[EL] Careful What [We] Wish For?

[Steve Hoersting]

The listserv has been debating whether America has a system of meaningful
disclosure. And wouldn't you know it, the early presidential running
provides an illustrative example.

Hundreds, on both the Right and Left, have worked for years to free-up
independent political speech and to secure a measure of anonymity for its
donors. Of those hundreds, the ones on the Right can fairly be categorized
as "Constitutional Conservatives."

So it is more than a little ironic that some *faceless* group has deployed
unlimited and undisclosed dollars to rework Lyndon Johnson's "Daisy"
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDTBnsqxZ3k> ad (that decimated the 1964
presidential aspirations of Barry Goldwater) to now blast
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeVjM8VNSXk> constitutional conservative
Senator Rand Paul. (Constitutional conservative Ted Cruz, the betting goes,
will be diluted in the primaries by Mike Huckabee).

Perhaps we constitutional-conservatives should be careful what we wish for.

But without unlimited independent speech I don't believe there'd be a
Senator Rand Paul. Without a Senator Rand Paul, there'd be no Presidential
Candidate Rand Paul, and certainly no noticeable mentions of "neocons" in
prime-time national television, which you cannot have missed if you've
watching the last few evenings.

Neoconservatism -- these days "Reform Conservatism" -- is more a domestic
policy than a foreign policy; it gets to the question of who we should be,
as a People.

It, along with its antipode, New Left nihilism, are the two thorns that
must work-their-way-out of the body politic for Americans to reclaim the
Enlightenment liberalism we'd each hoped to raise our children in --
something writers on the Right
<http://www.nationalreview.com/article/416307/war-private-mind-kevin-d-williamson>
and Left
<http://www.amazon.com/Silencing-Left-Killing-Free-Speech-ebook/dp/B00VSGEN2G/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428685435&sr=1-1&keywords=kirsten+powers>
are saying more and more frequently.

The trouble with a Warren - Rubio presidential race (the preferred
candidates, respectively, of the Progressives and Reform Conservatives, so
don't dismiss them) is that any battle between their sponsoring camps can
only result in a diminution of popular sovereignty; not in a renewed "Power
to People," nor in a revitalized Republican Grassroots. Perhaps this is
because Immanuel Kant's attack on the mind only furthers Plato's Politics
of Faith
<http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-theological-politics-of-irving-kristol>.
Perhaps as the New-Left thesis collides with the Reform-Conservative
antithesis ... to leave, in its wake, an authoritarian synthesis
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/20/opinion/david-brooks-the-nationalist-solution.html?_r=0>
.

There's no getting around it: Reclaiming the Enlightenment can only happen
with free speech.

But that still leaves an objection to the efforts of constitutional
conservatives, on disclosure grounds: No one really knows who financed the
new ad designed to take-out Rand Paul. And shouldn't that tick-us-off?

This gets to the point, a point others have made better than I. Anonymity
for independent speech, rather than detailed disclosure, allows us to know
the argument without knowing the donors. And that makes us focus on what
matters most: refuting the argument, not on seeking retribution. In
politics, it is the argument that must be confronted. And the sooner we get
back to that, the better.

But the truth is this. We know the forces behind this attack on Rand Paul.
We know even better, I dare say, than its financiers do; even better than
the ad-makers themselves. We've known "who" for months. We've known "who"
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato> for 2,300 years.

Steve
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