Clear Moral Objectives in the Age of Trump
Clear Moral Objectives, published in 2003 attempted to define and solve America’s biggest problems.
It’s been said that the best way to close the border is to close the border. By that reasoning, the best way to keep men out of women’s sports is to keep them out. And you know what? Many of our great political issues are that simple on the surface.
We can’t solve them because Washington is crawling with politicians that want to get reelected and lobbyists that are paid millions to keep them in check.
In 2003, I wrote a book about twelve big, overriding core values that had gone astray.
In Clear Moral Objectives, I attempted to define America’s failings and present solutions. None of the solutions were complicated. That was well over two decades ago. We’re just now starting to look at these issues. We are in a new populist era under Donald Trump. This is perhaps our last, best chance to get it done.
AUDIO: Random Samplings of a Logical Mind
What were those clear, moral objectives?
Let me start at the beginning. The introduction to the book jarred my memory a bit. The late, great New York City talk host Barry Farber said something to me that lit the fire. I wrote a long column with fifteen “objectives” that would make America great again, long before Trump made it into a movement. I submitted the op-ed to Bob Moos at the Dallas Morning News, who accepted the column, but only after I edited it to twelve main issues.
Here’s what they were, as stated in overt calls to action:
- Preserve the right to life
- Reduce the size of government
- Abolish the Income Tax Code
- Restore the American family
- Foster an American culture
- Establish English as our national language
- End racial preferences
- Keep America strong
- Take back our schools
- Acknowledge right from wrong
- Respect the Judeo-Christian Ethic
- Return to the Constitution
This book never got its cover shown on Fox News. CNN didn’t mention it. It never made the New York Times Best Seller List. It sold a few copies, and that was that.
CLEAR MORAL OBJECTIVES ON AMAZON.COM
But look what’s happening right now. It doesn’t have anything to do with this book, but it’s the convergence of electing possibly the worst president in the history of the United States – Joe Biden – and the reelection of a president – Donald Trump – who’s willing to reach for the stars. Just look at how many of those clear, moral objectives Trump wants to fix.
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It’s been said that there were three great leaders of modern American conservatism in the sixties through the eighties.
Those men were Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, and Ronald Reagan. Goldwater could not win the presidency in 1964 because of the effect of the Kennedy assassination. However, he was a seminal figure in the early formulation of conservatism as we came to know it. His 1960 book (likely ghost written, but still his ideas), The Conscience of a Conservative, laid the groundwork for Reagan. Of the book, Wikipedia said this:
The Conscience of a Conservative is a 1960 book published under the name of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater who was the 1964 Republican presidential candidate. It helped revive the American conservative movement and make Goldwater a political star, and it has influenced countless conservatives in the United States, helping to lay the foundation for the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s.
Of course, Buckley was known as the great conservative commentator, novelist, and host of “Firing Line,” a television public affairs show that presented politics to the general public on a highly intellectual level. Buckley also propelled the conservative movement by founding the magazine “National Review” that ran his own editorials and the writings of other prominent voices on the Right.
And then came Ronald Reagan and suddenly it was Morning in America. The Reagan Revolution brought pride and prosperity to America, and eventually ended the Cold War. But President George H.W. Bush lied about taxes and ushered in Bill Clinton with as assist from H. Ross Perot. We began to go backwards, and the era of George W. Bush saw the attacks of September 11, and Bush and Dick Cheney got us into a war with the wrong country.
Video: Reagan’s seminal “A Time for Choosing” – one of the great speeches in the history of conservatism.
Then, we got eight years of Barack Obama, the Trump interregnum, and then four dreadful years with Biden. Trump had a damn good record as president – chaotic though it may have been – but the Left hated him, and so Biden took a 90-degree turn on just about everything. Biden’s presidency was a study in how to destroy a country. The Democrats threw him out, and then voters rejected his replacement, the insipid Kamala Harris. But Biden had done great damage to the country.
Now look at that list of objectives.
How many of them have been fixed since Reagan left office? Two, perhaps? Due to Trump’s nomination of the three mostly conservative Supreme Court justices, Roe v. Wade has been abolished and abortion rightfully sent back to the states.
