Back to Basics

Two heads of state delivered speeches last week in Washington, D.C. They spoke from the same podium on consecutive days. The subject was the right of a sovereign nation to defend itself from a country run by radical Islamic fundamentalists that may soon possess nuclear weapons and has vowed to use them against its sworn enemy in order to eliminate it from the face of the earth.

One of the speakers spoke in a manner befitting Neville Chamberlain in the British parliament in the 1930s. While hinting at consequences for Iran, he emphasized a continuation of sanctions that may or may not be afflicting the Iranian economy, but are most assuredly not halting its nuclear ambitions. He chastised what he called “loose talk of war,” though, as if often the case with this particular speaker, he seemed to affix the blame to such bellicosity to the exact wrong party. During the same speech, in an astonishing display of flippancy, he claimed to “have” the threatened country’s “back” “when the chips are down.”

One of the speakers gave an eloquent disquisition on the concept of sovereignty and the protection of full and equal civil rights in his country. He spoke of the responsibilities of providing the state that he leads with security in the face of imminent danger.

One of the speakers said that more diplomacy should be employed in the hopes that Iran will back down from the development of its nuclear weapons program. Yet he also said that U.S. policy on Iran is not containment and that “all options” concerning Iran were on the table. Whether any or all of those options would be exercised was not revealed or even strongly suggested.

One of the speakers said, “Responsible leaders should not bet the security of their countries on the bet that the world’s most dangerous regimes won’t use the world’s most dangerous weapons.” He declared, “A nuclear armed Iran must be stopped.”

One of the speakers said, “In that effort, I firmly believe that an opportunity remains for diplomacy – backed by pressure – to succeed. The United States and Israel both assess that Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon, and we are exceedingly vigilant in monitoring their program. Now, the international community has a responsibility to use the time and space that exists. Sanctions are continuing to increase, and this July – thanks to our diplomatic coordination – a European ban on Iranian oil imports will take hold. Faced with these increasingly dire consequences, Iran’s leaders still have the opportunity to make the right decision. They can choose a path that brings them back into the community of nations, or they can continue down a dead end.

“Given their history, there are of course no guarantees that the Iranian regime will make the right choice. But both Israel and the United States have an interest in seeing this challenge resolved diplomatically. After all, the only way to truly solve this problem (italics added) is for the Iranian government to make a decision to forsake nuclear weapons. That’s what history tells us.”

One of the speakers said, “For fifteen years, I have been warning that a nuclear-armed Iran is a grave danger to my country, and to the peace and security of the entire world.

It is easy to decry the state of higher education in the United States, an arena in which William Ayers is a decorated figure.  But if you have access to a computer with an internet connection, you can rediscover a lost faith in academia and reaffirm the principles of republican government by watching and, more importantly, listening to Hillsdale College president Larry P. Arnn and members of his Hillsdale faculty teach a ten-week course on the United States Constitution beginning in February.

As you may have read in Imprimis, the speech digest of Hillsdale College of Hillsdale, Michigan, Arnn is overseeing an online seminar entitled “Constitution 101: The Meaning and History of the Constitution.”  Anyone can register for the course here.  There is no financial obligation, but donations are welcome.

Arnn’s lectures bookend the course, which as a whole examines the fundamental aspects of the Constitution.  These aspects include the separation of powers, how religion and morality relate to property, and the rejection of the Constitution by the so-called Progressive movement.  Registrants may submit questions to Hillsdale faculty, participate in quizzes, and study readings identical to those assigned in the course taught to Hillsdale students.

While the course lecturers include first-rate scholars such as Thomas G. West, Will Morrisey, and David Bobb, Arnn is the main attraction.  If this country revered education as much as so many politicians and self-styled educators claim, Arnn would be a household name.  So who is this man?

Arnn is many things.  This man with the gray beard and graying hair is affable, deadpan, impish, and brilliant in person or behind the lectern.  He can and does rattle off phrases and paragraphs from Aristotle, Churchill, and the Declaration of Independence from memory.  He does this not to show off, but to demonstrate his reverence for the English language and the power of constitutional ideas and ideals, and to invite you to share in that joy and the joy of learning.  Simply, he loves to teach.

He bluntly — and correctly — calls the Republican Party the stupid party — not for a cheap laugh, but to express his deep disappointment in and frustration with that organization for regularly squandering its many opportunities that arise to defend ordered liberty and limited government.  He is at his best when making the profound ideas and concepts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution applicable to contemporary issues.  He is unafraid to put the words and ideas of people like Barack Obama against people like Thomas Jefferson and demonstrate the differences and the consequences of those differences.  There is no relativism in the life of Larry Arnn.  Of how many other academics can one say that?

No college takes its mission, its charter, and its founding principles more seriously than Hillsdale College.  This is so because of the leadership of Arnn.  He came to Hillsdale by way of Pocahontas, Arkansas, Oxford, and the Claremont Institute.  He was the founding chairman of the California Civil Rights Initiative, later led by Ward Connerly.  He is not merely an administrator out of touch with and out of reach to those in his charge; on the contrary, he teaches courses to Hillsdale students on subjects such as Aristotle’s Ethics.  Again, how many administrators do that in academia today?

