Self Evident Truths

Obama's New Plan: Pass the Bill...Pass the Bill...Pass the Bill...Pass the Bill...

2011-09-09T12:00:00.001-07:00

President Obama, the Community-Organizer-in-Chief, had a message for Congress and the American people this past week.

I'm not quite sure what he's trying to say here, but I think I'll pass.

Bill Whittle: Afterburner: The Truth Is Out There

2011-09-01T14:52:00.000-07:00

PJTV's Bill Whittle exposes the basic problems with leftist ideology and how it obfuscates the concept of "truth."

The Main Problem with Education in the US

2011-08-29T13:34:00.002-07:00

Take a look at this sign, from Prescott High School in Arizona and then see if you can figure out the main problem with contemporary education in the US.

If we'd only we'd spend more federal money on education, have more federal controls, and bigger teachers' unions, our schools would be much better off....

Do any of you have signs like this in your neighborhood? I'd love to see them!

Hat tip to Stephen Green at PJVT.

Andrew Klavan's Rules for Wannabe Pundits

2011-08-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

Andrew Klavan's back with some observations on what not to say as a political pundit.

Herman Cain Responds to Janeane Garofalo on Keith Olbermann's Talk Show

2011-08-24T13:12:00.000-07:00

For those of you who keep up with the left's obsession with race warfare, you'll recall the blissfully ignorant words of one of Hollywood's "finest," former comedian Janeane Garofalo. In an interview on Keith Olbermann's talk show, she brilliantly demonstrates how leftist doctrine obscures reality, and shows how racist the ideals of modern liberalism really are. In the interview, Garofalo said that Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is "being paid to run" and is "a stooge for racists"(among other equally ignorant things). (Real Clear Politics)

That level of clueless drivel displays business as usual among the leftist elite whose objectivity has been skewed by what Andrew Breibart calls the Democrat-Media Complex. (See Breitbart's book, Righteous Indignation.) Not everyone on the left are as radically unhinged as Garofalo, yet such statements as hers belie the leftist narrative that professes to be guardians of race, civil liberty, and freedom within the US.

Take a look at Herman Cain's response. Here's a man who understands the damages that the left does through such reckless, elitist, racist, ignorant statements as Garofalo's.

Afterburner with Bill Whittle: Do You Have Anything Worth Dying For?

2011-08-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

I've rarely posted PJTV's Bill Whittle's videos before. He's a decent defender of the founding principles of the US but he strikes me as somewhat pedantic. This video caught my attention, however, because it outlines important principles of liberty and freedom - that self-sacrifice is as integral to democracy as inalienable rights and individualism.

After all, the United States only stands because we've been propped up on the backs of those who've given up everything in order to preserve our freedom.

UK Riots: A Warning Shot Across the Bow

2011-08-16T16:22:00.000-07:00

UK Prime Minister David Cameron outlines the basic problem underlying the recent riots in the United Kingdom.

With all of the smoke and mirror talk in Washington, D.C. about fixing the budget and reducing the debt, with all of the talk about how Bush and Obama have hurt the US economy, with all of the talk about jobs and recession and scary stock market trends, what's lost is talk about the underlying causes of American decline.

I have no common ground with socialists and I also differ from many of my libertarian friends. Why? Well, socialism is based on a faulty utopian premise of equality of outcomes. Modern libertarianism, while identifying key economic problems, refuses to acknowledge the underlying causes of our present-day government woes.

You see, the problem stems from a lack of understanding and acknowledgement of the social ills that plague Americans. We suffer from social, as well as economic sickness.

The recent riots across London and the rest of the UK help to illustrate the point with a statement given by David Cameron, Prime Minister:

This crisis has been building for years. It is the result of a major cultural shift that took place in the 1960s and 1970s, and the long-term decline of the conservative values and institutions that had underpinned British society since the late 19th century. This process was marked by a collapse in the belief in marriage, a retreat of the police from the streets, a move away from tough penalties for property crime, the rise of moral relativism and rampant consumerism, the diminution of stigma as a restraint on bad behaviour and the entrenchment of welfare dependency. (The Telegraph)

Progressives will mock Cameron's statement. Socialists will dismiss it out of hand. Identity radicalism will fight against any ideals that don't actively accept their lifestyle du jour. Others will reject it because they disbelieve that there is anything like a moral standard.

But the simple truth is that the US and the UK are countries in decline - not from the loss of economic standing or military might, but from the loss of moral compass. We are decadent societies and history has proven time and again that decadence destroys great nations.

As Abraham Lincoln wisely put it 173 years ago:

Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Plague of the Debt: Artwork by Sam Hundley

2011-08-12T12:09:00.001-07:00

This artwork comes from Sam Hundley, a Virginia based artist. It's refreshing to see a modern artist who can make a statement without falling into the usual modern liberal claptrap that seems to plague art and academia. Check out his other works here.

Andrew Klavan's Talking Crap 3: ABSOLUTE CRAP!!!

2011-08-11T12:48:00.000-07:00

I Admit It. The Bad Economy Is All My Fault. Now Can We Get Some Real Spending Cuts Please?

2011-08-10T16:52:00.002-07:00

OK. I admit it.¹ I caused all the problems with the economy and the government. And you know what? It's a relief to finally get that confession off my chest. In fact, the relief has overwhelmed me and I feel like confessing all of my anti-establishment sins.²

You see, I've discovered that agree with the basic principles that the Tea Party seems to express: limited government, lower taxes, and reduced government spending. While I thought that my ideas came from such sources as the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the political philosophies of such thinkers as John Locke, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and Alexander Hamilton, I've recently discovered the error of my ways.

Apparently, my mistaken ideas about how the government should be structured and run stems from my having been brainwashed by a group of racist, terrorist, economy killing, kitten eating, freaked-out white men who forced Standard & Poor's to downgrade the credit rating of the US.³

Whew! That's another relief to get that off my chest.

I know that I'm racist. Why? It's because I'm a white male. Oh, and I'm not a member of the Democrat Party or even a member of a labor union. Yep, it's true. Even though I work within the state college system, I haven't joined the union. (I just figured I'd like to use my own money instead of having more of it vanish to support Democrats.) I'm also not a member of the Republican Party, but that doesn't seem to count to qualify me as a non-racist.

I also know that I'm a racist because one of my friends told me that I was. He was upset that I'd posted a video explaining the historical relationship between the Democrat Party to slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow laws and voting against the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s. Apparently Democrats don't like to be reminded of their own past flings with racism so they can keep and hold political power. My friend didn't like the connection as well and has since disowned me.

So I guess I'm racist by default.

I'm a terrorist too because I...well I...uh.... Actually, I have no idea why I'm a terrorist. Can someone please get Joe Biden to explain that one to me?

I take full and personal responsibility for killing the economy, however. I bought right into the whole corporate structure thing and created several corporations of my own. I've turned them to nefarious purposes by placing my money in such flaky and insubstantial investments such as real estate. (Come to think of it, since the economy collapsed in 2008, real estate wasn't such a great investment. Dang! I knew I should have bought gold at $500 an ounce!) I'm also simply not doing my part as a corporate owner and taking risks to grow my companies. That's because I've been sitting around on my butt waiting to be able to get corporate loans from stingy banks, waiting for the SEC rules to stabilize so I can plan investments, waiting for real estate prices to stabilize, waiting for the government to make some decision on capital gains and corporate taxes, and waiting for the government to decide how to address the bad economy. (It's selfish for me to wait. I know.)

I also refused to borrow money at the great subprime rates that Congress allowed. Instead, I wasted 20 years saving enough money to earn a decent loan rate to buy a house I could afford. I helped kill off the economy by not participating in the 2008 subprime loan crash. I admit to my selfishness.

