Stephen Stone
The need for a new political paradigm
By Stephen Stone
As is well known, one of the knocks against conservatives is that they tend to let their enemies define who they are and what they believe. Rather than define themselves on their own terms, they let liberals and Democrats take control of the debate by defining all the important terminology. The result is that the conservatives never really succeed in educating the general public about who they are and what their agenda is. They allow their detractors to do that for them.
A key reason for this phenomenon is that the liberals control the communication apparatus of our nation--our schools, our media, our publications, our entertainment. If we want to know why the liberals are permitted to define nearly all the important terms in the political arena (even to the point of imposing "political correctness" on us all), we need look no further than our monopolistic education system, our monopolistic media, our monopolistic publishing industry, and our monopolistic movie and TV industry.
Thankfully, computers, the internet, and cable television offer a way to change all that--provided that we are willing to stand up for ourselves as principled conservatives and define ourselves in terms that do justice to our ideas, and then take effective steps to disseminate those terms and ideas through new alternative media. That, I believe requires that we create a whole new political paradigm and rearrange or invent any labels needed to communicate or apply the new sensible model.
As long as we let the liberals define the model and all its essential terms, we will never succeed in communicating the constitutional conservatism that is the core of what it means to be a true American.
I suggest that we create a political "spectrum" of our own defining, and put the liberals on it where they belong, as well as place ourselves where we rightfully belong. To do so, we must reject the current paradigm, along with any labels that are clearly senseless.
Problems of definition
The popular model in politics is the left / right model that places liberals on the left and conservatives on the right. The more radical liberals are labeled extreme left, far left, ultra left, etc., and the more radical conservatives are labeled extreme right, far right, ultra right, etc.
This model has at least two problems. The main problem is that it originated in France just after the first socialistic revolution in modern times--the French Revolution--which was a counterfeit of America's legitimate war for independence. The French model was created in 1789, when radicals in the French Legislature were seated to the left of the speaker, and traditional or conservative nobles were seated to the right.
In time, the notion that liberals constituted the left and conservatives constituted the right became prevalent throughout Europe. Ultimately, the model became dominant in American politics, as well. Unfortunately, because the model is purely European, it reflects Europe's general acceptance of socialism of one kind or another. Hence, both European liberals and conservatives tend to accept many of the same socialistic assumptions and goals, differing primarily in approach, application, and aggressiveness.
This leads to the second problem with the French political model. The terms used to define the opposite ends of the spectrum are themselves inadequate. By definition, liberal means "suitable for a freeman" (original meaning); "tolerant of views differing from one's own"; "of democratic or republican forms of government"; "favoring reform or progress, specifically favoring political reforms tending toward democracy and personal freedom for the individual"; "progressive." Conservative, on the other hand, means "tending to preserve established traditions and to resist or oppose any changes in these." (Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition)
The dictionary then defines left-wing as "the more radical or liberal section of a political party, group, etc.," and right-wing as "the more conservative or reactionary section of a political party, group, etc." (emphasis added). Here's the clincher. A "reactionary" is defined as one who espouses "a movement back to a former or less advanced condition" (emphasis added).
Need I say any more? According to the dictionary, liberals are admirable people who favor principles of freedom, democracy, and republicanism, and conservatives are intolerant "reactionaries" who are "less advanced" than their liberal counterparts and who oppose human progress. Bear in mind that my dictionary was published in 1970, well before political correctness made these kinds of definitions even more pronounced than they are today.
Is that the kind of labeling that we are going to take sitting down?
It has always been obvious that the European left-wing / right-wing paradigm is defined by its promoters as a continuum in which GOOD is on the left and BAD is on the right--with the result that all thinking, compassionate persons would want to align themselves with the left, or at least with the center, which of course over time has become increasingly liberal.
Conservatives are left increasingly out in the cold, while civilization marches progressively forward. (That's a recapitulation, by the way, of Hegel and Marx.)
Obviously, we need a better political paradigm than the European model, and we also need better terms with which to define what it means to be a constitutional conservative.
A proposed model
What America needs is its own distinctive political paradigm, one that ignores European prejudices and emphasizes America's unifying founding principles. I propose that the ideals in the Declaration and the Constitution are not just "tradition"--unlike the cultural ideals presumed by the European model--but are true, even inspired of God. They therefore are not just old notions to be cast off as the world grows more sophisticated, interconnected, and "one-worldly." They are eternal truths that govern reality and which we ignore at our peril. They define the only reliable means of self-government in the world's history, and any perversion of them places our nation in jeopardy of destruction, both from within and from without.
