Ronald Wilson Reagan, the actor who became our 40^th President, died of pneumonia on June 5, 2004, at age 93. Gone but never-to-be-forgotten is the man who was the greatest president of the 20^th Century, even supassing the successful minimalist approach of the underrated, low-profile Calvin Coolidge. Their greatness was defined in part by their leadership styles that were tailor-made for their times, though also by their optimism and their ultimate belief in America's capability, its future potential, and its overall greatness, although Reagan had considerably more charisma and style. But both also believed in the idea that people were better at solutions than government, and that the private sector was far more effective at fulfilling most of society’s needs than bureaucratic central planning. “Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in America,” the Gipper once said.

Those on the left of the political spectrum both at home and abroad derided Reagan for his “cowboy” image (much as they maligned Bush-43 20 years later for ostensibly the same reason) and the attitudes that accompanied it, but in so doing they failed to consider that being 'cowboys' is part of America's secret to our success and a symbolic image of American exceptionalism. It is a sign of how much we value our individual liberties -- as opposed to 'Old Europe' which puts equality ahead of freedom, regardless of cost -- as well as our pioneering spirit to blaze new trails and push back boundaries. By that token, it is no surprise that for the better part of 150 years, America has become a fountainhead of so many new inventions that have changed the world -- from the light bulb to the telephone to an automobile for the masses -- and we're the first, and still the only ones to land on the Moon. Reagan personified all these great things, and he emerged on the national scene when we needed him the most.

The 1970s were not a decade to be fondly remembered for America, and I'm not talking about disco, either. Even in 1979, we were still smarting from having lost Vietnam -- thanks to liberal politicians who wouldn't let the generals fight the war, and liberals in the press who tried to convince a befuddled nation that we were losing despite our military successes. If that were not enough, the supposed intelligentsia peddled the notion that America had already reached its apogee of success, and that we should all accept the fact that our days of glory were behind us for good. Heck, this same intelligentsia was also saying how immoral we were and that we deserved to lose Vietnam because we were just so arrogant to think that the Vietnamese people didn't want to be enslaved by communism! 

Worst of all, at home under then-President Jimmy Carter, we were dealing with double-digit unemployment, inflation and interest rates (yes, the double digits applied to all three) -- the lethal ingredients that made up Carter's "Misery Index." We were also facing an energy crisis due to price controls on those important commodities, which Carter refused to touch. Instead of dealing with these problems that were making a mess of our economy, Carter's approach was to blame the American people first -- a habit he has sadly not broken to this day. On July 15, 1979, in what became known as his "Malaise Speech," he said America was suffering a "crisis of confidence" and a state of "paralysis, stagnation and drift." He berated Americans for being too greedy, keeping their thermostats too high and taking vacations. After the speech bombed (no surprise there!), he turned on his Cabinet and demanded that they all resign.

Abroad, things were no better. Just two days after the Malaise Speech, Marxists launched a communist coup in Nicaragua. Likewise sensing a wimp in the White House, The Russian Commies invaded Afghanistan that same year. But that was nothing compared to what happened in Iran. That same year, the Ayatollah incited some of his citizens to storm sovereign United States territory -- the embassy in Tehran -- and take 66 of our fellow Americans hostage, 52 of whom would remain captured for over a year. Carter's response? A botched rescue attempt, followed by the usual economic sanctions and sitting on one's hands. No wonder we had a confidence crisis.

All that was before Reagan came along. Rather than focus on the justifiable anger against Carter -- personified by the saying "I'm sick of America getting pushed around!" -- his 1980 campaign was based on his own personal optimism that, contrary to what those on the left were saying, America's best days were still yet to come. He knew better than the intelligentsia; he knew that the character of the American people was too great not to succeed, that there was not a foe we could not conquer, that there was no reason for us not to prosper so long as we did not stand in the way of free enterprise. The American people responded to his optimism in kind, and elected him that year; he carried 44 states, and get 489 electoral college votes compared with Carter's forty-nine -- in short, he won by a landslide. 

Reagan's victory over the incumbent Carter caused autocrats all over the world to take notice -- the people had replaced a Mahatma Gandhi-wannabe with John Wayne. Credit the Ayatollah and Co. in Iran for taking notice; within 36 minutes of Reagan's inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981, he received the news that the Iranian government had released the American hostages after 444 days and had already put them on a plane headed for the States. If that were not enough, during Reagan’s inaugural address, the decade-long nightmare of economic stagnation was coming to an end with the new tone in Washington, evident in his inaugural speech. “We are a nation that has a government – not the other way around!” If only the current occupant in the White House understand this fundamental truism!

At home, the Misery Index under Carter had seen its last days after Reagan cut taxes and opened the door to the longest period of economic peacetime prosperity to date.

Meanwhile, the Soviet aggression in Afghanistan was turned back, and thanks to brilliant leadership, along with Oliver North's management, the Marxists were defeated in Nicaragua. It was "Morning in America" again, and The Gipper made that possible.

Before Reagan, the popular belief was that presidents were only successful in their executive duties when they were miserable, that the job of president destroyed its occupants. Reagan took the opposite approach; he viewed the presidency as something fun; indeed, upon taking office, he said, " [T]his is fun. Let's saddle up and go for a ride.''

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            Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on Feb. 6, 1911 in Tampico, Ill. He grew up in Dixon Ill., and as a senior in high school, he was the student body president, and a stand-out in football, basketball and track. After graduating from Eureka College (Ill.) in 1932 with a degree in economics (where he also played football), he became a sportscaster for an NBC affiliate radio station in Davenport, Iowa. Although he grew up in the Midwest, California became his adopted home state, first moving there temporarily in 1933 to cover the Chicago Cubs' spring training. By 1937, he started to permanently reside in the Golden State when he signed a seven-year acting contract with Warner Brothers for $200 a week -- good money for the time. 

Reagan's nickname "The Gipper" came from his role of legendary Notre Dame football player George Gipp in the 1940 film Knute Rockne, All-American. In the film, Gipp gives his deathbed message of "win one for the Gipper" to his coach, Knute Rockne, and the message became the stuff of sports legend, especially in college football. Indeed, Reagan attributed part of his success as president to his acting background. Indeed, he credited his professional background with his ability to communicate well, hence his reputation as "The Great Communicator." 

Reagan started to find politics after WWII; he was elected to the Screen Actors Guild in 1947 for what would be five consecutive terms, but his great political awakening occurred at the end of the 1940s when Richard Nixon in Congress and Joe McCarthy in the Senate were exposing the Soviet spies that had honeycombed the State and Justice Departments since FDR's administration. By the early 1950s, Reagan was making a name for himself as a persuasive conservative speaker in addition to his acting (he became the host for CBS' weekly TV series General Electric Theater in 1953). By 1956, still a Democrat, he nonetheless campaigned for Dwight Eisenhower. He finally switched parties in 1962 ("I didn't leave the Democrats, they left me," he used to say). He kicked off his own political career in 1964 when he gave his "A Time for Choosing" speech, in which he endorsed Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater; two years later, The Gipper was elected governor of California, an office he would retain for two full terms.

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Reagan's economic recovery, which he implemented upon taking office was not that complicated. His system was simply based on "Supply-Side Economics," which called for, among other things, cutting taxes, which would allow more people to spend more of their own money, and pump it into the economy. His belief in supply-side economics was again based on his optimism that the American people were capable of being successful on their own, without an intrusive big government to decide how people should or should not be successful. In truth, he made no bones about his distrust for government when it came to economic policy. Thus he once said during a conference on small businesses on Aug. 15, 1986: "Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

His system of supply-side economics worked then, and still works to this day, as we did see the strongest period of economic growth in 20 years due to the same measures having taken place under George W. Bush (that is, before the Democrats took control of Congress after 2006) that Ronald Reagan implemented at the beginning of the 1980s.

