On the Consequences of Compromise

October 11, 2013October 12, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 5 Comments

“The Congress threw away a great opportunity to help the people. If it has granted all necessary relief and then by a policy of rigid economy reduced governmental costs, avoided a deficit and more debt, the country would have looked on it as a savior. Politics is always present. Probably there were those who thought they would profit politically by being able to charge that business is bad and taxes and debt have been increased. Those making the charge in the future will have to explain what constructive measures they proposed to revive business, promote economy and reduce taxes and debt. Those voting for the largest peace-time expenditures any Congress ever authorized cannot escape responsibility” — Calvin Coolidge, March 4, 1931.

As talk of Congressional deals to reopen the government seem imminent, funding everything including Obamacare, what is not being discussed is how any of these proposals advance the interests of the people. On an unprecedented scale, we stand alone, without representation in Washington. The establishment of both parties, insulated from the impact of their own decisions, seem content to ensure surrender to the President and his agenda on every point of difference so long as they get to hold some measure of Congressional power over the money and committees.

Observing a Congress ready to embrace the largest peacetime tax increase up to that time, as proposed by President Hoover, Coolidge would live to see the first deficit in over a decade and its attempted remedy, the disastrous Revenue Act of 1932. The Republicans, flinching at the prospect of unpopularity, forgot the lessons of the 1921, 1923 and 1926 recessions. Instead of holding firm on reducing expenditures, cutting waste and following Coolidge’s recipe for success, fear prevailed over principles. The quick recoveries of past recessions due to strict economy by Harding and Coolidge were thrown overboard as passe and obsolete.

The election of 1930 was but a harbinger of F.D.R.’s sweep in 1932. The costs of abandoning the people in that crucial hour, refusing to stand in bold opposition to the expansion of government at the sacrifice of individual freedom, cannot be quantified. Had the 71st Congress demonstrated courageous and conservative leadership, like Senators Lee and Cruz have done, the losses both at the ballot box and to the people may have been curtailed, if not largely avoided. Whatever might have happened, this much can be known: it is compromise, not conservatism, that leads to defeat at the polls.

The timely warning Coolidge expressed in the spring of 1931 applies just as readily now as it did then. The consequences of compromising, when just a little more resolve and the pressure of time could win a huge victory for the people, will have enormous impact on every one of us. It will especially affect those currently in Washington who find themselves joining the unemployed after next year’s fast-approaching primaries and general election. Just as Coolidge put it, “Those voting for the largest peace-time expenditure any Congress ever authorized cannot escape responsibility.” The Washington establishment will not rule over and against the people with impunity. There will be electoral consequences for surrendering now to the radical and partisan wishes of this President.

On Honoring Our Veterans

October 5, 2013October 5, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

As Senate Democrats continue to back the President’s cherry-picking approach on which public sites to shut down and who deserves funding, veterans simply do not contribute anything to their Party agenda that merits respect or support. In the midst of what is supposed to be a Government “shutdown,” we saw the reinforcement of the World War II Memorial fencing by seven Park Service employees. At the same time, the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in France has been chained shut “due to the U.S. Government shutdown.” So, we are spending money to reinforce gates and place guards at closed sites because we no longer have the money to keep them open?

Meanwhile, Camp David, the Presidential retreat, is kept open. The Blue Angels and NASA programs have long been shut down as visible symbols of American achievement and patriotism. Now Senator Harry Reid is refusing every effort to fund the National Guard, salaries for Reserve personnel, veterans’ services, and museums and parks. Taking all of these together, combined with the rabid attacks by Democrats against our military for serving in Iraq and Afghanistan during the previous administration, it forces the question: What do the Democrats have against our Armed Forces? Of course, they do not have value to the agenda.

