House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., should borrow from the Smithsonian a Frederic Remington statue of the bronco buster for his speaker's office. (The Smithsonian lent speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., a reproduction T-Rex skull!)
Johnson presents as capable of governing his fractious Republican majority. The Establishment Media gave him faint recognition for having averted a holiday government shutdown.
Big mistake.
A small statue of a cowboy breaking a bucking bronco graced the Oval Office from Jimmy Carter through Donald Trump (a grace note ended by Joe Biden). It has quite the history and would look great in the new speaker's office ... and send a message.
Per the White House Historical Association, "... Frederic Remington (1861-1909) ... drew a picture of a bronco buster trying to tame a wild horse for an 1888 article in Century Magazine. The author of the article was Theodore Roosevelt. ... Remington and Roosevelt became friends at this time.
"Roosevelt wrote about the life of a bronco buster: He "receives high wages and deserves them, for he follows a most dangerous trade, at which no man can hope to grow old."
Sounds like the job description of the speaker of the (majority Republican) House!
Not long after his entirely unexpected election as speaker, many establishment doomsayers predicted that Johnson would be unable to avert a federal government shutdown. Wrong!
I contend Johnson will prove the skeptics wrong again. And again.
Why? Merriam-Webster just announced that the Word of the Year for 2023 is "authentic." Speaker Johnson is authentic to the bone. That gives him real cred.
The Establishment Media is clutching its pearls and heading for the fainting couch. The New York Times put it recently in a headline: "Behind Johnson's Rise, a G.O.P. Consumed by the Far Right."
I am a proud member of the Far Right, an Original Gangster of Jack ("Voodoo Economics") Kemp's supply-side, founder of the Prosperity Caucus, Reagan White House deputy general counsel, called by a Washington Post columnist "the second most conservative man in the world" (for my advocacy of the classical gold standard), co-emcee of the Boston Tea Party in 2009, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman of the 200,000+ follower Capitalist League. Newsmax columnist!
The New York Times is confounded about who we conservatives are. Relax, I am here to help them escape from greater confusion than Job encountering the voice of the Lord issuing from the whirlwind.
To understand Johnson and his power, one must understand a little bit of the study of the nature of Being. (Ontology. For those who really want to get it, go read "The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog" by James Sire.)
The modern Establishment is modernist. They believe, despite this belief being utterly discredited by quantum physics and cognitive neuroscience, in the power of perception and reason to interpret the world.
Johnson is a pre-modernist. He believes that the world (and universe), as reported in the Holy Scriptures, is around 6,000 years old. Noah's Ark is literal truth.
This ur-conservatism disarms the Freedom Caucus. His civility soothes Establishment Republicans.
Powerful combo! I, a postmodernist, remain the second most conservative man in the world. (The most conservative is Benyamim Tsedaka, an elder of the Israelite-Samaritan people — yes, the descendants of the biblical Good Samaritans, who live strictly by an ancient, multi-millennial vintage, biblical code. I've been their U.S. envoy.)
Speaker Johnson? You come in a close third!
I am, moreover, a postmodernist, one of three or four arch-conservative postmodernists. Postmodernism, properly understood, has much more in common with pre-modernists, like Johnson, than with modernists.
Our common thread? Both of our understandings of the nature of Being is founded in faith. Neo-orthodox postmodernists, like me, recognize that the existence of God and an innate moral order cannot be proven by evidence and reason.
We, like Johnson, embrace these as an unapologetic act of faith. Johnson, an authentic pre-modernist, too is a true believer in God, God's love for us, and a moral order defined by divine will.
Next up? Will Johnson live up to the biblical admonition for precious metal money, the missing fulcrum on which to turn the federal deficit into a stunning federal surplus?
The classical gold standard is the only repeatedly proven way to dramatically cut interest rates, cutting federal outlays (by a lot!). And, by squeezing out uncertainty, cutting cost of credit.
This will bring on a new burst of economic growth, flooding Uncle Sam with enough revenue to create another federal surplus, preferably used to pay down the federal debt!
Johnson's rock-ribbed faith gives him a rock-solid basis from which to tame the bucking bronco of the House of Representatives with its Freedom and Problem Solvers caucuses, both.
Welcome Speaker Johnson, bronco buster!
Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $94T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.
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