TheNextRight blogger Soren Dayton was at the Republican Party of Virginia Convention yesterday. His observations:

“I have written a bunch about the role of Ron Paul supporters in the party and the impact that John McCain’s military supporters may have. Yesterday, I went to the convention of the Republican Party of Virginia. The only seriously contested race was for the nomination for Attorney General.”

“State Senator Ken Cuccinnelli, the candidate of grassroots conservatives, was the most likely winner, given who normally attends a state party convention. And indeed he won.”

“However, many people were shocked that he won on the first ballot over John Brownlee, former U.S. Attorney, and Dave Foster, a Republican who sits on the Arlington County School Board. When I drove down to Richmond for the convention, I certainly did not expect that result either.”

“But when I got to the convention floor on Saturday, it was clear what was going on. The Virginia chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus had endorsed Cuccinelli. They were out in force. From eyeballing, people identified with either the Republican Liberty Caucus or the Campaign for Liberty seemed to be about 10-15% of the convention. They pushed Cuccinelli over the top. I think that this marks a pattern for the future of the GOP in smaller caucuses and conventions.”

Why did the RLC endorse Senator Cuccinelli?

To begin, Senator Cuccinelli was the only candidate who had previously addressed our group — in 2007:

See part II and part III and part IV of Ken’s speech, too.

At his website, Ken Cuccinelli discussed the importance of property rights, open/accountable government, and fighting taxes.  Perhaps most important of all is that Cuccinelli truly understands the disconnect between Republican Party leaders and the grassroots. He knows why Republicans have been losing in Virginia and nationwide. And he is a longtime former activist for limited government.

Now he will be the next Attorney General.

And, according to Mr. Dayton (who was not supporting Ken for the nomination), our members put him over the top.  Says Mr. Dayton: “RLC/CfL/Ron Paul supporters are likely to continue to hold an important swing role in party contests like this.”

RLC member photos from the Convention are available here and here. A report on our success at the Convention is available here.

Since January, Republican Liberty Caucus members in Virginia have been planning a re-launch of the RLC affiliate. The affiliate was chartered at the RPV Advance in 2007, but RLC Chair D.J. McGuire stepped down to run for Supervisor in Spotsylvania County and subsequently the affiliate needed to elect a new Board of Directors.

On Friday and Saturday, over 10,000 Republican Party delegates from across Virginia came together at the Richmond Convention Center to select their nominees for Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and state GOP Chair.  The winning candidates for those races included Bob McDonnell for Governor, Bill Bolling for Lt. Governor, Ken Cuccinelli for Attorney General, and Pat Mullins for Virginia GOP Chair.  Cuccinelli was endorsed by the RLC and our members helped him win in the most contested Convention race.

Although not delegates, Matt Gagnon and I spent all day yesterday (starting very early in the morning and going until the Convention concluded) reaching out to prospective RLC members at the state GOP Convention.

The RLC booth at the RPV Convention, sponsored by RLC member Lisa Miller of Alexandria, was a massive success, with:

· Nearly 100 Convention-goers signing up to receive e-mail alerts from the RLC;

· 135 individuals took the World’s Smallest Political Quiz;

· The Virginia RLC meeting after the Convention, attended by 35 liberty-loving Republicans from across the state, was a huge success;

· The Virginia RLC solidified its new Board of Directors;

· The RLC gained a dozen new members on the spot;

· The RLC’s endorsed Attorney General nominee (Ken Cuccinelli) won on the first ballot.

Our quiz results were as follows:

This was the first time the World’s Smallest Political Quiz was used at Virginia GOP Convention.  I was surprised to see how many folks who took the quiz landed in the ‘libertarian’ quadrant.  There were even some RPV delegates that joined me at 100-100, the far top of the chart.

The exact results were: 64 right libertarians, 15 center-libertarians (including ten at 100-100, the top of the chart), 12 left libertarians, 15 centrists, 26 right conservatives, two left liberals, and one statist.  Therefore sixty-seven percent of quiz-takers scored in the libertarian quadrant; eleven percent were centrist; and nineteen percent were right conservative.