I admit that I'm a freaked out white man. Maybe if I weren't white or male, I wouldn't worry about such things as the cut back on teachers' pay at my college, the real estate that I own but cannot sell, the threat of new taxes, the rising gas prices, the loss of a majority of my business clients, and the broken air conditioner. I'm sure I wouldn't worry about any of those things if I were a Latina woman. Or a Democrat. Instead I'm just a freaked out white man.

Me as a freaked out white man.

Lastly, I also admit to causing Standard & Poor's downgrade of the US credit rating. You see, I wrote to my congressman and to Speaker of the House Boehner saying that I support reduced government spending without an increase in taxes. I'm certain that both of them felt severely threatened by my letters, cowered under my poison pen, and decided right then and there that they would cut a deal to: 1) allow for trillions more in public spending with the possibility of future tax increases and 2) propose a drop-in-the-bucket of future spending cuts.

Standard & Poor's retaliated against me by downgrading the US credit rating because of (as many news stories have reluctantly revealed) the "the political brinksmanship" between the two branches of Congress and the executive branch. If you care to actually read the S&P report, however, they really stat that the primary reason S&P gave for the downgrade was that:

The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics. (Standard & Poor's PDF)

Yep, from racism to the S&P downgrade. It's all my fault.
_____________________________________

¹satire |ˈsaˌtīr| noun
The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

²I won't, however.

³I just made up the part about eating kittens. No one's said that Tea Party members eat kittens, and there are only a few references to George W. Bush eating kittens.

The Stinky Award: MSNBC News Investigative Report: Are Tea Partiers ‘Delusional’ Addicts?

2011-08-03T18:20:00.000-07:00

Today's Stinky Award goes to both MSNBC's Martin Bashir and psychologist Stanton Peele who defy all rationality in their analysis of the Tea Party. As Peele states about those who identify with the Tea Party: "It reminds us of addiction because addicts are seeking something that they can't have."

This is the kindest of the remarks both Bashir and Peele make about the Tea Partiers.

Source: Breitbart.tv

Oh. My. Gosh. This propaganda cannot be taken seriously except by the True Convert of modern leftist doctrine. Can we assume that Dr. Stanton Peele's middle name is "Goebbels"? His particular brand of "analysis" has crossed the line from merely destructive to downright evil.

Of course, there is no such thing as evil in leftist dogma, except for any disagreement with it's tenants.

My Take on the Debt Ceiling "Crisis"

2011-07-30T13:03:00.001-07:00

Thanks to modern liberalism, our system of politics now seems, not merely to function, but to thrive on the crisis of the day (or crise du jour if you speak French which I do not). Adhering to the Saul Alinsky doctrine of manufactured crises (crisises? crisi?) the politicians in Washington cannot seem to pass any legislation, let alone reform legislation, without manufacturing a crisis of one kind or another. Neither party is immune to modern liberalism. The Democrats proudly bear the standard of community organizing and union thuggery, while the Republicans easily adopted the big government model.

Case in point is the debt ceiling manufactured "crisis." Why is this a manufactured crisis? We only need to read (or heaven forbid listen to) the statements from both parties to realize that neither side is serious about solving the underlying problem of the debt ceiling. President Obama's rhetoric called for raising taxes on the evil rich (what he named a "balanced plan" option). Speaker of the House Boehner manufactured a crisis by tying the vote on raising the debt ceiling to spending cuts.

While I agree with spending cuts, limited taxation, and a far, far smaller government than the one we now own, the current crisis bothers me - perhaps not in the same way it bothers most other Americans. Here are some of my thoughts:

1) Why do we have a debt ceiling?
The US is saddled with too many laws which don't work, cannot work, or which will not work for the simple fact that Americans keep putting representatives and presidents in power who have no intention of obeying the law. The debt ceiling intended to curb federal spending by putting an absolute cap on the national debt. Yet, time after time, when the ceiling was reached, Congress merely raised the ceiling.

The intent of the law was good, but should why should we put up with the charade of the debt ceiling law when it obviously doesn't work as intended? I agree with Moody's assessment. We should just get rid of the debt ceiling law. Stop clinging to the hope that the law will somehow limit spending.

2) Right now, the government is working exactly as it should.
The US government was not designed for a single faction or party to have control and force through legislation or executive orders without the consent of the people. Government failed the US when the Democrat controlled Congress and President Obama forced through the 2009 spending bill and the 2010 health care bill. The people responded in 2010 by electing Republicans to stymie the expansion of Democrat ideology.

Now that President Obama and Congress are wrangling over the debt ceiling, spending cuts, balanced budgets, and the possibility of reform, I'm satisfied that government is once again working at its peak inefficiency. Laws should and need to take time to formulate. Compromise and self-interested dealing are the keystones of our republican system. It's only when one political party or the other gets too much control that our process becomes what it should not - a forum to extend government power and waste the resources of the American people on foreign wars, social programs, and entitlement spending.

3) Neither side is serious about reducing the size of government.
We can tell that neither side is really serious about reform or shrinking government. Sure, there are a few conservatives who understand and hold firm to reduced government principles (case in point is Arizona's Jeff Flake), yet the vast majority, including Boehner in the House and Reid in the Senate, are looking to preserve power, not to limit government. This is merely an indicator of how much leftist thought has seeped into all areas of political thought.

4) Congress could easily fix the "crisis."
The current "crisis" could be over in a heartbeat by unlinking the debt ceiling legislation from spending cuts. Republicans forced the crisis, using the opportunity to press for what the people of the US want, low taxes, controlled government spending, and reduced dependency on borrowed money. Yes, it is proper and good to use such leverage to extend a political agenda. Yet, have you noticed that Speaker Boehner didn't link the debt ceiling with repealing Obamacare? (Now that would have been an interesting battle.)

5) Modern leftist ideology is getting in the way.
Leftist ideology wants to see an increased government role in the everyday lives of Americans. It wants centralized planning. It wants to stem capitalism. It wants to create equal economic (and social) outcomes for everyone. It is linked with the bankrupt ideology of socialism.

There is hardly a branch of government in the US that doesn't believe in some implementation of these ideals. Hence, whether Harry Reid or John Boehner suggest cuts to the budget, the cuts are insignificant gestures compared with the growing national deficit and federal debt.

The mainstream media, of course, gets in the way, by propagandizing the leftist ideology to the American people, convincing the masses that not raising the debt ceiling will cut off grandma from her only source of income, or that spending cuts will lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it.

It's all a bunch of horse hockey.

Which leads us to the question, who are the worst offenders at spreading the dung? I've got my money on the socialists.

Andrew Klavan: The Facts of Life for Liberals

2011-07-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

Andrew Klavan explains the birds and the bees (of wealth) for those who believe spread-the-wealth schemes are really about spreading the wealth.

Soft socialism, expressed politically as tax and spend, entitlement government, does not work. Indeed, the redistribution of wealth cannot work in the long run. As the great F.A. Hayek said:

From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.

It's time to return to free market principles, deregulation, defunding entitlements, and replacing socialist economics taught in schools with market ideals.

No, the market system isn't perfect, but it's got a far better shot at preserving freedom for all than adopting state-run, soft socialism.

Obama: "Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you."

2011-07-25T12:18:00.000-07:00

The Socialist-in-Chief, turned dictator wannabe, tells the National Council of La Raza of his "frustrations" with trying to make a deal with Congress. In this video, he admits that he's tempted "to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own." The rest of the socialists in the country scratch their heads wondering why Obama doesn't go ahead and do that. (Considering the state of contemporary education, that observation, unfortunately, may not be a rhetorical question. Note the positive reaction from the folks at La Raza.)