Those who derided Reagan because of "soaring deficits" do so erroneously. For one, the federal deficit must be compared with the GDP (for the benefit of you IU and Kentucky fans, that's "Gross Domestic Product") of the time. During strong economic growth, a larger deficit is not that big of a deal, and indeed, economic growth historically has lead us out of deficits (barring a massive reduction in government spending, something that is long overdue!). Furthermore, those who blame Reagan for the deficit in the '80s forget two major things, namely the fact that liberals in Congress could not control their own social spending addictions, and that the president had a Cold War to win, which required serious investments in the strengthening of our military.

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Although Reagan led America back into economic prosperity, his greatest legacy was his having won the Cold War. He accomplished this in no small measure by his different approach to the Soviets. Instead of trying to appease the Communists -- a recipe for disaster, as half of Europe was subsumed by Soviet imperialism in the immediate years after WWII due to such appeasement -- Reagan faced them head-on. He also had the gumption to identify them as they were -- evil. He gave his famous "Evil Empire" speech about the Soviet Union to the British House of Commons on June 8, 1982, rightfully calling communist Russia "the focus of evil in the modern world." Needless to say, this sent the left into apoplexy, for while Reagan was busy trying to deliver America and the world from this evil, they were busy writing mash notes to the Kremlin. Part of facing the Soviet threat head-on meant building a stronger military; this sent the liberals into hysteria, panicking as though Reagan was somehow leading us into nuclear annihilation. The subsequent events have proven that those naysayers were on the wrong side of history then, and still are today.

The American people certainly had confidence in Reagan as he brought morning back to America. Despite all the red meat Walter F. Mondale threw at the left during the 1984 election -- he bragged that he opposed the F-14 fighter, the M-1 tank, the B-1 bomber, even an increase in military salaries, Had he had his way in 1967, he would have dismantled the space program, too. -- Reagan won again by an even bigger landslide than he did in 1980; this time he carried 49 states. Even Mondale's own state of Minnesota chose The Great Communicator. Of course, the Cold War was far from won at that point, and Reagan kept pressing on.

The year 1985 would prove to be a key year in our victory over the Evil Empire, for that was the year that their hegemonic influence came to a screeching halt when he helped the Contras kick the Marxists out of Nicaragua. In the wake of our success, the Democrats in Congress acted as though some sort of illegal activity -- the "Iran-Contra" affair -- had taken place, but that's only because it's illegal, in the liberal Democrat worldview, to do anything that's in our own national interest, especially defeating communism.

The following year, 1986, was another milestone in Reagan's Cold War victory when he joined Soviet "President" Mikhail Gorbechev in Reikjavik to discuss possible arms reductions. Gorbechev offered a massive arms reduction on one condition; that Reagan would agree to scrap his Strategic Defense Initiative that he introduced three years earlier. That he could not give up, and so he walked out on Gorby (one of the first lessons in business is that you have to be willing to walk away from the deal if the terms become intolerable). As Reagan boarded Air Force One out of Iceland, he told the press his aim was victory, not agreement. "The ultimate goal of American foreign policy," he said, "is not the prevention of war, but the expansion of freedom." You can imagine how badly panicked the New York Times got over that quote! In hindsight, though, that meeting in a cottage in Iceland’s capital would prove to be the last great battle of the Cold War. By refusing to abandon SDI, Ronaldus Magnus had consigned the Evil Empire to the dustbin of history.

Naturally, this was in line with his own predictions. Slightly over a quarter century earlier, Nikita Khrushchev was blustering to America that “we will bury you,” meaning that the Soviet system would outlast the American way of life. The intelligentsia, from “historian” Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to pretend-economist John Kenneth Galbraith, in all their moral confusion, were able to delude themselves into thinking that this could very well be true. Reagan, not surprisingly, had an entirely different vision of the future. In his Westminster address given on June 3, 2002, Reagan gave his famous prognostication, saying "[t]he march of freedom and democracy...will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people."

            Perhaps the most memorable milestone, though, took place on June 12, 1987, when he gave his historic speech in Berlin, in front of the Berlin Wall and the Brandenburg Gate. Reagan, not known to mince words when freedom was on the line, bluntly told Gorbechev, "If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbechev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbechev, tear down this wall!"

            By that time, Gorbechev was starting to get the message, and to reward him for his good behavior, Reagan signed with him the Immediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty on Dec. 8, 1987, which eliminated all U.S. Pershing II and Soviet SS-20 immediate-range missiles in Europe. Although Reagan went against his conservative base in doing so, by that time, the Soviets were in such bad shape trying to keep up with American military might and deal with their poorly-run economy at the same time that it became hopeless for them to amount any more serious threats, even with our missile withdrawl from Europe. For all intents and purposes, the signing of the INF Treaty signaled victory for the U.S. in the Cold War.

            While fighting the Cold War, Reagan also set the precedence for fighting terrorism as well. Terror was already starting to become a problem in those days, though not as much as it would in the 1990s and 2000s. When Libyan-backed terrorists bombed a discotheque in Berlin, killing some American troops in the process, Reagan bombed Muammar Qadaffi's offices in Tripoli. We didn't hear from Qadaffi again until last year, when he finally decided to join the civilized world after being reminded by George W. Bush what America was capable of doing if Libya were to incur America's ire again.

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            If winning the Cold War weren't a good enough legacy, Reagan left his positive mark elsewhere in politics as well. He basically transformed the Republican Party. Before Reagan, Republicans were best cited by Jack Kemp or Richard Lugar: rather strong on foreign policy issues, unreliably strong on economic issues, but weak on social issues. In earlier eras, they could afford to be weak on social issues, because liberalism hadn't begotten the fallout from the era of "free love" that help characterized the 1960s and '70s, nor the “self-esteem” industrial complex that his poisoned our educational system. Suffice it to say that during that time, they were a bit "behind the eight ball," to use the old adage. Reagan changed all that, too. He ushered in a new era for the party's ideology, one in which its members would be conservative on all three areas of policy, across the board. This shift in Republican ideology invited in new members, namely Southern Democrats who were repulsed by the new "anything goes" mentality that their erstwhile party was only too happy to coddle (to say nothing of the nanny state mentality that has curdled the Party since the days of Woodrow Wilson and FDR). These "Reagan Democrats" became part of the new strong base that has helped define the traditional views of Middle America. In short, Reagan overhauled the Republican Party, and made it far more viable in the marketplace as times changed; he adapted, and the party had no choice but to adapt with him.

            He introduced what were then new ideas in the Executive Branch. Since FDR, it was conventional wisdom that big government was the mechanism to right all wrongs. Indeed, the Obamunists continue to operate under this false premise to this very day, much to our national detriment. Reagan, however, acted on the belief that the people didn't need more government programs and subsidies, they need government to get out of their way. “[G]overnment is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” Reagan announced during his inaugural address as President. This guiding belief remains the central maxim of the Republican Party to this day, though some of its members are still not above apostasy, to be sure.

As mentioned previously, I have made the assertion that both Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan are the two greatest Presidents of the 20^th Century. One thing probably puts Reagan ahead of Coolidge, aside from style and communication ability, in terms of overall greatness was the danger to which he responded. To paraphrase historian/pundit George Will, Reagan's greatness can be summed up by taking note that the dangers that summoned him have since been so thoroughly defeated, in so small measure by what he did, that it is difficult to remember the magnitude of the dangers themselves, let alone his achievements -- particularly for those my age, who were in grade school while he was in the White House. If you're looking for a monument to Ronald Reagan, look around and consider what you do not see, such as communist slavery in parts of Europe were it once ran rampant.

A loving husband, he married his closest friend in Nancy on Mar. 4, 1952. He had two loves of his life; one was his wife Nancy, and the other was with the American people; the people responded in kind. He was also a man of deep faith, and made it no secret that his faith in God was the wellspring from which he derived his conservative core beliefs. Nor did he restrict faith as the source for such beliefs to himself, either. "No arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women," he said during his first inaugural address. He also credited America's strong overall religious faith in part to our military victories, as he said in Normandy, France, on the 40^th Anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1984, " The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest."