Dr. Kevin Roberts (Photo: The Heritage Foundation)
Racial preferences (now called Diversify, Equity and Inclusion) are on life support. But most of these objectives took a hit after Reagan left office. We have a long way to go to get them all done – and the Left will fight every step of the way. That’s what they do.
Is there a new “Big 3” on the national stage to replace Goldwater, Buckley, and Reagan?
Rush Limbaugh was an amazing force for conservatism, but he’s gone and no one in media has emerged to take his place. But there are three names – three men — I’d like you to consider.
Trump, of course, is the Goldwater figure as the outsider politician who got the new populist movement going. My friend Kevin Roberts is the Buckley figure, using his literary and debating prowess to further the cause.
Dr. Roberts has emerged as a far-right champion of what ought to be done – and how to get it done. And then, playing the part of Reagan comes the world’s richest man, Elon Musk to use his wealth and influence to achieve specific goals. In fact, Musk is taking on the task of my old objective #2: reduce the size of government.
From Clear Moral Objectives to Dawn’s Early Light.
Dr. Roberts’ new book, Dawn’s Early Light, is his take on what I wrote about more than 20 years ago. If you subscribe to the monthly letter Imprimis, from Hillsdale College, you may have read his article in the October 2024 issue. In it, he touches on one subject that is dear to me. He writes:
The greatest challenges we face today are fairly straightforward. The necessary solutions, as Reagan said, may not be easy, but they are simple.
How embarrassingly and sadly true. We don’t have to have a $35,000,000,000,000 national debt. We could stop the drunken spending by … wait for it … stopping the spending. We could easily control and even close the border. We could restore the traditional American family by stopping the enabling of fathers to impregnate and then skip out.
But there’s more. We need to get back to those 12 objectives.
“Dawn’s Early Light” by Dr. Kevin Roberts (Amazon)
We need a district American culture. We used to have a melting pot, but that went haywire with the rise of multiculturalism in our schools back in the eighties. The number one thing we could do to fix that and restore unity among the American people is to declare English as the official language. Even applied only to government, not to corporations, and with logical exceptions, this would be a most unifying policy.
I’m tired of the Left crapping on America.
I don’t mind teaching the truth about slavery and Jim Crow, but America IS exceptional and still is the place the rest of the world wants to be. Yesterday’s warts, as mentioned above, have been replaced today by the Left’s fixation on race, the surgical mutilation of children in the name of sex-change (which we used to decry when other countries surgically mutilated their young girls), and the insertion of men into sports meant for women. Someday we will look back at web pages that list pronouns (they/them) and we will laugh at the abject stupidity of it all.
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I’m proud to know Kevin Roberts, and I thank him for pushing me further to the Right. I didn’t know that was possible. Perhaps the change in me is not that I have moved to the right – I’ve always thought that today’s far left thought as promulgated by the Squad is a special kind of stupid – but rather that I now see a pathway to get it done.
When I wrote Clear Moral Objectives, I was trying to define what was wrong with this country, and offer some solutions. But I’m not a big name, and I knew then, as now, that my voice is a small one. [I am just a small-time, humble talk show host with no ego!]
But others have emerged that have far louder voices, more reach, and the ability to accomplish great things if only the establishment doesn’t find a way to preserve the status quo. Donald Trump, Kevin Roberts and Elon Musk aren’t the only ones in this fight. I’m with them, and praying for them, and hoping this is more than just failed effort that will fall by the wayside.
But consider this: DEI is no longer in vogue. Wokeness is being challenged as never before. Joe Biden showed us what true liberalism is like when fully implemented and nobody wanted it. Liberalism is on the way out, and conservatism is in.
I’m not sure I made a single buck off of Clear Moral Objectives. But I’m glad I wrote it. It was 22 years before its time. But it’s a great reminder to me that I can always say this: I was conservative when conservatism wasn’t cool.
Lynn Woolley is a Texas-based author, broadcaster, and songwriter. Follow his podcast at https://www.PlanetLogic.us. Check out his author’s page at https://www.Amazon.com/author/lynnwoolley.
Order books direct from Lynn at https://PlanetLogicPress.Square.Site. Email Lynn at lwoolley9189@gmail.com.
CLEAR OBJECTIVE: Christmas presents for your friends and family that enjoy a good science fiction/political novel. You can purchase direct from me at the above link, or get the trade paperback or e-book version at Amazon.
