.

·         Obama arranged with the Muslim Brotherhood to kidnap Ambassador Stevens, with the idea that, because of Obama’s warm relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, he would save the day by arranging for the Ambassador’s release—in exchange for secretly releasing the Blind Sheik. But the Muslim Brotherhood didn’t go along with the original plan.

Some of these seem more suited for action-thriller fiction than news. We don’t yet know the background of what happened. But I can guarantee that there is no non-nefarious reason for the President of the United States to make up as scapegoat an irrelevant video, telling and re-telling this falsehood to the American people, and failing even yet to explain why.

I would like this question to come up at Monday’s foreign policy debate:

Mr. President, since it is now known that the Benghazi attack was a planned terrorist attack, and that this fact was known by the State Department even as the attack was underway, why did the White House assert and persist in the fiction that this was a spontaneous protest reacting to an obscure, almost unviewed amateur video? It appears there was purposeful disinformation given to the American people. Where did the claim of the video as cause come from (the agency, position or rank, if you’d rather not reveal a name), and why was this claim continued against all evidence for so long?

I would accept this alternative question (inspired by BryanPreston in reference to Obama’s book):

Mr. President, on page 261 of your book The Audacity of Hope, you declare that if the post-9/11 political winds were to shift in an ugly direction against Muslims, you would stand with them. In the Middle East on September 11, 2012, following a terrorist attack in which our Ambassador was murdered along with three other American defenders, you stepped forward to defend the Muslim World against an obscure anti-Muslim video. How do we interpret your allegiance to America based on your words and actions?

While Rome Burns

It continues to be a disturbing week. When we left off a couple of days ago, there was unrest in Egypt and violence in Libya. Romney spoke out against the Obama administration’s lack of response and apparent knee-jerk need to sympathize with the perpetrators. The Obama administration said Romney didn’t know what he was talking about and spoke too soon.

Since then, reports have come out that continue to puzzle. There was an obscure internet movie identified that offensively portrayed the prophet Mohammed. It was so obscure previously that it had essentially no notice and no notoriety. It played only once in a theater, to an almost empty house. The filmmaker is now in hiding, and the attention will cause much more viewing than would have occurred without this call to attention. (The movie was removed from online, but here is information about it.)

But it appears the movie-as-catalyst-to-violence is just an excuse. The attacks are more likely a retaliation for deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan some time ago, and the dates were coordinated to hit on 9/11 for the symbolism of the day. In addition, the administration may have had 48 hours warning prior to the attack on the Libyan embassy. Security was believed to be tight enough, but it turns out documents were stolen, and information leaked about a nearby safe house, which was directly attacked.

Additional unrest has occurred in Yemen, Tunisia, and Sudan—and a total of 20 countries. (Info here  and here.) Closer to home, an anonymous caller with a middle eastern accent, claiming ties to al Qaeda, said bombs had been placed around the University of Texas Austin campus this morning. The campus was evacuated, and the time passed for the explosions, and nothing happened or was found. But the sense of vulnerability that terrorism was spread as intended. A similar threat happened on the North Dakota State campus.

Meanwhile, it is reported that the president skipped his intel briefing—again. Also, the House Intelligence Committee requested a briefing from the State Department, which was refused, no reason given.[i] The president sort of said Egypt wasn’t an ally, apparently uncertain of the definition of the word, and then had that statement walked back by the state department. 

Hillary Clinton and others are “shocked, SHOCKED” that the US should be treated this way after all the mollifying we’ve done.

The thing about mollifying is, it lets a bully know your intention is not to stand up to them, and it validates their excuse for violence. Mollifying is not good foreign policy. Unwise people mistake mollifying for diplomacy, but they are quite different. Diplomacy shows respect to other parties while expressing your own party’s (in this case the US's) interests so that all interests can be addressed with respect while moving toward, hopefully, mutual agreement, or at least understanding.

It is difficult to know the president’s inscrutable reasoning. Does he see the situation as acceptable? Does he misread the situation as unimportant? Is he pleased for some anti-American reason? Is he simply incompetent, or is he evil? If there is some other explanation, we certainly ought to hear it—very soon.

 

 

ments, or half-answers or half-truths or outright lies from the Obama Administration.

We have to conclude that Obama is worried about what a briefing would show. I'm thinking they couldn't send a rep over from State this morning because they needed some time to get all their lies memorized and synchronized.