And America's clueless call the Tea Party a bunch of loonies? What if President Bush had said something like this? Wouldn't the mainstream media be all over Bush like cockroaches on a moldy Twinkie under the fridge?

The mind boggles at Obama's hubris.

Andrew Klavan: Michele Bachmann Makes a Gaffe!!!

2011-07-14T23:07:00.000-07:00

Terrific graphics on this one!

Eric Cantor: Obama abruptly walked out of debt meeting

2011-07-13T17:36:00.000-07:00

From Politico:

President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of a stormy debt-limit meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday, throwing into serious doubt the already shaky negotiations, according to GOP sources

“He shoved back and said ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ and walked out,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters in the Capitol after the meeting.

It's Obama's extraordinary leadership ability, his professionalism, his dedication, his negotiating skills, and his willingness to solve the nation's problems that I like.

Conservative Quote: If Dems Can't Hand Out Money, What Good Are They?

2011-07-08T11:57:00.000-07:00

Stephen Green, appears at PJTV as Vodkapundit.

Here's a quote that explains a lot about President Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats who keep blocking passage of, not only a budget, but budget cuts, and the means to start to fix the fiscal irresponsibility that Pelosi's Congress got us into. The quote was made by Stephen Green at PJTV:

If [Obama] cuts spending, what good is he?... This president exists to hand out goodies to his supporters, sometimes it's union jobs with the phony baloney bankruptcy for GM and Chrysler, or the Boeing plant that he may or may not allow to be built in a right to work state, but mostly it's about handing out money. Democrats exist to hand out other people's money. And if the money gets cut off, there's no reason for Barack Obama and there's not much need for the Democrats in general. They're fighting for their very existence here and they know it . I just wonder if Republicans know it too. I don't think so.

Doesn't this explain a lot about the Democrats in the current administration?

The Obama Legacy

2011-07-07T10:08:00.000-07:00

Too busy to breath these days, putting out a magazine and teaching at two colleges. Here's a little something worth taking a look at and spreading around.

Independence Day

2011-07-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

(Michael Ramirez on Townhall.com)

Democrat Calls for Tougher Gun Laws After Illegal BATFE Program Sells Guns to Mexican Drug Cartels

2011-07-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland

Democrat US representative from Maryland, Elijah Cummings, wants stricter gun laws. His reason? Using a report from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) Cummings "quoted law enforcement officers on how lax or nonexistent laws and regulations on so-called 'straw' purchases of illegal weapons, firearms trafficking and monitoring of the sales of assault rifles and other long guns contributed to the thriving trafficking of illegal weapons to Mexico." (CNN)

Tougher gun laws are always good, right? And the BATFE report can be trusted, right?

Except that the BATFE program, called Operation Fast and Furious, broke current US and international laws in order to traffic illegal guns to Mexican drug cartels. This is the same Operation Fast and Furious, which released the guns that got border agent Brian Terry killed. (CBS) This is the same Operations Fast and Furious where federal agents were ordered to intentionally let guns "walk" across the border into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. (CBS) This is the same Operation Fast and Furious for which the BATFE acting director is expected to resign and threatens to unseat US Attorney General Eric Holder. (CNN)

The entire BATFE operation resulted in thousands of guns illegally crossing the border. The guns weren't sold by law-abiding firearms dealers. They weren't sold at gun shows. They weren't withheld from known "straw" buyers. They were intentionally and illegally sold by US government officials.

And now Democrat Elijah Cummings thinks we need tougher gun laws? The ideology behind the thought boggles the mind.

The Stinky Award: NBC News Hosts Admit Pressure to Book More Pro-Obama Flacks

2011-07-01T14:46:00.000-07:00

Can we all stop pretending that news agencies have anything to say anymore? Can the news agencies just admit that they are no longer relevant except as preachers of leftist dogma? And why does anyone still watch these Democrat flacks?

Andrew Klavan: Why Do Blacks Vote for Democrats?

2011-06-30T12:19:00.000-07:00

Andrew Klavan takes on the question of why Blacks continue to vote for Democrats. Is socialist dogma and perpetual class and race warfare really all that appealing?

Economic Freedom & Quality of Life Video

2011-06-29T18:07:00.000-07:00

Where are we headed in the US with more and more government control through taxes, spending, debt, entitlements, and unrestrained concepts of the welfare state? This video from the Charles Koch Foundation asks the question. What will be the response of the American people?

Planned Parenthood: To Fund or Not to Fund, That Is the Question

2011-06-29T13:40:00.000-07:00

Why did the United States government spend $363.2 to support Planned Parenthood which claims 332,278 "abortion procedures" in the United States in 2009? (Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet)

That is about as many as the 333,012 people who lived in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 2009, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The 332,278 abortions Planned Parenthood performed over the 365 days of 2009 equals an average of 910 lives terminated per day--or about 38 per hour, or one every 95 seconds. (CNS News)

What a waste....

New York Gay Marriage Cartoon

2011-06-27T22:34:00.000-07:00

(Cartoon by Glenn Foden - Source: Townhall.com)

One of the common arguments that gay activists make when defending same sex marriage (or gay marriage as they call it) is the appeal to equality based on the analogy of civil rights based on race or gender. Yet there is a significant disconnect in comparing an ideology based on sexual preference versus race or gender. The disconnect stems from the gay activist misperception of the analogy.

In a nutshell, while same sex attraction may or may not be inborn, the outward expression of sexual preference is a moral question and not a question of innate consequence, nor is it a civil right. The same is true of the outward expression of heterosexuality as well.

Here are some examples to illustrate the differences:

Being black is not a moral question. Being a black activist is.
Being a woman is not a moral question. Being a pro-abortion feminist is a moral decision.
Having sexual feelings is not a moral question. The media's hypersexualization of teens is.
Having same sex attraction is not a moral question. Preaching an ideology based on sexual preference in order to change the definition of marriage is.

Like it or not, homosexual behavior (not same-sex attraction) crosses the social boundaries of moral custom and moral behavior. To claim homosexual behavior is akin to race or gender is to propose a false analogy. There is no such thing as equality of morality. Yet gay activists will insist that their particular moral ideal must be the only valid moral standard and therefore must be protected by law.

Elitist NY Times Columnist: Kansas, Missouri ‘Middle Places’ Land of ‘Low Sloping Foreheads’

2011-06-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

Today's Stinky goes to David Carr of the NY Times. Here's a true leftist who considers anyone from Kansas or Missouri to live in the land of "low sloping foreheads."

Thank you David Carr for proving once again that the leftist media are a bunch of elitist ideologues who constantly exhibit the double standard of representing the people, while in fact despising them for their rejection of your point of view.

(Source: Breitbart.tv)

New York Adopts Gay Marriage Law

2011-06-25T11:12:00.000-07:00

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill into law last night that legalized same sex marriage in New York. The Bill passed the state Senate 33-29, with a number of Republicans changing their vote from two years ago in order to neuter marriage.

This makes the sixth state which has legalized same sex marriage, through legal fiat or, in this case, through legislative action.

This is the same Senate about which New York Senator Tom Duane, the only openly gay state senator, said "was a combination of 'a homophobic cesspool Senate' that is 'filled with people lacking courage.'" (New York Daily News) I guess even the Republicans got tired of the name calling and caved into political expediency.

The decision of the New York Legislature deals another blow to the legal, political, and social structure of the United States.

