Winter 2014—If I Was The President: Peterson For President

One of the advantages of a college education is that you learn to appreciate details; you learn to value the close inspection, the focused perspective, the exacting evaluation, and the clear and concise truth of every matter within its proper and complete context. Being “spot on” has been somewhat of a humbling journey for me as a an exponent of conservative values. Being precise is something I hope to accomplish in this blog post.

I decided that it was high time for some fun, for an intellectually enjoyable fantasy. I say “fantasy” because there is likely NOTHING about what I am going to talk about in this post that I expect to take place or come true. The socio-political realities and the logistics of our government would almost certainly prevent the scenario from actually happening.

But sometimes, reality isn’t entertaining enough. And even though I am sure there are millions of people out there who would find this imagined scenario positively horrifying, I still believe it’s entertaining to at least consider.

The scenario I am referring to is this: what if Christopher Peterson was the President of the United States of America?

I initially thought about doing a blog post after reflecting upon my own rhetoric in the past few months concerning the Barack Obama administration. I realized that I spend a great deal of time criticizing the current presidential occupant of the White House. What I don’t seem to do enough of is explain the specifics of why I oppose the President, of why I consistently label his actions—and the actions of his allies in all levels of government—as “un-American.”

In my time as a college student, experience has taught me that perhaps the most effective criticism of conservatives is that we overgeneralize, using blanket statements of belief that are ignorant of facts, data, and statistics that might endanger our positions. My personal hero, former President Ronald Reagan, was guilty of casting aside criticism by using generic dismissals that often ignored individual variation of experience and interpretation. More recently, even the less-than-full-blooded-conservative former President George W. Bush has been accused of leading the nation while conveniently ignoring countervailing evidence. There is a degree of legitimacy to these criticisms; conservatives (and their allies) operate in a world of core principles that do not change—principles that guide our perceptions and actions in almost every aspect of life. With that comes a strong tendency to overgeneralize, to ignore contrarian facts, and to appear impassive and unresponsive to irregularities and unusual circumstances. I think this is one of the reasons why there are so few truly conservative college professors—the giants of academia make their livings on exploring the minutest of details.

While I believe that conservatives get most of the big concepts right, I freely admit that we often goof on a lot of the small things, that we overlook a lot of important details, and that we tend to feed the stereotype of conservatives as insensitive and old-fashioned ideologues who can’t see past the ruminations of Rush Limbaugh or the drumbeats of Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz.

Conservatives tend to simplify the world around them. In many ways, this is a heuristic advantage—especially in matters of principle. Principles should NEVER be compromised. At the same time, the simple views of a conservative can also be a weakness when the application of principles fails the test of pragmatism. Conservatives should never give up on their principles. At the same time, ignoring opposing details, variations, anomalies, and other small matters is not permissible.

What does this have to do with Christopher Peterson running for president?

As I have already mentioned, Barack-bashing has become one of my favorite pastimes. Because of this, many people have accused me of giving in to blind hatred. They assume that my disdain for President Obama and his administration stems from mindless overgeneralization that ignores the positive achievements of the current Democratic government. I have been accused of being heartless, of spewing forth my anti-Obama rhetoric without justification. I have, in a sense, been accused of attacking Barack Obama simply because I am an old-fashioned, out-of-touch, relatively uneducated, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later conservative who has nothing with which to reasonably validate his positions.

My goal in this blog post is to change that perception of myself. I hope to show you, the reader, that I have very good reasons to accuse the Barack Obama administration of “un-American” behavior. I hope to accomplish this by running an imaginary presidential campaign against President Obama. I will do this by focusing on broad principles while at the same time pointing to real-life, commonsense examples of why I think a conservative revival would do far more good for America than the strategic, social, economic, political, and cultural wandering in the wilderness that the liberal Barack Obama administration has left us with.

