Freaky Politics: Terry Jeffrey vs. the Left -- By: Interview ‘I believe freedom and prosperity are uniquely threatened at this point in our history,” says Terence P. Jeffrey, author of the new book Control Freaks: 7 Ways Liberals Plan to Ruin Your Life. He sat down with NRO’s Kathryn Lopez to discuss his new book. Be warned: There are a lot of f-words beyond the title, from fetus to freedom to foreign policy.KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Isn’t it a bit much -- not to mention uncharitable! -- to call liberals “freaks”?TERENCE P. JEFFREY: And here I was worried they might take it as a compliment.LOPEZ: Not to be difficult, but are they really planning to ruin my life?#ad#JEFFREY: If you are an eight-month-old fetus, they plan to preserve the “right” of someone to kill you. If you are eight-year-old second-grader, they plan to preserve the “right” of your public-school teacher to instruct you that same-sex marriage is a good thing. If you are 68-year-old grandmother or grandfather getting ready to retire after decades of working hard and living within your means, they are planning to tax your savings in a last-ditch attempt to save an unsustainable welfare state that needed to find $200,000 in additional revenue for every man, woman, and child in the United States before Obamacare became a factor. Were they to succeed in their plans, they would not only ruin the lives of Americans today but the lives of future generations. LOPEZ: Are there Republican “freaks”?JEFFREY: Yes.LOPEZ: Speaking of which, how terrible atransportation secretary has former congressman Ray LaHood been?JEFFREY: LaHood, a Republican, may be the most under-appreciated “Control Freak” in the Obama administration. In the book, I explain how and why he is pushing an agenda designed, as he once put it, “to coerce people out of their cars.”LOPEZ: How did you get your list down to seven?JEFFREY: I had to decide the most important things I could write about in the time that I had to write. In this case, the governing question was: Where are liberals pushing for government control of our lives? I picked four basic rights that Control Freaks are attacking (property, speech, life, and conscience), two elements of the welfare state they are using to reduce middle-class Americans to government dependency (Social Security and government-controlled health care), and one freedom that goes to the heart of the American experience and is crucial to the survival of our other freedoms: the freedom of movement.I am sure that thoughtful people can and will point out other ways the Control Freaks want government to run our lives.#page#LOPEZ: How about another list of seven -- seven action items a reader/voter can take away from your book?JEFFREY: Read the Declaration of Independence. Read the Constitution. Read what the Founding Fathers said about the Constitution and the Declaration. Encourage young people to study America’s history and cherish our heritage of freedom.Demand that your congressmen and senators demonstrate the constitutionality of any legislation they support by citing the specific language in the Constitution that authorizes the federal government to do such a thing.#ad#Stay informed through the conservative media, whose freedom of speech the Control Freaks would like to limit. Frequently visit websites such as National Review Online, CNSNews.com (which I edit), Human Events, and The American Spectator, and listen to radio hosts such as Bill Bennett, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin, as well as those in your local market who respect America’s founding principles and values.And finally, of course, buy copies of Control Freaks for your family and friends.LOPEZ: What was item number eight? What ended up on the cutting-room floor? JEFFREY: Education. I left it out not because it lacked merit, but because I decided to consider it a component of the attempt by liberals to control our consciences, the seventh item in the book. I argue that the ultimate strategic aim of the Left is to use the education system to control the hearts and minds of the next generation. They want to indoctrinate your children in their beliefs, and they are using government to do it.LOPEZ: Is putting Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court just another liberal strategy to ruin my life?JEFFREY: Yes. Kagan is a committed Control Freak. On the Supreme Court, she will be a consistent opponent of originalist and, therefore, limited-government interpretations of the Constitution. As I explain in the book, she has already argued as solicitor general that government prohibitions on political speech can be justified. She also worked with unseemly zeal as an associate counsel in the Clinton White House to keep partial-birth abortion legal, meaning she has no respect for the most fundamental right of all.LOPEZ: Who is John Holdren, and why is he important?JEFFREY: Holdren is important because long before he became President Obama’s top adviser on science and technology, he was a founding father of the environmental movement -- at one point, he joined Paul and Anne Ehrlich in calling for a campaign “to de-develop the United States.” He also joined with the Ehrlichs to say: “Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.” These prescriptions were logical conclusions of a worldview that sees both a growing population and increasing per capita wealth as threats to the planet.LOPEZ: Are liberals anti-science? JEFFREY: The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose, but ultimately, liberals are not inclined to allow objective truth to stand in the way of their designs. #page#LOPEZ: Why is a book published in 1910 important to you, Mark Levin, and the Social Security Administration? JEFFREY: In Liberty and Tyranny, Mark Levin notes that Columbia University economist Henry Rogers Seager, in his 1910 book Social Insurance: A Program for Social Reform, laid out an argument for an American welfare state anchored in a social-security program. As Mark pointed out, the contemporary Social Security Administration is so taken with Seager’s statist views that it has posted his book on its website. Seager was the consummate Control Freak, someone who wanted to eradicate the pioneering spirit from American life, and he pushed not only for a welfare state, but also for eugenics -- literally advocating the sterilization of people he believed unworthy of breeding. Seager exemplifies how modern liberals parted ways with both the constitutional and the moral traditions of our nation.