The response to the booth was overwhelmingly positive.  Virginians were proud to see the quiz providing a diamond view of the political spectrum and several teachers commented that they would be presenting the chart to their students.

At certain points, the booth was so busy it was very hard to keep up with the demand:

After the Convention, RLC members in Virginia held the Annual RLCVA Meeting at the Hard Shell restaurant in Richmond.  The venue was perfect for our meeting.  The food was great, the company excellent, and the quality of the individuals who attended our meeting was extremely impressive.

Some photos from the Republican Liberty Caucus of Virginia Annual Meeting are below.

The Virginia RLC also elected its new Board of Directors: Matt Gagnon (Chair); Steven Latimer (Vice-Chair); Krystle Weeks (Secretary); Cliff Dunn (Treasurer); and At-Large Board members Rick Sincere, Leonard Harris, and Matt DeLeon.

Look for more activity from the Virginia RLC affiliate on Facebook or at http://www.RLCVA.org/. Some additional RLC Convention photos are available here.

Freedom and liberalism, the Jeffersonian view that that government is best which governs least, has been responsible for eradication of starvation in the developed world; massive increases in standards of living; and the opening of more avenues for literary, artistic and creative freedom than were imaginable in the Renaissance days of Henry VIII.  But from the beginnings of the trend toward freedom there was a concomitant trend toward centralization.  With the assistance of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII dissolved the Catholic monasteries that were responsible for assisting the poor and took early steps toward establishing a centralized welfare state.  Like today’s big government “liberals”, Henry VIII was liberal with money. He used state power to suppress the Protestant Reformation as well as Catholicism. Dissenting monks were tortured and murdered, as were many of his advisers, including Thomas Cromwell.  As well, he debased the currency of England in order to finance wars and his suppression of religious dissenters, resulting in a century of inflation.  A century after his death, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Cromwell’s great-great-grand nephew, led the English revolution on behalf of republicanism.

Limited government liberalism and centralization of authority have been in conflict since the 16th century and earlier.  Many of the ideas that the centralizers advocate today, such as inflation to finance government bailouts,  have their origination in the 17th and 18th century economics of David Hume, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the First Lord of Shaftesbury, and other mercantilists.  In the 18th and 19th centuries the liberal ideas of Smith and Jefferson triumphed. But the centralizing ideas of the mercantilists asserted themselves in the late 18th century via the Federalists, in the early 19th century via the Whigs and in the late 19th century via the Republicans.

Social Darwinism confounded the debate between centralization and liberalism in the late nineteenth century.  Although the way it is usually characterized may be unfair, the centralizers were able to argue that laissez-faire is cruel because it advocates Herbert Spencer’s survival of the fittest. In fact, laissez-faire had increased life expectancy by 50 per cent by the early 1900s.  No more humane ideology than laissez-faire capitalism has been derived in human history before or after Adam Smith. But in arguing that laissez-faire is elitist and cruel, the centralizers were able to draw popular support to Wall Street’s big government liberalism.  Many decentralizers, unfortunately, allowed the Progressives to bait them.  Although philosophically selfishness may be logical, allowing liberalism to be characterized as selfish is poor marketing.

In particular, the Progressive movement of the 1890s to 1920s, which was largely Republican and was represented in politics by Roosevelt, Taft, Hoover and Wilson, aimed to reverse the implications of laissez-faire.  The centralization movement until McKinley (and Spencer criticized Gladstone for the same tendency) was associated with the wealthy. The Federalists and the Whigs were pro tariff and pro central bank.  The Progressives did not change the basic content of the Whig program, but rather the cultural image of the centralizing Whig philosophy.  In order to do this control of media opinion was essential.  The Progressives were the first to argue that centralizing was not on behalf of manufacturing interests but rather on behalf of the poor.  Yet, as Murray N. Rothbard, Ronald Radosh, Gabriel Kolko and others have shown in books like New History of Leviathan and Triumph of Conservatism, Progressivism was largely a pro-business movement that had the effect of utilizing the state in order to further business objectives such as enforcing high prices.

