Published in Shameless Self-Promotion

How to build your resume by blogging: Tim Seibel, who blogged on Santorum the Servant, provides material for Foster Friess's introduction of the GOP aspirant at CPAC today. (See my post here on his original.)  Tim explains the mix of purpose and serendipity that led to his posting.

BTW, Tim comes out of University of Dallas and Claremont Graduate School and currently resides in Colorado Springs.

I knew someone who got a job with then-EEOC Chairman Clarence Thomas by writing letters to the editor of prominent newspapers and articles for the Claremont Review of Books.

Update: And while we're touching on CPAC, note Paul Ryan's speech, which contained this great line: "The only class warfare that threatens America comes from a class of bureaucrats and crony capitalists rising above society - calling the shots, rigging the rules, and securing their places of privilege at our expense." Cf. this NLT post decrying the use of the phrase "class warfare" by Republicans.

Peter Schramm has diligently brought to the attention of RONLT the series of political treatises known as "Letters from an Ohio Farmer." These missives have now been consolidated in book form under the title, "A Constitutional Conversation: Letters from an Ohio Farmer," which is available for download on Kindle.

The farmer describes the book as follows:

We are not the oldest country in the world, but our written Constitution has endured longer than that of any other people. That fact is worth not only celebrating, but pondering.

This is especially important for members of Congress. As these letters have had occasion to observe, Congress is at the very heart of our experiment in constitutional self-government. In the Constitution, Congress comes first: it is Article I. Congress holds the law-making power without which the president has much less to do and the federal courts nothing at all.

In fact, of all the branches, Congress has the primary authority to interpret the Constitution. Like the president or the Supreme Court, Congress receives its power from the Constitution. Just as the president has no authority to act against the Constitution, you in Congress have no authority to pass legislation that violates it. So - as the 112th Congress has distinguished itself by recognizing - every time you consider a bill, the first question you must ask yourself is not: "Do my constituents like it?" or even "Is it a good idea?" but "Is this Constitutional?" That's not a matter of partisan politics; it's a matter of legitimate authority.

That constitutional deliberation must continue in Congress if we are going to restore the American experiment in self-government. For it is in Congress where the American people most fully govern themselves: where the common rights and responsibilities of the American people are submitted to law, and where the variety of the legitimate interests of the American people are most fully represented. When people's representatives engage in constitutional deliberation, the American people engage in it too.

The book's preface, penned on Constitution Day 2011, is worth quoting in full:

The American people have started a historic conversation - about the foundations, purposes, and scope of our government. In a spontaneous movement they rose to challenge long-established orthodoxies, and a sustained exertion of their sovereign power is changing the direction in which the country is heading. The movement began with no headquarters, no recognized leader, and no agreed upon platform. Thousands of independent groups of private citizens gathered in thousands of public squares across the land. Through all the diverse ideas expressed in these gatherings, one theme shone clearly: the federal government has, over the last several decades, stepped further and further outside the bounds of the Constitution.

How did our government get to this point? What would constitutional government look like? What paths are available to the people and their representatives for returning to constitutional self-government? These and related questions were taken up in a series of weekly letters sent to the 112^th Congress over the past year, and collected here, as a humble contribution to this American conversation - a constitutional conversation in the broadest sense. The letters continue and can be read weekly at: www.ohiofarmer.org.

The Ohio Farmer is not one person, but a group of citizens seeking to preserve constitutional self-government in America. The Farmer's letters are written in the tradition of the Federalists and Antifederalists in the American founding who wrote newspaper articles debating the new form of government proposed in the Constitution of 1787. They wrote using pen names such as Publius, or Federal Farmer, or American Citizen, to allow their arguments to speak for themselves and be judged on their own merits. The letters from the Ohio Farmer are offered in the same spirit.

The Ohio Farmer is a project of the Ashbrook Center. The various authors who compose each letter from the Ohio Farmer are partisans in one sense: they are partisans of the constitutional self-government they regard as America's greatest gift to the world. The Ohio Farmer is not primarily concerned with immediate policy questions, though he necessarily discusses them; he hopes to refine and enlarge the public's view of the larger political principles implicit in our policy debates. He is a friend to all who love this country and wish it well; he is searching for that common ground that can unite all reasonable parties who wish to maintain America's glorious tradition of constitutional self-government.

The Letters are necessary reading for political philosophers and citizen patriots alike. They possess the element of timelessness which sets apart historic works of political writing - simultaneously capturing the contemporary zeitgeist while evoking fundamental principles of political philosophy.

Daily Caller has posted an article of mine tackling the truths and fictions of Occupy Wall Street coverage.

"Occupy Wall Street" has captured global attention and become the darling of the world press. CNN hosts a "Meet the 99%" webpage advertising the movement on cnn.com. MSNBC's praise of OWS has approached religious awe. Yet for all the attention, many assertions about the movement are flatly inaccurate.