As naive and cliché as it may sound, I honestly and forthrightly believe that the United States of America stands for certain universal principles of truth that can benefit mankind regardless of race, religion, background, or location in space and time. I acknowledge that America has not always stood for these ideals. I willingly concede that America is an experiment—and mistakes are usually made when experiments are conducted. For you skeptics out there, you had better write this moment down in your journal: you just read the words of a conservative admitting that the history of the United States is filled with serious imperfections and that the high ideals explored in this blog post have not always been universally honored by or held true for all participants in the American historical experience. Yet, with that said, I also feel that the American experiment has gotten more things right than wrong, that our country’s triumphs have outshone its many mistakes, that American civilization has done more for the advancement of the human race than possibly any other society in the known history of the world.

The United States has come to stand for five great principles that ensure societal success, peace, and prosperity. These principles, properly balanced with one another, have always maximized the human capacity for happiness in this otherwise difficult mortal life. You may recognize four of these principles from the explanatory page of this blog. These five principles are:

Strategic Strength…before any society or civilization can be viable, it must be safe and protected.

Social Order…the rights of individuals are not guaranteed in a vacuum; the relationships between individuals and the manner in which we socialize within the greater brotherhood of man must be balanced, harmonistic, and cooperative.

Economic Independence or Freedom…individuals deserve to own and be secure in their labor and personal property.

Political Liberty…individuals must be free to choose the political direction of their communities in a system that grants liberal amounts of autonomy while maintaining appropriate levels of structure, responsibility, and accountability.

Cultural Righteousness…individuals who participate in a society or civilization should strive to make the best of themselves, to hold fast to proven traditions, to maximize personal happiness and all the positive personal and social characteristics for themselves and others, and to promote, perpetuate, and encourage teachings that maintain public and private virtue.

These ideals encapsulate everything I believe the United States of America has come to represent for millions and millions of God’s children around the world and throughout the last two centuries of the republic’s existence. They are “American” principles in the sense that “America” is not a landmass in the northern hemisphere of the New World, but an idea that peace-loving, prosperity-seeking men and women have yearned for, fought and died for, and passed on to their children. The United States of America is the Great Experiment of republicanism that all mankind can claim as a heritage—a heritage of social order, economic freedom, political liberty, and cultural righteousness defended by a proud tradition of strategic strength.

I expect that there are other millions of people will take exception to some of these ideals. Again, I wish to make clear that the United States is not a perfect country with a perfect history free of blemish. Indeed, events have transpired throughout the republic’s history of which we should all be less than proud. Yet, when we compare the rise and development of the United States and its impressive story running right into the second decade of the 21^st century to the histories of other countries and nations, we can realize that we have much that we can be proud. Even with all of our flaws, we have a remarkably peaceful and prosperous history that is the envy of the world.

The legacy of our country is something that I believe we have fought hard to build and protect. It’s a legacy worth defending. It’s a legacy worth maintaining in the face of those who would seek to bend our Constitution to an “evolutionary” perspective, who claim that big government and economic micromanagement are progressive ideas worth implementing. The conservative viewpoint of government argues that righteous traditions should not be discarded just because those traditions stem from older times when those in power labored under unsound delusions. Most importantly, conservatives understand that changing social norms do not change the natural inclinations of imperfect people to make mistakes. Conservatives know that the rules governing proper human relations have not changed, that the value of social institutions that provide positive interactions for community members has not lessened. Above all else, true believers in republican ideology instinctively understand the existence of good and evil, and that a successful republic can only navigate the difficult waters of international affairs from a position of martial strength and diplomatic resolve.

It is my belief that the Barack Obama administration has failed to build upon, protect, or maintain our country’s great legacy.

Let me address my complaints in terms of the ideals mentioned above.