Gay ideology of same sex marriage is ultimately not a legal question, although it is certainly expressed in the legal world through identity politics. Rather, gay ideology is a battle for the definition of what is moral within society. "Gay marriage" is merely an attempt, not at equality, fairness, or even family, but it is an attempt at establishing a political identity based on sexual preference. While the question of harm may not affect the individual per se, the aspect of harm does threaten the more nebulous realm of such basic societal elements as family or the institution of marriage.

Systems which ultimately tear at the "fabric of society" (as Edmund Burke put it about 250 years ago) all have similar features, related to the utopian systems of collectivism or progressivism. Such systems attempt to replace true moral principles with state-imposed morality. The founders of the US understood the problem of imposing moral values when they adopted the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution. The founders understood the dangers of a government enforcing the ideals of religion, as well as enforcing the ideals of any particular group. Hence the 1st Amendment guarantees individual free speech and the free expression of religion. Since the founding of the US, we've seen examples of governments which impose the state's version of morality. These have inevitably turned into statist governments such as exist throughout Europe today, and sometimes turned into highly destructive political systems such as Communism and National Socialism.

We must each as ourselves. Are we as a nation really willing to let gay ideology dictate state-imposed morality? Apparently the New York legislature thinks so.

Andrew Klavan: Klavan's Economic Smackdown: Paul Ryan vs. Barack Obama

2011-06-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

Andrew Klavan on the Culture

The Stinky Award: Shameless Democrats Blame GOP Nominees for Answering CNN’s Questions at Debate

2011-06-17T17:39:00.000-07:00

This week's Stinky Award goes to the Democrat National Party for its smear propaganda against the Republicans in a debate with questions asked by CNN moderator John King.

From Breitbart.tv:

The DNC has produced a deceptively edited advertisement to make it look as though the GOP candidates for President aren't interested in education or the middle class and instead are fixated on Shariah Law and permanent moon bases. The problem is, of course, each of the candidates' statements were direct responses to the questions delivered from CNN moderator John King. Now, we know Democrats aren't used to politicians who give direct answers to questions in a debate, but perhaps their beef should be with the questions and not the answers.

Socialism or a Democratic Republic? The Facebook Status Update

2011-06-16T22:04:00.002-07:00

I came across this bit of socialist garbage, currently being spread around Facebook:

The questions asked, of course, make leftists feel smug about taking the moral high ground against evil corporate America (the backbone of our economy, by the way) with a jab thrown in for the environmentalists.

Not wishing to have the left completely control the thought processes of modern Americans, I offer this modest substitution, geared more for rational conservatives.

Please do go ahead and splatter this all over Facebook.

New Book - Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind

2011-06-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

UCLA Professor Tim Grosclose has a new book out Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. In his book, he outlines what conservatives have known for years, that the mainstream media has turned more and more leftist which in turn promulgates, influences, rewords, redefines, and imposes leftist doctrine.

From the book:

Using objective, social-scientific methods, the filtering prevents us from seeing the world as it actually is. Instead, we see only a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass—a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see....

That bias makes us more liberal, which makes us less able to detect the bias, which allows the media to get away with more bias, which makes us even more liberal.

Read the book and decide just how much Americans have been taken in by leftist doctrine. Then take a look at Andrew Breitbart's Righteous Indignation to read his fascinating story of enlightenment and to glean ideas about combating (as he calls it) the Democrat - Media Complex.

Judge James Ware Denies Motion to Vacate Anti-Proposition 8 Judgment

2011-06-15T13:06:00.000-07:00

No surprises here. US District Court Judge James Ware has issued a 21 page order denying the California's Proposition 8 defenders' motion to vacate former district judge Vaughn Walker's anti-Prop 8 judgment on account of Walker's failure to recuse.

Ware, rather than directly taking on Prop 8 proponents’ argument, rejects it out of hand by mischaracterizing it. For example, he states that the argument for recusal rests merely on the grounds that Walker "could be affected by the proceedings" and that "it depends upon the assumption that a judge who is in a relationship has an interest in getting married which is so powerful that it would render that judge incapable of performing his duties."

In fact, the core of Prop 8 defendants' argument is that Walker had a "significant legal interest" at stake in the case. He was deciding whether to confer on himself a legal right to marry his same-sex partner. The argument also states that Walker has no exemption from the long-held legal principle that no one can be a judge in his own case and no one is permitted to try cases where he has an interest in the outcome.

Ware ignored the defenders' argument to favor identity politics over the rule of law.

Of course, all the leftist media now mischaracterize the order to vacate, promoting headlines such as this from the New York Times: "California Judge Upholds a Ruling on Gay Marriage."

There are several problems with the bias and propaganda shown by the press:

1) The news headlines all make Judge Ware's order sound as though gay marriage is now legal in California or that it soon will be. This is pure and simple propaganda for the masses who do not carefully follow the news.

2) Judge Ware did not "uphold" any ruling. He denied the Prop 8 proponents' motion to vacate the decision. There is a world of difference between the two.

3) Judge Ware's order was not a "ruling on gay marriage." It was a ruling on a motion to vacate Judge Walker's biased and legally dubious opinions about Prop 8 and about California voters.

4) Prop 8 doesn't have anything to do with "gay marriage." It is a California constitutional amendment stating that California only recognizes a marriage between a man and a woman. Even in the case of same sex marriage, there is no test or proof of "gayness" required. To insist that the debate is about "gay marriage" is to deny the problem of intrusive provability (How does one "prove" gayness?) and to deny the myriad ramifications of neutering the marriage relationship.

Proposition 8 will now go back to the federal circuit court, on its way to the Supreme Court. Same sex marriage advocates and gay activists will consider this to be a great victory in the struggle to promote gay identity.

The rest will see this for what it is. Another judicial attack on marriage and the family, tearing at the very fabric of our society.

Leftist Fixations, or, Why Can't the Media Leave Sarah Palin Alone?

2011-06-14T05:00:00.002-07:00

Sarah Palin, the darling of leftist media everywhere. What's behind their nearly constant obsession with this woman?

The leftist media hate giving up their elitist control of the political and social narrative. Yet the media's consistent attacks against those who don't stand with them ideologically is now exposed for what it really is: a blatant attempt to maintain power at any costs and mania against all things conservative. After all, according to the Alinsky playbook, there is no such thing as good or evil and any means to an end is perfectly acceptable. Let the character assassinations continue!

Just look at the media's (and Nancy Pelosi's) attempt to keep Anthony Weiner in power, despite Weiner's own admission of guilt. (Of course Pelosi had to sing a different tune when Weiner admitted texting a 17 year old girl.... After all, Democrats have some limits - not sure what they are - but they do have some.)

The leftist media are so fixed on keeping the power, that character assassinations have become commonplace and very nearly universal.

Here's a modest list of the top psychoses afflicting the leftist media:

Sarah Palin Derangement Syndrome
What is it about Sarah Palin that after three years as an "also ran" vice presidential candidate, the media just can't seem to leave her alone? She doesn't even have to actually be a candidate for the Republican nomination in order to have the media nipping at her heels like ill-behaved yippy-dogs chasing after cars on the street.

Palin is dangerous to leftists because she represents an uncanny ability to connect with right wing voters. There's nothing more dangerous to leftists than a community organizer who appeals to, in the words of MSNBC's Chris "Tingly Leg" Matthews, the "rural" Americans, the conservatives, the Christians, and the "culturally backward."

How awful it must be to the radical left that there are Americans who don't believe in socialist ideology.

George W. Bush Derangement Syndrome
It's always nice to have a whipping boy on which to blame all the world's troubles. And while the current president of the US is always accused of causing the world's problems, none have been so maligned as George W. Bush. The fact that Obama and the media still point to Bush as the cause of all evil in America is proof positive of a mania - especially when Obama in Afghanistan and Libya looks like a bad B movie remake of Bush foreign policies and the "solution" to the national debt is more of the same.

