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PARKINS POINTS TO PONDER: The
First Amendment to our Constitution is not what the First Congress proposed
for that spot. Partisan
divisions of Congress and the Presidency in the second half of the twentieth
century differed extremely from those in the first half. Since
1930, no Republican President has enjoyed a partisan congressional division
as favorable as Clinton’s was in 1993-1994, but all other Democrat Presidents
have fared better than Clinton. If
the average Representative were to spend 1000 hours per year meeting
face-to-face with individual constituents, it would not be possible to spend
10 seconds with each constituent. In
just 5 weeks of 2006, Israel lost approximately twice (as a percentage of its
population) as many soldiers in Lebanon as our military fatalities in five
years of the “War on Terror”. Just
the increase of
violent deaths domestically, among American youths in the 1960’s and ‘70’s,
exceeded our combat fatalities in Vietnam. According
to the World Health Organization’s calculations of increased malaria deaths
following the ban on DDT, that policy has already been more deadly than
Hitler’s “final solution”. The
pension funds held by state and local governments, and by corporations, for
their employees exceed the “National Debt”. None
of the above is a secret, but none is emphasized in the mass media. |
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Letter to the
Editor, NATIONAL REVIEW, 9/4/07 (this letter
was not published) It is easy to agree with two of
Ramesh Ponnuru's statements in the September 10 issue, the first and the
(almost) last. "Hindsight's validity isn't 20/20,"... and
"To call this presidency failed is premature." Republicans
should note that President Bush's four years of meager congressional
majorities exceeded those of all other Republican Presidents since 1932; i.e.
they exceeded Eisenhower's first two years. Even Clinton
did better than that, until 1995, and all other Democrats did better than
Clinton. President Carter entered office with a filibuster-proof
majority in the Senate and two to one in the House, an advantage that no Republican
President (ever) has had. With the
advent of television, media bias has been one especially large factor in our
politics. Its present effects may be largely the result of its
past. Among many Americans, "McCarthyism" is still an
effective slur, while the Venona files might as well have remained
secret. Who is aware that just the increase of violent deaths
domestically, among America's young people in the 1960's and 1970s, exceeded
our combat losses in Vietnam? Now, the toll of innocent lives from
increased malaria, following the ban on DDT, has probably exceeded that of
even Hitler's "final solution." And, like higher rates of
violence among our young, the toll from the DDT ban continues. If we don't
want "liberals" and Democrats to walk on the waters we need to keep
the waters warm. Neglected
facts regarding the past leave Republican politicians to contend for office,
and for policies, upon a very slanted field. |
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2008 AND AMERICA’S DESTINY By Ivan W. Parkins
American voters who are serious about, not just the coming election,
but also the long-term future of America, should take a look at Jonah
Goldberg’s LIBERAL FASCISM. I say
“take a look at,” because I eventually found the volume tiring. And I already have some familiarity with
many of the fascist and American writers to whom Goldberg refers.
Goldberg begins by suggesting that American fascism will have a
“smiley-face.” He warns (page 7), “It
is difficult now, in the light of their massive crimes and failures, to
remember that both fascism and communism were, in their time, utopian visions
and the bearers of great hopes.” He
goes on to note that both, in earlier times had strong followings in Western
societies, including the United States. The heyday of fascism was the early
1930s, a time of very real and deep economic distress. My
one-time professor, Rex Tugwell, is quoted as calling early Italian fascism
the “… cleanest, neatest, most efficiently operating piece of social
machinery I’ve ever seen.” Quoting
further from Goldberg’s first chapter: “Rather than talk in explicitly
religious terms, however, today’s liberals use a secularized vocabulary of
‘hope’ and construct explicitly spiritual philosophies like Hillary
Clinton’s ‘politics of meaning.’”
The French Revolution is Goldberg’s nominee for the first fascism,”
totalitarian, terrorist, nationalist, conspiratorial, and populist.” He cites Robespierre and Napoleon as the
first modern dictators. A
good time to look elsewhere! I suggest
James R. Gaines” FOR LIBERTY AND GLORY.
It provides a sharp picture of Lafayette’s close relationship with
George Washington and our Revolution.
It also follows the young French nobleman’s different experience when
he tried to apply in France what he had learned here. At first, he was a hero and great leader
there too. But, step-by-step he was
brushed aside, mocked, threatened, and forced to flee, to years of
confinement in a foreign prison. In
Paris, the brutal and bloodthirsty mobs were gradually succeeded by utopian
regimes who substituted public displays of guillotining, after show trials,
for the more savage disorders. Our
Founding Fathers, people like Washington, Madison, John Adams, Hamilton, and Gouverneur
Morris, built our national foundations upon a few basic principles of popular
representation and limited government led by a temporary executive;
federalism and protection of individual rights were also essential. It was not, and it is not Utopia. It is, and has been for more than two
centuries, the most effective large representative democracy in history. It can continue to be that if we can
continue to keep it representative and democratic until something larger and
equally satisfactory surpasses it.