Earlier this month I was present at a public appearance by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who had just finished touring a thriving and growing business on the North Shore. Following his tour, the governor delivered a gracious presentation to an assembly of employees. He invited questions following his remarks. What followed was an explicit demonstration of the corrosion of our political discourse.

It’s not what you might think: stark-raving morons did not accuse the governor of hiding Barack Obama’s original birth certificate underneath a tree in Boston Common. There were no demands that Patrick quarter state troopers in homes flying the Gadsden flag. All of the questions were politely proffered and, most likely in the minds of those asking, innocently benign.

One questioner mentioned how fortunate she was to enjoy employment inasmuch as she graduated with a degree in English. However, she wondered, what could the governor or the legislature do to encourage companies to actively hire other graduates of the liberal arts who are having difficulty finding jobs?

Another person cited a story on the Huffington Post(!) regarding a situation in which some employers in some industries are requiring that applicants for some positions be currently employed to be considered. What could the government do about this?

To his credit, Patrick deftly and diplomatically answered these inane questions about what the government could do about such nonsense with a gentle version of the correct answer: nothing. He let them down easy. But the unstated premise of the questions was frightening: any problem, no matter how anecdotal, no matter how easily solved privately or personally, no matter how irrelevant, demands a response from government. Looking to the government immediately rather than as the absolute last resort has become the default position of too many Americans.

We have a president who is currently doing everything he can to turn us in to Europe, which has been lounging on this very principle since the end of World War II. Every unoriginal solution Obama offers involves government. The government will give you health care. The government will determine what you may and may not eat. The government will determine what you may and may not drive. The government will determine how much debt your unborn children will be required to pay. In short, our president’s promise to “fundamentally change” the United States is about the only promise he has kept. Too many in our midst see nothing wrong with this.

This conditioned begging for the attention of Washington or Boston — with no thought of the consequences it entails — is symptomatic of a citizenry that has lost its moorings. It is a misapplication of the basic reasons for and functions of government. It is a perversion of the phrase self-government. The more we expect our problems to be solved by distant central planners, the farther we drift from that which made our nation unique and the reason for its existence.

Now is the time to test whether the Tea Party means business because, judging by last week’s Republican presidential debate, the Tea Party candidate for president in 2012 is self-evident.

Herman Cain is the ideal Tea Party candidate.  Herman Cain is the ideal citizen candidate among the eminently forgettable posse of professional politicians.  Cain has and utilizes, as he did last week in Greenville, South Carolina, the one asset that will unite constitutional conservatives: he is a plain-speaking Gadsden flag.

Generations of career politicians who, in the words of Daniel Webster, “mean to govern well, but mean to govern,” have bankrupted our country in a slow side toward socialism and the withering of our liberty.

Patriots are clamoring for an individual who, as president, can calmly and confidently reorient this country to the Constitution and fiscal sanity.  We the People must nominate the next Republican nominee, even (especially) if it means making an end run around the party establishment to put forth someone who is not of Washington, nor political moderation.  We must eliminate candidates who have had a part — large or small — in contributing to the current crisis.  That means no Romney, no Huckabee, no Gingrich, no Palin.  The boldest statement that can be made is to elect a private citizen president.

Not for Cain is the dialect of programmed candidates controlled by Republican Party hacks or “up-and-coming political stars.”  As was obvious during the debate, Cain does not require handlers and consultants.  No political consultant would ever tell a candidate to answer a question, to which he cannot truly give an informed answer, as Cain did on a question of national security, “I don’t know all the facts.”  Few, if any, would encourage a candidate to endorse Benjamin Netanyahu’s view on the ultimate aims of the jihadists.  Cain speaks with total self-confidence born of ability and achievement, not the unearned laurels of sycophants.

Cain speaks blunt truths about how far we have fallen from our charters and the necessity to restore them and revere them again.  As he recently told Neil Cavuto when refusing to walk back comments about a ban on Muslims in a Cain administration, he only wants “true patriots” around him, committed and dedicated to the Constitution, the Declaration, and the laws of this country.  What else matters?

Cain has proven himself again and again as an executive (which, lest anyone forget, is the office he is seeking), willing to begin at ground level and rising to save a company from bankruptcy.  He is a scholar, a mathematician (bachelors from Morehouse), and computer scientist (masters from Purdue) who speaks logically and plainly.  He recognizes that this is a world of absolutes, right and wrong, and operates so.  He does not fail, nor does he ever need to preface any statement with “Let me be clear.”

A Cain candidacy would give conservative voters a break during October 2012 in the form of a candidate before whom we do not cringe in anticipatory dread during the presidential debates.  Cain would crush the president in a debate, and would do so as calmly and precisely as he demolished Bill Clinton in 1994.  Cain is Obama’s worst nightmare: A strong black man from the South, a self-made black man, unafraid of anyone, unafraid to say directly to Obama’s face what needs to be said directly, as often as it needs to be said.  Cain has had a true American experience.  He knows from real racism and segregation, not some intellectualized rage formulated in the soft environs of the Ivy League.  Cain did not beg, borrow, and steal for a piece of the pie — he quite literally made his own pies.  His example is the American example.