The Racine teacher had his fifteen minutes of fame this month when he refused to accept an award from Congressman Paul Ryan at a Martin Luther King, Jr. event at a local college. A video of Levie’s antics, accompanied by a lame explanation for his defiance, is circulating online.

“Paul Ryan is a lackey for the one percent,” Levie contends in a video interview after the event.
The video made Levie an instant folk hero for leftists.

But our research shows that silly antics are nothing new for Levie, an ends-justify-the-means type who routinely uses his students to promote his personal political agenda.

In an article Levie penned for his union magazine, NEA Today, he wrote that “By engaging students in real-life issues and encouraging them to act on a political level, we will transform schools into places where authentic learning takes place.

“At the same time, we will help our students become engines of positive change in our society,” he wrote.

In other words, Levie wants his students to become fellow rabble rousers. And what better way to elicit “positive change” than to snub a respected congressman from a political party he opposes?

The incident with Ryan, however, is only the most recent example the social studies teacher has set for his students.

Last summer, he was kicked out of a Wisconsin Senate Finance Committee hearing for causing a fuss. He was literally carried out by police.

In 2009, “Horlick teacher Al Levie, known for organizing high school students in political movements, was part of the crowd” that protested outside of Ryan’s office, according to the Racine Post.

In 2004, a student vote project headed by Levie was canceled when it was discovered that the event would only benefit one political party. The Journal Times reported:

“The get out the vote project planned by Horlick High School students has been canceled.

“Racine Unified School District Superintendent Thomas Hicks said what started out to be a class-related activity last week turned out to be a partisan event. The decision to cancel the event was made … after he learned the facts had changed and it was no longer a bipartisan endeavor.”

It quickly becomes clear that Levie believes the purpose of public schools is to turn students into junior social democrats, and he’s setting the example with his childish antics aimed at Congressman Ryan.

Meanwhile, only 57 percent of Racine Unified high school students are proficient in social studies.

That sad reality will leave students with a one-sided perspective on American political issues, and likely little insight into Ryan’s conservative thought.

And that’s exactly the goal, isn’t it, Al?

But the silliness was nothing new for Racine teacher Al Levie.  He has a history of using students in his personal political agenda.

Case in point is an article Levie penned for the National Education Association magazine, NEA Today, titled, “Don’t Scold, Organize!”  He concluded it by writing:

“By engaging students in real-life issues and encouraging them to act on a political level, we will transform schools into places where authentic learning takes place.

“At the same time, we will help our students become engines of positive change in our society.”

Levie wants his students to be fellow rabble rousers, and what better way than to stick to a political foe right in front of them?

The incident with Ryan, however, is only the most recent example he has set for his students.

In June, 2011, Levie was kicked out of a Wisconsin Senate Finance Committee hearing for standing in the front and reading a statement.  He was literally carried out by police.

In 2009, Levie participated in (organized?) a protest outside Ryan’s office.   The Racine Post explained it this way:

“Horlick teacher Al Levie, known for organizing high school students in political movements, was part of the crowd.”

Levie’s 2004 vote project was canceled when it was discovered the event – oops! – was just for one political party.  The Journal Times reported:

“The get out the vote project planned by Horlick High School students has been canceled.

“Racine Unified School District Superintendent Thomas Hicks said what started out to be a class-related activity last week turned out to be a partisan event. The decision to cancel the event was made Monday morning after he learned the facts had changed and it was no longer a bipartisan endeavor.”

Levie’s response?

“We’re not teaching kids good values when a learning experience can be canceled by partisan politics,” Levie said.

On a school day in 2009, the high school teacher bussed students to the state capitol for a protest against out-of-state tuition being charged to illegal immigrants.  The Racine Post reported:

“Their demands: Remove unfair restrictions on tuition and drivers licenses that discriminate against undocumented workers in Wisconsin. Most of the students were members of Students United for Immigrant Rights, a group founded at Horlick High School in 2005.”

This appears to get to the nub of Levie’s personal view.  Consider his quote from NEA Today.  Levie believes that the purpose of schools is to turn students into change agents, and he sets the example with his childish antics aimed at Congressman Paul Ryan.

So while only 57% of Racine Unified high school students are proficient in social studies, I’m willing to bet 100% of them could find Congressman Ryan’s office to protest.

That sad reality will leave students with a one-sided perspective on American policy, and likely little insight into Ryan’s conservative thought.

But that’s “real world” teaching according to Al Levie.

High School teacher Al Levie refused to accept an MLK award from Rep. Paul Ryan because, well, Paul Ryan is a conservative no matter how Levie tries to frame it. Levie stated that “Paul Ryan has no business being at an MLK event.” That’s a pretty bigoted action.

