Nothing infuriates me more than an aristocratic man — or at least an upper-class man with a good pedigree and education — who refuses to behave as an aristocrat should. Given so much by God and Country, he should welcome the opportunity to behave as a liberal-conservative gentleman — open-minded on differences of opinion, opposed to progressive intrusions into civil society, and jealous of the political inheritance that produced him.
Former Senator Lincoln Chafee ‘75, then, infuriates me. He is an horrible human being, with no serious qualification necessary. Blessed with copious material resources and social position, he nonetheless uses his bully pulpit to be a demagogue, a foe of liberty, and a terrible custodian of Anglo-American traditions.
Though charged with the sacred duty of protecting our people from an illiberal government, he has behaved like a left-wing statist throughout his life, especially during his brief time in the U.S. Senate. He is unworthy of the very name that he has inherited, and the very region of the United States in which he lives.
Some political figures, however, are worthy of praise, so one must not think that the whole business of government is handled by the illiberal.
For instance, in a visit to a Brown Republicans meeting just last night, Chafee’s opponent in the 2006 GOP senatorial primary, former Mayor Steve Laffey (Cranston), laid out an eminently American approach to government. On such topics as the banking industry, education, the Rhode Island state budget, and even campus activities, Laffey drove home the point that effective governance is really just minimal governance, spearheaded by those who actually want to accomplish good.
All in attendance had unwavering certainty of the fact that the real liberal-conservative (or, American) in that race was Laffey himself, and not the communitarian Chafee.
Raised in a working-class family, Laffey understood well and internalized the values of hard work, self-reliance, vibrant (and free) communities, and inherited tradition. Verily, it seems that the instincts and values of the average man often do trump those of the social elite, whose pedigree and education should have inculcated liberal-conservative attitudes.
Laffey knew, despite being from ‘one of the last [families] to get off the boat’ (Primary Mistake, p. 1), that all of those values must be eternally safeguarded from the advances of a State armed with guns and prepared to do violence on the individual and his family. Chafee, though his aristocratic upbringing in ‘one of the first five families in Rhode Island’ (Ibid.) should have taught him better, was notoriously comfortable with socialism and its accompanying violence.
Again, nothing infuriates me more than an aristocratic man who behaves like a demagogue bent on gaining power by stealing from the ‘Haves’ in order to give to the ‘Have-Nots’. Therefore, Laffey’s understanding of the proper role of government, in the face of a childhood that certainly could have turned him into a violent, big-government progressive, is highly laudable.
If only more Republicans were like him, the GOP might return to its roots as the party of liberty and prosperity. But for now, an exodus of statists like Chafee is regarded, by this humble East Greenwich (RI) native, as sublime.
SBQ