So many presidents left the White House as shells of their former selves (e.g., LBJ and Carter); Reagan left office after two wildly successful terms still upbeat and on a wave of national popularity that is still yet to crest. His public announcement that he had Alzheimers in 1994 was a blow to us all, and Middle America can now take heart that he no longer has to suffer.

His belief in America's greatness was due to his unshakeable beliefs in the people's greatness, which translated into his confidence that people could be successful on their own, so long as government got our of their way. As he said on Sept. 29, 1981, "We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success -- only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free. Trust the people. This is the one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development."

His optimism in America's greatest days to come was therefore manifest in these beliefs, that so long as the people continue to be able to achieve great things, this country will reap the benefits of our achievements. It is in this way, that by living up to our potential, and drawing on our gumption to live out the American Dream and thus keep America prospering and strong, that we can honor this great man and President; that by making sure Morning stays in America, we'll always be winning one for the Gipper. May God bless Ronald Reagan, and may God Bless the United States of America.

Addendum: 

Some links to some great Reagan quotes

For one, Meyerson reports that

“On Tuesday, the Republican Senate whip, Jon Kyl of Arizona, called Democrat Kent Conrad's proposal for cooperatives in lieu of a public option “a Trojan horse” for a government takeover of health care.”

Has that not proven to be the case? Did Nanny Pelosi not say that this was a “down payment towards nationalized healthcare?” Or was that just my imagination, à la The Temptations?

Another Meyerson observation:

“For much of the 20th century, the Democrats were the party of the white South, the immigrant North and labor unions. The Republicans were the party of Wall Street bankers, Main Street merchants, professionals and Sun Belt cowboys.”

He got it mostly right in that above excerpt. For the first 65 years of the 20^th Century, this template seemed to hold up, but it started to unravel in the mid-1960s, on two counts. For one, the “white South” started to realize that the Democrats were the party of Big Government, and started to gravitate more towards anti-Big Government candidates as the rest of the century progressed. Let us not forget that the Southern States seceded from the Union 100 years earlier because they thought the federal government was getting too big then. Once they finally started to wake up to this fact, albeit 30+ years after it materialized in the 1930s, they started to gradually distance themselves from Democrats and slowly gravitate towards more conservative candidates, which anymore have an “R” after their names.

The other aspect of this template that has crumbled away is the alliance with Wall Street. As Michael Barone has pointed out, “the stereotype of Wall Street being aligned with the Republican Party is one that is decades out of date.” The reason for this is that the dirty little secret of many Wall Street execs is that they love government regulation, provided that it is regulation that serves their parochial financial interests.

A more pernicious, albeit stealthy jab from Meyerson:

“Of the 40 Republican members of the Senate, fully half — 20 — come from the old Confederacy, the Civil War border states where slavery was legal or Oklahoma, which politically is an extension of Texas without Texas' racial minorities. Ten others come from the Mountain West.”

Meyerson actually thinks he is a Psephologist (yes, that is how it is spelled) by trying to analyze identity politics. His false premise stems from a fundamentally misleading assumption of those on the left. According to those on the left side of the ideological spectrum, if you oppose their attempts to expand governmental control over our lives, you only do so out of sinister motive. A common mantra of the left is that they want a big government nanny state “to help the poor and disenfranchised.” Since it is a coincidence that many of the “poor and disenfranchised” happen to be minorities, leftists reflexively jump to the conclusion that if you oppose Big Government, you are racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, etc., etc., individual freedom and self-reliance be damned. But nevertheless, Meyerson continues:

“Obama, the Republican base is saying, personifies an America that is increasingly alien to them. It's multiracial, as they are not. It puts Sonia Sotomayor, who sure doesn't come from their America, on the Supreme Court. Increasingly, the Republicans have descended into white identity politics.”

Wait, did I read that correctly? “White identity politics?” This from a member (presumably) of a party that wrote the book on identity politics more than 40 years ago – the nerve and hypocrisy! False premises aside, Meyerson would be well-served to take notice of the diversity of conservative Republican candidates running for office this year, such as African-American GOP congressional candidates, or Nikki Haley (of Indian Punjab extraction) running for governor of South Carolina, a Chinese-American conservative GOP-er currently serving in Congress from Hawai’i (Charles Djou), a Cuban-American conservative running for the Senate in Florida (Marco Rubio), to many conservative women (Sharron Angle, Carly Fiorina, Christine O’Donnell, just to name a few) making their mark in campaigns all across the fruited plain. Many of these candidates, explicitly and implicitly mentioned, all got to where they were with Tea Party support (another racist political movement, according to Meyerson’s ideological ilk).

Need I remind this political scientist wannabe that the liberal establishment, past and present, is very top-heavy with WASPs? Clinton, Carter, Reid, Biden, Dean, not to mention liberal scions of the Drive-by Media (Cronkite, Brokaw, Jennings, Rather….Couric?), don’t exactly lend towards much diversity, now do they?

This Meyerson observation, however, perhaps merits the most in-depth analysis:

“In short, the Republican Party with which Democrats could make deals no longer exists. The GOP is too narrow; the gap between the parties too wide. Our politics are not those of the mid-20th century, when bipartisanship was fairly common. If anything, they're more like those of the mid-19th century, before the Civil War, when North and South combined only to make a house divided against itself — a conflict resolved not by compromise, but, as Lincoln predicted, by a nation then half-slave and half-free becoming ‘all one thing or all the other.’”

Oddly enough, here, Meyerson is correct on both counts. Regarding the evaporation of bipartisanship, he is correct because there are no longer any conservative (or even moderate) Democrats left, judging by how many have voted with San Francisco liberal Nanny, er, Nancy Pelosi and MINO (Mormon-in-name-only) Harry Reid, and conversely, RINOs are increasingly on the endangered species list, and rightfully so. I therefore do not lament the decline in bipartisanship, and more to the point, neither does Michael Barone. With the rise in partisanship, at least you have a much better idea of where both parties stand, unlike 50 years ago.

Meyerson is also correct about today’s ideological divide when he draws the parallel of the political lines being drawn in the 1850s that were a prelude to the Civil War. Indeed, Dennis Prager goes one step further, and points out that, at least ideologically, we are in a Second American Civil War. 

The potentially most disturbing observation, though, was the one Meyerson saves for last:

“Our current conflicts may be resolved only as the South becomes traditionally less Southern and more diverse — home to more Northern transplants and immigrants. That process was already at work in the 2008 elections, when Obama carried Virginia, North Carolina and Florida on the strength of those demographic shifts. As that process continues — perhaps only as it continues — the course of reform in America may run more smoothly.”

This is a classic example of premature analysis. True, Florida today feels more like a southern extension of the Midwest and New York once you get south of Jacksonville and Gainesville. Suburban DC expansion into Virginia means lots of Democrat-voting government stiffs gradually invading a once-reliably conservative state. More people from elsewhere are moving in to North Carolina, and from two directions. Folks have moved into the Tarheel State from the East Coast and Midwest for better weather and a better business climate (ah, what union-free factories can do for manufacturing!). Charlotte is becoming known as “Wall Street South” for good reason. The image of Tobacco Road is giving way to the image of the fast-growing Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill “Research Triangle,” which does attract some people who tend to have a more, er, “enlightened” view of the world, however phony this enlightenment may be. If that is not enough, North Carolina also attracted folks from Florida, themselves out-of-state transplants from the upper East Coast who liked the idea of the Sunshine State’s nice weather in the abstract until they started to experience something called “summer” in that peninsula. Many people, upon realizing this, found out that Florida was not for them after all, and opted to move a little further north to take summer’s edge off a tad – North Carolina became the logical choice of these serial migrants. So seeing things along all of these lines, one can understand from where Meyerson comes with the aforementioned point.

But valid point or not, it provides an incomplete perspective. If Virginia, for example, is irrevocably “Blue,” why did conservative Bob McDonnell win the governorship in 2009 in such convincing fashion? (Don’t bother answering: we all know it was largely a repudiation of Obamunism) Regarding North Carolina and Florida: two things easily account for why they temporarily put themselves into the “Blue” category in 2008. Both states were economically hit hard by the bursting of the housing bubble. In the wake of a sudden economic downturn, folks tend to vote against the incumbent party – then the GOP – more as an economic protest vote and less as an ideological one. Second of all, the marketing wing of Obama’s campaign team did a brilliant job of drumming up support by micro-targeting certain voter segments, as Michael Barone points out in one of his more analytical pieces.