The efficacy of the Progressive strategy is seen not only in the wholesale adoption of their program in the early 20th century but in the establishment of the two party system as a competition between two versions of Progressivism.  The Republicans became the Progressives who advocated business interests, regulated markets and inflation, while the Democrats became the Progressives who advocated for social democracy, regulation instead of markets and inflation, but invited Wall Street in through the back door anyway.  Estates were heavily taxed but the very wealthy, such as the New York Times’s Ochs Sulzbergers, could establish family trusts and avoid inheritance taxes; only owners of rising firms who might threaten the elite or Wall Street would see their estates taxed.

Most libertarians would agree that the difference between Democrats and mainstream RINOs was mostly on the surface because the chief economic policies involving monetary expansion were matters of complete agreement among the two parties. Nevertheless, the social democratic New Deal Democrats were able to remain in power for most of 40 years because of the power of their media imagery.  John Dewey had argued that the role of the media was to paint cartoon-like caricatures of policy debates for public consumption (because in his view the public couldn’t understand), and Americans accepted that approach in fact if not in theory.   Incidentally, Dewey did even worse harm in the realm of education, where the dumbing down of educational standards continues to reverberate in inner city students’ lack of exposure to basic skills education.

The most potent tool that the Progressive/social democratic movement has developed is control of the nation’s cultural institutions.  Decentralizers, advocates of freedom and individualism are almost nowhere to be found in American academic institutions, in film or on television. Where Republicans exist in universities they are primarily of the centralizing variety, midway between the early twentieth century Progressives and the advocates of social Darwinism. Few decentralizers are to be found anywhere in universities, on the left or right.  Where media outlets advocate “markets”, for example the Economist magazine, they are inevitably within the big government, Progressive tradition.

A key reason that the pro-freedom movement has faltered is lack of a media outlet.  Fox Television and other Rupert Murdoch properties have adopted the centralizing Progressive position and so appeal to Republicans in the pro-business Progressive tradition, as does talk radio.  Although these outlets feature announcers like Sean Hannity who use the language of small government, they do not permit airing of criticism of key centralizing institutions that are critical to the big government “liberal” Wall Street state, in particular the Fed and welfare state institutions like Social Security.

The upshot of this narrative is that Republicans who believe in liberty and decentralization lack a major media source.

Liberal Republicans need to begin to consider how a “libertarian” television network can be put into place. It would seem that a major cable network could be purchased for this purpose. The idea is not far fetched. Using appropriate marketing devices, such as attractive announcers, the ratings could be strong. In particular, Fox is larger than the other cable stations because it is the only Republican station.  I would guess that a good percentage of Fox’s viewers could be drawn to a libertarian station.   Just as Henry VIII had eight wives, there is no reason why Republicans cannot have two or more television stations, one of which is a libertarian station.

Mitchell Langbert can be visited at http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com.

According to an article from The Associated Press, “Guantanamo [is] a political win GOP needed.” The story is referencing the vote in the Senate that occurred earlier today. In a vote of 90 to 6, the Senate overwhelmingly opposed President Obama’s effort to close the prison that harbors accused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Every Republican member of the Senate passed on the opportunity to recognize that terrorist combatants do have Constitutional rights and that protections of the Bill of Rights apply to all persons under the jurisdiction of the U.S. regardless of where in the world that jurisdiction prevails.

As you know, one of Barack Obama’s first acts as president was to order the closing of the controversial prison for terrorist suspects within a year. Obama had campaigned on the issue, but Republicans pounced on what they correctly asserted to be a critical flaw: the lack of detailed plans for where the roughly 240 detainees would go if the Cuban prison were shut down.