I address fictional media accounts which report OWS as having a "global span" and "global importance," being a "historic movement" (in the image of the Tea Party, Arab Spring and civil rights movement) and having achieved "effectiveness." An example:

Global Span: Claims that OWS has spread to countries around the world - that is, Europe - fail to recall that circuses of this sort have been common in Europe for years. The OWS brand of demonstrator belongs to a quasi-professional cadre of anti-everything crusaders who follow protests like a Grateful Dead tour. Euro-protesters launch copy-cat OWS rallies because that's what they do - they follow protests, not issues. Euro-protests have now reached America, not vice versa.

Several factual accounts are also considered, such as the group promotion of "direct democracy," and projection of "diversity" and "independence." Of course, all of these qualities prove to be liabilities when explored rationally. An example:

Direct Democracy: Commentators report that OWS presents an alternative to established republican government and reacquaints Americans with a strain of direct democracy. This is true, but confuses virtue and vice. OWS looks like direct democracy because it is disorganized, leaderless, inefficient, susceptible to demagoguery, overly influenced by passions and incapable of articulating a coherent philosophy or forming a consistent governing policy. These are precisely the reasons the Founding Fathers prudently rejected direct democracy in favor of representative government.

As always, I hope you'll RTWT.

Reading the tea leaves, I suspect that the Tea Party Republican transformation I observe in the post below in Wisconsin and Washington will eventually shift the entire culture and balance of political power in America. I mention a single example today in my home-away-from-home at Intellectual Conservative.

Noting that "the U.S. Postal Service is a barometer of big-government, socialized policies," I find it unsurprising that it is "a failed business." What is surprising is the Postmaster General's strong stance against the congressional regulations and labor unions which are crippling the USPS's ability to compete in the free market (despite monopolistic advantages awarded by Congress).

the postmaster general threatened on Friday to break labor contracts in order to lay off 120,000 workers and to revoke employee health and retirement plans in favor of cheaper alternatives. These measures are "threatened" because they do not represent the postmaster general's hopes, but rather his Tea Party inspired strategy to coerce Congress into loosen its strangling regulations and labor unions into reasonable compromise.

Apparently, the postmaster general took notice of the Tea Party's debt-ceiling strategy and concluded that the only way to get Congress to act on a crisis is to propose an even worse ultimatum. . . .

The Postal Service is also taking a cue from the Tea Party's influence in Wisconsin by staking out an opposition stance to public sector unions. Breaking union contracts would have been unthinkable in the pre-Tea era.

 As they say, please RTWT.

The Washington Times has published my article predicting the end of the Republican's moratorium on internal feuding.

The Republican presidential candidates have presented a united front. They've held hands and stuck to the message. President Obama is the problem. They - the mature, resolved and above-the-fray Republican opposition - are the solution. Newt Gingrich momentarily strayed from the path by criticizing Paul Ryan's budget plan and was swiftly reprimanded by the greater GOP establishment. Even the recent GOP debate in New Hampshire was more of a GOP powwow. There has been an obvious consensus to defer the intraparty feuding until the GOP has collectively, convincingly and resoundingly identified Mr. Obama as the nation's albatross.

However, Obama's decline and Romney's ascent in the polls "have emboldened the Republican field to abandon their familial camaraderie and adopt a new strategy."

So, after playing nice in New Hampshire - and being widely criticized by the media for refusing to take CNN's repeated invitation to begin in-fighting - the candidates have begun lining up to take shots at the current king of the hill.

Please RTWT.

I've been a long-time fan of the conservative-libertarian site, Intellectual Conservative, and the good folks over there have invited me to come onboard as a columnist. So, when I wax too long for Peter's patience here on NLT, I'll occasionally redirect an article to IC.

My latest article with IC attempts to "decipher the incoherency of renewable energy." The intro:

Windmills are not the future of the global economy. They were dandy for grain-grinding in the 19th century (and much appreciated for their contribution to bread-baking and beer-brewing), but they've taken their place alongside wooden teeth and horse-drawn carriages. And yet windmills are the latest craze in Congress - the leading-lady in a full ensemble touring Washington under the title, "Renewable Energy." The troupe premiered on the D.C. circuit in the 1960's, with Al Gore soon emerging as the leading-man, and their quixotic environmentalist spectacle recently received an all-expense-paid encore from the Democrats lame-duck Congress.

I hope you'll RTWT.

The international diplomacy of climate change is the most implausible and unpromising initiative since the disarmament talks of the 1930s, and for many of the same reasons. . .  the Kyoto Protocol and its progeny are the climate diplomacy equivalent of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 that promised to end war (a treaty that is still on the books, by the way), and finally, future historians are going to look back on this whole period as the climate policy equivalent of wage and price controls to fight inflation in the 1970s.  

USA Today has published an article of mine today on the shifting global roles demonstrated during the Libyan crisis.

On the eve of a possible war in Libya, the major players on the world stage have taken their turns and staked out their positions. Yet many players have postured themselves in ways that seem to be reversals of their usual roles. This shift in global strategy is largely the domino effect of a shift in American self-identity under President Obama, and an omen of the future under his new foreign policy for America.

I hope you'll RTWT.

P.S. Just in case you're looking for my post on USA Today's opinion page, you'll find it just above the article by President Obama. He's in good company.