Andrew Breitbart Derangement Syndrome
When the Weiner story broke, did the leftist media immediately jump all over the congressman to bring truth to power? No. Rather, the media (and Weiner) relentlessly attacked the messenger: Andrew Breitbart. (That is, until Weiner actually confessed in public.)

Because Andrew Breitbart has stood up to the mainstream media and because he's not a blathering liberal, the leftist media point to him as a modern-day Joseph Goebbels, and deny the facts right in front of their noses.

When Breitbart got his moment to stand and ask the media "Where have I ever lied?" the media ignored simple facts and continued to paint Breitbart as the propaganda machine of some fascist phantasm.

Surely Breitbart must be doing something right in order to get the leftist media twisted into such a rage.

Rush Limbaugh Derangement Syndrome
Limbaugh's been around for a long time and has unprecedented audiences. Nothing gets the goat of leftist media more than a successful competitor. Especially one who doesn't preach the gospel of "social justice" or "redistribution of wealth." If Breitbart is Goebbels, Limbaugh is the Great Satan, from whom all evil flows.

But what really gets the media all riled up over Limbaugh is that he uses the left's own tactics to point out how bankrupt their narrative really is. And he's been doing it successfully for years and years.

Glenn Beck Derangement Syndrome
Beck was a firestorm that hit the mainstream media right where it hurt them the most - in their pocketbook. He became so "dangerous" to the leftist media that the international billionaire, George Soros, funded the website Media Matters in order to try and maintain control over the political and social narrative in the US.

And while Beck has indeed left FOXNews, his voice is still heard by more Americans than all liberal talk radio can manage. The derangement stems from the simple idea that leftist media cannot comprehend that more Americans would rather listen to conservative talk radio than liberal talk radio. Hence, liberal talk radio must continually be bailed out by such folks as George Soros. It cannot survive without being on welfare.

FOXNews Derangement Syndrome
George Soros' Media Matters also takes special aim at FOX, which has a larger market share than any other liberal-bias media. The leftist media war cry against FOX implies that it too is the Great Satan of America, spreading lies across the globe with unfair advantage.

Considering that FOX is the only conservative mainstream media, of course it attracts the largest group of Americans. And it's hardly fair to compare FOX on the one hand with ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, and PBS. If FOX must be vilified in order to compete with six other networks, maybe, just maybe, the narrative of the leftist media isn't appealing to most Americans.

Just a thought.

Chris Matthews: Weiner in Trouble Because His Behavior Offends ‘Culturally Backward’ Christian Conservatives

2011-06-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

Chris Matthews, MSNBC news hack and professional conservophobe.

Today's Stinky goes once again to Chris Matthews of MSNBC. In this segment of Hardball, he proves once again just how out of touch he, and the liberal left, are with mainstream America. Here's the question: If Weiner offends the "rural" Americans, the conservatives, the Christians, and the "culturally backward" in America, does that mean, by implication, that Wiener is a cultural progressive? Is Weiner one of the enlightened elites?

Or does that mean that the "progressives" in our country consider (in Mathews' words) that immoral behavior, indiscreet behavior, or embarrassing behavior is perfectly acceptable? Maybe it's only acceptable if Democrats do it? Or maybe it's only acceptable if you don't get caught (or, at least, you confuse the mob so that getting caught doesn't matter)?

Chris Matthews needs to go away and stop feeding the leftist mob with his horse hooey.

Source: Breitbart

Eric Boehlert Assures Al Sharpton: Media Matters Will Continue Monitoring Fox News Despite Beck’s Absence

2011-06-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

Eric Boehlert, Senior Fellow at Media Matters, is interviewed by Al Sharpton on MSNBC. Media Matters is a leftist "watchdog" group, funded by George Soros, and dedicated to the proposition that FOXNews and voices like Glenn Beck's must be shut up at all costs.

I hand today's Stinky Award to Eric Boehlert. This creeper also wins the George Orwell award for doublethink and the Oscar for most resembling Jack Nicholson in the movie The Shining. Al Sharpton gets credit for the assist.

Shouldn't it bother Americans that a Soros-funded corporation sits around all day "monitoring" every word spoken by non-liberals in the media? Has modern liberalism finally gone over the precarious edge of reason? And is it coincidence that George Soros and George Orwell have the same first name? (You never see them at parties together....)

Source: Breitbart

Andrew Klavan's One-State Solution: Give the Middle East to the Jews

2011-06-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

Andrew Klavan takes on the "One State" idea of unifying Israelis and Palestinians.

Barack Obama: Saul Alinsky's Fanning Resentment and Hostility

2011-06-01T14:34:00.000-07:00

I am currently rereading Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radcials. While reading the book, I've compared President Barack Obama's actions and governing style with Alinsky's explanations of the role of the community organizer. Obama's "style" and, especially, his mismanagement of the office of the President of the United States can be understood completely when compared with Alinsky's socialist philosophy.

One example of how Obama operates struck me this morning:

[The organizer] has taken a group;...he has fanned their resentments and hostilities by a number of means, including challenging contrasts of better conditions....And so the... organizer simultaneously breeds conflict and builds a power structure.

Consider Obama's campaign and the way he has subsequently dealt with the common American problems during the Bush administration of the war in Iraq, the failed mortgage industry, a floundering economy, and the rise in deficit spending. Using Bush to "fan resentment and hostility" Obama sailed into office as the Great Community Organizer.

We have to admit, that Alinsky's tactics worked for Obama. He certainly built resentment and hostility against George W. Bush and against conservative ideology.

Yet now that we have the resentment, we have to ask ourselves, has the Obama administration brought the "better conditions" that Americans sought during the 2008 election? Consider the following:

A spending package that increased debt spending and a federal deficit that dwarfs anything Bush did.
A spending package full of waste and payouts to big business (like GM).
A "stimulus" concept that failed to promote private sector jobs.
A "surge" in Afghanistan with no end in sight.
A health care deal guaranteed to increase taxes, raise medical costs, and hurt middle class Americans.
A "military action" in Libya with no Congressional oversight.
An economy still floundering and befuddling the mainstream media.

Are we really better off with Obama at the head of the US? He arrived in office using Alinsky's tactics, but his bankrupt ideology fails the litmus test of pragmatic solutions. And that, of course, fans resentment and hostility.

What did the Community Organizer in Chief expect?

On This Memorial Day....

2011-05-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

"That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." -- A. Lincoln

Can We Be Adults Here? The Impact of a Fatherless America

2011-05-27T15:12:00.000-07:00

While leftist doctrine may still adhere to the concept that "it takes a village to raise a child" the reality of human experience shows that what children need most is a mother and a father.

A recent article entitled "Fatherless America?" shows just what children miss out on because of the modern, bankrupt ideals which promote "alternative" families.

(Yes, there are certainly exceptions to every family and I'm sure some of you got along just fine without a father or a mother. The issue is not to point out the exceptions.)

(I don't know who I'm arguing with there. I just figured one of my readers would bring up a "but what about...?" exception.)

(And yes, I frequently argue with myself, especially in the shower. It's a great way to start the day.)

(But I digress....)

Here are some quotes from the article:

In many ways, I came to understand the importance of fatherhood through its absence — both in my life and in the lives of others. I came to understand that the hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children is one that no government can fill. We can do everything possible to provide good jobs and good schools and safe streets for our kids, but it will never be enough to fully make up the difference.

The quote comes from none other than Barack Obama. A family researcher had these observations:

For many years, marriage and children were a packaged deal, and society was pretty good at enforcing that with strong cultural norms....

