The Buchanan Factor

Pat as Goliath Kills David Duke

His companions on the McLaughlin Group exhibited amusement and merriment when Patrick J. Buchanan announced his intention to run for President. I thought at the time I watched the show that it was very brave of him to take on a sitting President of the United States, and couldn't for the life of me think of a suitable motive for him to do it. Surely he didn't think he could win. Surely the powers that be in the Republican party can be pretty nasty when they think some one is going to upset their apple cart. Buchanan did not impress me much beyond his journalism, and although he is not my kind of journalist, he is obviously quite effective at what he does. After all, he is a central member of the Republican establishment, having served in the Nixon White House.

It was a puzzlement as to why such a solid conservative person would want to take on the Republican establishment. The Republican extreme right is not happy with Bush, but since he advances most of its causes—death penalty, anti-abortion, anti-gun control, etc.—it is not that unhappy with him. I dismissed the announcement as an ego trip.

As the primary season moved into high gear, it soon became apparent that Buchanan was indeed being effective, drawing about a 30 percent protest vote from the extreme right. In New Hampshire it was not obvious who the extreme right was. However, everywhere Buchanan went he continued to receive a 30 percent protest vote, nothing that would constitute a serious challenge to President Bush, but nevertheless quite a respectable showing for a candidate running against a sitting President. After Super Tuesday in the South, it became abundantly clear who that 30 percent vote was.

Campaigning in the South, using the same rhetoric used by Duke in the Louisiana gubernatorial election, Pat Buchanan attracted extreme right wing votes like flies to honey. Here was a legitimate candidate, a pillar of the Republican establishment, criticizing Bush and attacking the Republican moderates, saying that America had to come home to conservative values. Except that he is not a former Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Pat Buchanan was stealing David Duke's thunder, so much so that when Super Tuesday was over, Buchanan claimed, with evident satisfaction, that he had buried Duke in a swamp off a road in a Louisiana bayou.

Imagine a scenario where Pat Buchanan was not running but David Duke was. Imagine David Duke, not Pat Buchanan, getting the 20 to 30 percent protest vote. What would the condition of the Republican party be today if David Duke, acknowledged Wizard of the KKK, acknowledged white supremacist, had been the recipient of the protest vote? The Republican party would have an albatross around its neck. Instead, respectable Pat Buchanan got that vote. And what will he tell his right wing supporters when the general election comes? Why, he will tell them to vote for George Bush. I'm sure David Duke also would have exhorted his supporters to vote for Bush, but it wouldn't have been quite the same thing since the Republican party has tried very hard to deny that he exists.

There is no doubt that David Duke is a creature of the Republican shift from Federalism to Anti-federalism. The Republican Party under the leadership of Nixon, Reagan, and Bush has embraced the Southern conservative view of States' Rights and racism, two points they now have in common with the Klan. It would have been a supreme irony if Bush had had to share the spotlight in each and every primary with David Duke as his challenger. It would have been an implosion of the Southern Strategy. Thanks to Patrick J. Buchanan, President Bush dodged a cannon ball and his reelection campaign was saved bitter embarrassment. Look for Pat Buchanan to get a hero's welcome at the Republican Convention. Somewhere Lee Atwater has to be all smiles.

..Ted Sudia...

Decision Systems

Terrestrial ecology is the study of organisms in relationship to their environment. The terrestrial environment consists of physical, biotic, and edaphic factors. Human ecology is the study of human organisms in relationship to their environment. The human environment consists of these same physical, biotic, edaphic, as well as technological factors.

Ecological systems, are decision systems. The equity in ecological systems is determined by the partitioning factors inherent in the genetics of the organisms or species of the system and their complex set of interactions. The organism's and species' equity in an ecological system results in individuals or species ability to survive and thrive in the system. Since all the actions, reactions, and interactions in an ecological, system are interrelated, changing one factor changes them all. A species or organism unable to cope in a specific environment must (1) adapt to the environment, (2) migrate to a favorable environment, or (3) die.

Morality in the form of the law of the talon rules the world of higher animals. The morality of the system is determined by genetically driven behavior, with some learning and behavior modification transferred from generation to generation. For instance, some mountain lions know how to kill elk, as well as deer as prey; some know only how to kill deer. The lions are the same species, but this information/skill is transmitted from generation to generation by the female. Females in one geographic location have learned to consider elk as well as deer as prey; females in another location do not. Introducing mountain lions that only know how to kill deer into elk country will not affect the elk population. Social systems but not government can arise from the animal morality of the law of the talon.