Levie’s speech can be found here.

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I’m not going to name names, because everybody knows who these Republicans are. Instead, I want to go positive, and commend Mitt Romney himself. Romney did his best in the second South Carolina debate to fight for free-market capitalism and Adam Smith, and against the spread of Obama-style crony capitalism and class envy.

During the Thursday night debate, Romney launched this:

“You’ve got to stop the spread of crony capitalism. [Obama] gives General Motors to the UAW. He takes $500 million and sticks it into Solyndra. He stacks the labor stooges on the NLRB so they can say no to Boeing and take care of their friends in the labor movement. . . . He has to bow to the most extreme members of the environmental movement. He turns down the Keystone pipeline, which would bring energy and jobs to America.

“My view is capitalism works. Free enterprise works. . . . There’s nothing wrong with profit, by the way. That profit went to pension funds, to charities. It went to a wide array of institutions. . . . And by the way, as enterprises become more profitable, they can hire more people. I’m someone who believes in free enterprise. I think Adam Smith was right. And I’m gonna stand and defend capitalism across this country, throughout this campaign. I know we’re going to get hit hard from President Obama, but we’re gonna stuff it down his throat and point out that it is capitalism and freedom that makes America strong.”

Whoa. Tough stuff. The right stuff.

I watched this on DVR late at night. So just to be sure, I read the transcript the next morning. Still there. And let me say, this is exactly what the Republicans must say.

The issue of crony capitalism should be front and center in this campaign. President Obama defends his cronies instead of the so called 99 percent. That’s his contradiction. Big Labor, Big Business, and Big Green Energy are collections of cronies with big jobs, big salaries, and big privileges. Nothing to do with the 99 percent.

But Governor Romney can go even further to slam crony capitalism. This is where tax-reform and deep spending cuts come in. A flattening of tax rates should be accompanied by the elimination of cronied tax deductions, exemptions, and carve-outs. Even more, we should get rid of crony corporate welfare wherever it exists, including crony government subsidies to energy, exports, and agriculture. Wherever it exists.

Let’s say you went to two tax brackets at 10 and 25 percent, as per Paul Ryan’s plan, or even the next step of a single-rate flat tax. Here, all the crony tax advantages should be wiped out. They won’t be necessary at lower rates and their removal would end crony favoritism.

Finally, Romney can punctuate his crony-capitalism attack by telling folks he will overturn and upend the prevailing Washington, D.C., establishment.

Sadly, with the exception Rick Santorum making the case for lower tax rates, Thursday night’s debate had virtually no discussion of tax reform. Newt Gingrich never even once mentioned his 15 percent flat-tax plan. Unfortunately, Newt still leaves most deductions and carve-outs in place, and that needs to be fixed.

That aside, Governor Romney capped his strong performance with a Reaganesque summation. As he has in the past, he criticized Obama for trying to “transform” America from a merit society — an opportunity society where people are free to choose — to a European-style entitlement society. Romney said, “We need to restore the values that made America the hope of the Earth. . . . [President Obama] has made it almost impossible for our private sector to reboot. . . . I will defeat Barack Obama and keep America as it’s always been, the shining [city] on a hill.”

Strong stuff. Good stuff.

Is anyone listening?

Brooks is concerned with what he calls the new culture war–not over the traditional social issues of “guns, gays, and abortion,” but over the moral virtue of the free market and free enterprise systems over the redistributionist, statist ethic.

Brooks cited Americans’ unprecedented dissatisfaction with government in the wake of the failed stimulus, the numerous bailouts, the government’s role in creating the housing crisis, and other statist failures. Proponents of free enterprise, he says, should be winning the argument. Instead, he points out, most Americans hold beliefs incompatible with a culture of free enterprise–supporting higher taxes, more regulations, and the like.

The reason? “Proponents of free enterprise have nothing but materialistic rejoinders.” Put simply, those who favor individual economic freedom tend to debate using numbers, and technical arguments–while those who favor more government, such as President Barack Obama, are making moral arguments about the unfairness and injustice of the inequality that freedom may enable. They are winning–even though they are wrong.

Our brains, Brooks says, are wired to favor moral over materialistic arguments when we are presented with both at the same time. People are “more moral than rational.” (That is a truth that Republicans have yet to acknowledge. A classic example: at the height of the ObamaCare debate, Paul Ryan trounced Debbie Wasserman-Schultz over the costs–only to lose the argument when she told a personal story about breast cancer.)