Marriage isn't about kids anymore. It's about my satisfaction as an adult, my emotional well-being, my personal development....

The bottom line is, kids really need frequent contact with both parents to successfully navigate developmental stages as they grow up.

How about these statistics?

A study by the Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services found only 13 percent of juvenile delinquents come from families where the biological mother and father are married to each other. Thirty-three percent come from families where the parents have divorced. Forty-four percent have parents who were never married.

The University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University both found young men who grow up in homes without fathers are twice as likely to end up in jail as those who come from traditional two-parent families — even when other factors like race, income, parent education and urban residence were held constant.

Or these?

Children who grow up without a father in the home are also more likely to run away from home and commit suicide, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Eighty-five percent of children with behavioral disorders don't have a father at home.

In a society bent on negating the importance of having a mother and a father in the home, the real losers are the children - the next generation who have to suffer the consequences of poor decisions made by the so-called adults of the previous generation.

Media Research Center Sting: DC Liberals Sign Petition to Ban Conservative Websites

2011-05-26T13:50:00.002-07:00

From the Media Research Center, an online resource dedicated to exposing the follies of modern liberalism, comes this video gem. As the MRC explains:

After hearing news the other day that the Obama administration had appointed a new position to monitor and push back against negative online press we thought some liberals in DC might think it wasn't enough. So we sent Joe Schoffstall out to see just how far liberals would go to silence conservative speech. Joe went around Georgetown in DC with a petition to "Ban Conservative Hate Sites". Here is what went down.

But will modern liberals sign a petition so blatantly advocating a violation of the 1st Amendment? Apparently so....

The text of the petition reads:

The undersigned hereby adamantly demand that the United States government shut down right wing hate sites. The hate speech propagated by sites like the Drudge Report, Hot Air, Instapundit, Big Government, and others must not be allowed to corrupt our political discourse any longer. These sites are dangerous not only to truth and freedom but also to our society as a whole. BAN THEM NOW!

Busting Gas Price Myths

2011-05-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

As gas prices keep rising, President Obama keeps fiddling. Notice in this video how many times he refers to "the truth." To which "truth" would you be referring, Mr. President?

Obama's remarks about Libya is sheer fantasy, since less than 1% of US oil comes from Libya. (How's that illegal war for oil going for ya, Mr. President?) And is "clean energy" the only solution to helping gas prices at the pump? Perhaps to a radical environmentalist. The rest of Americans would like to see a few more options, thank you.

Admittedly, the problem of soaring gas prices is more complex than this video indicates. For example, the US suffers the problem of increased competition with China for Mideast oil.

What does ring true, is Obama's "commitment" to renewable energy. Unfortunately for the American people, this means that his leftist doctrine actually applauds higher gas prices. Obama himself isn't effected by them. The higher prices serve the "useful" purpose of starting to wean Americans from using cars for transportation. And higher prices serve Obama's statist ideals to make the American people even more dependent on government for basic needs.

What this means in real terms is further economic problems for Americans, interruption of business and wealth creation, and increased economic misery for the poor - those least able to afford increased fuel costs. (But hey, we all know leftists only care about the poor when it suits a political agenda.) In Alinsky's radical socialist terms, any means to achieve desired ends are all right, if the ends agree with your political agenda.

Obama's political agenda seems clear enough - screw the American people.

The Agenda Project: America The Beautiful Spreading Lies About Medicare Cuts

2011-05-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

Today's Stinky goes to a video produced from The Agenda Project, headed up by Erica Payne, author of The Practical Progressive: How to Build a 21st Century Political Movement. This video villifies the GOP and Paul Ryan in particular, stating:

With pretty boy Paul Ryan's draconian and savage cuts to Medicare in his budget proposal, we have to ask ourselves: Is America still beautiful without Medicare?

While I'm not particularly fond of the GOP, the tactics used here to discredit the Ryan plan to cut government spending uses the tired tactic of demonizing the opposing view, rather than dealing with the the realities of good governance.

See if you can spot at least four lies about Medicare and seniors in this video.

Dark Energy Is Driving Universe Apart

2011-05-20T17:58:00.000-07:00

Artist's representation of dark energy (purple lines) showing its domination of the effects of gravitation (green lines) and the interaction between galaxies.

A five-year survey of 200,000 galaxies confirms that dark energy is driving apart our universe at accelerating speeds. (Science Daily)

In related news, scientists have now discovered the underlying source of dark energy: the Cannes Film Festival. Case in point is Antonio Banderas' latest movie, entitled The Skin I Live In.

Director Pedro Almodovar (C) poses with cast members Elena Anaya (L) and Antonio Banderas (R).

According to witnesses, the film was so out of touch with common decency, morality, and even French standards, the movie literally horrified viewers who then fled the movie theater. (FOX News)

"We can now be reasonably certain," said an astrophysicist who wished to remain anonymous, "that we can trace the source of dark energy directly to such primal events as The Cannes Film Festival, as well as to a host of other, out-of-touch and amoral filmmakers across the globe."

The astrophysicist continued: "Such events as the Banderas film help contribute to driving the universe apart, increasing the dark energy, while destroying the basic social and cultural mores which connect intelligent life together. In essence....this movie is helping to cause the brain death of the universe."

Moviegoers, those who weren't projectile vomiting on the sidewalk outside of the theater, had a decidedly different point of view about the nature of the movie.

"I see nothing wrong with helping expand the universe," one movie goer stated after watching the entire film. "What's wrong with the suicide, the gender reassignment, the face transplant, the torture, the implied incest, the rape and the nudity. I mean, that's life, isn't it?"

My views on such "art?" There is indeed an abundance of dark energy driving the universe apart. Unfortunately, out-of-touch filmmakers, such as director Pedro Almodovar and actor Antonio Banderas, are sources of dark and such poor movies, they don't qualify for the realm of intelligence.

And so, the coveted Stinky goes to the film The Skin I Live In.

Andrew Klavan: The Bin Laden Effect: How Nancy Pelosi and Stephen Colbert Learned to Love Seal Team Six

2011-05-19T13:05:00.000-07:00

Andrew Klaven exposes the duplicity of the left when confronted with the cold, hard world. Take killing Osama bin Laden for example....

New Study: Stimulus Bill Destroyed One Million Private Sector Jobs

2011-05-17T13:25:00.001-07:00

Feeling Stimulated Yet?

A recent study by Timothy Conley from the University of Western Ontario, Canada Economics Department and Bill Dupor of Ohio State University Economics Department shows that the stimulus bill, passed in 2009 to "save" jobs and get the economy back on track, actually destroyed one million private sector jobs:

Our benchmark results suggest that the ARRA created/saved approximately 450 thousand state and local government jobs and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs. (Here's the PDF of the study.)

What leftist doctrine doesn't seem to grasp is that public sector jobs, while employing people, exist only if the private sector can generate wealth. This study shows what common sense should have provided when the Pelosi/Reid Congress was in charge - Keynesian economics is a bankrupt philosophy that has the capacity to bankrupt entire countries.

Case in point is this graph, showing public sector jobs, service industry jobs, and goods producing jobs from 2001 to 2010. The pink line tanking at the bottom of the graph shows goods producing jobs lost pre- and post-stimulus. Worse than the initial job loss, is the lack of replacement jobs, now that the media assures us that the economy's "all-better-now-thanks-to-Obama."

(Click for larger image.)

This study, while not surprising, is disturbing. How long can our country stand by following such follies of economic failure?