Meanwhile, it is a very practical means of living together, safely and
productively; it is not a vehicle to one of the many imaginary Utopias. I.W. Parkins 0808 |
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The Presidency And Our Constitutional System Part
Two The following articles are centered around the power of
the President, and the role that
political parties and the media have in it. |
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Presidential
Choices, 2008 By Ivan W. Parkins
Presidential choices in 2008, and the ways that they are presented in
the media, seem inadequate to me. The
more that I observe and read about politics, the less of it seems really new. For
instance, John McCain, the “old” Republican candidate, was just starting
elementary school when I graduated from the Naval Academy. Whatever his future successes, he has
already demonstrated a remarkable capacity to rise above the self-serving
opportunities that life has afforded him.
Barack Obama appears to be a talented young man. And he has
demonstrated a capacity to rise beyond several more common personal hazards.
But when he talks of change and offering something new I cannot help remembering
that in 1952, before Obama was born, I served on the Akron, Ohio, Committee
of Volunteers for Stevenson. Adlai
Stevenson was also an Illinois politician, a great platform performer, and
one with a solid record of executive experience. He promised things not unlike those that
Obama does today. In
1954 I ran for nomination to Congress, against three more experienced
Democrats. I too stood for change,
more of it than I could have delivered—I never had to. But Lyndon Johnson, a decade later,
delivered much of it, before America became tired of him. And, after 25years as a Democrat, I became
a Republican following the 1968 fiasco.
Forty years later, this is likely to be my last presidential
election. Presidents that I have seen
come and go have mostly been better than they were credited with being while
in office, especially Truman and Reagan.
I haven’t been entirely happy as a Republican. But no Republican President has gotten
decent support from Congress and the media.
Now, McCain is, by far, the candidate best prepared to take the
office; Obama needs a decade or so of “seasoning.” But, for reasons cited elsewhere in this
blog, I can see little hope of major and lasting improvements in our
government’s performance. That is,
until Congress is made, in fact, more representative, and the media of
information are reduced to mere participants in, rather than the overseers
of, our system. - I.W.Parkins, 82408 |
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DRIVING
OUT OUR PRESIDENTS IS REPUDIATION OF DEMOCRACY LETTER TO THE EDITOR, The Atlanta Journal and
Constitution, 1/ 11/1987: Mount Pleasant, Mich. - Concern for the presidency
deserves priority over concern for Ronald Reagan, as suggested in Bill
Shipp's Dec. 26 column. However, my concern for the presidency first
became critical when Lyndon Johnson was being hounded from office in 1968. I was reassured by the
vigorous leadership of Richard Nixon and by his record plurality in
1972. We all know the outcome of that. Ronald Reagan has been a
significant president because of his capacity to win and retain a large
popular following and because of his success in imparting a spirit of hope
and direction to America. Much more than his personality and reputation
is at stake. If, within one generation,
a third president of the United States is driven into oblivion not long after
winning a landslide confirmation of his leadership, I will regard that as the
greatest repudiation of constitutional democracy in history. I.W. Parkins |
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(The following article is a reprint from January of 2008 –Ed.) AMERICA’S CRISIS, 2008 Or How
the Media makes Popular Presidents Impotent By Ivan Parkins During the Franklin
Roosevelt Administration, and for about a decade after,
“liberal” academics contended that strong executive leadership had rescued
our divided political system. The
weakness, an inability to control powerful minority interests, was not
represented in the presidential administrations of the two Roosevelt’s,
Lincoln and Jackson. They had supposedly rescued America by an ability to
control powerful minority interests. I
did, and I do, subscribe to that broad thesis. What
materialized during the Vietnam War, and especially in the 1968 elections,
was the rise of a new special interest or elite. Burgeoning college enrollments, new and
more pervasive media communication, private foundations, etc. created a
rapidly growing mass of extensively schooled and nationally organized
persons. Dominating, as they did and
still do, the main channels of communication, they maligned old institutions
and elites. Meanwhile, they made
themselves the most politically potent and legally protected elite- and
ultimately the enemies of strong Presidents. In
this nation, a clear and lasting majority of the public can accomplish almost
anything, politically. But only a
talented and vigorous President is able to assemble and maintain majority
support. In the late twentieth
century, with the outlets for political information more centralized and
united than ever before, we had conflicts on an unprecedented scale between
professional communicators and those Presidents who won the largest popular
majorities at the polls. Americans
are now understandably confused and depressed. The solution, I’m convinced, is more
diverse information and accountability of professional communicators
regarding the information that they disseminate. The
First Amendment should not canonize professors, journalists, artists, or
protesters. I.W. Parkins, January 25, 2008 |
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Page 14 |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2010, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
requires permission of the author
and can be obtained by contacting,
info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