Standing In The Way Of Strategic Strength: President Obama’s foreign policy record is a mess of inconsistency. President Obama seems to hold primary allegiance to some sort of transnational cosmopolitanism instead of to the United States and its interests; his rhetorical weakness in fighting the War on Terror and his “apology tour” are just two examples of Obama’s curious foreign policy. Instead of moving the country forward with a clear sense of direction and an understanding of America’s grand destiny to be a light and example to the world, President Obama has given in to political expedience and his own weak-willed liberal sentiments. The vision propounded by Barack Obama is that America is a deeply flawed country that needs to be reined in in the international arena so that other countries won’t feel oppressed by American power and success. He has failed to secure our country’s borders. He betrayed Poland, the Czech Republic, and other nations of Eastern Europe trying to maintain independence from Russia by scrapping the planned missile defense shield in that region. He constantly apologizes to the world for our war against terrorism, using the war to embarrass the George W. Bush administration and to score political points with radical constituents at home and non-citizens abroad. After trashing the Bush Doctrine in the lead-up to the 2008 election, President Obama actually expanded the policies of Bush’s War on Terror because he realized that there truly is no safe alternative. He failed to support the Iranian dissident movement of 2009, while insisting that we support possibly Al Qaeda-linked surrogate groups in Syria in 2013. More broadly, his handling of the so-called “Arab Spring” demonstrates the President’s shallow understanding of foreign conflicts; he has repeatedly endorsed the actions of Arab radicals claiming vestiges of democracy, ultimately realizing too late that many “democratic” protest movements were made up of Islamist extremists in disguise. And, of course, whole books could be written on the “Fast and Furious” and Benghazi scandals.

Upsetting The Social Order: President Obama has publicly enjoyed broad support from the likes of Bill Ayers, George Soros, MoveOn.org, Jeremiah Wright, Father Pfleger, and others of violently extremist and/or anti-American ideology. These endorsements prove that President Obama’s ideological roots are disruptive and dangerous to American law and order. He has made a mockery of U.S. citizenship by using his office to accommodate illegal immigrants and prevent as many deportations as possible. His administration has threatened states’ rights by preventing the states from solving the illegal immigrant question within their own jurisdictions. As for the Obama administration, the list of lawless activities and extra-constitutional behaviors are too numerous to list here. The IRS scandal is perhaps the most telling of these threats to social order.

An End To Economic Freedom: President Obama’s ideas of economic justice—involving wealth transfers from the rich and government intrusions into the private sector—are dangerous flirtations with socialism that reflect a poor view of the American Dream. Obama’s obsession with income redistribution destroys the American economy and ultimately destroys the working class through imposition of nanny-state policies that hamper self-reliance and entrepreneurship. His call for “trickle-up economics” defies logical sense. With bailouts, stimulus bills, and redistributive egalitarianism as his tools, Barack Obama has set out to make his administration the introducer of the next great wave of American liberalism. His treatment of corporations, CEOs, banks, Wall Street, and capitalism hints at outright fascism. He is the leading advocate of Obamacare, a law which unfairly mandates healthcare at taxpayer expense and greatly increases government power over the private sector and irresponsibly increases the federal deficit. President Obama’s energy polices have been equally disastrous. By refusing to allow extensive drilling in locations like ANWR and by propping up half-baked alternative energy resources, the president has only succeeded in exacerbating economic conditions in the United States.

Restricting Political Liberty: The Obama administration is leading America in a downward spiral by centralizing decision-making power in executive bureaucracies. There doesn’t seem to be a single aspect of life that the president doesn’t believe deserves its own executive “czar.” We’ve already had czars for AIDS, auto recovery, California water, climate, domestic violence, drugs, government performance, the Great Lakes, green jobs, Guantanamo closure, Mideast peace, science, stimulus accountability (is this a joke?), technology, and urban affairs. Doesn’t the president realize that the Constitution does not give him the right to oversee every aspect of the world’s affairs? Barack Obama also disparages the Tea Party movement, a collection of citizens’ groups that protest the expansionary tendencies of the federal government. Even while he accuses the Tea Party of extremism, extremism has unfortunately become common in Obama’s administration rhetoric: “don’t let a crisis go to waste” is Obama’s brilliant strategy for reordering what he believes is an unfair capitalistic way of life; “you didn’t build that” is Obama’s way of redefining success as something not created by individuals but by the state.