Can't Let Those Conservatives Get Too Uppity: How the Media View Andrew Breitbart

2011-05-15T21:05:00.002-07:00

Andrew Breitbart, author of the new book Righteous Indignation. Breitbart is one of the newest of the liberal left's whipping posts, demonstrating once again that the left have no idea what the word "tolerance" means.

Here's a compilation video of the Media's view of Andrew Breitbart. Again, you can know with absolute certainty when someone speaks truth against leftist doctrine. The left launches a campaign of personal destruction.

Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two

2011-05-14T20:08:00.000-07:00

In the modern economic question of central planning (Keynesian economics) versus market determination (Hayek) our government's filled with Keynesians, both among Republicans and Democrats. The problem with Keynesian economics stems from several areas:

1) Central planning cannot take into account all the complexities of the market and must, therefore fail to provide even adequate control.

2) Planned economies need strong, centralized government, which, when given enough power, runs the risk of authoritarianism and despotism.

3) Large deficit spending doesn't produce wealth. Wealth must be produced for growth to occur....

This rapidly gets too dull an argument for most people. Instead of going on, here are Keynes and Hayek in a new video, explaining their views. In rap.

It's Not All Obama's Fault or Do You Know George Soros?

2011-05-13T15:25:00.000-07:00

Left wing billionaire and media mogul George Soros would like to rearrange the world in his own image.

Perhaps you've never heard of George Soros. Not many people have. Soros is a left wing billionaire who is making a career of debunking conservative media and conservative values and subverting the role of the US in world politics. By way of introduction into George Soros' mind, consider the following quote from 2006:

The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.

Soros was the one who bailed out NRP when Congress clamored to defund its public money.

Soros is the money behind the leftist hit website Media Matters, where every word and deed of conservatives in the public eye are systematically picked to pieces to give talking points to the Democrat-media complex. Media Matters was the group who considers it's bound duty to be at war with FOXNews and with Andrew Breitbart's conservative websites.

Perhaps, then, we should pay attention when Soros funds a conference to "establish new international rules" and "reform the currency system." (Media Research Center) About Soros' conference, the MRC goes on to conclude:

The Soros empire is silent about this new Bretton Woods conference because it isn't just designed to change global economic rules. It also is designed to put America in its place - part of a multilateral world the way Soros wants it. He wrote that the U.S. "could lead a cooperative effort to involve both the developed and the developing world, thereby reestablishing American leadership in an acceptable form."

Is this really the best direction for the United States - to be recast in George Soros' image?

Chris Matthews: "I’m Not a Bush Hater."

2011-05-12T06:00:00.004-07:00

Today's Stinky Award for Media Bias goes to Chris Matthews - the Village Idiot of MSNBC. From Breitbart.tv:

First of all, we absolutely know that Chris Matthews is lying when he says he's not a Bush hater. Case in point? This Hardball segment arguing with a guy that's been out of office for two and one-half years, as well as referring to statements taken (out of context) nearly a decade ago.

Secondly, Michael Isikoff refers to Bush's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld's memoir Known and Unknown, apparently skipping the entire chapter dealing with this very subject of Osama bin Laden and the War on Terrorism. In the strategic context of the War on Terror, Bush's comments, replayed here, make perfect sense. I dare you to read Rumsfeld's book (it's a good read) and not come away with a new perspective of the Bush administration.

Lastly, a big Stinky goes out to MSNBC for showing us an accurate glimpse into the collective brain cell mentality of Bush Derangement Syndrome and for, once again, proving that Chris Matthews has more blather than brains.

Nanny State: Tax Parents of Obese Children

2011-05-10T22:57:00.001-07:00

From STLToday:

An Illinois lawmaker says parents who have obese children should lose their state tax deduction.

"It's the parents' responsibility that have obese kids," said state Sen. Shane Cultra, R-Onarga. "Take the tax deduction away for parents that have obese kids."

Here's a question for Cultra: Why stop with taxing parents with obese children? Why not tax owners of fat pets as well?

But wait! Why stop there? Why not tax obese adults - a universal fat tax?

For every pound over established government limits, Illinois should charge $113.92. (The $.92 helps pay the new tax handling fee.) People over the "healthy" limit of 20 pounds overweight would pay a premium surcharge of $327.96 per each pound over the legal limit. Any obese person who insisted on appearing in public without proper clothing would be charged an additional "mental distress" fee of $244.98.

The state of Illinois could wisely establish height/weight ratios through careful medical and other professional determination, based on norms established by Keira Knightley and Mary Kate Olsen. In an effort to promote healthier eating, the state could also join philosophical hands with San Francisco and ban Happy Meals.

The new Illinois nanny state would become the model for the rest of the US and eventually make its way to the federal level as an additional bonus to help pay for Obamacare. As a matter of fact, with increased fat tax revenues, no welfare program would be beyond our reach and we could rest assured that our government has our best interests in mind as it takes control over our lives.

Bigoted! The First Resort Weapon of the Left

2011-05-10T15:42:00.000-07:00

The New York Daily News reports on a rally of several hundred gay rights advocates at the New York State Capitol, there to push the state's governor and legislature to neuter marriage. The New York legislature wisely chose in 2009 not to pass same sex marriage legislation, keeping with the wishes of a majority of New Yorkers.

In expressing his solidarity with the cause, New York Senator Tom Duane, "the only openly gay state senator," decided that the root reasons same sex marriage didn't pass in New York "was a combination of 'a homophobic cesspool Senate' that is 'filled with people lacking courage.'" (New York Daily News)

Note Duane's tactic here, one we see ad nauseum among the left. The first resort weapon of the left is to attempt to polarize targets by name calling and labeling (Alinsky). Nowadays, being called a bigot/racist/homophobe is an immediate indicator to conservatives that we're on the right track in hampering the bankrupt policies of the left. It's also an indicator that leftists have lost the argument.

Congratulations to the New York Senate for getting labeled by Senator Duane.

And congratulations to Senator Duane for resorting to name calling. You're a true member of the institutional left.

Andrew Klavan Introduces a Keith Olbermann Compilation

2011-05-09T08:23:00.000-07:00

Andrew Klavan, speaking at the recent Media Research Center's celebration of the best and worst media bias awards, introduces a video paying tribute to the late, great Keith Olbermann. Ah! How we don't miss you Keith!

Andrew Klavan: The Hilarious World of Abortion

2011-05-05T12:21:00.000-07:00

Andrew Klavan takes on the abortion issue and offers a clear, concise argument about why the issue is still a hot topic long after Roe v. Wade.

Steven Crowder: BARACK FOR BRAZIL!! (Featuring an All-Star Cast)

2011-04-28T17:13:00.000-07:00

Steven Crowder endorses Barack Obama for president...of Brazil.

FORGED? Obama Birth Certificate Released

2011-04-27T12:15:00.006-07:00

FOXNews reported that the White House released President Obama's long form birth certificate. While I'm not a birther and don't buy into conspiracy theories, the released document has been tampered with and changed, and badly at that. The document FOXNews reports from the White House does not appear to be a valid birth certificate.

Here is a link to the original PDF file.

The Adobe PDF file has quite a few visual discrepancies. Here is the original that I've converted into a JPEG file so we can view it in Blogger. Click on it for a full-size version.

When I imported the original PDF document into Adobe Illustrator, I found ten different elements which makes up the image, including cut and pasted text and the well-known "Certificate of Live Birth" pasted on top of the green form.

Here's a look at the form, with all the elements outlined in bright red and with the Certificate of Live Birth form offset on the background. Click on it for a full-size version.

This is a manipulated document.

