Theo's blog

After the Republican defeats in 2006 and 2008, many people both inside and outside the party are attempting to sideline and remove the social conservative principles and even the members who hold them the most important in the party. Although I am not a social conservative myself, I do not agree that social conservatives should be caged up and belittled. Social conservative principles are just as important to the survival of the Republican party and this nation as fiscal conservative and “national defense conservative” principles. The party and its philosophy is big enough for all of us.

This attempts to make a solid, comprehensive case for the future of the “pro-life” movement that can appeal to both older Americans who have been involved with the pro-life movement and young Americans who are looking for new over-arching principles that are free of what has so far turned them off from the pro-life movement. It does deviate from traditional pro-life principles in some major ways, but it does so to try to create a broad “umbrella platform” that can be applied to a range of issues and excite a new generation of pro-life advocates.

The single line motto used to promote this “Full Life” or “New Pro-Life” or “Always Life” movement is: “Always for Life, from conception to natural death, and every day in between”.

The principles of this “Full Life” movement:

• “Every life must be protected because there is incredible potential in everyone, no matter how poor or troubled a beginning” This is the argument against abortion. Provide here real-life examples of great people who came from backgrounds that are typically prone to high abortion rates, and ask the reader to imagine if these people had never been born. Children are never a burden on our economy or society in the long run as Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama may believe.
• “Every life deserves to grow up in a home where they are wanted and loved, even if it is not the home they were born into” This is the argument for adoption as an alternative to abortion. We must make it a priority to invest in this nation’s adoption programs to not only streamline the laws and regulations, but also find creative ways to finance their expanded size and scope. The long term goal would be to establish a full ecosystem of private charities and even businesses that can carry out the full range of needed services under sufficient regulation and oversight. There may be some problems because out of all of the principles, this one may require the most taxpayer money and government regulation in order to create and sustain this system. Also, there is the problem that in order for adoption to be considered by pregnant women instead of abortions (even if illegal), they will need a large amount of care and incentive during their pregnancy. If incentive for having the child is not provided, then they may resort to dangerous means to abort. However, if too much or the wrong kind of incentive is given, then some women may end up abusing the system for selfish means (repeatedly having children for free health care, for example). This is a problem currently unresolved, and open for discussion.
• “There is no One-Size-Fits-All health care, while the best care is able to target differences between genders, ethnicities, cultures, and religions” This is the argument for privatized health care. The only way to ensure quality care to each citizen of this vast and diverse nation is to have a privatized system, where both businesses and charities are able to target all types of people and adapt in real-time as demographics change. When big government advocates point to countries in Europe as examples of centralized health care, they ignore the fact that America is tremendously larger and more diverse than any of these countries, and that prevents centralized systems from ever working here.
• “Even when a life is taken in foreign conflicts, we must make sure that no others are taken along with it” This is the argument for greater investment in our military to improve the accuracy of our weapons and our intelligence gathering. The Full Life movement is not an anti-war movement because it recognizes that oftentimes conflict is unavoidable, especially when dealing with fanatical non-state terrorists. What we are determined to do is work with our military to greatly improve our ability to hurt only the people who deserve it, and minimize or even eliminate collateral injuries or death to innocents, especially those innocents being used as human shields. Some may at first think this principle seeks to blame the military for deaths and therefore reduce funding for it, but that is very much the opposite because it instead turns the pro-life movement into an investment in our military power for the sake of the noble goal of greater accuracy and precision.
• “When we send our men and women into danger, we must make sure they are protected as much as possible” This is another argument for greater investment in our military to fully equip our warriors with defensive gear. We will not tolerate inadequate funding of our entire military of the bullet-proof vests, armored vehicles, and reinforced barracks. Yes, this is a stab at those politicians who resisted funding our troops during the recent wars and who may do so again in the future. But we can now reinforce our past position with this new over-arching Full Life movement.
• “Our law enforcement is a powerful force for life, not death, when properly trained and equipped” This is the argument for greater investment in our many law enforcement agencies. Although police sometimes have a bad reputation when it comes to protecting life, the solution is to increase training, the amount of personnel, and the equipment they have, instead of cutting their funding in any way. This seeks to eventually equip law enforcement with non-lethal means to subdue suspected criminals, but only when that non-lethal means is proven to be effective in the field. We cannot rush to force technologies on our police if those technologies are not as effective as the current lethal tools, all in the name of reducing unnecessary deaths. This is because when we improperly equip our police with non-lethal tools before they are proven effective, we likely will be trading the death of a suspected criminal for the death of the police officer. But when a viable non-lethal option is developed, we should make it a top priority. The question of what kind of a role the federal government may have in helping local law enforcement agencies is currently unresolved, and open for discussion.
• “There is rarely a life that is truly lost to society, even if they committed horrible crimes” This is the argument against the death penalty across the entire nation. Argue that even convicted criminals have a chance at spiritual redemption and contributing back to society. This does not mean they can ever be free citizens again, and in fact just replaces capital punishment with life in high security prison without any chance of parole. Whether the life-in-prison inmates spend their days sitting around their cell or are put to work doing menial labor in some way is left open for debate on the state level. This may be controversial to many conservatives who have favored capital punishment as a method of deterrent, but they should hopefully see this as a sufficient compromise to advance the pro-life movement. This can appeal to many wavering young Americans who are turned off by what they see as a hypocrisy within the pro-life movement of allegedly fighting for life at conception but then not caring about that life after birth. Removing this hypocrisy as they see it is a major step.