Thwarting Cultural Righteousness: By becoming the first sitting U.S. president to endorse what some have labeled “gay marriage,” Barak Obama has set a dangerous precedent that will accelerate the degrading effects on our culture stemming from the assault of moral relativism. The relativistic deluge that Obama seems so anxious to be a part of will bring the country to its knees as the institutions of marriage and the family will cease to be the bulwarks of virtue that they have traditionally been; with the dissolution of traditional marriages and families, the United States will lose its first and foremost institution for the proper raising and socialization of children.

Restoring the nation and the presidency after Obama is not simply a matter of picking a candidate with better policy views, but of reinvigorating the debate about the proper constitutional limits on the federal government. A truly constitutionally-minded president will defend the Constitution by deliberately restoring the limits on centralized government power that the Founders intended to erect, rather than subverting the Constitution by breaking down the few remaining limits left. A good president would work hard to give more responsibility back to the country’s citizens.

For the sake of having a little fun, I’d like to provide a brief outline for what Christopher Peterson would do if he ever decided to run for the office of President of the United States. You, the reader, are invited to laugh at my five proposals; I understand that in a perfect world where the Constitution is properly honored and obeyed, many of my presidential plans would  necessarily be implemented and overseen by Congress or would require populist validation through the amendment process.

But, remember, this blog post is just for fun. This is my way of imagining a perfect world where conservatives sweep the elections at all levels of government, making the policies and pledges that I will now outline possible and enforceable.

Strategic Strength: If Christopher Peterson was President of the United States, he would understand that his first duty to the country would be to protect its people, its interests, and its allies and their interests from enemy aggression. President Peterson would campaign on a general promise to maintain the international status quo, to protect the balances of power and national territorial integrities as they now stand. President Peterson would promise to never provoke aggression, but he would also make it clear that any attack upon the United States or its allies would result in swift and decisive retaliatory action. Such retaliation would not seek to merely “respond in kind” but would seek to achieve devastating victory, leaving the enemies of America no choice but to surrender, disband, and disarm or face utter and complete destruction. President Peterson would leave war prosecution strategies to the military experts, but he would insist that any damage inflicted on the enemy would be brutal and painful enough to rule out any of the enemy’s options short of unconditional capitulation. In matters of diplomacy, President Peterson would leave the intricate details of international relations to the experts in the State Department, insisting that friendship be extended to every country; states that did not live up to our ideals of human rights and freedoms would be treated with respect as long as they kept to themselves and refrained from upsetting the existing international order.

In essence, President Peterson would promise to do NOTHING in matters of foreign affairs unless it involved defending the country and/or honoring existing treaty obligations. President Peterson would strive to be utterly pragmatic in his approach to international affairs. He would not initiate conflict without unequivocal declarations of war from Congress. He would insist upon a strong defense establishment, a powerful military, and a responsive security apparatus designed to meet any and all threats to the United States. Finally, he would insist upon and be unapologetic about securing the nation’s borders, using overwhelming military force if necessary. President Peterson would do this with the understanding that a state which cannot defend and secure its own sovereignty loses its self-respect and dignity as a geopolitical entity.

Social Order: President Peterson would recognize that the most pressing national social problem centers on the issue of illegal immigration and its dire implications for the virtues of citizenship. President Peterson would value the status of citizenship and would strive to restore citizenship to its high and honorable place in our social consciousness. He would allow the individual states to handle the illegal immigrant issue as they best saw fit (within reasonable and lawful limits); he would encourage the Congress to work with the executive branch in securing the borders from illegal entry. Instead of tackling the controversial issue of what to do with illegal immigrants already in the country, President Peterson would focus on immediate border security as the primary issue of concern. Once border security had been achieved, President Peterson would work with the Congress to simplify, standardize, and streamline the LEGAL process for immigrants to become U.S. citizens.