So long as Meyerson is trying to make conservatives uncomfortable by pointing out electoral votes for Obama in conservative southern territory, by that same token, should Meyerson not be concerned that Chris Christie won the governorship in deep-blue New Jersey on a platform of less government and less government spending? What is Meyerson to make of the “Scott heard ‘round the world?” Did Sen. Scott Brown not win his senate seat from deepest-blue Massachusetts by promising to be the 41^st vote to sustain the filibuster against Obamacare?

Understanding the last point that Meyerson made in proper context should remind us of something very important. Many political pundits and analysts frequently make the mistake of over-analyzing snapshot events and thus erroneously extrapolate the perceived implications of events as having critical long-term implications – implications which may be nonexistent in lieu of unforeseen developments in the near and distant future. Keep in mind that the American political dynamic has remained in place for 150 years, and as such, there are no permanent majorities in the United States. In the meantime, however, the supposed “rigidity” about which Meyerson sneers toward the GOP is in fact an ideological catalyst that serves the party well as the voters’ balance of enthusiasm has swung heavily in favor of Republicans as of late. So much for being “too rigid.”

Granted, Article I, Section 9, has a whole list of things Congress cannot do, such as pass Bills of Attainder or Ex Post Facto Laws, or grant titles of nobility: such constraints are all well and good.  But those pale in comparison compared to our freedoms that the Bill of Rights guard.  So, if the Constitution isn't all about protection our rights, what is it all about?  You can find lots of clues to that answer in Article I, Section 8.

Article I, Section 8, is the first section that actually delegates enumerated powers to Congress.  The first powers listed give us insight into the priorities of our Founding Fathers.  It says:

"Congress shall have the power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties and Imposts and Excises....to borrow money on the credit of the United States:  to regulate Commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states...to establish uniform laws on bankruptcy...to coin money and regulate the value thereof, to establish Post Offices and Post Roads...to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for a limited time to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” 

All of this points to one thing:  the Framers wanted to create an orderly framework of national government to get all the states on the same page regarding economic policy so we, The People, could all go out and do that which is quintessentially American:  TO MAKE MONEY! (Remember, these Framers were practical men!)

Practically all the Framers were self-made men who knew that the best way to secure the blessings of liberty was to create an orderly system of government so we could all go out and, through our own hard work and ambition, live out the American dream.  Indeed, all the aforementioned enumerated powers found in Article I, Section 8 attest to this, and only after those powers that deal with creating a stable commercial system on a national scale are listed, THEN they get to more mundane matters such as punishing pirates, raising armies and navies and regulating the militia, and so forth.

This should serve as a reminder to us all that free enterprise and entrepreneurship are in our cultural DNA as Americans – a natural extension of our thirst for individual freedom and self-reliance -- that to continue the security of the blessings of liberty, government should not nationalize industries but instead allow for free people to come up with their own creative solutions to contemporary problems in the marketplace. GOD BLESS AMERICA!

In the wake of the past election cycle, much speculation continues to swirl in GOP circles as to what must be done to bring in attractive demographics. Our strongest constituent continues to be white southern males, but Michael Barone reminds us that this isn’t a growing demo. Besides, one cannot build a broad-based movement on hard-core fans alone: just ask Major League Soccer! Why is the NFL so big? One reason is that, in addition to lots of hard-core fans, it’s everyone else’s second-favorite league/sport.

So, the over-arching question remains: how can we expand our base, and whom should we target? Herein lies the arguments within GOP circles. Rush Limbaugh has speculated, only half-jokingly, that the country club blue bloods in the GOP are becoming so uncomfortable with conservatives that they would just as soon ditch us right-wingers and replace us with Hispanics. Good luck with that: conservatives are the ones doing all the heavy lifting in the Republican Party. The blue bloods would politically marginalize themselves. We, in turn, need the blue bloods’ money and voting bodies. Like it or not, we need each other, as a schism of that sort would hurt both camps.

Want to build a greater base of support? Start with a basic analysis. Find out whom you have a reasonable chance of attracting, and whom you don’t have much of a chance. Obviously, one wants to avoid writing off too many “groups,” but some “groups” are simply unwinnable. Income class is one of the most obvious areas of division. The Democrat Party has become a party of unholy alliances: it does well in attracting both the upper class and the lower classes – the well-to-do and life’s losers. This, of course, has already been tackled in a previous blog post.

Michael Barone has advised that, while the GOP already does strongly in “Jacksonian America,” he should try to attract more high-end voters. I agree in theory, of course, but the upscale voters come in many flavors. Which sorts of flavors would be pleasing to the base palate that favors low taxes and limited government (limited in the forms of laws, regulations, etc.)? 

Again, start with those whom one would have little chance of getting. It’s great to say that we want to attract more folks with advanced degrees, but you have to be careful targeting different folks in different lines of work. Target the wrong kinds of degreed citizenry, and they’ll either reject you (thus resulting in a major waste of time and resources), or to attract them, you have to modify your own party platform so extensively as to become a “me-too” form of the Dems (which is what got us in the current mess to begin with). 

Forget public school teachers. Sure, there are some exceptions, but that does not negate the fact that about 15-20% of the delegates to the Democrat National Convention in Denver in ’08 where from that line of work. The public school teachers are so in the tank for big government, because big government insulates them from having to compete to keep their jobs like the rest of us. It’s not worth trying to attract them, short of destroying the NEA and other teachers unions, which we could theoretically do if we get serious about school vouchers. But to do that, we have to build up a broad base of support elsewhere – consider it an attainable Catch-22.

But what about other professionals with advanced degrees? Forget higher ed professions. The whole educational industrial complex is about insulating themselves from reality, be they academic support professionals living in a cushy bubble, or college professors living on their own planets of fantasy – the management and econ profs notwithstanding, at least! 

Accountants might sound like a conservative position, since those who are in that line of work seem firmly grounded in reality. But in this case, reality is not the issue. Ask yourself: why go to an accountant? You go there because to most of us, tax laws are cumbersome and complex beyond belief, and we need a professional to help us through such Byzantine regulations. If business regulations and tax laws were less unduly elaborate, we would have less need for accountants. Simply put, accountants professionally thrive off such regulations that are burdensome to the rest of us – in gross violation of George Washington’s farewell advice to be mindful of the exploitation of various factions for political gain.

Lawyers are not necessarily monolithic in terms of Democrat support, but the majority certainly are. The plaintiff’s attorneys are major donors to the Dems, because they have a vested interest in maintaining litigation-friendly regulation. Indeed, the flurry of lawsuits that so many managers in so many industries have to face has become its own back-door regulation via litigation. The Dems and trial lawyers have thus developed their own symbiotic relationship.

Alright, you ask, so whom could we attract that is upscale and/or has an advanced degree? Doctors would be a great place to start. Most own their own private practices – hence, they believe in business-friendly laws, at least in theory, if nothing else – and litigation to them is a perpetual torment, perhaps worse that various wasps and ants would be to explorers in the Amazon! Add in the left’s absolute jones for nationalizing their very livelihood, and we have a ready-made upscale demographic begging for our help, and we in turn could benefit immensely from their support. Indeed, it is of a long-time mystery to yours truly as to why this golden opportunity to exploit this potentially wonderful symbiotic relationship has not since been exploited.

Another high-potential target demo: MBAs. Yours truly is among this camp, so it is safe to say that a good portion of this demographic is already in the GOP camp, but there is more gold to be mined, so to speak, particularly with those who pursue concentrations of general management and entrepreneurship (the folks who concentrate in HR might not have that great of potential, alas). Concerning both doctors or business managers, we don’t need to change our principles, contrary to the contentions of the Wizards of Smart. What we need to do is to come up with eloquent, powerful messages that clearly articulate our principles of low taxes and limited government, messages that could convince these important demos that we’re worth their time and support.