On that point, the town of Hardin, Montana (pop. 3,400) has volunteered to house 40% of the detainees (about 100 of them) in a state prison facility that is vacant.

Greg Smith, Economic Development Director in Hardin, says that there are 464 beds in the facility and over 120 jobs could be created by moving those prisoners to Hardin.  With flat land, a state-of-the-art corrections facility, and a Mayor (and City Council) willing to house the suspects, all it would have taken was a simple Senate vote in favor of closing Gitmo.

That vote, however, would require Senators to have a backbone and LEAD the country — something foreign to them.  Only six Senators, all from the far left wing of the Democrat Party, had the courage to vote in favor of the funding to move the captives to U.S. soil.

Why should we house these accused terrorists in the U.S.? The fact is that housing them in Gitmo has denied the terrorist suspects their constitutional rights and there is simply no possibility that piecemeal changes in law could create a legal system at Guantanamo equal to the U.S. criminal justice or courts martial systems.

Additionally, the detentions of the terrorist suspects are only temporary expedients that apply only in the field of combat according to U.S. law. Since we’re not at war with Cuba, the legitimate idea of temporarily detaining combatants in a war zone does not apply.

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, the abuses at Guantanamo Bay carried out at the beckon call of high-level government officials include widespread abuse:

• solitary confinement of detainees for periods exceeding a year;
• sleep deprivation of detainees for days, weeks, or months;
• exposure of detainees to prolonged temperature extremes;
• beatings of detainees;
• threats of transfer to a foreign country for torture;
• torture in foreign countries or at U.S. military bases abroad before transfer to Guantánamo;
• sexual harassment and rape or threat of rape against detainees;
• deprivation of medical treatment for serious conditions, or treatment granted only for “cooperating”; and
• “short-shackling,” where wrists and ankles are bound together and to the floor for hours or day.

I realize these suspects are accused of being terrorists and several of them were involved in the 911 attacks. I have tremendous sympathy for victims (and their families) of these accused terrorists and am quite convinced that the detainees at Gitmo are quite literally the scum of the earth.

That said, those accused of crimes in a nation governed by the rule of law are entitled to equal treatment under the law and due process rights under the Fifth Amendment as well as protection from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that the Guantanamo captives are entitled to the protection of the United States Constitution.

The Fifth Amendment includes “… nor shall [any person] be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law …”.  Further, the Eighth Amendment guarantees freedom from “cruel and unusual punishment” by government.

In Furman v. Georgia (1972), Justice Brennan wrote that “[t]here are … four principles by which we may determine whether a particular punishment is ‘cruel and unusual’.” They include:

- The “essential predicate” is “that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity,” especially torture.
- “A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion.”
- “A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society.”
- “A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary.”

The torture procedures that the Bush Administration, the Republicans in Congress, and the spineless Democrats who purport to be civil libertarians have gone along with violate constitutional protections and are clearly ‘cruel and unusual’ tactics under the definition of the U.S. Supreme Court.  The types of torture that have been used against suspected terrorists also violate the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture (both signed by the U.S.).

Moreover, the techniques are not effective. According to the U.S. Army Interrogation Field Manuel 34-52 (1992), “Use of torture and other illegal methods is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”

And according to the Center for Constitutional Rights,

“If someone has information, they are just as likely, if not more so, to disclose the information after non-abusive interrogation tactics. Second, many who are interrogated do not have information to give. Third, whether or not a person has information, he or she will likely confess to anything to stop torture; thus the information obtained is never reliable.”

Quoth the AP article: “Republicans have searched mightily for a good political issue this year as their traditional three Gs — gays, guns and God — have lost some steam. Now a fourth G — Guantanamo Bay — is handing them big boost.”

The issue of Guantanamo may be giving Republicans a boost in popular support, but it is at the sacrifice of the U.S. Constitution and a respect for the rule of law.

Over the last eight years, the Bush Administration has systematically dismantled some of the most important rights and protections of the United States Constitution.

