Thank you for writing this. It's superb, and greatly needed.

I wrote about Jonathan Chait's article, too — but naturally I wrote it from my own political perspective, and as valuable as that may be, I think that similar conclusions coming from such a distinctly non-liberal perspective are even more valuable.

I'm really glad that you have joined TMV as a contributing writer (I'm not sure if I said that yet) — and in case you're a bit skeptical of my motives, I will be happy to repeat that the next time you write a post that I do not agree with so strongly.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by TMV: GOP: Out of Gas, Out of Ideas, Over a Cliff: Jonathan Chait at The New Republic:
In reality, both parties have plen… http://bit.ly/7ennpO...

And then learn why giants within the conservative intellectual and political activist communities (such as Barry Goldwater, Russell Kirk, James Burnham, Frank Meyer, Ronald Reagan) rejected the JBS as inept, ignorant, and harmful.

If the JBS merely was offering unorthodox alternative public policy proposals, there would be no problem.
But my experience has been that 99% of readers are not familiar with the underlying premises of JBS ideology. For more than 50 years, the JBS has defamed and attacked the patriotism, character, integrity, and loyalty of virtually our entire national leadership — and it refers to our national political leaders as “a conspiracy of gangsters”.

The following report is based primarily upon first-time-released FBI files and documents on the JBS and its assertions.

Since the Birch Society has always effusively praised Hoover and the FBI as our nation's most knowledgeable, authoritative and reliable source of factual information on the communist movement as well as on what constitutes legitimate and effective anti-communist activities –Birchers now have the opportunity to compare their assertions and conclusions to the statements and evaluations made by the person (Hoover) and the institution (FBI) they have enthusiastically recommended for 5 decades.

FBI FILES ON BIRCH SOCIETY:
http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/jbs-1

FBI FILES on W. CLEON SKOUSEN (former FBI Special Agent who endorsed the JBS)
http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/skousen

FBI FILES on DAN SMOOT (former FBI Special Agent who endorsed the JBS)
http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/smoot

Why don't the Dems want to stop this practice?  Why don't they want to reform and rescue Social Security (and Medicare)?  They say reform is needed, after all.  (Of course, do they raise the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare to something normal and long-overdue, in the seventies, for example, as well as revise benefit formulas?  No.)  There are no easy solutions.  Removing the payroll tax cap, as has been explained countless times, won't solve the problem, only postpone it for a few years, for example.  Tax increases and constraints on costs, including on benefit growth, and even benefit reductions (as well as modernizing the retirement age, and probably subsequent revisions periodically) are overdue and in some form are inevitable.  The Dems “own” this and logic screams for them to seize the initiative and not only rescue these programs, but score huge points doing so (at least among the more intelligent voters, who are skeptical
or critical of the Dems, rather than those voting robotically for them already), by rescuing them before the serious harm begins and while they can control how the reforms will be done (particularly with respect to benefits versus taxes).  But do they do this?  Nooooo…

Conservatives just cannot stand the idea that people might not suffer.

The decision to oppose communist insurgency was certainly conservative and thereby MOSTLY republican, regardless of presidents.

Its Conservative hands that are attained with the blood of American youth and millions of Asians.

Take the partisan out of your history re-writing. Somebody might believe you and vote for a stupid greedy republican out of confusion.

The question is whether the party has any relevant ideas.

No sightings this decade so far.

At least they still try to give some respect, sometimes, to the Constitution, unlike the Dem record.

If it's outmoded, incidentally, why not revise or even replace the Constitution with something more suitable to the way things are today? (The current Constitution is not outmoded, incidentally. That gripe is as old as Ratification and never got anywhere far beyond those whining in that manner.) Of course, what comes to many of our minds is the same thing that does when anyone engages in the little exercise I've suggsted before — imagine people in Washington (and elsewhere, including in the business world) starting a manned moon effort from the start, right now? Would you have confidence or trust in those in Washington? Do you believe they and those whom they invited to join them, would do any better with constitutional revision or replacement? Even just a few choice amendments?

Rick — as soon as Social Security begins running deficits, it is failing, by definition.

With all these programs, perhaps you noticed what the Obama administration did this year, the year the President vowed to reform Medicare and reform entitlements (meaning Social Security and Medicare, essentially, as that was the context in which he made the vow, and which was obvious, anyway — we all know or should know what the biggest entitlements and budget siphons are).

Once deficits start, paying benefits in full requires new taxes, money taken from elsewhere, or more borrowing. This, after Obama and the Dems have spent and borrowed already to contemporary precedent-setting levels. (with no comparable results for all of it)

His administration's one known deed this year (the year of “entitlement reform”) was to remove from the annual Trustees' Report what has been in previous reports, about the future and the fiscal problems we (some of us) have long known and been told we will be facing.

