Doing nothing can be good conservative policy

To this day it is widely accepted in Australia that Bob Menzies was our greatest Prime Minister. He was the Prime Minister of Australia from 1939 to 1941 and again from 1949 to 1966. He is Australia's longest-serving prime minister, serving over 18 years in total. He ran Australia in the '50s and most of the '60s in what many now look back upon as a golden age. There was great embarrassment if unemployment exceeded 2% and life was generally tranquil, though Communist unions did their best to make trouble.



But when people say what a great man Bob was, a common response was:  "But what did he DO?"  And that is a hard question to answer.  Whenever people came to Bob and suggested something that the government should do,  Bob would reply:  "But if we do that, that will create another problem here".  So Bob would send the suggestions away, saying that the best thing to do was nothing.  

People are always calling on the politicians to do something so it takes great political talent to do nothing.  And doing nothing means that the size of the government stays pretty small -- unlike what mostly happens today when the government never ceases to expand.

So Bob's talent was to let the people of the nation create any change they desired, with little or no government interference.  If enough people backed the change it would happen.  If it had little backing it would not happen.  So prosperity and quality of life increased entirely through private initiatives.

Bob was however of Scottish origins and he inherited the great Scottish reverence for education.  So he saw it as a real problem that poor families could not send their children to university.  So, for once, he DID something about that. He instituted a scheme where the Federal government would send to university all children from poor families who had scored in the top third of High School grades.  The government not only paid the tuition fees but even gave the kid a living allowance.  It was called the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme and I was one of its beneficiaries.

But Bob was rare even among conservative politicians for his ability to do next to nothing. More on Menzies here

So let me mention another such rarity: "Honest" Frank Nicklin.  Would you believe a politician with the nickname "Honest"?  In WWI he was a war hero and after the war he was a banana farmer.  In 1957, he became the Premier of my home state of Queensland and ran Queensland for around 10 years in the 60s.  Frank was by all accounts a very nice man:  A pre-Reagan Reagan.  He got on well with the bureaucracy and even the unions.  So life in Queensland was very tranquil in his time.



How Frank did it can perhaps be gleaned from the words of a unionist who had just gone to see him with some request.  He was asked afterwards what had happened with his request.  He answered:  "Mr. Nicklin can say No in the nicest possible way"!

But, like Bob Menzies Frank did do something:  He spent a lot on upgrading the infrastructure -- roads and bridges etc. More on Nicklin here.

And then we come to an example that older Americans will know about: Ike.



Ike didn't like to rock boats and mainly just wanted to let people get on with their own lives.  He kept the government low-key and tried to reduce government financial deficits.  But he too did SOMETHING.  Like Frank Nicklin, he spent a lot on building up infrastructure -- a big network of high quality interstate highways.  That network is in rather bad repair these days but if all the money wasted on the global warming myth had been spent the way the three men above operated, there would be no such problem today. Has there ever before been so much money spent with nil result as has been spent on global warming?  It would take a war to equal it

But it is wrong to say that conservatives favour the status quo.  Conservative-run legislatures legislate as energetically as any  but mostly that is just to undo the damage caused by previous Leftist policies.  It is Leftist changes that they oppose, not all change.  But, as we see above, even the three champion conservative leaders did also make positive changes: carefully considered changes that generated broad consensus

Trump looks to be going down a similar road.  He is mainly unwinding Obama-era initiatives rather than launch initiatives of his own.  But he has launched one initiative: A Paid Parental Leave Entitlement.  Hopefully that will be his version of the "one thing" that deeply conservative leaders sometimes do.  Like their initiatives it will probably have broad support. Market-oriented conservatives don't like it very much but family-oriented conservatives probably will. And any welfare proposal will have the Democrats onside -- though they may feel burned that their name won't be on it.

*******************************

Washington Post Editor: Just Let White Working Class Die in Peace

They have thought it but recently a member of the media elite actually said it out loud. Washington Post columnist and editorial board member Jonathan Capehart basically told white working class Americans they are better off dying than trying to fight for their life against a swelling tide of immigration and globalization.

    “Economic dislocation and demographic changes are fueling discomfort and desperation among white working-class voters,” wrote WashPo columnist and editorial board member Jonathan Capehart, continuing:

    While [university professor and author] Justin Gest says that both Republicans and Democrats have exploited these voters, he sees a way forward.

    “The only way of addressing their plight is a form of political hospice care,” [Gest] said. “These are communities that are on the paths to death. And the question is: How can we make that as comfortable as possible?”

Professor Gest made no bones about his views of white working class citizens: they are a dying breed who are simply too dumb to understand that they need immigrants to revitalize their  communities.

    "Declining towns need immigrants to reinvigorate their markets, take on unwanted labor positions, and add youth to aging demographies. Once these communities understood the benefits immigrants bring and were consulted about the terms of their integration, they would feel more comfortable with their arrival."

Capehart and Gest are both well aware of their rabid anti-white working class prejudice:

    “It has become okay [among Democrats] to become classist against poor white people and the [white voters] see it,” said Gest.

    The party’s coalition includes environmentalists, lawyers, Latinos, hippies, and electric-car drivers, Gest said, adding “there are many people in there who like the privileged status that the Democratic Party gives to certain ethnic groups.” For the party to welcome the white working class, he added, it would be “cheapening” the privileges given to others.

In other words, the Left doesn’t want to demean itself by appealing to people who do not meet their standards of virtue signaling.