Very troubling. We have a shadow government within a rogue government who obviously, and continuously, disregards Congress' role as a legitimate oversight on behalf of the American people

 

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[i] From Kevin Jackson’s The Blacksphere Face book status, 9-13-2012: “On the John Batchelor radio program this evening, a little after 9p.m (eastern), Congressman Devin Nunes (California) was being interviewed by Batchelor. He said that the House Intelligence Committee (of which Nunes is a member) REQUESTED someone from the State Department come to brief them on the events in the Middle East, and not only were they refused that brief, but State didn’t give a reason why

                “Congressman Nunes said it was unprecedented and, as long as he could remember, it had never happened previously in our history. He made a point of saying there was a great deal of bi-partisan cooperation on the committee, so it couldn’t be blamed on election year partisanship; said that both parties on the committee were infuriated. Lastly, he said, ‘Tomorrow, I thinkthe CIA will come in and brief us.’”

 

Measuring Rick Santorum

It’s the day before the Iowa caucuses. I don’t know what’s going to happen there. While I’m mildly interested, I am not one to work out the mathematical and strategic possibilities based on each of these early state primaries. However, polls have been showing a sudden rise for Rick Santorum, and I hadn’t covered him yet, so I thought I’d do that today.

I have always liked Santorum. I’ve read his book, It Takes a Family, which I thought was quite president someday.” He’s thoughtful and intelligent, and consistently conservative.

My hesitation I that his experience is more limited that some of the other candidates (particularly compared to Romney) in successfully persuading people. If he were to be the nominee, I would gladly support him. I don’t foresee that happening this time around, however. So, if I could see a future for him, I’d like to see him in a significant cabinet position, something that gives him experience that would place him in a good position eight years hence. (I’d also like to see more of Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, or even Michelle Bachman, all with more experience down the road.) I wouldn’t object at all to Santorum as VP.

It has been a disadvantage to Santorum in the debates to be behind, and therefore forced to be on offensive against candidates he mostly agrees with. But in the last debate, December 15^th, there was a moment where he shined. His answer was juxtaposed right after Ron Paul for contrast. The question for both was essentially what he would do as president if he received solid intel that Iran had a nuclear weapon. Early last year I had a conversation with a Paul fan. He mentioned that he really didn’t like Santorum, because he was so pro-war under any circumstances. That wasn’t something I’d ever noticed about Santorum, so I’ve paid attention since then. I think my friend would look at this exchange and think Paul makes perfect sense. I, on the other hand, see it as clear evidence of what people say about Paul’s wrong-headedness on foreign policy, and Santorum gives a good explanation of the more accurate view.

You can see the debate here. The exchanges transcribed below can be seen from about 57 minutes in to just after the hour mark.

Brett Baier: Congressman Paul, the question was based on the premise that you had solid intelligence; you actually had solid intelligence [that Iran had a nuclear weapon] as President Paul. And yet you still at that point would pull back American sanctions. And again, as a GOP nominee would be running left of President Obama on this issue.

Ron Paul: Yes. All we’re doing is promoting their desire to have it [a nuclear weapon]. Ehud Barak, the defense minister for Israel, said that, um, that, if he were in Iran, he would probably want a nuclear weapon too, because they’re surrounded, for geopolitical reasons. So that’s an understanding. So, the fact that they are surrounded, they have a desire…. And how do we treat people with a nuclear weapon? With a lot more respect. What did we do with Libya? We talked with them; we talked them out of their nuclear weapon, and then we killed them. So it makes more sense to work with people. And the whole thing is, nuclear weapons are loaded over there: Pakistan and India; Israel has 300 of them; we have our ships there. We gotta get it in a proper context. We don’t need another war.

Brett Baier: Understood. And you make that point quite a lot. I’m gonna…  I’ll try one more time. Iran is reportedly running exercises on closing the Straits of Hormuz, a key passage, as you know, for global trade. Now, what should the US response be if Iran were to take that dramatic step.

Ron Paul: Well, this is…  The plans are on the book. All they talk about is when are we, the West, going to bomb Iran. So why wouldn’t they talk about… They don’t have a weapon; they don’t have a nuclear weapon. Why wouldn’t they try to send out some information there and say, “You know, if you come and bomb us, we might close the Straits of Hormuz down”? So, already the president, I think is wisely backing off on the sanctions, because it’s going to be an economic calamity if you take all the oil out of Europe. So I think that makes sense. He knows these sanctions are overreaching. Sanctions are an act of war, when you prevent goods and services from going into a country. We need to approach this a little differently. We have 12,000 diplomats in our services; we ought to use a little bit of diplomacy once in a while.

Brett Baier: OK…. Senator Santorum, you have a very different thought about the threat from Iran. For several years, according to US military leaders, Iran has provided training, funding, and lethal arms to jihadists killing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are those acts of war?