Conservatives had won the debate over welfare reform in the 1980s and 1990s, Brooks notes, by pointing out that government handouts were hurting the people they had been intended to help. That wasn’t just an empirical, economic argument; it was a profoundly moral argument. The argument for free enterprise will not be resolved in 2012, but will take at least a decade, Brooks predicts: “We’ve got to be in it for the long haul,” he says.

The moral argument begins with a question about happiness, Brooks says–a topic he has written about before, and in which America’s Founders were deeply interested. When they substituted “the pursuit of happiness” for “property” in the Declaration of Independence, they knew something economists are only just beginning to understand: money doesn’t buy happiness, but the belief that you’ve earned your success does.

“The government can redistribute money until the cows come home, but they can’t redistribute earned success.” And that, Brooks says, explains the paradox of people being dissatisfied with government but wanting more of it: we confuse money with earned success, then fail to achieve it. In the meantime, many fall victim to what he calls “learned helplessness”: we give up on our ability to achieve happiness on our own.

The answer, Brooks says, is a system: free enterprise, which allows us to keep what we earn, to pursue our individual visions of happiness. To the statists who charge that free enterprise is unfair, we ought to ask the question: what do you define as fair? Is fairness crude material equality? Or is fairness equal reward for equal merit? The latter, Brooks says, is compatible with free enterprise; the former is not, and is doomed to fail.

President Obama, Brooks says, subscribes to the first version–and tells those who have succeeded that they have not earned their success. The way to win the argument, Brooks says, is to assert a different definition of fairness. That is a moral case, Brooks says, and must precede the material case. We should demand that the government protect the fairness that previous generations enjoyed–fairness as earned success.

Listening to Brooks, it struck me that the moral case for freedom is what conservatives have been seeking–and failing to find–among many GOP presidential candidates. Those who have surged lately are those who have made liberty their cause (Ron Paul), or who have made the moral case against Obama’s presidency (Rick Santorum). Those who are fading are those who have ceded to Obama’s (im)moral definition of fairness.

Romney doesn’t seem to get it: the 2012 election is about the size and cost of government.

We already have a “smart” president with ambitious plans who thinks he knows better. That hasn’t worked for our economy, and has damaged trust in our democracy.

Romney says “America doesn’t need a manager,” but his plans reflect what the Journal euphemistically calls “positive technocratic thinking.”

Though Romney may be more “sober” than his rival Newt Gingrich (or, less charitably, more timid than the former Speaker), he evidently shares with Gingrich an enthusiasm for what the federal government could do, if only he were put in control.

Given that Ron Paul’s radical foreign policy is a non-starter, and that several other candidates–however well-meaning–could not manage the mundane task of qualifying for the Virginia ballot, or withstand the media scrutiny of a long campaign, Republicans are feeling new doubts about the current field.

They are all better than Obama; the question is–are they the best Republicans can offer?

As Republicans have wrestled with that question, a few have floated the idea of a “brokered convention,” at which the party’s nominee would be chosen through back-room negotiations and contested ballots instead of the pro forma roll calls of recent decades.

Given Romney’s struggle to provide the clear alternative to Obama that Americans so desperately need, the party should consider whether a brokered convention is feasible as a fallback option.

Here, then, are the top ten Republicans who could be nominated at a brokered convention. Some declined to run earlier, and should reconsider; all would provide a stronger contrast to President Obama than Romney or Gingrich is providing at the moment.

***

10. Rep. Eric Cantor

The Whip united the caucus against the disastrous stimulus in 2009. In the debt ceiling debate, he reportedly held out against new taxes in any final agreement. Moreover, he has made clear that his vision for the country’s future is plainly different from Obama’s.

***

9. Sen. Jim DeMint

The conservative stalwart has provided key support to Tea Party candidates, and has challenged the compromise politics of the Republican establishment.

***

8. Gov. Bobby Jindal

Recently elected in a landslide to a second term, he has fought political corruption and brought competence and leadership to a state long lacking both. Despite a rocky national TV debut in 2009, Jindal is a ruthless and effective campaigner.

***

7. Rep. Mike Pence

The Indiana all-star has the policy positions and the media profile that conservatives have beenseeking. He declined to run for president earlier this year, despite strong grassroots support, but could perhaps be persuaded to reconsider.

***

6. Gov. Mitch Daniels

An early favorite who also declined to run, the Indiana governor has boosted his state from deficit to surplus, and stagnation to job creation. Some conservatives are wary of his proposed “truce” on social issues, but would rally behind his fiscal leadership.

***

5. Sen. Marco Rubio

Rubio represents the best marriage of what Tea Party Republicans believe, and what traditional Republicans respect. He has declined to run for president–or even vice president–but, if he reconsidered, could help swing the Latino and Florida vote.