The fine folks at First Things have published an article of mine entitled, Conceding Good Faith. It's was fun to write, as it reflects on my time in D.C. among a group of hard-left, Peace Corps liberals (who happened to include my girlfriend - hence my inclusion).

The article touches upon the need, in most cases, for a mutual concession on good intentions in political debate. As Charles Krauthammer once observed:

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

At most, Krauthammer doesn't go far enough (maybe he doesn't have any Peace Corps friends). I suggest a sort of truce - if liberals truly want an end to toxic, impoverished political discourse, they must allow that conservatives also seek good ends, but simply disagree as to the most effective means.

I would wager most RONLT (Readers of NLT) have experienced similar trials. I hope you'll RTWT.

I've an article at The American Spectator asking: "What if Loughner wasn't a tin-foil-hat lunatic, but a card-carrying member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, a disciple of Sarah Palin and full-throated, tea-dumping critic of Obama's taxation-nation? What difference would it make?"

I humbly recommend that you RTWT.

I have an op-ed in Friday's Washington Times, weighing in on the latest absurdities in the Smithsonian's ants-crawling-on-Jesus exhibit scandal. The article begins:

A good share of conservative commentators have avoided remarking on the Smithsonian scandal involving the gay-themed "Hide/Seek" exhibit featuring a video of ants crawling over a bloody, crucified Christ, among other lewd, sado-masochistic porn displays. There was no need to comment because it all had been said before. The cowards and hypocrites who constitute the chattering-class activists of the art world dogmatically avoid offending those corners of society deeply in need of critical reflection, such as Islam and the Middle East, or considered sacrosanct, such as feminism and racial/ethnic/sexual minorities, under the banner of tolerance and diversity. Yet these same noble paragons ruthlessly and intentionally insult Christians and everyone with a modicum of taste and decency, all the while praising their double standard as speaking truth to power.

The Smithsonian pulled the offensive piece after the Catholic League raised a fuss and called for an end of public funding. Yet I can't see praising the Smithsonian for this decision, as it's rather akin to praising an acquaintance's decision to stop beating his girlfriend - he shouldn't have done it in the first place. Belatedly pulling the piece merely represented the Smithsonian's grudging adoption of the common decency obvious to any adolescent of average intelligence and morality.

However, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts - lacking an adolescent standard of intellect and morality - has protested the Smithsonian's decision:

"Such blatant censorship is unconscionable ... we cannot stand by and watch the Smithsonian bow to the demands of bigots who have attacked the exhibition out of ignorance, hatred and fear."

RTWT.

Family Research Council has released their latest edition of The Social Conservative Review, which includes three articles of mine and two articles from No Left Turns writers Michael Schwarz and John Moser. Among the many luminaries, I'd also like to mention a friend of mine from Catholic University Law, Seana Cranston, who does good works at the UN watchdog, Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute.

So go ahead, annoy the Southern Poverty Law Center and read FRC's latest edition of conservative literature. It's categorized by topic, and I promise you'll learn something.

I've an article at one of my favorite old stomping-grounds, Intellectual Conservative. An excerpt:

Obama is holding offshore drilling (and the American economy) hostage and demanding concessions to his otherwise-doomed, voter-rejected, ultra-liberal environmental policies. He's demanding passage of his agenda if the U.S. ever wants to see its economy alive again.

"Mr. Hayward, I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your time on the Bill Bennett show this morning. I commute from Fort Worth to Dallas most mornings, as unenviable as that may sound, and I found your time slot absolutely fascinating this morning.  Thanks so much for your work and commitment to the study of energy and environment. It is not often that I find myself absolutely riveted via radio programming, but your information this morning was just mind boggling."

1. Scott Johnson of Power Line is an enthusiastic supporter of the Claremont Review of Books.  Today he devotes a post to reiterating his kind support for Never Enough, and to providing that book's author an opportunity to reflect on what the Gulf oil spill tells us about the argument between liberals and conservatives.
   
2. My 15 minutes of fame worked out to be only seven-and-a-half minutes long.  You can view them here, an interview taped at last month's Book Expo America in New York. 
3. If, understandably, you would prefer to listen to Never Enough's author discuss the book without having to watch him, you can catch Seth Leibsohn's interview on last week's Bill Bennett Show, or the one I did on June 12th with Steven Spierer on Talk Radio One.
4. Perhaps you're old school, and like to listen to the radio on the radio, instead of the computer.  Tomorrow is your lucky day, then.  I'll be a guest on the Dennis Prager Show from 2 to 3 p.m., Eastern Time, 11 a.m. to noon, Pacific Time.
5. I encourage NLT readers living in or near our nation's capital to attend a speech I'll deliver next Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation.  
6. Also in Washington, Brother Hayward has kindly organized an American Enterprise Institute panel to consider the arguments in Never Enough and in The Struggle to Limit Government, by John Samples of the Cato Institute.  It will be held the morning of Thursday, June 24, and feature, in addition to the authors and Steve, Jonathan Rauch, Christopher DeMuth, Charles Murray, Fred Siegel and Jonah Goldberg.