Consider that the European model would place America's true principles of self-government on the right end of the spectrum, along with foolish anachronisms like male superiority, racial segregation, and religious intolerance. By the very definitions inherent in the European model, those ideals that we most cherish as Americans are now considered merely backward traditions that will naturally fall by the wayside in fulfillment of Hegel's and Marx's dialectic.
It follows that the more passionately any of us believes in America's founding principles, the more "extreme" we would be perceived--as well as the more wrong-headed and resistant.
We need to replace such clever distortion of truth with a model that defines America's principles as the safe center, and all aberrations of those principles as manifold examples of error.
Imagine a wagon wheel from pioneer days. The hub would be the true political ideals bequeathed us by our Founders, and the ends of the opposing spokes would be any conceivable perversion or corruption of those core ideals.
Go a step further, and consider the exact opposite ends of the spokes to be not only aberrations of America's central principles, but antitheses of their polar opposite at the farthest end of the transecting spoke. This allows for multiple spectrums of competing ideas, just as exist in reality, not just one linear continuum.
If you run out of room for all possible perversions of the core political philosophy, spin the wheel on its transverse axis and make it multi-dimensional, like a gyroscope. Because the ways of error are limitless, while true principles are fixed and finite, this extra "spinning" dimension would accommodate all theoretical possibilities.
The result is a sphere with truth in the dead center--with infinite polar opposites on the outer surface nothing but perversions of the core.
That, I believe, is a sensible, and perfectly defensible, paradigm for American politics. It enables us to envision the way things really are--infinitely complex, infinitely unpredictable. In politics, there isn't just one linear spectrum that does justice to all possibilities. Imagining a "sphere" with truth in the middle enables us to be "multilingual," translating all other paradigms and spectrums into comparable form for analysis, arraying all against each other, with truth as the anchor.
A paradigm shift
Let the Europeans keep their meaningless paradigm, whose meandering center represents mere compromise of erroneous extremes, having no fixed core of absolute truth. Here in the "States," we need a paradigm that reflects our origins, as well as (hopefully) our future, and that also properly characterizes anything that ignores or damages our founding principles.
As we seek a better paradigm, we should recognize that--although the Founders employed something resembling the European tradition in arriving at what was to become the fundamental principles of our nation's philosophy--once they agreed upon that uniquely American doctrine, the paradigm completely shifted. No longer was the goal to find some kind of Golden Mean between evil extremes in search of a safe center. Once the true principles were laid, the goal became to stand firm upon those truths and measure all else against them.
Hence the need for defining the center as self-evident truth and the extremes as aberrations. Unlike our Founders, we no longer need to seek that safe center. We already have that in our founding documents. Our role is to preserve and defend that core of truth.
New terminology
But what about well-accepted terms like liberal, conservative, left-wing, right-wing, etc.--or any recasting of such terms into new phrases like "right-wing liberal" or "constitutional conservative"? Would they still have relevance in America? Perhaps, but such traditional terms (in any form) would be used mainly to describe the polar perversions on the outside of the sphere, including even the term "constitutional conservative," which is only half acceptable. (Note that the term "conservative" comes from 19th Century British politics and does not faithfully describe anything relating to the American founding.)
The only terms that would make any real sense would be terms like "Declarationist" or "Constitutionalist" or "American"--properly defined. Universal use of such terms, if properly defined, would help to unite our country around the things that will "preserve us a nation," and will help us avoid needless infighting, meaningless name-calling, and fickle partisanship.
Above all, such a new paradigm and such rejection of time-worn political cliches like "conservative" will enable us to replace an absolutely unacceptable and destructive model borrowed from 18th Century France.
Dissemination
Twenty years ago, creation and dissemination of a more rational model in American politics would have been futile, because the means of communication were then basically closed. The web, of course, has changed all that, and so has cable television.
No matter the paradigm chosen, we need something better than that borrowed from Europe. The model I propose is just one possibility. Let's come up with whatever fits America's origins and then take it to informed, politically-active Americans who are drawn to alternative media. In time, perhaps not far down the road, we can generate a whole new way of looking at politics. Well, maybe not so new. More like our Founders had in mind.