Economic Freedom: Matters of economic policy are often closely tied to political considerations. This is especially the case in a country like the United States where taxation, government spending, and federal power are so closely interwoven. Unfortunately, we currently live under a system that breeds economic oppression through government debt and unfair taxation, punishing the successes of prosperous American citizens. We live in a country where taxation is used as a political weapon, to be used in a subtle kind of class warfare. In the United States, we suffer under a system of government where spending on pet projects leads to despicable scrambles for influence among interest groups, economic classes, and political fortune-seekers who view the government as a writer of blank checks. All that is required to obtain such a check is a “worthy” social cause or other suitable project that will benefit the “public welfare.” In response, the federal government finds itself in the position of stepping in to solve all of our society’s problems; Uncle Sam loves to spend money because, in reality, he is buying up political power in the form of return favors and extra votes—all while appearing to be everyone’s knight in shining armor.

In an effort to solve the triangular problem of taxation, government spending, and the expansion of federal power, President Peterson would encourage the Congress to reform the entire taxation code, making it simple and fair. Preferably, this simplified and equitable tax code would tax ALL citizens at an equal percentage of their income REGARDLESS of any other factor. In this way, the only citizens who wouldn’t pay taxes would be the citizens who didn’t have an income in the first place. President Peterson would argue his case by demonstrating that when all citizens are compelled to contribute equally to the financing of government, all citizens will be equally invested in how the government works. Simple and fair taxation would force voters to be more responsible for their vote. It would force them to keep a careful watch on government’s activities and spending habits. It would force Americans to be actively engaged with what their government was doing. Growth of government would only occur when the voters truly felt that more spending was legitimate and necessary. President Peterson would trust the American people to make the right decisions in regards to these affairs.

Taxation should never be used as a political weapon; neither should subsidies, exemptions, or loopholes. All of these unequitable and un-American characteristics of our tax system should be done away with. President Peterson would see to it that tax reformation was a central pursuit of his administration.

Political Liberty: President Peterson would believe in securing the future of the country. The best way to invest in the future is to invest in the rising generation. Unlike other politicians, President Peterson would not invest in children by throwing more money at them; this practice has been tried for a generation with limited success, if any. Instead, President Peterson would ensure future opportunities for America’s children by returning responsibility and accountability for their upbringing to the people who know the subject best: parents, teachers, and local school districts.

President Peterson would work to eliminate the federal Department of Education. The Department of Education represents millions of dollars in wasted funds and is a significant drain on the federal budget. Most importantly, the department as currently constituted does little for the average American child. Instead of allowing millions of tax dollars to be centralized in an ineffective and largely symbolic federal bureaucracy, President Peterson would prefer to have local school districts, working in conjunction with teachers and parents, to take the lead in the future of education in America. There is nothing that a Washington D.C. bureaucrat can do better for a child than the child’s own parents and teachers. Ridding the country of the Department of Education would force local school districts to look to themselves for the well-being of their children’s education instead of relying upon a far-distant agency in the nation’s capital. Moving to place the responsibility of education on the parents and teachers of America’s children would bring back a sense of family strength and community togetherness to the cities and towns of the republic. Educational standards, methods, and practices are best left to local control.

Cultural Righteousness: To further enhance America’s ability to secure the blessings of peace and prosperity for its children, President Peterson would lead an effort to pass a constitutional amendment concerning the definition of marriage. Marriage should be strictly defined as a legal union between one man and one woman; marriages should only be granted to such unions. Protecting the institution of marriage in this manner would also protect the institution of the family, the most important function of which is the raising and rearing of children. While many would argue that the federal government has no right to interfere with the definition of marriage—which, they say, is a cultural construct involving the private relationship between individuals—President Peterson would understand that marriage is a unique cultural phenomenon which interests the state in a most significant manner: marriages lead to the creation of families and are the foremost institutions and the best environments for children to be born, raised, nurtured, and protected in. Without traditional marriage and traditional families, American children will be ill-equipped and ill-trained to function as responsible, cooperative, balanced, and contributing citizens. An emotionally and culturally happy and healthy citizenry is something that every government in the world should be interested in fostering. Broken families, declining marriage rates, and perversions of familial love and devotion degrade the culture of America. Defending the American culture of marriage and family would be one of President Peterson’s foremost concerns as a leader and as an example to the citizens of the United States and to the world at large.