So instead of appealing to them in any meaningful way, Gest suggests political suicide:

    "For many white working class people, and this is going to be controversial, for many white working class people, not all of them but many, you have a community of people who are advanced in age, whose skill set is for a different economy, who are living in communities that are losing population, losing resources, and so in many ways, the only way of addressing their plight is a form of political hospice care. These are communities that are on the paths to death, and the question is how can we make that as comfortable as possible …"

A white working class voter offered this defense of her community:

    "Education can’t be the only answer for Americans if the U.S. labor market is also being flooded with cheap foreign workers", said a highly skilled worker contacted by Breitbart. “I know you don’t know me from a can of paint, but I had to throw in my 2 cents in your article about the WashPo editor,” said the woman, who tunes and operates computer-controlled machine tools in Cincinnati, Ohio. She continued:

    "I work in manufacturing. I have a high school diploma and a so-called associate degree from Wyotech that currently has as much worth to me as toilet paper (and it’s just as disposable). I am a [Computer Numeric Control] Machinist. I set up, tool, program, and operate CNC mills and lathes to make precision parts out of Teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene, that nonstick stuff on your frying pan) and can hold tolerances to +/- 0.0002″. So I’m wondering, since I am working in a field of a bygone economic era, how dumb do they think I really am that I need “more” education? What is more education going to do for me? So I can sit around and be a great do-nothing thinker as a white (non) working class individual? What is the threshold of intellectual satiation? How many degrees do we need to be indebted to the federal government before they deem the white working middle class smart enough to associate with people like THAT?

    I have a hard time understanding how someone like Gest or Capehart can look down their noses at someone like me because I don’t share their desire for overpriced toilet paper. Could either of them program a machine to cut an arc into a piece of material? No, but I can. Could either of them change their oil, replace their brakes, or change their front differential fluid? (I’d be surprised if they knew where the dipstick is to even check it.) No, but I can. I’m a 35-year-old, white working class woman that could outsmart them on a common sense basis and on a highly technical basis, and somehow I am the one that needs more education?

    People like that think that “working class white voters” is a descriptor of who we are as a socioeconomic group, with a dash of race and political functionality. “Working class (white) voters” are machinists, assemblers, machine operators, mechanics, nurse’s aides, waitresses, small retail store managers, bus drivers, taxi drivers, truck drivers, and all the jobs that they wouldn’t dare do themselves, being so much smarter than the rest of us (doubtful they know which end of a wrench to use).

    Being a “working class white voter” does not make us inferior or intellectually stunted so much that we need to be (re)educated in liberally biased schools of doublespeak and thoughtlessness. All we want to do is work a good job that does present a modest challenge, that does feel rewarding, keeps the lights on and our bellies full and after all of that, we just want to come home, drink some beers, pet the dog and enjoy the sunset in our small suburban slice of heaven. For us, that is what life is all about. We don’t care about revolutions, microaggressions, or how many physical and economic descriptors we can apply to a sub group of a sub group of a sub group. People like Gest and Capehart are more important to themselves, like Narcissus was to his reflection; eventually, they will drown in their obsession. And when they do, they’re still gonna be at the counter of a Mom and Pop shop asking some “white working class voter” with grease on his or her face “What’s wrong with my Prius?”

SOURCE

***************************

Ted Cruz Lays Out 4 Priorities for a Blockbuster Year for Conservatives

We have “a historic opportunity,” was the message of Sen. Ted Cruz at the Road to Majority Conference.

“It is June 2017, and Hillary Clinton is not president and Neil Gorsuch is a Supreme Court justice,” said the Texas Republican Thursday.

This year “demonstrates that elections matter,” Cruz said. “It demonstrates that men and women here, men and women of faith, pastors, Americans across this country love freedom, and if we rise up and stand together, we can do remarkable things.”

“We have a majority in the House, we have a majority in the Senate, we have a Republican as president, how about we act like it?” Cruz said to the crowd.

And with this “historic opportunity” in mind, Cruz laid out the four big priorities that Republicans need to deliver on. Otherwise, he warned, the party risks 2017 being a “heartbreaking missed opportunity” rather than a “blockbuster year” with possibly the “most productive Congress in decades.”

These four priorities are the Supreme Court, repealing Obamacare, regulatory reform, and tax reform.

*    Supreme Court. Cruz commended President Donald Trump on his nomination of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and “for honoring his promise to the American people of nominating a principled constitutionalist,” calling it a “home run.”

*    Obamacare. The second priority was repealing Obamacare, which Cruz called “a train wreck collapsing right before our eyes.” It is, he said, “critical … to repeal Obamacare and it is critical that we do it well, in a way that provides real relief.”

*    Tax Reform. Rather than focusing on the “political circus … let’s focus on delivering results,” Cruz stated, advocating a “bold and simple” approach to tax reform, saying that “there is power to bold simplicity.”

*    Regulation reform. The Texas conservative called for a “pull back of the regulations that are strangling small businesses, strangling farmers and ranches, and job creators across this country.”

In closing, Cruz emphasized his appreciation for those in attendance and those who have fought so hard to make a difference in the U.S., saying, “thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“Thank you for your prayers, thank you for your passion, thank you for your time, thank you for your energy, thank you for speaking out and working to retake our nation.”

The Road to Majority Conference is hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Washington, D.C.

SOURCE

******************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************