Rick Santorum: They have been continually. They just tried to plan an attack here in this country, killing the Saudi ambassador. They’ve been at war with us since 1979. The IEDs that have killed so many soldiers—they’re manufactured in Iran. This is…  Iran is not any other country. It’s a country that is ruled by the equivalent of al Qaeda, on top of this country. They are a radical theocracy. The principle virtue of the Islamic Republic of Iran, according to President Amadinijad, is not freedom, opportunity; it’s martyrdom. The idea, Ron, that mutual assured destruction, like the policy during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, would work on Iran, when their principle virtue is martyrdom, is…  Mutual assured destruction with respect to Iran would not be a, any kind of, you know, preventing a war; it would be an inducement to war. This is what their objective is; their objective is to in fact create a calamity. This is what their theology teaches. They believe that it is their mission to take on the West. They don’t hate us because of what we do, or the policies we have. They hate us because of who we are and what we believe in. And we need to make sure that they do not have a nuclear weapon. And we should be working with the state of Israel right now. We should use covert activity. And we should be planting a missile strike against their facilities, and say, “If you do not open up those facilities and close them down, we will close them down for you.”

Three-Legged Stool

Yesterday in the car I had the radio on. Rush was responding to an email accusing him of being anti-Romney. He used a clip from his show four years ago to claim otherwise. One thing he said caught my attention—because it relates to the Spherical Model.

I want to take you back to the archives of this program, February 4^th of 2008. From my website, RushLimbaugh.com: “One candidate now stands for all three legs of conservatism.” February 4^th, 2008. You people have forgotten. I supported Romney in 2008. I was defending Romney against the fact that Huckabee and McCain were ganging up on him in the West Virginia primaries. I did everything but endorse Romney in 2008….

From this program, February 4, 2008: “I think now, based on the way the campaign has shaken out, that there probably is a candidate on our side who does embody all three legs of the conservative stool, and that’s Romney. The three legs of the stool are national security/foreign policy, the social conservatives, and the fiscal conservatives. The social conservatives are the cultural people; fiscal conservatives, the economic crowd, low taxes, smaller government, get out of the way.”… Back in 2008 Romney was the guy. There weren’t too many alternatives.

In Spherical Model language, we have three overlaying spheres: the political sphere (freedom vs. tyranny), the economic sphere (free enterprise vs. controlled economy), and the social sphere (civilization vs. savagery). The things we as conservatives intend to conserve are freedom, free enterprise, and civilization. They interrelate; you can’t get freedom and prosperity without living the rules of civilization. And it’s hard to get to civilization when freedom and prosperity are hindered. At this point it’s not so much about “conserving” those things as getting back to them—reinstituting. But when we say “conservative ideology,” we mean the principles the bring about freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

Rush went to say:

Conservatism is the solution, proud, unabashed, cheerful conservatism. I believe the campaign ought to be run on ideology. I know there are a lot of people, “No, no, we can’t go ideological, Rush; it’s too limiting. It thwarts, it scares off the independents.” I think ideology is what sells conservatism….

I know the effort is intense to force conservative ideologues to tamp it down. I fully understand that. I see the evidence of it each and every day. But who is it, name a name. When you get excited about a candidate or an elected official, public figure, who says something that really rallies you, why has that happened? That person’s engaged in ideology. And what I mean by that is principles. The person has supported, can explain, optimistically advance principles.

Conservative principles, I believe, are the principles that founded this country. They work.

Then he points out Bobby Jindal’s reelection as governor of Louisiana—as a principled conservative. In a landslide—in liberal (and historically corrupt) Louisiana! The press doesn’t want to mention it, because that whole principled conservative thing wins elections. It’s what worked in November 2010. It will work again in 2012—even more.

He’s not endorsing Romney—not yet anyway. He agrees with me:

I think any of our candidates could beat Obama, especially if the election were tomorrow, any of our candidates could beat Obama. Well, maybe two exceptions. I’m not sure that Huntsman could, and I’m not sure that Ron Paul could. But the rest of them up there….

Why not those two? Rush didn’t say, but if there must be three legs of the stool, Paul says things that make us not trust him to keep us safe. He’s very good, however, on economic and social issues (except for a few libertarian issues, for example, drug legalization). When Huntsman has a good day, he sounds pretty conservative, but there’s often indefiniteness, a hint of not being firmly there on principle on all three legs of the conservative stool—more policy than ideology. He’s comfortable dwelling near the equator, maybe even a little south of the equator, in the political, economic, and social spheres. And that won’t do when what we want is an anti-Obama. Clarity on principles the lead to freedom, economic prosperity, and civilization—that’s what we need.