To be credible in this message, we have to make sure that we actually stand for these things – not having done so is why we’ve been whisked into the political wilderness in the first place. Enough liberals seem willing to lose elections without compromising their leftist principles. We have to take a similar principled stand when it comes to be willing to live – and die – by our conservative values. Even if we lose, liberals’ credibility will eventually implode in the eyes of the voters, and they’ll be hungry for a conservative alternative. Now’s not the time to go soft on standing up for what made America great!

The results of the past election continue to swirl in the minds of the GOP faithful as we strive to move forward and find new ways to advance the ball of conservatism. One thing that continues to stick in the mind of yours truly is what sort of folks the two major parties tend to attract.

The Democrat Party has become an unholy alliance of two disparate classes: the upper class and the lower class. This party attracts the well-to-do – the majority of them, at least – and the Great Unwashed for very different reasons. Concerning the latter, the reason is rather obvious. The Great Unwashed feel as though they are entitled to every government hand-out under the sun, and view the politicians that bring them such hand-outs as having sympathy to their plight. Most people with a modicum of ambition would look at themselves in the mirror and try to figure out how to end such a plight. Not the Great Unwashed. Theirs is largely a self-inflicted predicament, mostly due to lack of faith in their own abilities, and often combined with a lack of discipline to overcome one’s own character flaws. In short, they see no reason to improve themselves – a direct contradiction to the American Way of life-long self-improvement – and expect everyone else to subsidize their self-indulgence in their own poverty. Government to them is a permanent safety net, coming at our expense in the form of higher taxes and empowering Democrats to encroach on more of our liberties. Given the current political climate and lax standards in our education system, empowering such people with the right to vote is like letting the inmates run the asylum. In earlier times, you had to hold property in order to be allowed to vote. Thanks to Andrew Jackson, that horse left the barn a long time ago, and more the pity.

The saving grace concerning the Great Unwashed when it comes to the political threat they continue to pose to those of us who are industrious is thus: they are, at best, a static (if not shrinking) demographic, and their voter turnout rate is inconsistent. True, within the lower class swath, some sub-groups turn out in droves – black trash, for example, have an historically higher turnout rate than white trash, since identity politics is a cornerstone of black trash culture(hence its inherent defectiveness). The GOP could try to attract them with the right message of preserving individual liberties, but in order for that message to become attractive, these people will have to learn to have faith in themselves and in their own potential. Ultimately, motivation comes from within, something that no politician of any party can change.

A bigger head-scratcher to the politically engaged industrious folk is, what attracts the well-to-do to the Democrats? There are actually four major reasons.

One reason: Many in the well-to-do love the idea of government subsidizing boutique social spending. It’s their way of acting like they’re compassionate to the rest of society – compassionate with other people’s money, mind you, but let’s not confuse these poor rich people with facts.

Another reason: the well-to-do are, by and large, wealthy. The fundamental difference between wealth and earnings is wealth is what you already have accumulated, whereas earnings are what you make in terms of being paid for your productivity. The general idea behind building wealth is to methodically save and invest your earnings. The greatest entry barrier to wealth is high taxes – the more the government takes away from you, the less you have left over to build your own wealth. Translation: I have mine, screw the rest of you.

The third reason why the upper class tends to side with the Dems has to do with the most fundamental impetus that animates liberalism, that being the foolish notion that “we know what is best for you.” Many of the well-to-do have, over time, erroneously concluded that just because they’re adept at making money – assuming they didn’t inherit it, which is often the case – they are therefore wise enough to make broad-sweeping decisions for everybody else in society.

The fourth reason is perhaps the most telling. Part of being liberal is being detached from reality. To quote Dr. Thomas Sowell, among the many luxuries wealth can afford is insulation from reality, which is perhaps the most dangerous reality of them all.

So if the Dems are largely composed of the two economic extremes – the well-to-do and life’s losers – then where does that leave Republicans? Easy: the Republicans are indeed the Party of the Middle. No, not necessarily of middle-of-the-road politics (moderate politics means you don’t really stand for anything, one of the big reasons we’ve lost badly in 2006 and ’08), but of the Middle Class.

What are Middle Class values? There are many, but the big ones include being accountable for your actions, be hard-working, work to make something of yourself, obey the law, have faith in yourself, delay gratification, don’t have kids out of wedlock…you get the idea.

Therefore, whereas the well-to-do are insulated from reality with wealth, accountability and delayed gratification become low priorities. On the other side of the coin, the Great Unwashed are such because delayed gratification is a foreign concept – which is why these people account for such large percentages of lottery ticket sales, and they perpetuate their own poverty in-part with having children outside the bonds of marriage.

Whereas the Great Unwashed lack faith in themselves and ultimately have little if any direction in life, the Middle Class all strive to methodically build wealth, to raise their standards of living, give their children better lives than they themselves had, all the while maintain a sound, civil society. Because their ticket to building wealth is making and saving as much money as possible, the Middle Class has a vested interest in keeping taxes as low as possible. The well-to-do, however, already have substantial amounts of wealth, and as such, high income taxes are not an issue, since they already have lots of money. But, as mentioned previously, those same high taxes will crush the dreams of those who work hard in order to improve their lot in life. B. Hussein Obama threatens to crush those “animal spirits” with his flurry of new regulations and calls for more taxes.

This same vested interest in high taxes spills directly over into a vested interest in minimized government regulation. Many in the Middle Class have concluded that the way to a better life is though ardent, earnest entrepreneurship. Heavy government regulation is the main barrier to being successful in this critical arena, and those who don’t “get it” – namely High Queen Hillary -- deride the idea of an “ownership society” as an “on-your-own society.” Indeed, those who are well-to-do and are conservative usually are because they started out lower or middle class, and became wealthy through their own hard work, and, at the same time, kept in mind the values that got them there, realizing that other people becoming wealthy does not detract from their own wealth.

That same entrepreneurship mentality can be extrapolated to entire metropolitan areas. Raise your hand if you think you have a better chance of “making it” as an entrepreneur in one of these cities: New York or Dallas? If you chose the latter city, go to the head of the class. Indeed, the best cities for corporate growth and business in general are all cities in the Sun Belt, and in “Red States,” including Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston and Phoenix.

By that same token, one of the many reasons that California has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country (about 10.5% at last count) is that regulations and taxes are so crushing, businesses have been leaving the state in droves. Add in ungodly mandatory workman’s comp “benefits,” and you’ve got Small Business Hell in the Once-Golden State.

So if the GOP is indeed the “Party of the Middle,” how can the party leverage this position for future success? The most concise answer is to be more vigilant and eloquent in our message of why people can benefit with lower taxes and less government regulation, in direct contrast to B. Hussein Obama’s “Shock and Awe Statism,” to quote Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana. John McCain was, to be perfectly frank, lacking in eloquence and in credibility in delivering such a critical message. To move forward, we will need a standard-bearer who has the eloquence to connect more strongly with Middle Class America.

   Like many other future legends in Big Band, he got his big start with Ben Pollack’s band, beginning in 1926, making his first record the next year at age eighteen. He left Pollack’s band in 1929, moved to New York City, and became a studio musician. Already enjoying a good reputation among the jazz community by the early 1930s, with the help of his friend and agent, John Hammond, he put together a band of all-star musicians and cut some jazz sides in 1933 and ’34 on Columbia Records. Two tracks of note during this period were recorded in December of 1933: a young Billie Holiday made her vocal recording debut on the records “Your Mother’s Son-in-Law” and “Riffin’ the Scotch.”

