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Hello,
I was wondering if we could post the link to Ambassador Alan Keyes' website which has 13 articles which might be pertinant to good political discussion.  If we can't post the link, can we copy the articles and credit them to him to avoid plagarism.  I think he has some good ideas.  I am aware of the rules concerning website links.  I ask, because of the link posted at the start of the Biblical Creation vs. Evolution thread by the admin to get people to engage in intelligent conversation.
Sincerely,
MangoMan

The first thing you see when going to his web site is a request for donations so linking to it would not be permitted by the forum rules.There are none of his articles that I am aware of that would violate forum rules. As long as that is the case then there is nothing wrong with posting them here.

btw ... Just to keep things clear, that post you are talking about was posted by one of the moderators not Admin.

Hello,
Understood, I'm interested in the conversation.  With regards to admin and moderators, I stand corrected.  My intent, was that it was posted by a person with authority to do so, and I was making sure that either the link or the posted information would be acceptable.  It was in deference to the moderators / admins of this important site.  I am appreciative of your stand.
Sincerely,
Mangoman (Mango Man)

Here's the intro to a series of 13 articles that Ambassador Alan Keyes has recently written.  I will also post the first article.  I invite conversation and thoughts on this.  I am by no means moderating this.  I want to participate in this.

The crisis of the republic
An introduction

The 2008 presidential election cycle is well under way, hurried along by decisions of more populous states like New York and California to move their primaries to February 5, 2008.

For some time now, I have been receiving emails asking my view of the election and the candidates who are competing for nomination, both Democrats and Republicans. Some people have urged me to get involved as I did in 1996 and 2000. Since I ran against him in Illinois in 2004, some of the media have sought my comments on Barack Obama's campaign and personality.

Frankly though, I don't think it's constructive to discuss candidates and personalities until we have a good sense of what is at stake this time around in the choice the American people will make.

Turning point

For a long time, I have believed that the 2008 election would be a turning point for the survival of the American republic--our nation's system of constitutional government based on the sovereignty of the American people and respect for their inalienable rights.

During the past several decades, the trend in American life and politics has been adverse to just about everything needed to sustain American liberty. In our intellectual life, we have embraced theories and concepts that are simply incompatible with the ideas of human equality and inalienable rights that shaped our institutions of self-government. In the moral realm, we have legitimized attitudes and practices incompatible with the self-reliance and self-discipline that make limited government practicable. We have lived with policies on taxation and our economic life that destroy the rights, self-sufficiency, and initiative of the people. We have thoughtlessly adopted--and allowed our elites to implement--an understanding of political life that destructively erodes the sovereignty of the people.

The end result is a crisis so pervasive that our preoccupation with its many symptoms and manifestations keeps us from appreciating its overall extent.

Train of abuses

In many ways, the American people are like a monarch whose legitimacy, character, and resources are being systematically eroded by those who mean to replace his rule with their own.

One advisor tells him that the borders are under assault, and that parts of his kingdom must be sold off or surrendered in order to defend them. Another encourages him to kill off members of his family who might challenge him for the throne, while seducing him to waste his time in lustful pursuits with willing partners procured for the purpose. A third assuages his guilt over these crimes and vices by convincing him to abandon the stern morality of his ancestors, and turn from the religion that required it.

Distracted, demoralized, by turns arrogant, resentful, ashamed, and confused, he stumbles from one preoccupation to another, never realizing the truth--that each issue and temptation is only one part of a train of abuses that will end in his removal from the throne.

Upcoming series of articles

In a series of articles over the next several weeks, I will examine this crisis and its bearing on the choice we face in 2008. In the course of this examination, I will deal with a wide range of issues, but my main purpose will be to place each and all of them in the larger context of the threat to our sovereignty as a people.

I hope that by the end of this effort, those like myself who deeply cherish the hope for humanity America is supposed to represent will be moved to view the 2008 election with the same sense of urgent foreboding that I do. I hope they will realize that the American people must create and seize the opportunity to break free from the grip of the ambitious, self-serving elites who have been manipulating them toward destruction.

We must find a voice that can rally us to implement the vision of restored faith, self-discipline, and self-government that alone can save our sovereign constitutional power and America's identity as the land of the free.