Plant species compete with each other with a variety of life cycle strategies. Tolerance to shade, browsing, low or high moisture, rapid life cycles, long life, and many other strategies are common in the plant world. Great genetic variability allows plants to occupy most of the numerous niches in the world. Plants are said to exist in communities.

Human ecological systems are decision systems. Many of the decisions determine life or death. The equity in human ecological systems is deter mined in part generically and in part by behavioral modifications and learning that cross generational lines. However, because human ecological systems have high order technological attributes as well as biological attributed, equity is not based merely on genetic complement but on a large number of language based technological decisions, particularly as these pertain to property, contract, and law.

The principle that changing one factor changes them all applies to human ecosystems as well as to lower biological systems. However, the forces available to change the factors are now often controlled by humans who have effect or status in the system for language based technological reasons, but not biological reasons, in the main. (This latter is changing with the development of new techniques for modifying genes.) An example of the former is ownership of wealth—property or paper assets—because such ownership bestows effect or status in language based law.

The morality in a human ecosystem is human morality, which for the most part is based upon property. Thou shalt not kill, covet, bear false witness, steal, obey, etc., relate to the regulation of human behavior in propertied ecosystems. Whether the property is public or private the same principles apply, for it is the concept of property that is the determining factor. Property is an artifact of the language based technological system which bestows ownership on the basis of law and contract and has no relationship to biological ecology of higher animals based on genetic information. Property exists because of language, not because of genetic based information.

Human ecological decision systems have a morality that, in general, is expressed in a code of conduct and, more specifically, in a code of law. Values in such a decision system, therefore, are intrinsic, moral, and ethical.

Intrinsic values are economic values (Locke) and are the principal driving force of human society, no matter how basic or advanced. Consider the potlatch, a type of celebration among Native Americans of the northwest Pacific coast, where the host either gives away or destroys many, if not most, of his possessions. It is no less an economic leveling device because it serves to emphasize the belief of the group that material possessions are of low value and the one who gives or destroys them has high status.

It matters not whether the economic system is a monetary or barter system; it is still economic and the intrinsic value of the goods and services in commerce are the determining factors.

In certain circumstances however, decisions are made in a human ecosystem that move beyond the intrinsic values of the resource, goods, or service. In the allocation of lands for public use, two valleys of essentially the same intrinsic worth were allocated different uses resulting in two very different entities. Yosemite Valley was placed in Yosemite National Park. Hetch Hetchy Valley was dammed and converted into a hydroelectric facility providing power and water to the city of San Francisco.

The intrinsic worth of both properties is nearly identical, while the moral and ethical values are quite distinctly different. In the one case the resource is to remain "unimpaired for future generations;" in the other case the resource was altered considerably to serve as a reservoir. For the National Park the moral was preservation; for the City of San Francisco the moral was a safe, healthful, and dependable water supply to sustain the life of the city.

The values are applied arbitrarily since, in the case of the Yosemite Valley and Hetch Hetchy Valley, the decisions could have been reversed with the same results. Human ecological equity in the world of property is property—equity.

A great variety of governments have arisen within the framework of property-based human ecological systems with their morality. The governments have ranged from absolute autocracy to democracy. All governments, autocracies to democracies, created in an environment of human morality, are flawed since human life was and is assumed to have value as property.

Beyond the law of the talon and the laws of property and contracts lies yet a third human ecosystem with a higher morality. The third level human ecosystem recognized that humans are endowed by their creator with certain creator-given rights, and that governments are established to obtain these rights and make them secure. Governments so ordained are characterized by Justice, domestic Tranquility, common defense and the General Welfare in the setting of a self-perfecting union, that assures the blessings of Liberty for itself and its posterity. The third level human ecosystem is the humane ecosystem. The human ecological factors of the humane ecosystem are the unalienable rights. Ecological equity in a humane ecosystem is access to the unalienable rights. Since the citizens of such a system are the sovereign, they are the citizens-sovereign.

The humane ecosystem is based upon the following principles:

• The common good is the product of humane ecosystems that sustain all citizens-sovereign.

• The common right—the unalienable rights—is an endowment from the Creator that confers, upon the citizens-sovereign humanity and constitutes the common sovereignty.

• The common just is humane ecological equity, which enfranchises the citizens-sovereign, with the unalienable rights in exchange for which they consent to be governed.

...Ted Sudia...

© Copyright 1992
Institute for domestic Tranquility