   Goodman would record those same tracks in instrumental form the following year with the same band, this time under the surname of “Bill Dodge and His All-Stars.” The line-up included such legends as Bunny Berigan, Jack Teagarden, and a host of others. Also in 1934, already with a more permanent band, he secured a spot on the popular NBC radio program “Let’s Dance,” which featured three different bands and different styles of music (Xavier Cugat’s band provided the Latin music, Kel Murray’s band the mainstream vanilla music, and Goodman’s band capped things off with the swing!). What tied all three bands together was not just that they played on the same show, but each opened up their respective segments with the same theme song, “Let’s Dance,” all arranged in different ways, naturally. This show would leave a lasting influence on Benny’s band, as he would adopt this tune as his band’s own theme song (he and his band would finally record a studio version in Oct., 1939), opening almost all future gigs with it, as numerous CBS and NBC radio airchecks have since attested. Because Goodman needed new arrangements for each show, however, he brought in Fletcher Henderson, who himself once led a popular all-black jazz band, to arrange popular songs. He even hired Henderson’s former players to teach his players how to play in their “gutsy” style.

   The truly pivotal year, though, came in 1935. In May of that year, a musician strike forced the cancellation of the Let’s Dance show, and with nothing else to do, Goodman and his band decided to tour across the country that summer. Most of the tour swayed between having mediocre results and outright disaster. Some dancehall proprietors charged their patrons by the dance, which put pressure on the band to shorten their songs, thus cutting out many musicians’ solos. One particular low point of the tour came in Denver when the crowd demanded their money back. By the time they reached the West Coast in August, the band was broke, disillusioned, and ready to quit. Then one gig turned it all around. The band was booked to perform at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles for three weeks, starting on Aug. 21, 1935. The location was a serendipitous spot for a big turnaround, as the ballroom could accommodate 4,000 couples. Initially wanting to play it safe, the band started out playing some recently-purchased stock arrangements, i.e., the soft stuff.

   Following the engagement at the Palomar, Benny’s band did several one-nighters before being booked to play at the Congress Hotel in Chicago. Goodman was already tabbed “The King of Swing” by the press and fans, and even though the booking was to last three weeks, the band stayed there for eight months!

   To be sure, Benny and his band had plenty other records that same year to signify that the Swing Era was officially under way, both before and after the pivotal events at the Palomar. Many historians look back to April of that year, with records such as “Hunkadola,” “I’m Livin’ in a Great Big Way” (featuring a young Buddy Clark on the vocals) and the Johnny Mercer tune “Dixieland Band”, one of the first tunes that introduces fans to the vocals of Helen Ward, Goodman’s primary female vocalist for two full years. All three of these records set the highly energetic tone that characterizes most of Goodman’s other records of 1935, including King Porter Stomp. Fans of arcane Christmas songs relish Goodman’s band’s version of “Jingle Bells,” which also features a sublime Bunny Berigan trumpet solo. Fans looking for a tune that typifies the popular “businessman’s bounce” tempo of the era would enjoy “You’re a Heavenly Thing,” and “Japanese Sandman,” both of which illustrate Fletcher Henderson’s style of playing off sharp, biting brass against rolling reeds. Just for good measure, the band’s versatility is demonstrated in the blissful Art Deco imagery-inspiring ballad “Restless.” For those who doubt that Benny Goodman’s was music the gutsiest of the era, Goodman properly set that important tone that same year with “Get Rhythm in Your Feet (And Music in Your Soul),” also graced with a brief Berigan trumpet solo.

   Goodman’s gutsiness was the prime reason why he was the King of Swing, but it was by no means the only reason. Granted, the formula that Goodman followed could perhaps be simplified to the point of white musicians playing black-inspired arrangements (think of Sam Phillips’ comments on Elvis as a white boy singing like a black man, and making him a million bucks in so doing) – such an oversimplification would nonetheless partly explain the “gutsy” factor. But behind the strong playing styles were highly talented musicians. Not only was Goodman a good business manager, he lead a virtual all-star cast of talent (his “Bill Dodge” band of 1934 might have been temporary, but it set the precedent for his selectiveness of the right kind of talent. From 1935 to 1939, his trumpet section alone read like an all-time greatest team, with Bunny Berigan, Pee Wee Erwin, Chris Griffin, Ziggy Elman, and even Harry James, who joined the band in 1937 before starting his own prominent band in early 1939. Goodman started in 1935 with Frankie Froeba at the piano, but later replaced him with the even more-talented Jess Stacey, who would remain with Goodman for the rest of the decade. Gene Krupa’s credentials at the drums have already been mentioned, but it underscores an important point: in any business, be it music, sports, or even accounting, the best-performing teams are not necessarily entirely composed of all-stars from top to bottom, but a healthy mix of all-stars and other solid, slightly niche-talent that is very well suited for specific roles. The rest of Goodman’s roster during its heyday of the latter part of the 1930s reads off the same way, with Red Ballard and Murray McEachern on trombones, Benny’s own brother, Harry, on bass, Allen Reuss on rhythm guitar, and who could forget the saxophone line-up of Vido Musso & Art Rollini on tenor, coupled with Hymie Schertzer and Toots Mondello on alto? Even Goodman’s chief rival, Tommy Dorsey, would have clamored for such a line-up, and indeed, he would later incorporate certain members into his own band, either on a temporary (Bunny Berigan) or permanent (Ziggy Elman) basis. Not to be outdone, Goodman would sometimes respond in kind, buying off some of Dorsey’s talent. When Gene Krupa left Goodman’s band to start his own in 1938, Goodman brought over Davey Tough from Dorsey to fill in the vacated drum chair. That same year, Goodman also snatched away Babe Russin, Dorsey’s star tenor sax player who capped off the legendary TD recording of Irving Berlin’s “Marie” (Jan. 29, 1937) with a memorable solo, just eight or ten bars removed from one of Berigan’s greatest trumpet solos ever put to acetate.

   If unparalleled energy sets the tone for Benny Goodman’s 1935 records, gutsiness sets the tone for what he and his band recorded in 1936. January 24, 1936 was a particularly fecund recording date, for it included “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” “Goody Goody,” “It’s Been So Long,” and “Swingtime in the Rockies.” Other key tunes from that year include “Christopher Columbus,” whose main riff reappeared in a more important record the following year. “Sing Me a Swing Song” essentially picks up where “Get Rhythm in Your Feet” left off, including a Helen Ward vocal, albeit minus Berigan’s trumpet talent. Also worth noting are records such as “Remember” and Fletcher Henderson’s arrangement of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust.” Since Hoagy first recorded his own song in 1927, 1,600 different artist have rendered their own interpretation of this precious song. As the Swing Era progressed, it became de riguer for each band to record their own version of that song, and each band predictably had their own “take” on the song. Goodman’s take, with the help of Henderson, was very much that of the “businessman’s bounce” tempo, in stark contrast to Tommy Dorsey’s and Artie Shaw’s balladeering approaches.

   But the 1936 tour de force work of Goodman did not stop there. Helen Ward did some of her most poignant work with the band on “Glory of Love,” “These Foolish Things Remind Me of You” and “You Turned the Tables on Me.” One of the last songs she sang with the band was “Gee, But You’re Swell.” She left the band in October of that year to marry a Texas oil millionaire, but her singing legacy was already firmly in place by then. The instrumentals from the later part of that year do not disappoint, either. Henderson’s arrangement W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” sets the bar for other bands to meet with that blues standard, but an even more important Henderson arrangement is “Down South Camp Meeting.” Incidentally, both tunes were featured in the Martin Scorsese film “The Aviator”. Yet it could be argued that Goodman saved the best for last in ’36. The Nov. 5, 1936 session produced one of the ‘swingingest’ records of all time, and then turned around with one of the most wonderful big band ballads ever recorded. Offering proof positive that Fletcher Henderson did not have a monopoly on hard-core swing is Jimmy Mundy’s arrangement of “Bugle Call Rag” (which can also be heard in the movie “The Aviator”). One other notable record of that date, though, was “Goodnight My Love.” Helen Ward had already left the band, so to fill in the female vocal gap, Goodman borrowed a young Ella Fitzgerald from Chick Webb’s band to temporarily fill in the void. While “Goodnight My Love” is one of the perfect songs to cap off a date with your significant other, the other records she cut with the band – “Did You Mean It” and “Take Another Guess” – are worth bending the ear as well.

