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Doug Lasken
[Publisher’s Note: Doug Lasken is a long time friend of the FlashReport. From time to time we publish some of his thoughts for our readers. Enjoy! – Flash]
I started political life asking what a Democrat is. My parents were lifelong liberal Democrats, but during the Nixon administration I came of age and broke politically from them. It was the spectacle of Nixon’s travails that did it. His career was one of the last attempts by blue-collar, religious white America to stand equally beside the ruling class, i.e. the Ivy League and Associates techno-bureaucrats who run the show to this day. Not that I have anything against techno/bureaucrats as such (I love their literary organ, The New Yorker Magazine), but they can be an arrogant bunch, particularly the Democrats. I joined the Republican Party during Watergate, not so much out of sympathy with Nixon as out of disgust with the relentless holier-than-thou pontifications of Democrats.
So Nixon spied on people did he? Look at us today. It’s a Democratic liberal icon who blandly tells us that for the good of the state we must give up all communications privacy to the techno-bureaucrats. Nixon ravaged South East Asia, yes, a war started by Kennedy and brought to fruition by LBJ, whose Democratic party paid no penalty against its image as the Party of Peace. And today? A Democratic president tells us we must attack Syria, an action which Americans, by a margin of 2 to 1, believe is uncalled for and risks starting a wider war. If a Republican president inherits the war Obama is trying to start, the GOP will be remembered as the War Party, not the Democrats. You can’t fault the Democrats for strategic genius.
I moved to the Republican Party to find shelter from Democrats, but I was comfortable in the Republican Party at that time. I heard sensible things about business, about how to handle money, which I liked. My dad was a businessman, a capitalist, and he was a good man. Are there bad capitalists? Duh! Does that mean capitalism is bad? The Republican Party seemed to understand that business and the kinds of things businesses do are for the most part good and necessary things. I thought I knew what a Republican was.
The conversation lost me, however, with the “Free Market,” and here’s my first question: do you have to believe in the “Free Market” to be a Republican? I’m talking about the hypothetical market that, in response to the normal forces of supply, demand and competition, is by nature self-regulating, both in terms of sound business practices and ethical behavior, so there is no need for outside regulation, since each industry is adequately supervised by in-house monitoring.
What market is that again? You say it has existed somewhere? Do I really have to believe that to be in the GOP? Please say no.
Then there’s education. One waited in vain for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney to attack Obama’s signature education initiative: the Common Core Standards, mandatory (if you know what’s good for you) uniform academic standards, tests and new text-books, for 49 states (including California), bringing many billions in contracts to the testing and publishing industries, and now responsible for a two-year period in California school districts during which, starting this school year, all standardized testing will be suspended and all textbooks invalidated (two years is the optimistic estimate).
The data gap will throw out established baselines and abort years of longitudinal studies at a wasted cost of many millions, put hundreds of thousands of children into a lengthy curriculum and testing limbo, as well as disrupt efforts to evaluate teachers using the now missing data- and this privilege will cost California (which already had excellent standards and tests) $2 billion (the first $1 billion from Prop.30). This was a Democratic president’s policy, implemented by our Democratic governor, who taxed us to pay for it.
Well, where does the Republican Party stand on the Common Core Standards? Where indeed? Romney didn’t bring it up- strange, since opposition would have garnered him millions of votes. Earlier this year I contacted California GOP Chair Jim Brulte who, to his credit, helped me get an audience with several GOP Assembly staffers. The staff members made clear to me that the Common Core Standards are not in play, as they are not in the playbook. End of story.
Ok, I guess a Republican is not necessarily a person who stands up to big money interests. That’s too bad. Though I wonder if it’s a ridiculous thing to expect anyway; I mean, how many times in history have leaders stood up to big money, when they thought big money was in error? Not bloody many times. So why should now be different? I don’t know. Shouldn’t it?
Finally on to War and Peace. Any impartial observer should agree that there is no ideological division between the two major parties such that one party is the War party and the other is the Peace party. Wars are begun and ended by both parties. The Democratic Party, however, by draping itself in banners and slogans of social welfare and “the people,” exhibits a hypocrisy when they start a war that is so egregious it really is incumbent upon my party, the Republican Party, to respond.
I need for the GOP to respond to Obama’s Syria strike, in order for me to know what a Republican is. If I may address California and national GOP leaders directly: I need the party to stand forcefully against Obama’s Syria strike, which is calculated to wreak geo-political havoc under the guise of a moral statement. Have you noticed that no one from W’s camp- not W, not Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice- none of them is pushing the Syria strike? That’s a favor they’re doing for Obama, because can you imagine it’s Bush’s face on Tuesday telling the nation he’s going to bomb Syria, a country that has not attacked us and that is ground zero for a vicious region-wide civil war? There would rioting in the streets. Only Obama can pull this off. Only the Republican Party can stop him. If it does not do this, then what exactly is a Republican?
Doug Lasken is a retired LA Unified teacher, current debate coach and consultant. Reach him at doug.lasken@gmail.com