Dear President Reagan

Dear President Reagan,

There are many things going on in America today, many of which would have been inconceivable for most Americans to forecast, from the point of view of the 1980s, as the probable pathway our country would walk down. There seems to be a general shift to the left in this country and we seem to be moving farther and farther away from the conservative principles you championed every election cycle, and the train that coupled the Republicans and the Conservatives seems to me to have become uncoupled.

Our country has recently experienced and is currently dealing with an economic failure of massive proportions. I know economic ‘crisis’ is the popular term-du-jour. I say failure because that’s what it was, a failure of individuals not fulfilling their individual responsibilities, from buyers to lenders to mortgage underwriters to the elected officials whose responsibility it was to make sure this didn’t happen. To call it a crisis is to compare it to a natural disaster, a true crisis, where the outcome is inevitable no matter what is done to prevent it, and lends itself to the mitigation of the liability of those who are complicit.

To make up for the lack of individual responsibility that was the root cause of the economic failure, the government has decided to step in and be a major player in larger portions of our markets. The very first plan to turn around the markets came from a Republican White House and it gave the power to the Treasury Secretary to make decisions that were unreviewable by any court of law and the ability to designate private financial businesses as financial agent of the government. Pretty unbelievable for a ruling political party that claims reduced government as a principle.

With all due respect to the President, and the incredible pressure of the circumstances, the first impulse of the preeminent Republican in the country to move towards nationalization and radically away from free market principles is hardly in keeping with bedrock conservative principles of free markets and limited government. In fact, Mr. President, you’d think you were reading headlines from Venezuela’s newly nationalized media.

Now the government is fully invested in the financial markets, in an apparent non-voting manner, in effect nationalizing the leading financial institutions in the country. A growing liberal voice in the Congress is urging that the government needs to do more to get involved and subvert the “failed” free markets. Much like the welfare program advocates in the past wanted, politicians now have a new demographic to pander to… home owners. Imagine the federal government being involved in the process of securing a loan to buy a home, when lately they have been talking about taxing homeowners that have houses that are too big!

Leading Representatives in the U.S. House are pushing forward in their calls for increased federal spending and creating new departments of government, all aimed at seizing and controlling more segments of society. Plans to take from some citizens who have achieved great things and giving to those who do not even attempt to better their own situations are now being spoken out loud in open forums, no longer are they being whispered behind closed liberal doors.
The other day I heard the analogy of Robin Hood taking from the evil rich and giving to the unfortunate poor applied to the Democrat platform. I seem to remember that in the story of Robin Hood, he was stealing from the government that had taken from the people, not rich people. A very important but often overlooked nuance of the story.

The one defining issue of our times has to be the fact that there are factions of Islam around the world who have openly declared war on Americans, and organize to that end. If the United States is defeated militarily or ideologically, then domestic social and economic issues will become moot. I hope that history will be honest and give President Bush the credit he has earned in keeping Americans safe by recognizing that threat and taking the offensive against those who live to kill Americans. In that endeavor, the record is clear that Republicans are more apt to act preemptively in the defense of our nation than was the last Democrat President, and lacking a true conservative voice on the national stage, I must stand with the current Republicans because of this.

Every day I hear from Americans who say that they feel like voters without a party. I can see why, what with such a Hobson’s choice of Presidential candidates to choose from. The Democrats have celebrated their shift to the radical left-wing of their party by choosing the most liberal voting member of the Senate, Barak Obama. The Republicans have chosen the Democrats favorite Republican Senator, John McCain, who was discussed by some as a VP candidate on the 2004 Kerry ticket, and it was seriously conjectured that Joe Lieberman could be his own VP running mate this year. Choosing my own home state Governor Sara Palin was indeed a strategic decision (if we’re honest) that spoke directly to Senator McCain’s disconnect with what was has been a historically conservative base for the Republican Party.

President Reagan, America has become a place where Democrats are trying to implement socialism and Republicans have limited free political speech and did indeed nationalize aspects of the public marketplace. This is a hard time for us conservatives, and I hope the 2008 election cycle will awaken the sleeping giant in America that is the silent conservative majority.

In two years we will have another round of Congressional elections. Conservatives need to develop a national leader that will stand and be the first in a long time to espouse and act upon the true conservative ideas of individual responsibility and liberty, fiscal conservatism, small government and lower taxation that allow all Americans the opportunity to succeed based on the merits of their own labor, not someone else’s.

In short Mr. President, I fear that the times when the Republicans and Conservatives walked the same line side by side, may be slowly coming to an end, and the time when we see national leaders with a (C) after their name may be approaching.

Very respectfully,
A Concerned Conservative