© 2007 Alan Keyes

Electoral politics?
Part 2 of 'The Crisis of the Republic'

Alan Keyes
April 25, 2007

 Because our understanding of politics has been corrupted, we cannot discuss what threatens our political sovereignty until we free ourselves from the effects of that corruption. It's as if we are looking at our political life through lenses or panes of glass that obscure and distort everything we see, including the nature of our own actions.

Thus, though the very possibility of electoral politics derives from moral premises that justify and require self-government, we are led to consider our political choices without regard to those moral premises, as if economic and other material consequences are the only proper subjects of political life.

Why do the American people accept this approach, when it so evidently undermines their claim to political sovereignty?

The "science" of politics

The great scientific and technological breakthroughs of the twentieth century contributed to the intellectual triumph of scientific materialism as the paradigm of all human knowledge and expertise. Abashed by the success of their colleagues in the physical sciences, intellectuals concerned with politics and society sought to reestablish their disciplines on what would appear to be scientific grounds.

This meant of course an attempt to understand complex human actions and activities in quantitative terms, with little respect for the moral elements of human consciousness that cannot easily be reduced to material data.

 Scientific methodology requires facts — which is to say, measurable objects of study and experimentation. But how does one measure faith in God; the love of family, of justice, or of noble deeds; or the vision of compassion that seeks no gain? How does one measure boundless hate passed on through generations, or fear tasted for so long that it is like an organ in the body? Many things that play a role in human action, for better or worse, defy quantitative expression, including of course the sense of infinite worth that almost everyone instinctively attaches to their own existence.

The sense that there is at the heart of our existence an intangible, indefinable mystery of being may explain why many human beings have refused to surrender their belief in God and transcendent morality, despite pressure from the arrogant ideologues of scientific methodology. Given the proverbial pride of intellect, however, it shouldn't be surprising that many elite intellectuals have not been among them.

Calculating human worth

Instead of accepting the true challenge of the human condition, these ambitious intellectuals have proselytized for the redefinition of human activities in terms that would appear to fit the paradigm of scientific methodology. Motivations, of course, cannot be easily quantified, but the behavior they produce can be tracked, categorized, sorted, counted, and compared. The meaning of right and wrong may not be scientifically provable, but opinions about it can be polled, averaged, analyzed, classified, and broken down and out.

In social science methodology, counting has taken the place of measuring, but only by discounting a difficulty that does not arise when dealing with physical things, which is the effect of abstracting from the significance of the unit of measurement — i.e., the worth and significance of the individual human being.

In the realm of mathematical science, the individual is a mere abstraction. No harm is done, it is assumed, when relationships are considered in the aggregate without regard for the worth of the ones being counted.

When applied to human things, however, this mentality denies the very insight that American principles place at the heart of right, justice, and legitimacy — which is that every individual has a worth and dignity not derived from their participation in the community or group, or their relations with other individuals, but which must be respected as a matter of principle, rather than calculation.

"Materialistic pluralism" and electoral corruption

 The mimicry of scientific materialism in political and social science is obviously quite compatible with materialistic pluralism as the paradigm of American political life. Indeed, the pervasive acceptance of this paradigm owes much to the apparent confirmation provided by these pseudo-sciences.

Tragically for the American republic, this approach to human affairs rejects in its very premises the understanding of human nature and action on which our free institutions depend. This is nowhere more apparent than in the degraded understanding of elections which it has imposed upon our politics.

In the material sciences, measurement produces a result that is the consequence of the presence or activity of material factors, but in no way a sign of their self-determination or responsibility. Heat of a certain intensity brings water to a boil. But it would be thoroughly unscientific to suggest that individual units of the material being heated somehow "decide" upon this outcome. The action of physical things is what it is, not what the things themselves have determined it to be.

Looked at in this way, the outcome of an election becomes a result entirely abstracted from the individual choices that have produced it. Individuals participate in the result the way agitated molecules participate in the production of heat.

....

...

Obsession with polling

Now, part of the mind recoils from the suggestion that elections are regarded in this way. Yet consider the extent to which, in our discussions and media coverage, we treat them like horse races, or games of chance. The focus of attention is more than ever on the question of who is winning, who will win, who has won.

Talking heads rail on incessantly about who has lost or gained momentum, or who stands where in this poll or that. Indeed, it would be fair to say that the obsession with polling and poll numbers has taken the place of any real interest in the quality, thought, or characteristics of the people standing for election.