There you have it: the five goals of a Christopher Peterson presidency! As President of the United States of America, I would work to protect the strategic strength of our country by defending America’s interests, the status quo of the international order, and by providing the defense community with ample resources to maintain our nation’s self-protective capabilities. To protect social order at home, I would move to secure the borders from illegal immigration and work to streamline and simplify the process of attaining citizenship, thereby returning citizenship to its rightful place in our society’s consciousness as something to be honored, respected, and legally obtained. On the economic front, I believe that the first step to promoting freedom, progress, and prosperity is to force all American citizens to be equally invested and responsible for what their government does with their money; as president, I would work to accomplish this by pushing for a truly equitable and simple tax code that would make American voters accountable for their electoral decisions. To secure our nation’s future—represented by our country’s sons and daughters—I would work with the Congress to introduce a degree of political liberty into our educational system, scrapping the Department of Education and encouraging more local autonomy for parents, teachers, and school districts. To further secure our future, I would lead out in an effort to pass a constitutional amendment whereby marriage would be strictly defined as being between one man and one woman; in this way, American families would be strengthened, giving children a healthy environment in which to grow up and to learn to be responsible, healthy, and well-adjusted citizens.

Would you vote for candidate Peterson? Probably not. I’m far too radical, aren’t I? Would candidate Peterson win an election? I doubt it. There is too much that is politically incorrect about his campaign platform. It’s too “old-fashioned,” “outdated,” and “out-of-touch.” And to bring this blog post full circle, I am confident that my political opponents could marshal millions of little pieces of evidence that defy my broadside of broadly generalized ideals.

Yet, as a conservative, I think I’ve done a pretty good job of explaining here why I oppose the direction this country is going, why I believe that a conservative revival needs to take place. I’ve identified specific mistakes made by the current administration. My proposed solutions and fictional presidential campaign platform are definitely less specific, but this is not because I am falling prey to the conservative’s foil discussed at the beginning of this post. It is because a few narrow changes to our current style of government would not be enough to save the America that I love. American government is not sick with a minor head cold; the workings of political power in this country are terminally ill. We are headed on a course that will dramatically change the country we live in, sacrificing the proud legacy that our forbearers have left for us. That is the best-case scenario. The worst-case is that America will slowly kill itself through apathy, cultural degradation, and a retreat from its customary position of power. The only way we can avoid such a fate is to rediscover what we had in the past, to re-fuse our proud traditions and past principles with the knowledge and sophistication we have gained in the last few decades.

I personally see my college experience as a metaphor of what could be true for the country at large. Coming to college was an experience that challenged my core conservative principles. I was faced with teachers and evidence that brought more sophistication and knowledge to my life. I’ve learned to appreciate that when it comes to the details of any given subject, the world can be more complex than I might be willing to admit. Yet through it all, I’ve never lost touch with my core principles. Why? Because these principles have served me well all my life; I would not jettison them for anything.

I think the same should hold true for the United States of America. We have a proud, principled legacy to rely on. We’ve made mistakes in the past. We’ve overlooked the details of some of our biggest flaws. But we’ve also learned to cope with and overcome many of those flaws, and I am confident that we can continue to overcome all of our challenges.

But we won’t overcome them by jettisoning our core principles; we will solve America’s problems by holding fast to those principles. When we look to our political leadership, we should expect them to do the same.

Barack Obama has consistently proven that he does not understand those principles.

America deserves better…

--Christopher Peterson, February 17^th, 2014