“To put these magnitudes into historical perspective, in 2007 the combined annual cost of HI, SMI, and OASDI amounted to 38 percent of total Federal revenues, or about 7 percent of GDP. That cost (as a percentage of GDP) is projected to double by 2060, and then to increase further to nearly 17 percent of GDP in 2082. It is noteworthy that over the past four decades, the average amount of total Federal revenue as a percentage of GDP has been 18 percent, and has not exceeded 21 percent in a given year. Assuming the continued need to fund a wide range of other government functions, the projected growth in Social Security and Medicare costs would require that the total Federal revenue share of GDP increase to wholly unprecedented levels.”

http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/TRSUM/tr08su…

“To put these magnitudes into historical perspective, in 2006 the combined annual cost of HI, SMI, and OASDI amounted to 40 percent of total Federal revenues, or about 7 percent of GDP. That cost (as a percentage of GDP) is projected to double by 2042, and then to increase further to nearly 18 percent of GDP in 2081. It is noteworthy that over the past four decades, the average amount of total Federal revenues as a percentage of GDP has also been 18 percent, and has never exceeded 21 percent in a given year. Assuming the continued need to fund a wide range of other government functions, the projected growth in Social Security and Medicare costs would require that the total Federal revenue share of GDP increase to wholly unprecedented levels.”

http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history/pdf/tr07s…

etc.

Such is Democratic reform these days — remove the bad news. (Not denial, but rather, deception)

Oh, and Change [tm] in transparency and honesty in government and with entitlement reform…removing the bad news is a way of giving people more Hope [tm] about entitlements, I guess.

Of course, perhaps they and the low tail of the electorate IQ bell curve would prefer it to be that way.

They did, when Bush was in office. They had the chance to rescue the program themselves, and win subsequent elections and more importantly, gain some respect and associated political clout for years. They obviously should have done it. Did they? No. Incredibly, they insisted on doing nothing.

Aside from mental or other forms of dysfunction among the Dems, the only explanation is that they were counting on the support of a sufficient number of voters so defective in one or more ways that these voters may not only have accepted, but actually approved of the decision. That's buying cheap votes from truly cheap voters.

OK, so many of these voters were too stupid to realize this, or actually supported it. Some of us noticed it, though. (That's another reason why some of us are not surprised, and don't approved, that the Dems also didn't set Medicare right before trying to “reform” the rest of health care — and we never did believe the vow by Obama and other Dems who may have joined him, that entitlement reform would be done by them — or that it is important to them.) We're also not surprised by current Dem self-made blunders and their need to recover currently.

* * *

“Can you govern without believing in the efficacy of government?”

Actually, someone like Ron Paul or anyone who 100% demonizes government needs to be asked at least that, if he or she is running for — government office. Better yet — does he or she believe in the need for government [at all]?

May 1961 – President Kennedy sends 400 American Green Beret 'Special Advisors' to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers in methods of 'counter-insurgency' in the fight against Viet Cong guerrillas.

The role of the Green Berets soon expands to include the establishment of Civilian Irregular Defense Groups (CIDG) made up of fierce mountain men known as the Montagnards. These groups establish a series of fortified camps strung out along the mountains to thwart infiltration by North Vietnamese.

President Kennedy then sends additional military advisors along with American helicopter units to transport and direct South Vietnamese troops in battle, thus involving Americans in combat operations. Kennedy justifies the expanding U.S. military role as a means “…to prevent a Communist takeover of Vietnam………..” The number of military advisors sent by Kennedy will eventually surpass 16,000.

Kennedy wanted to limit our involvement, dummy?

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietna…

Seems like it is the Democrats that had the documented issue with the Communists…….let's see a reference for your support, dummy….or will you just blow smoke out your ass and think people will actually believe you?

It was the republicans that wanted the escalation of Vietnam. It was Eisenhower that first sent troops as “advisors”. Kennedy wanted to limit our involvement . LBJ, well you are right, but he did the right thing and refused to run another term because of his failure. No republican has ever had that much integrity.

Wow.

Wow….Kennedy and Johnson were Republicans, huh?

I'd be careful as to whom you label ignorant.

Though Republicans hate and fear Communists, they rush to do business with them. It is their irrational fear that caused America’s ill fated involvement in the Vietnam war, but their uncontrollable greed and undisciplined lack of morality that leads them into dealings with those that will, without a doubt, destroy them. They do it, over the dead bodies of those young American’s they demanded be sent to fight the very Communism they fear.

Republican ideology is ignorant, short term, and, horribly unpatriotic, though they try ever so hard to lead people into believing otherwise.

Their gig relied on whipping their base into line with cookies and fear alternately, depending on the situation of which of their leaders wanted what and ciphered which motivator would work best. This system served them well for many many years since they controlled information via most media outlets. Newspapers, magazines and broadcasting stations were so predominantly GOP-owned and operated that it's silly to discuss the thumnail of those that weren't. They just didn't stand a chance of impact. The GOP literally [and I mean this LITERALLY] controlled what we know as our description of reality.

Ergo, anyone against “reality” was deemed “crazy” [liberal]. And so those people who most benefitted by this situation kept an iron fist on business as usual….

Then along came the GOP's arch-enemy, the internets. Free-flow of information took one decade to turn sheep into goats, those stubborn more intelligent creatures with minds of their own and a penchant for testing fencing on a regular basis.

Oh sure. You've got remnants of the old sheep population around stomping their hooves at change, wanting their old, dwindling overgrazed green pastures of contentment and no need to think outside their paddock. But within one generation now even they will be gone. Sheep are mortal creatures after all..

And all that will be left is one whacky, wild and amazing herd of goats all with minds of their own. They will scramble on the rocks way above all the old “realities” and strike out new ones of their own. It was coming. Everyone knew it was. The internet sealed the deal.