 The focus is not on who they are, what they believe, or most importantly, why and how they think as they do — but rather on the reaction of the electorate to their presence, the way a chemist focuses on the reaction of a substance to the introduction of a catalytic reagent. For purposes of analysis, the chemist needs to know what the reagent is, not why it is as it is. In the testing process, the objective is to determine from its behavior the nature of the substance (in this case the electorate), not the factors that influence its nature in order to affect its behavior.

Manipulate versus persuade

Why is this a bad way to understand political elections? Because the ultimate purpose of the election is not just to produce an outcome, but to determine the outcome one way or another. For freedom to be respected, the aim of the political process cannot be simply to determine who wins or loses. It must include an effort to persuade the voters that it is better for them and for their country that one person wins their support, rather than another.

Unless the element of persuasion is taken seriously, the political process degenerates into a competition to see who can successfully manipulate perception to drive the electorate toward an outcome that generates power for their side. When elections focus more or less exclusively on matters of perception, the perception of victory tends to drive out and dominate all the rest. Power flows toward the perception of power.

Impact over substance

When a candidate's views are simply catalysts for the process of analyzing and manipulating electoral reaction, their content is less important than their effect.

To achieve the maximum impact, every political statement must be limited to words and phrases calculated to achieve that effect. In this context, what makes for a strong viewpoint is not its rational basis or the facts that support it, nor the truth or decency of the principles, ideals, and values it represents. Political strength lies all in the momentary electoral impact, and not at all in the substance.

Many have assumed that the reduction of political discussion to sixty-second sound bites, or bullet point notations of support and opposition, is especially the result of media imperatives, but it is more likely that media coverage is what it is because of the influence of the pseudo-scientific paradigm of politics itself. The alliance between materialistic pseudo-science and material ambition effectively drives from politics the substance that would otherwise offer the electorate some basis for deliberate choice.

Voter disconnect

This degraded approach to political life necessarily affects the voter's understanding of his political actions. When politics is like a horse race, or a game of chance, casting a vote is like placing a bet.

Though the bettors pick the winner, they would not claim that their choice has determined the winner. They might consult the handicappers to know who looks like a winner. They might follow some gut instinct and bet against the odds. They might try to learn whatever they can about a competitor's form, past performance, handlers and trainers, etc. Such information might influence their pick — but it would not give them the sense that their choice contributed to a competitor's victory or defeat.

 Bettors presume that forces beyond their control, including mere chance, are responsible for the outcome.

Politics as pastime, not opportunity for moral choice

Understood in this way, voting and political activity may be seen as engaging pastimes, like sports competitions or a trip to Atlantic City. They cannot be regarded as serious moral responsibilities, through which the people exert their sovereign will and as a whole make the choices that determine the destiny of the nation.

The materialist paradigm of politics therefore undermines the sovereignty of the people by corrupting their understanding of the act through which above all they exercise that sovereignty. They come to believe that their role in politics is to follow the most powerful force, rather than, by their choice, to constitute the powers by which force may legitimately be exercised.

Rather than choosing their representatives, they become elements of a process that periodically alters the appearance of the forces that dominate them, and which actually exist beyond their control.

Is this liberty?

© 2007 Alan Keyes

MM

WAY too much for a single thread :)

But in the first post there is a problem which creates a trickle down effect of the others.

However the first line of the second post Keyes says "Because our understanding of politics has been corrupted"
And no where does he specify how our understanding is corrupt. 

I'm not saying that I agree with everything that Alan Keyes says because I don't. However he does specify this. Perhaps not very clearly but he does state it somewhat in the paragraph following that statement and then continues on in various places throughout the article such as his comment in regards to polling and poll numbers.

Well he really does not explain why our views are corrupt.  Even in the polling thing he tries to say that we consider the polls the important thing and not the actual election, or that we make up our mind based on the polls and not the issues.  And he has nothing to back that up, nor does he explain how that is corrupt.  Nor does he take into account that maybe it is not the polls that are making our minds up but that the polls are showing what are minds are.

Even his analogy of the chemist, it is untrue, the chemist is not going to simply toss in something and hope for the right results, they are going to want to know why it is that this certain reagent gives them the results that they achieve. 

I do not know.  All I have ever gotten out of Keyes is innuendo and glossy touches of any issue and no real meat to the discussion and thus with no meat on the theory you get an even thinner solution.  But that is just me.