   Goodman’s prolific recording that year mirrored his constantly busy tour & concert schedule. He started off the year with a busy recording slate, and ended the year in a similarly hectic pace, but his exacting, demanding standards continued to shine through with quality records. His main vocalist position continued to be in flux, with different vocalists taking turns until Benny could find someone to measure up to his standards. Margaret McCrae took a few turns in front of the microphone (hear “This Year’s Kisses” for reference), though one notable record cut on Dec. 30, 1936 was “He Ain’t Got Rhythm” (another Irving Berlin song) sung by Jimmy Rushing, “Mr. Five-By-Five” himself!

   The band made some slight transitions in 1937, not the least of which was a new presence in the female vocals department. Goodman finally found a more-than-suitable replacement for Helen Ward in a young Martha Tilton, whose voice added new dimensions to the band’s records. Initially, most of her work was in the form of ballads (“You Took the Words Right Out of My Heart”), though occasionally she did semi-swing tempos such as Johnny Mercer’s “Bob White” and “Let That Be A Lesson to You.” 

   Much of Goodman’s music overall seems much smoother to the ear, compared with the overall hard-charging tones from the previous year. That said, the swing fans would not be disappointed with certain offerings such as “Roll ‘Em,” whose melodic structures, one could argue, gave rise to ancestral rock ‘n’ roll DNA. Another milestone recording was cut on Nov. 12, 1937: it’s businessman’s bounce tempo only partially concealed the tune’s true swing intentions, that being “Loch Lomond.” Keep your ear open for a brief yet stupendous Harry James trumpet solo.

   Yet the most important song for Goodman out of that year was also one that would define his career, and indeed, his musical legacy: “Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing),” recorded on July 6, 1937 in Hollywood, Calif. – one day before they cut “Roll ‘Em,” interestingly enough. The song may have been written by Louis Prima (yes, as in the voice of King Louie in Disney’s “The Jungle Book!”), but it was defined for all eternity by Goodman. At eight minutes and 40-some seconds, it takes up both sides of a 78-RPM record disc (the 12-inch kind, not the standard 10-inch one!), but the opening bars from the saxes in the low registers, punctuated by fluttering trumpets, will hook any listener who has anything resembling a pulse.

Postscript: The vast majority all the aforementioned tunes in this piece are available on iTunes, with a few exceptions from 1938, oddly enough (no luck? Try this example or this rare disc). Some recommended CDs are The Centennial Collection, as well as The Birth of Swing, a CD set no jazz fan should be without! As already mentioned, the Camel Caravan radio performances are worth their weight in gold, and the CD set On the Air 1937-1938 has a nice collection of live gems from other radio shows. That having been said, any reputable online CD store will have plenty other fine Benny Goodman CDs to choose from as well, though again, this assumes one chooses not to go the iTunes route in the first place!

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If Bill Clinton was “the first black President,” then B. Hussein Obama is the nation’s first “Muslim” President.

In the course of B. Hussein Obama’s blatant, naked attempts to nationalize our economy by trying to destroy the private sector in part with mob outrage (think the ginned-up AIG executive bonus scandal), he continually whines about how tough the job of president is, and how horrible the mess is that he “inherited” from the previous administration. 

Did we hear Ronald Reagan whine about the mess that he inherited from Jimmy Carter (which, I might remind everybody, was much worse than this “crisis” we have to contend with now) in the early ‘80s?

More to the point, did anybody hear Mitt Romney complain about the colossal mess he inherited when he became the CEO of the Salt Lake Olympic Committee? In the late 1990s, the organization in charge of the 2002 Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City was awash in scandals of graft and, worse yet, in dire financial straits. It took the leadership skills and strong business savvy of Mitt Romney to turn things around, and put on the best Winter Games to date. That same type of leadership is what we are in desperate need of today. As Obama continues to make the economy even more stagnant with his utter incompetence – not unlike Jimmy Carter – it is as if he’s setting the stage for Mitt to take over after 2012. Time will tell.

As if we need to re-hash this again, the liberal-leftist drive-bys in the media (such as the very left-wing, very naïve cartoonist Clay Bennett)  have been sounding like a hoard of Pavlov’s Dogs when Rush Limbaugh said that he hoped that Obama would fail. Anybody with a modicum of mental capacity and who is intellectually honest as well – not necessarily a guaranteed package deal! – realizes that Rush did not say that he personally hoped Obama’s presidency would fail, as the price of such failure would be damage to our country in one way or another (think Jimmy Carter’s failed presidency by 1980). Rather, he said that he hoped Obama’s attempts to pervert this great nation into a Socialist Banana republic fail, and I for one do too.

Hope for that sort of failure? Count me in!

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I love Middle America. The elites on the coasts disdain it as “flyover country,” but to me, it represents the true American values of hard work, honesty, integrity, respect for free enterprise, and, more to the point, an appreciation of limited government. With that in mind, remember when liberal author Thomas Frank wrote that condescending book What’s The Matter With Kansas? Kansas isn’t the problem, per se, as other states in Middle America tend to be in subtle ways.

Many of us conservatives rightfully disdain the disgusting self-indulgence on display when voters in Manhattan, Hollywood, San Francisco, Boston or Seattle endorse boutique socialist policies that all taxpayers across the country are forced to subsidize by the very coercion of the government itself. What is even more disturbing is that folks in some pockets of Middle America, such as, say, Iowa, Wisconsin or Minnesota, are sometimes just as apt to vote in the same manner as the self-indulgent, shallow-living denizens on the coasts. 

Iowa, for example, can be thought of as part of the back-bone of traditional Middle-American values, and yet, sometimes their voting habits are indistinguishable from Manhattan-based socialism. The problem with the good-hearted folks of Iowa, is that they’re naïve enough to think that endorsing big-government policies is a way of helping out their neighbor, without realizing the drastic consequences that eventually follow. How ironic for these hard-working, church-going folk to forget that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

As an aside, this is way I’ve always liked the South more than the Midwest. Same Middle American values, but they’re not as apt to get suckered into big government initiatives. They’re more independent (and less complacent) than folks in the Midwest, and their recent voting habits prove it. Plus, the football is better and the girls are prettier in the South, and the cities of the South are among the best business climates in this great land. What’s not to love?

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Want the proof-positive that Marxism goes against everything that American society stands for? Contrast the basic premises of Marx’s ideology and our Protestant-rooted culture. To Marx, work was bad; it got in the way of what he viewed as the ideal for society, which to him was being to able to sit around the write poetry. For all you Harley-Davidson fans, classic car gearheads, SEC football fans and NASCAR fans, I’ll allow you sufficient pause time for you to grab your barf bags, as I’ll grab mine.

America, however, from its earliest days was rooted in the Protestant work ethic, where hard work is good for you, and as such is good for the soul. Indeed, almost 400 years after the Pilgrims established their colony at Plymouth Rock, work defines who we are. Just as we give thanks to Almighty God for his bountiful blessings, we should likewise give thanks for the myriads of opportunities we have to further fine-tune our personal definitions through our productivity. That is the American Way.

   The answer lies in that these people operate from a false premise. Recall in one of my earlier columns that one of the key differences between liberals and conservatives is that while the latter seek pragmatic solutions that have proven to work, the former continue to cling to their policies, no matter how many times they have failed. Idealism animates the left, whereas pragmatism guides the right. That hints at the core of why the left always blames (read: hates) America first.

   This is the greatest country that humanity has ever known. It is the greatest country in reality. But those of us who live in reality and not in La-la Land (read: San Francisco, Manhattan, west side of LA, Seattle, etc.) know that people create countries, and people are not perfect. The left, however, continue to ignore all the inconvenient truths that people are not perfect, and continue to cling to the fantasy that mankind is somehow perfectible. Indeed, not only do they believe in such perfectibility, they expect it, hence the aforementioned false premise.

