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Rep. Allen West gave the keynote address at CPAC on Saturday, and was typically effective. Politico likened his performance to the throwing of “red meat” to the massed conservatives. It’s a good metaphor. His speech drew the loudest applause in its bloodiest moments — those moments in which West deployed his greatest political gift, and cleaved Us from Them, and Right from Wrong, in terms of comic book simplicity.
West delayed the proper beginning of his speech with a bit of jingoist theater, introducing Sgt. Jason Aubon (I may be misspelling that), a veteran of Iraq now responsible for training troops to guard the Tomb of The Unknown Soldier. “The reason I’m here,” said Sgt. Aubon, an earnest quiver in his voice, “is because I have a bigger fear for my future … than I did back in Baghdad. And the reason I’m here is that I believe in the Colonel.”
This drew rapturous applause, and framed West as someone to be believed in; as someone upon whom hopes may be pinned.
West then began his address. He bitched for a moment about his treatment
at the hands of the liberal media, and then explained for us what
conservatism isn’t. Quoting Lincoln, he said:
‘What
is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tired against
the new and untried?’ I would say this, if Abraham Lincoln was standing
here today: Liberal progressivism … has been tried. It has repeatedly
failed, all over the world. So why would we think it can be successful
here, in our United States of America?
We haven’t
even gotten to the meat of West’s address, and yet we may already sense
the giddy fuckery he is about to inflict upon our shared history.
“Liberal progressivism” has failed indeed, if by that West means “Maoist
China” or “the Soviet Union.” Happily, there are no Maoists or
Stalinists in America. The people who might call themselves
“liberal” or “progressive” are ordinary Americans who might appreciate a
tax code more reminiscent of that of the American 1950s, and
a government as efficient, and as concerned for the citizenry’s
well-being, as those of modern-day Sweden or Denmark. If those states
are failures, we ought to worry less about success.
With the bulk
of western civilization thusly consigned to the trashbin of history, West set
about defining the “three pillars” of conservatism (which he sometimes
calls “conservativism”). First: “Effective and efficient constitutional
government.” West quoted Jefferson: “My reading of history convinces me that
most bad government results from too much government.” West asked his
audience if America would be better off with a bureaucratic nanny state.
“No!” said the audience. No argument here.
The second pillar of
conservatism and/or conservativism is apparently “peace through
strength.” “Political correctness has no place in our national
security,” said West. “…Truth is not subjective, and facts do not lie,
and those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. A new
America, a secure America means that we cannot afford to have a 21st
century Neville Chamberlain moment.” While West didn’t clarify what
such a moment would look like, or what might constitute a superior,
Churchillian moment, I find once more that I’ve got no argument. West
also offered a balanced, sane, if unsubtle commentary on Egypt, praising
the protesters of Tahrir Square while cautioning listeners to temper
their idealism. Egypt could still turn out badly.
If the speech ended there, I would now be praising the emergence of a new,
less-crazy Allen West. No such luck. Before turning to
his third pillar, West earned massive ovations by opposing nuclear
disarmament and described China as an enemy of the United States. “China
is still a Communist country,” he said, “which is using capitalism as a
weapon against us.” Naturally, West didn’t bother to wonder how well our version
of capitalism would have functioned for the last two decades if the
Chinese hadn’t been around to underwrite it. (Like Stalinist Russia during
the hideous Five Year Plan, China’s Communist-in-name-only government
has done more for American “capitalism” than any pro-business
legislation could hope to.)
Then West came to conservatism/conservativisms third pillar — “Never abandon our values” — and promptly lost his mind.
Without
our values, West explained, we are “incomplete as an American people.”
And so we ought to “honor our language,” and “celebrate the diversity of
the melting pot called America,” while never allowing “multiculturalism
to grow on steroids and define itself as making American culture
subservient. Because, yes, there is a definitive American culture.”
How
telling is that word, “definitive.” Unlike saying that America has a
“definite” culture — which would indicate that the United States has a
culture distinct from any other — to say it is “definitive” means that
it is finished, closed off, unavailable for improvement, rejiggering,
evolution or adaptation. A “definitive” culture is ready for
enshrinement in a glass case, where it will be unaffected by the wishes
of the polity. Since this is a pretty good encapsulation of Allen West’s
entire political philosophy — “Hands off my America!” — I’m going to
assume it wasn’t a slip of the tongue.
A moment later, West offered some standard-issue anti-abortion rhetoric before laying out his argument against gay marriage:
We
must hold sacred the privilege of the institution of marriage … to
promote the promulgation of our society. Because we cannot allow the
destruction of the American family … And why is that important?
Because if you break down the American family, that leads to government
dependency, which leads to the growth of government, which leads and
results in greater government spending.
It’s economics! We must keep the gays from marrying to shrink the welfare rolls!
Perhaps
sensing the horribleness of his argument, West did some quick
patriotic padding: “When America expanded westward,” he cried, “it were men and women
with their children in wagons, going across the Mississippi River and
spreading this great nation! Do not ever forget the bond of this great
nation!”
Even a few of the CPACkers must have balked at this. Wouldn’t gay male couples have pioneered
at least as effectively as married ones? Furthermore, weren’t most
pioneers male? Wasn’t there all kinds of desperate buggery during
westward expansion? Does Allen West even think about this shit before he
says it?
“If we are to have a new dawn in America,” continued West:
…it
means reclaiming our Judeo-Christian faith heritage. John Adams said,
‘We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human
passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made
only for a moral and religious people. It is totally inadequate to the
government of any other.’ This is not about a separation of church and
state; it is about making sure that we do not separate faith from the
individual. We must never forget that the American motto is ‘In God We
Trust.’
It’s worth noting here that John Adams wrote the above
words in a letter to a group of soldiers whom he was admonishing to
behave themselves. Adams himself was a Christian only tenuously; he
believed all world religions had more-or-less equal claims to truth,
though he had a special admiration for Jesus. Adams’ inclination being
towards ecumenical Unitarianism, this letter’s words are atypical of the
man. What’s typical is the letter’s subtle intellectual dishonesty. Adams was
famously contemptuous of the rabble, and at one point during his
presidency tried to suspend freedom of the press. When he wrote these words, Adams was locked in a bitter, years-long political
fight with Thomas Jefferson, who was not only un-Christian, but
anti-Christian. It is very likely that Adams was trying to draw a
distinction between the two of them, and draw attention to his own relative godliness.
But knowing all of this,
never mind thinking about it, isn’t something Allen West expects of his
audience. You can tell, because West quotes no
one quite so often as the anti-Christian (and therefore un-American)
Thomas Jefferson. West is content to skate over such inconsistencies,
and drown a listener’s dissenting thoughts beneath tidal waves of
applause. “We welcome the beliefs of others in America,” he said, near
the end of his talk, “but our co-existance must be based on a simple
premise: When tolerance becomes a one-way street, it leads to cultural
suicide.”
Agreed! Though in what way Christian America has become marginalized is anyone’s guess. Recent events in Allen West’s own life reflect no marginalization: He’s got half the country in his hands, and a lot of us expect him to run for much, much higher office. In all of America, you’d be hard pressed to find someone less disenfranchised.
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