The time to stand up for the Constitution is NOW.  Americans oppose the Bush-Cheney torture policies and a free nation based on the rule of law requires more of its government and its elected officials.

South Carolina is a peculiar state. It’s managed to produce both Lindsey Graham and Mark Sanford, two politicians who come from the same place but are literally like oil and water.

Graham is the model of the kind of Republican who infiltrated the party after the Reagan era. He’s religiously conservative, completely irresponsible on budgetary issues, and has a record on civil liberties that can only be described as embarrassing.

Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Barry Goldwater wouldn’t have recognized him as a Republican at all. He’s like an old-style southern Democrat but with less integrity.

Mark Sanford is almost his exact opposite. He’s fiscally conservative and a strong supporter of civil and individual liberty. He’s in the Goldwater tradition and willing to stick by his principles regardless of the cost.

Being from the same state, it’s inevitable that two such opposite politicians would clash. When Sanford held firm and opposed federal bailout money for the state, Graham tried to end-run him in the Congress and play havoc with states rights by giving legislatures federal authority to override governors to accept federal money.

Last weekend at the South Carolina Republican Convention, it’s not surprising that there were some fireworks.

On the floor, Graham made a speech arguing in favor of compromising Republican principles and moving to the center and was heckled by members of the audience who were Ron Paul supporters. In response he made a strong statement against libertarianism, saying:

“I am not a libertarian. If you are, you’re welcome to vote for me and help this party, but we’re not going to build a party around libertarian ideas. I am a Ronald Reagan, Strom Thurmond, Lindsey Graham, Carrol Campbell Republican.”

It was certainly not news to anyone that Graham isn’t a libertarian, and his self-identification with former Democrats, segregationists and pork barrel spendocrats tells the whole story about why so many in South Carolina aren’t happy with their senior Senator.

More interesting than Graham’s remarks was Governor Sanford’s reaction a few minutes later when RLC member Amanda Moore stopped him in the hallway and asked him what he thought about Graham’s comments on libertarianism. Sanford went on at length, and said:

“It’s funny it was almost a pejorative comment a moment ago. Senator Graham spoke and said ‘I’m not a libertarian’, and whatever, whatever, as if that’s an evil word. Liberty is the hallmark of the American experiment. That is the distinguishing characteristic of our republic and frankly, what’s made it great. In my comments last night I said that is the genius of America, of affording liberty so that in your pursuit of happiness versus my pursuit of happiness and the dreams that went with that you unleash individual initiative that can’t be there with central planning. People say, you know, ‘Mark, you’re kind of libertarian’ and they’ll say it as if it’s an evil word like ‘You’re a communist’ or something. I’m like ‘Throw me in that brier patch. I’m guilty. I love liberty’ and I think that ought to be a good thing and I don’t think that it should be something that people back away from. I’ve been accused of being a libertarian and I wear it as a badge of honor, because I believe in, love and support liberty.”

Sanford expressed a vision of the Republican Party which strongly contrasted with Graham’s concept of a party of appeasement and opportunism. Sanford offered a positive vision of a party which embraces rights and individual liberty and enterprise and initiative, a party like the GOP which freed the slaves and fought the monopolies and championed civil rights and won the cold war.

Sanford seems to understand that the arguments between conservatives and moderates in the party is meaningless and that the party needs to move on a course perpendicular to the old ideas of right and left, in the direction of liberty.

Lindsey Graham represents the worst of the failures of the post-Reagan GOP.

It’s not just that he doesn’t want to be a libertarian. He doesn’t want to be in a party which bases its policies on principles at all.

Sanford seems to understand that ideals and principles and doing the right thing matter. He represents hope for a better future for the party and a return to real Republican values.

As President Obama’s kids are settling in at Sidwell Friends, one of the best private schools in the nation, their father has signed a budget that takes away the opportunity for poor kids in Washington DC to attend schools like Sidwell Friends with the help of the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which makes it possible for 1,700 kids a year — mostly African-Americans — to escape from the worst public school system in the country and attend a charter school or a private school which will give them a chance at a better future.