© Stephen Stone
As is well known, one of the knocks against conservatives is that they tend to let their enemies define who they are and what they believe. Rather than define themselves on their own terms, they let liberals and Democrats take control of the debate by defining all the important terminology. The result is that the conservatives never really succeed in educating the general public about who they are and what their agenda is. They allow their detractors to do that for them.
A key reason for this phenomenon is that the liberals control the communication apparatus of our nation--our schools, our media, our publications, our entertainment. If we want to know why the liberals are permitted to define nearly all the important terms in the political arena (even to the point of imposing "political correctness" on us all), we need look no further than our monopolistic education system, our monopolistic media, our monopolistic publishing industry, and our monopolistic movie and TV industry.
Thankfully, computers, the internet, and cable television offer a way to change all that--provided that we are willing to stand up for ourselves as principled conservatives and define ourselves in terms that do justice to our ideas, and then take effective steps to disseminate those terms and ideas through new alternative media. That, I believe requires that we create a whole new political paradigm and rearrange or invent any labels needed to communicate or apply the new sensible model.
As long as we let the liberals define the model and all its essential terms, we will never succeed in communicating the constitutional conservatism that is the core of what it means to be a true American.
I suggest that we create a political "spectrum" of our own defining, and put the liberals on it where they belong, as well as place ourselves where we rightfully belong. To do so, we must reject the current paradigm, along with any labels that are clearly senseless.
Problems of definition
The popular model in politics is the left / right model that places liberals on the left and conservatives on the right. The more radical liberals are labeled extreme left, far left, ultra left, etc., and the more radical conservatives are labeled extreme right, far right, ultra right, etc.
This model has at least two problems. The main problem is that it originated in France just after the first socialistic revolution in modern times--the French Revolution--which was a counterfeit of America's legitimate war for independence. The French model was created in 1789, when radicals in the French Legislature were seated to the left of the speaker, and traditional or conservative nobles were seated to the right.
In time, the notion that liberals constituted the left and conservatives constituted the right became prevalent throughout Europe. Ultimately, the model became dominant in American politics, as well. Unfortunately, because the model is purely European, it reflects Europe's general acceptance of socialism of one kind or another. Hence, both European liberals and conservatives tend to accept many of the same socialistic assumptions and goals, differing primarily in approach, application, and aggressiveness.
This leads to the second problem with the French political model. The terms used to define the opposite ends of the spectrum are themselves inadequate. By definition, liberal means "suitable for a freeman" (original meaning); "tolerant of views differing from one's own"; "of democratic or republican forms of government"; "favoring reform or progress, specifically favoring political reforms tending toward democracy and personal freedom for the individual"; "progressive." Conservative, on the other hand, means "tending to preserve established traditions and to resist or oppose any changes in these." (Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition)
The dictionary then defines left-wing as "the more radical or liberal section of a political party, group, etc.," and right-wing as "the more conservative or reactionary section of a political party, group, etc." (emphasis added). Here's the clincher. A "reactionary" is defined as one who espouses "a movement back to a former or less advanced condition" (emphasis added).
Need I say any more? According to the dictionary, liberals are admirable people who favor principles of freedom, democracy, and republicanism, and conservatives are intolerant "reactionaries" who are "less advanced" than their liberal counterparts and who oppose human progress. Bear in mind that my dictionary was published in 1970, well before political correctness made these kinds of definitions even more pronounced than they are today.
Is that the kind of labeling that we are going to take sitting down?
It has always been obvious that the European left-wing / right-wing paradigm is defined by its promoters as a continuum in which GOOD is on the left and BAD is on the right--with the result that all thinking, compassionate persons would want to align themselves with the left, or at least with the center, which of course over time has become increasingly liberal.
Conservatives are left increasingly out in the cold, while civilization marches progressively forward. (That's a recapitulation, by the way, of Hegel and Marx.)
Obviously, we need a better political paradigm than the European model, and we also need better terms with which to define what it means to be a constitutional conservative.
A proposed model
What America needs is its own distinctive political paradigm, one that ignores European prejudices and emphasizes America's unifying founding principles. I propose that the ideals in the Declaration and the Constitution are not just "tradition"--unlike the cultural ideals presumed by the European model--but are true, even inspired of God. They therefore are not just old notions to be cast off as the world grows more sophisticated, interconnected, and "one-worldly." They are eternal truths that govern reality and which we ignore at our peril. They define the only reliable means of self-government in the world's history, and any perversion of them places our nation in jeopardy of destruction, both from within and from without.