Calvin Coolidge, upon being officially informed of his nomination as Vice Presidential candidate, spoke at length on what the country needed. He saw America suffering under a militant White House, continuing to prosecute the powers of wartime in peace. When a return to respect for our laws and institutions was needed, President Wilson and his Party kept the hostility and obstruction going. Evading their responsibilities to govern, the Democrats had assumed control at the expense of the people’s sovereignty. Millions were now unemployed, many of them World War I veterans and their families. The economy was stagnating under high taxation rates extracted by the Internal Revenue Service. A culture of fear was being perpetuated by Wilson’s Justice Department. The Democrats were shirking the duty they held not only to all the people but to those who had served. The unrestrained waste of the people’s substance had to be stopped. It was time to change those in charge. What they were doing was wrong and the first opportunity for the people to correct the direction in which America was going came with the 1920 election. As we know the people took their country back decisively, sweeping the White House, the Congress and state governments across the land.

When it came to veterans, while there could be no price quantified for what they had sacrificed, America had an obligation to them they could not pass off to anyone else. Coolidge said,

Whenever in the future this nation undertakes to assess its strength and resources, the largest item will be the roll of those who served her in every patriotic capacity in the world war. There are those who bore the civil tasks of that great undertaking, often at heavy sacrifices, always with the disinterested desire to serve their country. There are those who wore the uniform. The presence of the living, the example of the dead, will ever be a standing guaranty of the stability of our republic. From their rugged virtue springs a never-ending obligation to hold unimpaired the principles established by their victory. Honor is theirs forevermore.

The form this honor should take is what compelled Coolidge to stand on principle against cash payments to veterans, or any other special demographic. He knew what the perception of a Government giving money away does even to good and honest people. He knew that no amount could adequately recompense those who risked all, some giving life itself, for America’s ideals. When he vetoed measures to bestow cash bonuses to veterans, he acted with full awareness of what it might cost him politically. Principle mattered more to him. The principle of honoring sacrifice to Coolidge did not consist of merely appropriating money to show that “we care” but by embracing a deeper, more profound respect and reverence for what our veterans have done. The Congress of his day, overrode his veto.

Americans had made promises to veterans and those promises must be kept. Coolidge continued,

Duty compels that those promises, so freely made, that out of their sacrifices they should have a larger life, be speedily redeemed. Care of dependents, relief from distress, restoration from infirmity, provision for education, honorable preferment in the public service, a helping hand everywhere, are theirs not as a favor but by right. They have conquered the claim to suitable recognition in all things.

This recognition would be desecrated, however, if honoring our veterans became nothing more than a cash giveaway. More is required than simply to throw money at the problem and walk away. Unless we take up the service of those who served, no amount we give purchases the compassion and respect we owe. By helping the veteran who lives next door, providing for the assistance of his family, supporting the education and upward mobility of our defenders, wherever they are, ensuring the wounded are healed, the forsaken encouraged and the war-torn are built up, we are meeting that obligation. Responsible government appropriates the funds but it accomplishes nothing without the active participation of you and me serving those who served.

On numerous memorials across our nation, what Coolidge said next is fittingly preserved for posterity on the stones we have established in recognition of our veterans’ sacrifices. He reminds us still, “The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.”

On Pretense and Truth in Politics

October 3, 2013October 3, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

As events unfold across America’s most familiar parks, monuments and memorials, it is becoming increasingly obvious that we are witnessing a very deliberate theatrical display by the Obama administration. Whether denying the request to allow D-Day veterans the permission to see their own memorial in Washington or barricading the publicly-owned parking lots furnished for privately-owned sites like Mount Vernon, the result is anything but an honest mistake. It is evident closing sites normally open to the public 24/7 (after Park Service personnel go home) that this is not real. It is meant to convey a false perception of reality in order to score cheap political points against a Republican Party leadership that has willingly conceded everything to avert “shutdown.” Instead, the President and his Senate majority leader have rejected every proposal to fund, by separate legislation, every program but one: “Affordable” health care because of the obvious harm it is already inflicting on millions of Americans. Obama, having no interest in working out any solutions, demands full support for “Obamacare” or no one gets any funding and he will make sure it hurts.

