{"id":24148,"date":"2019-02-19T13:32:20","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T19:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=24148"},"modified":"2019-03-17T22:31:16","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T03:31:16","slug":"a-measuring-stick-for-your-leftist-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2019\/02\/19\/a-measuring-stick-for-your-leftist-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"A Measuring Stick For Your Leftist Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’d noticed the news report that obscure Congressman Rep.\u00a0Walter Jones (R-NC), age 76, had broken a hip in a fall, gone through surgery, and then been moved to hospice; it turns out he also had ALS<\/a><\/strong>. As I grow older, 76 doesn’t seem as old as it once did, so I felt sad for the man and his family on a personal level. A week or two later came the notice of his passing, which of course will bring up questions about his successor. But there was little notice about his qualities.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, Andrew Sullivan, who is a conservative who has little use for the Republicans in general, celebrates<\/a> the man’s life in the third part of his weekly tri-partite column:<\/p>\n

\n

But he also had a conscience and an independent streak, and when it became clear that the Iraq War had been based on phony intelligence, he actually changed his mind. More than that: He took moral responsibility for his vote for the war, and rethought a great deal of his previous views. Ashamed of what he had done \u2014 and the lives lost because of the war \u2014 he went on to write 12,000 letters to family members of service members killed. \u201cIn terms of his skepticism of authority and power in Washington, I think part of his wiring changed,\u201d\u00a0Congressman Mark Sanford<\/a>, told the Washington\u00a0Post<\/em>. \u201cHe started looking at leadership\u2019s claims with a skeptical eye, and that\u2019s led to the independence you now see on a regular basis.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I wonder how many people, such as my reader and myself, would actually take moral responsibility for a mistake of this magnitude, and how many of us would shrug it off and hide. This is the sort of behavior best termed exemplary<\/em>, and I’m thrilled to see it in a Republican, a member of the party that houses such politically craven creatures as Ryan, Nunes, and Graham.<\/p>\n

\n

He was that very rare creature: a true Republican fiscal conservative. Because of this, he voted against the Trump tax cut, which is even now adding exponentially to $22 trillion in debt. Pressured by Tom DeLay to vote for some of the appropriations bills that bankrupted the country under George W. Bush, because \u201cthese are Republican bills now,\u201d as DeLay explained,\u00a0Jones replied<\/a>, \u201cYes, Tom, but you\u2019re spending more than the Democrats did.\u201d For being this kind of constitutional and fiscal conservative, Jones was denied any significant committee roles during his 12 consecutive terms in the Congress as a Republican.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I mentioned measurement in the post title. If you have some concerns about a leftist friend, tell them about the late Rep. Jones. Maybe pull out the significant parts of his column and make them read it. If they celebrate his passing because it’s an opportunity for the Democrats to pick up a seat, well, you may have a political cultist on your hands.<\/p>\n

Treat with caution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’d noticed the news report that obscure Congressman Rep.\u00a0Walter Jones (R-NC), age 76, had broken a hip in a fall, gone through surgery, and then been moved to hospice; it turns out he also had ALS. As I grow older, 76 doesn’t seem as old as it once did, so \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24148"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24376,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24148\/revisions\/24376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}