The cloture vote is tonight. Call your Senators.

An interesting side note is that the video was posted by someone calling himself “therightscoop” and who is represented by a picture of Charles Krauthammer. Does “therightscoop” not realize that neocon nationalists like Krauthammer would be appalled by the direction Napolitano, Woods, and Gutzman take in this video?

David Lindsay is a sometimes right, often frustratingly wrong, but always interesting blogger at the American Conservative website. David Lindsay is also, like my fellow student, “The Reason.” He is also my Facebook friend, but may not be after he reads this.

Let me explain. Recently there has been a lot of chatter among paleoconservative, libertarian and other elements of the alternative right that the American Conservative has lost its way. There is even the suggestion, perish the thought, that the magazine and website are drifting left.

Why all this concern? David Lindsay is “The Reason.” Lindsay may not be “The Only Reason,” but he is certainly “A Major Reason.” But “A Major Reason” doesn’t lend itself to nickname status quite as well so I will stick with “The Reason.”

Personally I have defended the American Conservative from this accusation although not always without my own doubts. But that is a discussion for another essay.

David Lindsay writes under the blog heading “Post Right.” This blog is, as the name suggests, written by people who fall outside the traditional Left/Right dichotomy. As such, it is probably not reasonable to expect pure paleoism from Lindsay, but Jack Hunter and Nathan P. Oringer also write under the same blog, and I rarely disagree with either of them while I only occasionally agree with Lindsay.

Lindsay is a British conservative. Therefore he does not share the American right’s love affair with the free market. This frustrates the more libertarian leaning AmCon readers to no end. While I am much more favorable of the free market than Lindsay, he is philosophically correct that laissez-faire capitalism is not inherently conservative and historically speaking was leftist in origin (classical liberalism.) While I do not question the efficiency of the market place, conservatives should be very careful to avoid economic reductionism and economic man thinking which can quickly degenerate into nothing more than the flip side of Marxism.

But Lindsay also does not share the American right’s commitment to limited government, especially regarding health care. So Mr. Lindsay has proceeded to lecture us over and over and over and over … on the benefits of Universal Single Payer Health Care. It is this incessant drumbeat for big government health care that occasions this little rant.

Lindsay envisions a social conservative, anti-capitalist, big government synthesis, because … well basically … that’s how they do it in England. But I have a news flash for Mr. Lindsay, America is not England and American conservatism is not English conservatism. I recall what the late great Lewis Grizzard used to say about Yankees in the South. Heavily paraphrased he suggested that Yankees were more than welcome to come down here and eat our grits, drink our sweat tea, and even marry our women, just as long as they didn’t tell us how they used to do it back in Cleveland. Southerners don’t care how Yankees do it in Cleveland, and Mr. Lindsay, American conservatives don’t care how you do it in England. We have our own tradition that we are trying to conserve (imagine that), and government-run health care would trample on, not conserve, that tradition. Not to mention the difficulty of cobbling together the coalition he envisions.

Mr. Lindsay and I have been round and round in his blog posts, but for the benefit of most of the readers who have not followed our little spat, I will go over this again. It is all very simple. Conservatives seek to conserve. (Crazy thought I know.) One thing that conservatives in America should seek to conserve is the constitutional Republic left to us by our Founding Fathers. One aspect of conserving that constitutional Republic is the quaint little idea that the Constitution should actually be followed. (Another crazy thought.) Strict Constitutionalism is not the sum total of conservatism, but it is difficult to defend as authentic American style conservatism anything that doesn’t include strict constitutionalism. I realize there could be rightist objections to “constitutionalism,” but that too is for another essay. In this case Lindsay is not a rightist objecting to constitutionalism on some principled grounds. He simply doesn’t consider the Constitution an impediment to government-run health care.

The Constitution does not authorize Federal involvement in health care delivery. Period! If you think it does then please provide me with the Article and section that does so. Therefore, a conservative, who is seeking to conserve our constitutional Republic, cannot support a government program that tramples upon the concept of enumerated powers enshrined in the Constitution. If he does then what, pray tell, is he conserving?

If we had honest political discourse in this country then liberals who support government-run health care would provide the Article and section of the Constitution that authorizes it. Lacking such (I’ve read it, and it ain’t in there.), they would either drop the subject or seek to amend the Constitution so as to authorize it. But alas we do not have honest political discourse in this country and instead we have liberals babbling about the “general welfare” and “interstate commerce” clauses and a “living and breathing” Constitution when they are not just ignoring it altogether. Invoking the Preamble, broadly interpreting the commerce clause, or fancying the Constitution a living document is clearly a thought pattern of the left in this country. How anyone can think casual disregard of the Constitution as written and intended is conservative, or could serve conservatives well, is beyond me. I’ve said it many times on his blog, and I will say it again, David Lindsay does not get American conservatism, and until he does he will remain “The Reason.”

The segment began with Church playing a clip of Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D -MD) asserting that the General Welfare Clause authorizes Congress to control health care. Here is a transcript of the interview that followed. Needless to say, Dr. Gutzman disagrees.

Part 1

Part 2 (Subscription required)

Thanks,

The Committee for Constitutional Health Care Reform