***

4. Gov. Chris Christie

The tough-talking New Jersey governor became a conservative hero when he stood up to public sector unions in restoring his state’s solvency–and he has taken on President Obama as well.

***

3. Rep. Paul Ryan

The House budget chair and “Conservative of the Year” famously confronted the president on Obamacare, but his main focus has been fiscal reform–including bipartisan proposals for fixing Medicare. He is also considered strong on social issues.

***

2. Gov. Sarah Palin

With a corruption-busting record, solid positions on the issues, and a big grassroots fan base, Palin would be a stronger contender than many in the field. She is a constant media target, but has found ways to speak directly to her supporters, and would excite passion in the race as no other candidate could.

***

1. Gov. Scott Walker

Targeted by the left, he has faced down a relentless public sector union onslaught. and put Wisconsin on a path to fiscal and economic recovery. He has Christie’s toughness–but with a quiet Midwestern delivery rather than a New Jersey swagger. Recently named “Governor of the Year,” Walker has the courage and experience to lead the nation.

***

There are other candidates who could do the job–former Florida governor Jeb Bush is one, for example, though his surname is still a burden in the first post-Bush presidential election.

Regardless, Republicans should consider a brokered convention unless the frontrunners improve their attack on Obama, because the mess that is the GOP primary isn’t just a disaster for the party, but also for a nation ready to hear the conservative message.

Today, even Democrats know that we can no longer afford big government and its obligations, and enough also realize that raising taxes will restrain the economic growth our country needs in order to build our future and balance the books.

Perhaps it would be easier if a Democrat–other than Obama–had the opportunity to take on the size of government, just as only a Republican like Nixon could go to China, and just as it was Democrat Bill Clinton who signed welfare reform into law in 1996.

Obama could have taken on entitlement reform, but chose not to, both because he wants to reshape government in a socialist mould, and because he is bound to allies who are busy enriching themselves. And he won’t change. Nor will he face a primary challenge, despite the fact that there are several other Democrats who would be better candidates.

So Americans–like it or not–are looking for the right Republican. Unfortunately, what the Grand Old Party has provided thus far is not particularly Grand, and Old in all the wrong ways–failing to challenge Obama’s 2008 vision of a vastly expanded government, while threatening to undo the Tea Party’s success in 2010.

There must be an alternative. And there are–several, in fact.

To put it mildly, many libertarians and conservatives are underwhelmed by his less-than-stellar record on healthcare, his weakness on Social Security reform, his anemic list of proposed budget savings, and his reprehensible support for ethanol subsidies.

Notwithstanding this dismal track record, some advocates of free markets argue that anybody would be better than Obama.

But that’s not necessarily the case. Economic history shows that the burden of government often expands the most under Republicans, with Nixon and Bush (either one) being obvious examples.

On the other hand, even a skeptic like me has admitted that Romney’s record in Massachusetts is difficult to assess because he was governor of a very left-wing state and he had to deal with a state legislature with heavy Democratic majorities.

That being said, there’s a new development that suggests Romney may be an unacceptable alternative to Obama. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he basically said he is willing to consider a value-added tax for the United States. Here’s the relevant passage.

He says he doesn’t “like the idea” of layering a VAT onto the current income tax system. But he adds that, philosophically speaking, a VAT might work as a replacement for some part of the tax code, “particularly at the corporate level,” as Paul Ryan proposed several years ago. What he doesn’t do is rule a VAT out.

For those who are not familiar with a VAT, it is a version of a national sales tax, but imposed at every stage in the production process and embedded in the price of goods and services. Perhaps more important, it is despised by everyone who wants to limit the size of government. This video explains how it works and why it is a money machine for big government.

Simply stated, this is an awful tax. If it ever gets implemented in the United States, the battle will be over. America will descend to European-style stagnation, eventually leading to fiscal crisis.

Any politician that supports a VAT (or even hints at supporting a VAT) should not be allowed anywhere near the White House. That applies to Mitt Romney. And it should be the rule for Paul Ryan as well.

But what about Barack Obama, you may be asking. Hasn’t he said nice things about a VAT?

Not surprisingly, he has been sympathetic, appointing VAT sympathizers to high office and remarking that a VAT is “something that has worked for other countries.”

But there’s no way a VAT will happen if Obama gets reelected. Republicans will be overwhelmingly opposed, even if only for shallow reasons of partisanship.

But if Romney wins and decides to push a VAT, many Republicans will say yes because of loyalty (much as many GOPers went along with Bush’s statist agenda) and many Democrats will say yes in order to get a new source of revenue to expand government.

The consequences, as explained here, would be disastrous.

P.S. For a humorous – but accurate – perspective on the VAT, take a look at these clever cartoons (here, here, and here).