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The New Challenge Movement: A Manifesto The Genius of Self-Government

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Don't Get Mad, Send Money

by Christopher Chantrill
August 22, 2004 at 3:00 am

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REMEMBER BACK in 2000 when the liberals took out after the NRA?  It was spring and the media was swooning over the Million Mom March, a pseudo-grassroots event gussied up by liberal gun-control activists.  The Clinton administration was pushing gun-control measures through Congress.  Vice-President Al Gore was thinking he would be able to ride gun control to the White House.  Liberals thought they finally had the NRA on the run. 

But something went wrong.  Conservatives didn’t get mad; they sent money.  The NRA reported a flood tide of contributions.  I remember Googling up the NRA’s site and sending them $100 myself.  It’s seared, seared in my brain.  And Al Gore decided to run for the people against the powerful instead of running against the NRA.

Then liberals thought they’d take a whack at the Boy Scouts for banning gay scoutmasters.  Not surprisingly, the Boy Scouts had developed a policy (after some early scandals) of keeping gays away from Boy Scouts.  But the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the Boy Scouts had no right to discriminate against gay scoutmasters.  The media was swooning again.  But I didn’t get mad.  I sent money.  I checked out the local Boy Scouts organization and sent them a check.  And I’ve been sending them money ever since.

Now we have the presidential election of 2004.  For over a year, liberals have been screaming “Bush LIED!!!”  Rich international speculators have been pouring millions of dollars into conspiracy outfits like MoveOn.org to run ads against President Bush.  Rich Hollywood stars have been pouring millions into the coffers of Democrats and their shadowy 527 organizations.  Rich Hollywood A-listers have been riding media publicity to box-office nirvana with conspiracy movies like Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Manchurian Candidate.  Minor federal government officials have written books to embarrass the president, and the media has swooned all over them.

But along comes Swift Boat Veterans for Truth with a book called Unfit for Command by John O’Neill and Jerome Corsi and a simple story line: Kerry Lied.  John Kerry, they said, has been lying about his military service for 35 years.  Swift Boat Veterans For Truth bought a half-million dollar TV buy in the battleground states to tell America about it.

The result?  Dead silence in the mainstream partisan media.  Dead silence from the Kerry Campaign.  Frenzy in talk radio. But after two weeks, the juggernaut of talk radio had moved the poll numbers.  A CBS News poll reported that support for Kerry among veterans had dropped from 46 percent to 37 percent.

All of a sudden an outraged John Kerry was demanding that the Bush campaign call off its dogs, was filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, and was suing to prevent TV stations from airing the Swift Boat ads.  How about that First Amendment!

It makes you think, doesn’t it?  Millions in hot money from international speculators, a scurrilous “documentary” hauling in $100 million at the box office, millions in free publicity from the mainstream partisan media and it buys you a tie game in the polls.  But two weeks of talk radio and a half-million dollar ad buy and the Bushies are moving the country against you. 

No wonder the Democrats and the media are in full outrage mode.  Swift Boat vets have been coordinating with the Bush campaign!  The major contributor to Swift Boat vets is a big Republican donor!  Oh no!

But the timing!  The strategery!  You’d have to say that the episode has Karl Rove written all over it.  At the end of July John Kerry presents himself to the American people as a war hero.  By the end of August he is exposed as a faker.  They’ll be citing the Swift Boat escapade in Campaign Management 101 for the next generation.

There’s a big lesson here for Democrats and the media—when they have cooled down and are ready to review the whole mess.  They don’t do themselves any favors by giving their guys a pass.  No Republican could have got away with the contradiction that John Kerry has been permitted: running for election as a war hero after a career as an anti-war activist and a liberal U.S. senator.  Imagine a Republican who runs for office on family values and then runs off with one of his aides.  He’s not going to get fawning coverage on The Today Show; he’ll get tough questions—unless, of course he runs off with a gay aide.

The same rules ought to apply to Democrats. They need less mothering from the media and more fathering. Fathering. There’s a concept!  

No, I’m not mad.  I’ll just send money.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com.

Buy his Road to the Middle Class.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate. 
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.”  —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches... they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

presented by Christopher Chantrill

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