Of Party and Principle
By Mitch Berg
The other day, commenter J. Ewing – who is a frequent dissident from this forum’s dominant paradigm – left a comment in my thread about the launch of True North:
But what I just don’t get is how, without taking a “principled stand” that candidates of one party (say, for example, the GOP) will do a better job of advancing your principles than those of another party.
The answer is, of course, that True North is not “non-partisan”. We are overtly partisan; our “party” is First-Principles-based Conservatism. Not the GOP.
A simple look at the roster of bloggers writing for True North should tell the tale; True North includes a list of people who are conservative activists and Republican sympathizers, and even functionaries.
But the blog is not, and emphatically will never be, an organ of the GOP. The GOP needs its feet held in the fire when it comes to the First Principles that drive us, no different than the DFL (only the DFL is much farther-gone).
Looking at the roster of contributors, it’s pretty obvious that most of us are Republicans of one form or another, and all of us are conservatives. Most of us are Republicans because we believe in those first principles, and that the GOP (at its best, anyway – and don’t all of us join political parties because of the best they represent?) best supports them.
So we’re explicitly partisan. We are just not part of the Republican party.
There are two reasons to declare yourself or your organization “non-partisan”:
- To exercise, with integrity, an intent to disavow politcal postures of any sort. This is the philosophy of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers, which actively eschews politics (even though most of its members are conservatives) in order to remain open to bloggers of all types.
- To disingenuously claim non-partisanship to make an expressly partisan agenda seem benign, like “Growth for Justice” and its contributors.
To do so – for a group of active, gleefully unrepentant conservatives – would be as disingenuous as Joel Kramer’s claims of centricity.
Mr. Ewing continues:
Yes, you can do a heck of a good job being “nonpartisan and purely educational,” as the Taxpayers League is, but at some point you need to start putting the education into an actual practicum– “field work”– to get anything done, right? What’s wrong with partisanship, if it gets you where you want to go?
And that’s what True North is really all about; making the turn from opinion to action.
But that comes a little later.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:56 am
Mitch said: “But the blog is not, and emphatically will never be, an organ of the GOP. ”
So we should think of True North as a blog with a wide stance?
See if you can get those GOP organs under control, though, would ya?
September 6th, 2007 at 9:40 am
You seem to ignore organizations such as the NRA, which is nonpartisan and routinely endorses Democrats and Republicans. Contrary to what pinheads like the Clown think about the organization, they do firearms and hunting advocacy, not party politics; the NRA routinely endorsed Dean while he was in Vermont government, for example. It wasn’t until he had to change his position in an attempt to play on the national stage that he lost their recommendation.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:02 am
Who said anything about the NRA, ya idjit?
September 6th, 2007 at 11:37 am
There are two reasons to declare yourself or your organization “non-partisan”:
Actually there is a third reason,
3. To obtain 501(c)(3) tax status so that you can milk the tit of progressive foundations.