#ad#LOPEZ: Is the conscience front the most insidious? Or is the speech front?JEFFREY: Yes, conscience is the most insidious. Liberals today don’t just believe they can force you to pay for the killing of someone else’s unborn child (and brazenly tell you they are not doing it), they also believe they have a right to teach your five-year-old kindergartner that same-sex unions are a good thing -- without ever telling you they are doing it. There is a reason why liberal politicians like President Obama don’t like school choice, even if they send their own children to very expensive private schools. They see the public-school classroom as a moral battlefield where they can wage a 13-year insurgency to capture the soul of your child. LOPEZ: So conscience is the one of the seven most important to you?JEFFREY: Yes. Individual and national well-being depend on allegiance to moral order. LOPEZ: Is there one of the seven that’s hardest to get people to believe? JEFFREY: I think right-minded people will nod in recognition when they read all seven. Liberals would prefer they didn’t. LOPEZ: Does the health-care fight provide a monumental opportunity for the Right?JEFFREY: It provides a monumental threat and a monumental opportunity. The threat is that once Obamacare is fully in place, there may be no turning back from socialism. The opportunity is that a broad group of Americans -- exemplified by the tea-party movement -- has awoken to the threat. In their awakening, they have turned back to the history and principles of America’s founding, exactly the guides we need to lead us back to the land of the free. LOPEZ: How is it “fiction” to say that the Obama administration is protecting taxpayers from paying for abortions? Democrats for Life seem to disagree.JEFFREY: Tax dollars can pay the salaries of the abortionist, his nurse, and his secretary. They can pay for the construction, heating, and cleaning of the room where the abortionist kills the baby. They can pay for the surgical instruments he uses to do the killing. But the actual compensation for the killing itself must come from a segregated fund into which federally subsidized insurance customers must, by federal law, deposit a fee if their plan covers abortion. LOPEZ: How can a candidate this election year take your book and run with it?JEFFREY: He can’t. He has to pay for it first -- with his own money.#page#LOPEZ: How can Control Freaks inform a Republican agenda for a new Congress, one in which they might control one or both houses?JEFFREY: In the book, I contrast what the liberals are trying to do against two constants: the principles of limited government found in the Constitution and the God-given natural law enshrined in the Declaration. Any federal elected official who seeks to conscientiously govern according to these two things cannot go too far wrong. For starters, such a leader would necessarily pursue an agenda both fiscally and socially conservative. Such a leader would take seriously his or her duty to protect all of our rights -- from our property rights to our free-speech rights, to our right to life, to our right to be free from government coercion aimed at forcing us to act against our consciences.#ad#I believe that the coming crisis of the welfare state, alluded to earlier, is the greatest problem Congress will face in the next decade. Liberals will to try to use it to drive America deeper into socialism. Elected officials who understand the Constitution and want to maintain individual liberty in this country will seek to repeal Obamacare and promote policies -- such as Rep. Paul Ryan’s Social Security reform, which is based on personal retirement accounts -- to push America back toward its heritage of personal responsibility and self-reliance. LOPEZ: How do foreign policy and the war we’re in fit into your vision of the Left?JEFFREY: The Obama administration acts as if it is possible for the government to construct an international regime that can control the global climate, but not a federal agency that can control our southern border. At the same time, it is more interested in protecting what it perceives to be the rights of terrorists than the real and inalienable rights of Americans. It wants to engage in activities not authorized by the Constitution while ignoring fundamental duties that are.The Constitution created a federal government designed to deal primarily with external affairs, most especially the defense of the nation against foreign enemies. Whether one agreed or disagreed with the prudential judgments made in initiating the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or with their subsequent conduct, it is indisputable that Congress expressly authorized both using its power under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11. Had President Bush invaded Afghanistan or Iraq without congressional authorization, it would have been a serious usurpation of Congress’s constitutional authority. But he did not.Those charged with the constitutional authority to conduct the foreign policy of the United States ought to take every practical step that is both constitutionally and morally permissible to advance the security, liberty, and prosperity of the American people. If voters do not like the decisions they make, they can throw them out of power. But the Left, driven by its desire to do such things as control global climate, would erode U.S. sovereignty by giving authority over these matters to international institutions beyond the control of Americans voters. LOPEZ: In your acknowledgements, you mention a cause and a vocation you love. What are they exactly?JEFFREY: The cause I love is the preservation of the constitutional and moral values that made America the greatest nation in history. To me, that is the conservative cause. The vocation I love is journalism.LOPEZ: When did you know you weren’t liberal?JEFFREY: At the age of reason. LOPEZ: What was the main catalyst for this book? Was there a moment that convinced you it had to be written? JEFFREY: I had two wonderful parents who made great sacrifices to give their children every opportunity to take advantage of the blessings of a free society. Their generation gave our generation a free and prosperous society. I believe we owe the next generation no less. However, I believe freedom and prosperity are uniquely threatened at this point in our history by liberals in political power who have turned their backs on the constitutional and moral foundations of our republic. -- Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online.
National Review Online | Jul 30, 2010 08:23 AM [GMT] | recommend found in Politics: Opinions