The above principles are really just a rough start to what could become a powerful platform. There are likely some issues which I have neglected to cover (such as the role of contraceptives, the teaching of abstinence, how pregnant minors are to be dealt with, how any exceptions for abortion in cases of danger to life of the mother if such cases even exist). Even if you disagree with some of these, please promote and recommend the article to bring in more discussion and debate.

And I will finish with a disclaimer that may surprise some. Although I have tried very hard to lay out convincing arguments for a greater pro-live movement to re-invigorate conservative ideals and appeal to young people, I myself am not pro-life. I am in fact pro-choice (although mild compared to what the rest of society seems to be), in favor of capital punishment (since I agree with a “eye for an eye, life for a life” in principle), and never want any children of my own (even abstaining from sex to make sure that happens). However, despite my traditional beliefs on the matter, I have tried to come up with arguments and a platform that could even convince me to join a pro-life movement.

Cross-posted at RedState.

I have begun the difficult but exciting process of carefully thinking about what specific issues a new Republican party can run on in the future (planning for 2012, but we may be ready for 2010).

Steps for Success

Our problem is the party's race relations. For decades now Republicans (and even conservatives in general) have very successfully been labeled as racists and bigots. Yes, this is very largely because our opponents have driven this message to the public, but ultimately it is our fault for not working hard enough to selling ourselves and our accomplishments in this area.

• This starts with our history as the party that ended slavery under President Lincoln, but continues right up to President George W. Bush's very racially diverse administration. We must build grassroots marketing campaigns to make sure the public (especially young people) know that the Republican party is the historical party of racial liberty and opportunity. These grassroots campaigns should start on popular Internet social networking sites and conservative blogs, but could eventually create multimedia advertisements to be picked up and distributed on broadcast stations by political organizations with money. We will receive much ridicule from the left at first, but if we stick to these campaigns we can at least get this out into the "public consciousness" so it isn't such a strange idea when 2012 comes around.
• Reach out more to an ethnic population very often overlooked by both conservatives and liberals: Native Americans. With the power of charities and grassroots fundraising, we can take the message of self-reliance and hard work to the communities that are trapped in alcoholism and welfare. People may scoff at this, but it would go a long way not only to helping Native peoples, but also our reputation among the public. And assuming initial success we could expand the message to immigrating Hispanics, who oftentimes identify themselves with mixed Native heritage depending upon the region they come from.
• And the hardest, but most important one: we have to take a long, hard look at our traditional stance on immigration. Does this mean accepting "Amnesty"? No. But it does mean being willing to come up with creative solutions to the problem and packaging those solutions in digestible ideas for sound bites and campaign slogans to persuade people. Below are ideas on how a Republican immigration plan can look and be marketed. The bottom line is that we have to be willing to bend a little on this issue and heavily market this in order to ever overcome our unfair reputation as the anti-immigration party.
• We have to also work harder at digging up hard examples of how welfare and big government nanny-ism hurts immigrant families in the long run. Counter that with hard evidence of how entrepreneurship and learning English in these families leads to greater success. And when we have these examples and raw information, we need to package and market deep inside ethnic communities (Spanish-language television stations, newspapers, churches and other organizations).