The Opportunity Scholarship Program is only four years old and has barely had a chance to prove itself, but it stands little chance of continuing when the federal funds backing it are eliminated from the budget by Democrat legislators eager to keep campaign contributions from the teachers unions flowing.

Teachers unions don’t like any kind of program which gives kids a chance to escape from government-run schools, and even this relatively modest voucher program is too much of a threat to be allowed to survive now that they have some clout. The funding was in the budget coming out of the last session, but has now been removed and is unlikely to be added back in with Democrats in control.

The program provides $7,500 vouchers to about 1,700 DC public school students chosen by lottery which they can then use to change schools, attend a charter school or attend an area private school. Every student who uses a voucher releases more money for other students who stay behind in public school because their voucher is underwritten by the federal government and is considerably less than the $14,400 per student spent by the DC public school system, which has the sad distinction of being the one of the most expensive and lowest performing school systems in the nation. DC ranks last in the nation in math and reading, 4th lowest in SAT scores and 6th worst in graduation rate,

Perhaps most important and almost always overlooked by those doing studies on voucher programs is how many graduates go to college and the quality of the colleges they end up attending. In the DC public school system only 59% of high school students even graduate. Of those only 36% have completed the coursework necessary to qualify them to go to a 4-year college degree program. Only 52.8% of those who take the SAT in DC go to college. Of those 86.2% attend in-state colleges which in the overwhelming majority of cases means that they attend the University of the District of Columbia which offers 4-year degrees but is basically comparable to a decent community college. That means that of entering freshmen only about a fifth will end up going to college and most of those will go to a second-rate institution.

In comparison, at the top private schools in DC like St. Albans, National Cathedral and Sidwell Friends virtually all of the students graduate and about 99% of those graduates go on to college and more than 25% of those graduates go to one of the top 10 colleges in the country — like Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Princeton and Stanford. So that means they send more graduates to the very best colleges in the world than even manage to get to college at all after graduating a public high-school in DC.

Now admittedly, the $7,500 which this program provides to students isn’t enough by itself to pay for a private school which costs $15,000 to $30,000 a year. But all of these private schools also have endowments for scholarships, some of them quite substantial and targeting kids from the poorer parts of DC. On average for every 3 students who come with a $7,500 voucher that’s another student who can attend one of these schools for free, so between vouchers and private endowments a lot more poor students can attend some of the best private schools in the nation than could have otherwise.

In addition, these vouchers can also be used at charter schools in DC, which have performance much closer to private schools than public schools. DC charter schools graduate 91% of their students, almost double the rate at DC public schools. 83% of those students attend college, close to three times the number of DC public school students going to college. As a group in 2007 DC charter school graduates received $11 million in college scholarship awards, a vital advantage when so many of them come from an underprivileged background.

High school graduation and the chance to go to college can make all the difference in the world for a poor kid from the inner city. It massively reduces the chance that they will be involved in crime, reduces their chance of using drugs, more than doubles their long-term earning potential and even raises up others in the community around them. It even substantially reduces their chance of a violent death. DC has a rate of violent crime which is three times the national average and its poor neighborhoods are among the poorest in the nation. Unemployment is high, drug use is widespread in the poor communities and for many there is no way out. Kids born into this environment are born doomed.

Access to better educational opportunities is the key to saving children from poverty and social disadvantage. A public school system which sends only a small fraction of its graduates to college and is rated third worst in the nation is not providing that opportunity, but for almost 2,000 students a year the Opportunity Scholarship Program did offer hope of a much better education and a very good chance at a degree from a good four-year college.

By taking this program away, Democrats in Congress are reminding us that they don’t really care about helping the most needy in our society. They just want to keep getting their votes, while pandering to the special interests for whom keeping the people poor and undereducated is politically advantageous.

According to The State, Rich Bolen, 42, won the two-year chairmanship of the Lexington County Republican Party over a GOP moderate.