This denial for funds even applies to the National Institute of Health, despite the Republican measure (with no strings attached) to keep research and treatment provided for children with cancer. Asked by reporters on Wednesday, “[I]f you can help one child with cancer, why wouldn’t you do it?” Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid responded, “Why would we want to do that?”

Only in the artificial world of partisan showmanship does this kind of behavior on the part of Obama and his Party make sense. He is trying to create a perception of reality and no attempt to actually solve the problem is allowed, especially when it comes from those cootie-infested Republicans. Full funding for Obamacare or else kids will be denied cancer treatment, veterans will be refused access to their own memorials and privately owned properties will be barricaded…until all of you out there in this ungrateful country feel the pain of Government “shutdown.”

When Coolidge contemplated the true meaning of politics, he did not have much good to say about Washington, D.C. It was instructive, to be sure, but it was usually a lesson in what not to do rather than illustrative of the sound and noble purpose of statesmanship. To obtain guidance from politics as it ought to be, he had to return to the ancient principles of political philosophy learned from the Greeks. “Politics is not an end,” he would reiterate, “but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government.” This current regime, however, has been weaned on Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the influence of Frank Marshall Davis and a host of other violent and hateful men and women. Politics is the end result for this group. This is not a politics Coolidge would have tolerated. It has become a seemingly endless chain of subterfuge, calculation and disregard for any law that blocks the selfish interests of this man’s ideology. The agenda trumps everything. Nothing is allowed to divert, detract or disparage what this one man wants done. Governing never enters the picture. It is only by perpetually politicizing every event for personal advantage that politics itself is corrupted from its original purpose as a “minister to civilization” with a “candid and sincere service.” Instead, it is the “counterfeit” and “false,” the “spurious presentment” or fake imagery that defines politics now, Coolidge had said. “So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness.” The “mean” or lowest common denominator has become the central focus of political attentions. The “sordid” or shameful and sleazy character of politics, while distorting all sense of “true and dignified proportions” at present, can be defeated with a clear-headed and moral leadership.

Inspiring people to greater things is not gone. Though it be “obscured,” as Coolidge noted, it has not been eradicated. It is ready to come back with a righteous vengeance when honest and genuine leadership steps forward, rejecting the fraudulent snake oil salesmanship of this Administration and returning to a “sincerity and integrity of purpose” which comes from men and women, like us, who hold fast an “informed conscience.” “All the predominant political opinion of the nation which is worth cultivating is never impressed by decisions made for effect. Those who compose that body want responsible officeholders to try to find out what is best for the welfare of the people and do that…Pretense does not appeal to them…The people know a sham even when they seem to be trying to fool themselves and they cannot help having a wholesome respect for reality.” The staged political production Obama has orchestrated here to further a deliberately fake perception is no service to civilization. It is a repudiation of civilization for nothing more than concession to one man’s desires to instigate perpetual backlash against his enemies, force them to fund “Obamacare” in order to escape this and any future “shutdown” and cement a permanently uninformed electorate that will keep his vision for this country in power for decades to come.

We hold greater power than we realize to effect a far brighter outcome than this fate. Restoration remains in our hands. Every time we have united together and exercised that sovereignty over our Government, we ultimately prevail. It was true in the legislative triumphs after the 1995 “shutdown” as well as the 2010 election, winning control of the House. It was true in the defeat of gun control and even now in what is an incremental defeat of “Obamacare.” It may not yet appear victorious to us but greater are those who are with us than those who are with pretense and theatrics.

Coolidge, upon accepting his nomination to the Vice-Presidency in July 1920, declared, “All authority must be exercised by those to whom it is constitutionally entrusted, without dictation, and with responsibility only to those who have bestowed it, the people” (emphasis added). Coolidge embraced honesty. He knew that telling the truth, however much it challenged his listeners, served the good. He lived in reality, dealt straightforwardly with all and refused to manipulate people with deceitful fantasies for his benefit or the perceived gain of anyone else. When he reminded people, as he often did, to “work out salvation,” he was not engaging in callous platitudes or pollyannaish delusions, he was expecting nothing less than what Americans have proven is possible every day of our exceptional history.