Legislative Leadership

Assuming Senator John McCain decides to stay in office after this election, he would be a tremendous asset to this immigration campaign. He has championed borderline Amnesty immigration reform, but if we come up with solutions that are less strict than we traditionally have pushed, we could convince him to meet us half way. He has also been a huge advocate for Native Americans in his time in the Senate (which is something I am sad never was brought up during any of his stump speeches or television spots), and his reputation in this could lift up other Republican politicians that work with him (legislators or governors) and provide them a foundation to build on.

Are there any other Republican politicians that are working on immigration reform or relations within the Native American communities?

Possible Features

Some ideas for this future immigration reform, for your consideration to get discussion started:

• Whatever programs for helping educating and integrating immigrants into America must come from charities and other private sources, not the federal government (although state governments would be free to partner with these programs, of course). The federal government may help co-ordinate these disparate organizations so that people in need of the services have a single website and phone number to get information from, but that is the extent of government involvement. We can start here by making a list of existing charities that are in this field already.
• It may be necessary for some federal taxpayer money to be used to help these programs with their expanded administrative costs at first, but even if this is true any annual financing should have an automatic expiration date that fades away over a set number of years.
• A combined guest worker and academic study program with a defined path to citizenship. Allow a certain number of people from all over the world to come to the U.S. for 2 year blocks of time to work or go to school. They would never be eligible for the welfare programs, so if they loose their job and can't find another one to buy food or health care, their guest permit is revoked. They must show some level of English, although wouldn't have to be fluent (that should come while they work or learn here). If they break any significant crime they would loose their guest permit (drunk driving would be enough, but a speeding citation may not).
• The above guest worker/student program can be used to funnel all potential citizens into our country. Therefore, there would not be any hard line between foreigner one day then full-blown citizen the next. Everyone would come in to work or learn while proving to the government they can follow the laws and become fluent in English in order to attain full citizenship.
• I do not think the guest worker/student program should cost the foreigner much money. It should be cheap and easy to become a "guest" for at least 2 years. Their presence in the country by paying taxes and being productive would be benefit enough to our economy. However, the costs for becoming a full citizen should pay for themselves through application fees. Even at most I don't expect that to be more than $2,000, and even that may be high.
• Give all applicants in our current system that have been waiting more than 2 years a priority treatment to become guests as soon as possible, and waive their application fees to become citizens when they are ready (assuming they meet all qualifications).
• To become a guest worker, the individual must apply through a U.S. Embassy in their native country (or an auxiliary office of the Embassy in large countries). There would not be any way to apply within the USA, therefore encouraging immigrants who are here in the U.S. illegally to return home first. We would allow them to leave in peace, and in fact may even set them up with charities or other programs to help them pay for the trip back. Once they properly apply, they may be given a priority treatment to become guests because of the prior experience with the U.S., but it would not be greater treatment than those immigrants who are grandfathered in from the old system.
• And of course, securing the border is an absolute requirement. Leaving it open and unguarded is a huge national security risk as we all know. I believe we can successfully sell this to the public if our plans for legal guests and immigrants is seen as accepting and humanitarian enough. The only real questions are whether this secured border would be a physical wall (sorry, a "fence" isn't going to cut it), or a virtual one of cameras and UAVs patrols in the air. I'm leaning towards the virtual one. And also whether the National Guard would be involved by activation by the federal government on short term rotations (3 months would be best).

Consequences

If we fail to reclaim the label of racial liberators, then the Republican Party will fade away, faced with a Democrat Party constantly growing off of changing ethnic demographics all over the country. The two party Republican/Democrat dynamic would eventually be replaced by a split in the Democratic party between their far-left and left-of-center factions. Yes, the core conservative heart of the American public will live on, but an organization large and sufficiently funded enough will not be there to empower them.

A disclaimer: I am a conservative, but registered Libertarian, not Republican, although that may change in the future depending where the party goes.