   The concept of “Utopia” is a perfect society based on reason. Notice that p-word again. But given man’s inherent fallibility, Utopia has never been possible at any time in recorded or pre-recorded history. Depending on one’s theology, it might very well be possible in the next life, but that is another matter entirely. We Christians learn early on that we will always fall short of the ideals we cling to, but there are built-in mechanisms for forgiveness for our failings through repentance, etc. The bottom line is, we understand that falling short of preached ideals is an inevitability, and we deal with them as these shortcomings arise.

   The problem with the left, however, is that when something is shown to be not perfect when they expect it to be, it is deserving of unmerciful condemnation. Simply put, the left compares America to something that is unattainable – Utopia. But because Utopia is not possible – contrary to what those on the left believe – America, in the left’s eyes, will always fall short. More practical individuals – conservatives – would quickly realize that that comparison is unreasonable, and would adjust our frame of reference accordingly (we already have!). But the left cannot give up on their Utopian fantasies, and as such, America will never measure up to their unreasonable expectations, hence, once again, the left’s propensity to blame America first.

   The biggest irony in this false premise of the left is that America’s ideals have led to this nation solving its own shortcomings. For example, the left loves to browbeat America for slavery and segregation. But those practices did not mesh with the ideals surrounding the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution had the mechanisms that allowed for us to, over time, rid ourselves of these problems democratically. As previously mentioned, Christians believe in forgiveness and redemption; again, what is implicit in those beliefs is the acknowledgement that shortcomings are inevitable by virtue of being human.

   But acknowledging that premise presupposes that one is grounded in a faith of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Those who tend to shun that sort of faith also tend to worship man instead, hence the idea of mankind’s perfectibility as opposed to the right’s faith in a perfect Creator. While those on the right readily acknowledge that God has blessed America, many on the left act as if the land were never blessed to begin with. 

   All patriotic Americans know of the Spirit of ’76, as in 1776. It is a spirit of independence, of self-reliance – or, looking to individual, ordinary people as the core strength of America and the power behind America’s greatness. That sort of ‘spirit,’ or mentality, logically leads to the call for a limited government, one that does not stifle free enterprise (the whole thing about “taxation without representation” was one of the main issues that drove us to cut the umbilical cord from the mother country, after all), and one that does not try to micromanage individual and interpersonal behavior (read: no “speech codes,” and no “sexual harassment” laws). In terms of foreign policy, that spirit is embodied by the Revolutionary era American flag, which had the alternating horizontal red and white stripes and a snake in the middle. Underneath was a script with a clear warning to would-be enemies: “[D]on’t tread upon me.” A similar flag from that era was also popular in the rebelling States.

   The Spirit of ’76 also provides the underpinnings of American Exceptionalism, the idea that there are reasons behind the fact that we have succeeded in many ways where before many nations and empires had failed. The aforementioned animus also encompasses a strong faith component. For all the revisionism that our Founding Fathers were “deists,” they all routinely appealed to a higher power, and routinely sought the blessings of an Almighty God – as understood through a Judeo-Christian lens – to guide them as leaders and to protect this young nation as a whole. George Washington prayed in church for guidance shortly before being inaugurated as our first president, and later in his term was the first to call for setting aside an official holiday to give thanks to God for the many blessings he had bestowed upon America (roughly 73 years later, Abraham Lincoln would finally make Thanksgiving an official holiday in 1863). All of this suggests a requirement that to maintain success both as an individual and as a society, it remains paramount to be able to acknowledge, at the very least, that there are bigger things out there than oneself.

   All in all, it comes as no surprise that the Spirit of ’76 is part of the driving force behind traditional Americans of past areas and those on the right side of the ideological spectrum in this modern era. Contrast that with the “Spirit of ’68,” as in 1968, which animates the modern left. Rich Lowry of National Review points out that what’s left out of the nostalgic accounts of young baby boomers coming of age in the 1960s and rebelling against their parents and “the system” is the nihilism, that ideological wrecking ball of tearing down tradition for the sheer, ephemeral thrill of it. In a past essay, I pointed out that the Republicans are the party of delayed gratification and working towards the future, whereas the Dems are all about the ephemeral here and now. That drive for instant gratification derived from rebellion, and the underlying nihilism that fueled said drive, is the ugly truth behind young, degenerate hippies then and the toxic leftist ideology they spawned.

   Everything these degenerate, spoiled brats stood for flew directly in the face of everything that previous generations had worked hard to build and fought/died to protect. Heeding the call for self-sacrifice and to protect America, the Greatest Generation came through. In so doing, they fought and bled to defeat the twin evils of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. After they came home, through their hard work, they built the biggest, strongest middle class the world had ever seen:  one that continues to grow and flourish to this day. The grand irony in all of this is that the children of the Greatest Generation (not all, but at least enough to cause lasting damage to our society and culture) ended up giving rise to the Spirit of ’68, one that eschews delayed gratification, self-sacrifice, service in the form of protecting our nation, rewarding risk-taking and high productivity, and acknowledging the wisdom of those who came before you. 

   Monogamy was rejected in place of “free love.” Private property was seen as fascist, whereas communal property was seen as, like, cool. If you were poor, it was because evil corporations run by Adolf Eichmann clones were deliberately bleeding you dry. The Spirit of ’68 also dictated that love of country and American Exceptionalism were tantamount to evil, and in place came the celebration of world citizenship and denouncing America as racist, sexist, bigoted and homophobic. The adherents of the Spirit of ’68 called for “liberation” by hijacking Ivy League campuses and holding employees of those universities hostage with threats of escalating violence. Over time, this trend towards anarchy-as-“liberation” gave rise to the exact opposite of that against which they were ostensibly rebelling, as Rich Lowry chronicles.

   The self-centered flower children might have been anti-war, but that did not stop them from resorting to violence and related threats to have their way. Some radical leftists such as Barack Obama’s close friend Bill Ayers led the Weathermen Underground, who literally wanted to “bring the war home to America” and engaged in terrorist bombings on our own soil. The young idealists might have been rebelling against an authoritarian system, but authoritarian coercion turned out to be quite convenient for implementing “speech codes,” micromanaging individual relationships, and every other aspect of our lives.

   Whereas with the Spirit of ’76 there is a deep, abiding faith in its adherents that this is a blessed land of a chosen people (to quote the late Ronaldus Magnus), the adherents of the animus conjured up in 1968 reject what they have deemed to be an overly simplistic notion. 

   The gaps in the ‘spiritual’ sense (no pun intended!) perhaps speak the biggest volumes. Whereas the Spirit of ’76 includes acknowledgement of the blessings of Divine Providence as a prerequisite for understanding just how privileged one is to be American, The Spirit of ’68 sees all progress coming from Man and Man alone. Translation: conservatives worship God, while leftists worship the secular. Indeed, liberalism in its modern form has become its own ersatz religion (with abortion being the cult’s sacrament), a quasi-faith that is far more liberating to its adherents than the genuine, Judeo-Christian variety that reminds us there is a judgmental God out there and He would like for us to stay on the straight and narrow. This accounts for why those who spawned the Spirit of ’68 are overtly hostile to the Ten Commandments, as Michael Medved eloquently explains in a recent blog post. As inconvenient as this truth may be, those on the “religious right” and the “religious” left are therefore, in many ways worshipping two different gods. Conservatives of faith use themselves as vehicles to worship God, whereas leftists who give lip-service to religion actually just use God as a vehicle to worship themselves. No wonder the libs hate the “Big Ten:” the first commandment demands that they put no god before the Almighty, and yet they do so as a matter of routine!

   The ‘so-what’ in all of this is that the two presidential candidates are respectively faithful to these opposing Spirits. For all his faults, John McCain is a rather decent adherent to the Spirit of ’76. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is the most faithful, steadfast follower of the Spirit of ’68 than any other candidate in our nation’s history. The company he has kept for 20+ years with people who have dedicated their lives to destroying everything America stands for (e.g., Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Michael Pfleger) demonstrates that he is in the ’68 camp, rejecting the ’76 ideas. This alone should properly guide our voting decisions as we show up to the polls on Election Day. Come early November, we have a crucial opportunity to protect the Spirit of ’76 from a deadly assault by its hostile adversary.