Consider that the European model would place America's true principles of self-government on the right end of the spectrum, along with foolish anachronisms like male superiority, racial segregation, and religious intolerance. By the very definitions inherent in the European model, those ideals that we most cherish as Americans are now considered merely backward traditions that will naturally fall by the wayside in fulfillment of Hegel's and Marx's dialectic.
It follows that the more passionately any of us believes in America's founding principles, the more "extreme" we would be perceived--as well as the more wrong-headed and resistant.
We need to replace such clever distortion of truth with a model that defines America's principles as the safe center, and all aberrations of those principles as manifold examples of error.
Imagine a wagon wheel from pioneer days. The hub would be the true political ideals bequeathed us by our Founders, and the ends of the opposing spokes would be any conceivable perversion or corruption of those core ideals.
Go a step further, and consider the exact opposite ends of the spokes to be not only aberrations of America's central principles, but antitheses of their polar opposite at the farthest end of the transecting spoke. This allows for multiple spectrums of competing ideas, just as exist in reality, not just one linear continuum.
If you run out of room for all possible perversions of the core political philosophy, spin the wheel on its transverse axis and make it multi-dimensional, like a gyroscope. Because the ways of error are limitless, while true principles are fixed and finite, this extra "spinning" dimension would accommodate all theoretical possibilities.
The result is a sphere with truth in the dead center--with infinite polar opposites on the outer surface nothing but perversions of the core.
That, I believe, is a sensible, and perfectly defensible, paradigm for American politics. It enables us to envision the way things really are--infinitely complex, infinitely unpredictable. In politics, there isn't just one linear spectrum that does justice to all possibilities. Imagining a "sphere" with truth in the middle enables us to be "multilingual," translating all other paradigms and spectrums into comparable form for analysis, arraying all against each other, with truth as the anchor.
A paradigm shift
Let the Europeans keep their meaningless paradigm, whose meandering center represents mere compromise of erroneous extremes, having no fixed core of absolute truth. Here in the "States," we need a paradigm that reflects our origins, as well as (hopefully) our future, and that also properly characterizes anything that ignores or damages our founding principles.
As we seek a better paradigm, we should recognize that--although the Founders employed something resembling the European tradition in arriving at what was to become the fundamental principles of our nation's philosophy--once they agreed upon that uniquely American doctrine, the paradigm completely shifted. No longer was the goal to find some kind of Golden Mean between evil extremes in search of a safe center. Once the true principles were laid, the goal became to stand firm upon those truths and measure all else against them.
Hence the need for defining the center as self-evident truth and the extremes as aberrations. Unlike our Founders, we no longer need to seek that safe center. We already have that in our founding documents. Our role is to preserve and defend that core of truth.
New terminology
But what about well-accepted terms like liberal, conservative, left-wing, right-wing, etc.--or any recasting of such terms into new phrases like "right-wing liberal" or "constitutional conservative"? Would they still have relevance in America? Perhaps, but such traditional terms (in any form) would be used mainly to describe the polar perversions on the outside of the sphere, including even the term "constitutional conservative," which is only half acceptable. (Note that the term "conservative" comes from 19th Century British politics and does not faithfully describe anything relating to the American founding.)
The only terms that would make any real sense would be terms like "Declarationist" or "Constitutionalist" or "American"--properly defined. Universal use of such terms, if properly defined, would help to unite our country around the things that will "preserve us a nation," and will help us avoid needless infighting, meaningless name-calling, and fickle partisanship.
Above all, such a new paradigm and such rejection of time-worn political cliches like "conservative" will enable us to replace an absolutely unacceptable and destructive model borrowed from 18th Century France.
Dissemination
Twenty years ago, creation and dissemination of a more rational model in American politics would have been futile, because the means of communication were then basically closed. The web, of course, has changed all that, and so has cable television.
No matter the paradigm chosen, we need something better than that borrowed from Europe. The model I propose is just one possibility. Let's come up with whatever fits America's origins and then take it to informed, politically-active Americans who are drawn to alternative media. In time, perhaps not far down the road, we can generate a whole new way of looking at politics. Well, maybe not so new. More like our Founders had in mind.
© Stephen Stone