On Letterman, Maher Charges Racist ‘Tea-Baggers’ Are ‘Corporate America’s Useful Idiots’

2011-04-26T17:24:00.002-07:00

As a new feature, here at Self Evident Truths, I've created The Stinkies Award for Media Bias. I'll award The Stinkies to the media who try so desperately to cling to their leftist narrative that they will do and say just about anything to destroy the reputations and beliefs of conservative America.

Case in point is this clip of Bill Maher (who else to represent the intolerant left?) on the David Letterman show. Here's a brilliant example of Maher throwing down the narrative gauntlet of bigotry against the Tea Party. Notice the rude and spiteful tactics, playing the race card, resorting to vulgarities, and generally showing the world what hatred Maher truly has. All this without providing a shred of evidence in his broad condemnation and hatred of the Tea Party.

Congratulations Bill Maher. You've won the first Stinkies Award for Media Bias!

Video from Breitbart.tv

Advanced Thuggery: How to College Course on Violent Union Tactics Chilling Case Studies

2011-04-26T04:00:00.001-07:00

Two union leaders teach a college class on "thinking creatively" about disrupting manufacturing businesses by using fear, intimidation, and violence.

And leftists want us to believe that big businesses are the real danger to the US? Video from Breitbart.com.

Which reminds me of an old Monty Python sketch. The relevant bits start at 1:30:

While Obama and Congress Spending Goes Out of Control - Culture Matters

2011-04-25T09:51:00.002-07:00

Americans are finally waking up to the fact that absurd deficit spending and a huge national debt are somehow bad for the country. A few even realize that the fault lies within the leftist ideals of statist government, unsustainable Keynesian economic models, and the failed policies of the welfare state.

Yet, a lot of conservatives, libertarians, and even a few old-style Democrats focus on deficit spending without addressing the root of the problem. Government uberspending is merely a symptom of the underlying disease.

What is the disease that's eating away at the very foundations of our government? The rejection of those values and ideas on which the US was founded. We've rejected the secular religion based on the Constitution and have, in its place, gradually imposed the secular religion of socialism. The new secular religion values change at all costs and expresses a profound intolerance against any other system.

Leftist doctrine, in absolute hubris, cannot tolerate competing systems. Modern conservatism is demonized as bigoted and unfeeling. Christianity is demonized as shameful bigotry. Tea Party members are condemned as racist. Republicans are trying to kill women and babies. Middle Americans are gun-clinging, Bible thumpers.

Americans have long known that the universities were permeated with faculty who bought into the anti-American system. Yet we, who held the benefits of our constitutional system, said and did little. Now we have several generations of children raised up within the public school system who, besides becoming increasingly illiterate and uneducated, are taught only the memes of leftist thought.

The sheer idiocy of the dialog in Washington DC ought to convince us that something is fundamentally wrong with the current underlying system:

In proposing a budget, Republicans tried to defund Planned Parenthood. In response, Harry Reid implied that women's cancer screenings are more important than saving the country - attacking Republicans by fear mongering.
Republicans proposed a budget that would significantly reduce spending. Barack Obama called the budget wrong for America and proposed taxing the rich even more to reduce the budget - because being rich is unfair.
Congressional talk about cutting spending currently centers on raising the debt ceiling - a situation that Barack Obama himself called a failure in leadership when talking about the rising debt under George W. Bush.
The International Monetary Fund now predicts that China's economy will surpass that of the US sometime in 2016 - an indicator that current policies have put the US into decline.

The point isn't that our economy is a shambles. It is. Rather, the point is that in order to fix the economy, we must reject the socialist policies that brought us to this point. This is not merely a problem of economic policy, it is a war against the underlying socialist assumptions and socialist narratives that we've allowed to creep into the system at all levels.

We will never be able to maintain checks and balances in our government until we take on and conquer the destructive narrative of the left.

We must bring American culture in line with classical liberalism to cure the socialist disease failing our system. Fiscal conservatives must also become cultural conservatives.

Andrew Klavan: How to Behave During an Islamic Massacre

2011-04-21T10:01:00.002-07:00

Andrew Klavan takes on multiculturalism once again in this How to Behave During an Islamic Massacre.

Protesting the Madison, Wisconsin Tea Party Rally with Sarah Palin

2011-04-19T11:27:00.000-07:00

This was a find. At a recent Tea Party rally in Madison, Wisconsin, which featured a speech by Sarah Palin, someone turned a camera on one of those protesting...Sarah Palin. Take a look:

I realize that this man represents only a small sample of the entire protest against the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. Yet the mainstream media who've attacked Palin and the Tea Party for two solid years still can't admit who are the real nut cases and extremists in the current political climate.

The mainstream media, which controls the narrative, has too long demonized and defined legitimate protests against leftist policy in the government.

On Civil Liberties and Morality

2011-04-15T14:20:00.000-07:00

F. A. Hayek

Just some thoughts today on the link between civil liberties and morality. It was Edmund Burke, the 18th Century conservative, who noted:

Men are qualified for civil liberties, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their appetites: in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity.

Huh. Burke tied the concept of liberty directly to a moral base indicating that liberty cannot survive rapacity. John Locke, the17th Century liberal promoted this concept:

Where there is no property, there is no justice.

Meaning that anyone, or anything, which could take away property was bound to take away justice as well. Darned radical thought. F. A. Hayek, the 20th Century economist, made the axiomatic observation:

Sooner or later, however, [governments] tend to abuse...power and to suppress the freedom they had earlier secured.

Without moral restraint, government takes power and property from the very citizens it should be protecting. Without moral restraint, justice dies and rapacity wins.

How long must Americans listen to the members of Congress and the president wrangle and quibble over how much property the government needs to take from the people, or how much property will be wasted in the name of entitlements and programs, or how much liberty is taken away from the common voter in order to promote a Brave New World? How long will America sleep while its wealth and resources are spent and thrown away as casually as toilet paper?

President Obama's Trash Talk

2011-04-14T12:35:00.001-07:00

I was going to post an analysis of a quote on civil liberties and morality but found this video analysis from the Wall Street Journal showing President's Obama's complete unwillingness to seriously address the budget, deficit, and $12.5 trillion debt. Instead, Obama seems content to vilify the Republicans in Congress for advancing any kind of cuts. The video's about eight minutes long, but worth a look.

And here's a video of Congressman Paul Ryan's response to President Obama's speech. Ryan is the one who proposed the multi-trillion dollar budget cuts that have received a lot of flak from the media and from Democrats. You don't have to agree with the Ryan plan to see that Obama is not really serious about saving the fiscal foundation of the country.

Jennifer Roback Morse Testimony to RI House Judiciary on Marriage

2011-04-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute argues before the Rhode Island House Judiciary committee about the dangers of the arguments behind same sex marriage advocates. This is a well thought out argument and presentation and worth a look.

Mean to Me: Freedom from Being Offended?

2011-04-12T12:44:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things that offend me. For example, abortion is truly offensive. The idea that we as a nation accept the ideal of Woman's Choice as somehow more important than the inalienable right of life speaks volumes to the mentality of the American mind. The attack on the institutions of marriage and family is offensive, tearing at the very fabric of our society. Politicians are always offensive, self-serving, and power mongering.

I find classical liberalism the best hope of creating a society and state that will protect the freedoms of all individuals. Yet, even when offended by others, I still value such things as friendship above my own classical liberal ideology. If confronted by something that I find offensive, especially from one of my friends, I don't take offense. That seems to be the natural thing to do but may have more to do with my personality than with my ideology. And as with anyone who stands in the political arena, I've grown fairly thick skin and take insults and personal attacks from strangers with a grain of salt. Yet, with my friends, I will be the first to apologize if offense is given.

That said, I simply do not understand the modern leftist mindset of taking offense at anything they disagree with. I do not understand people, which I was proud to call friends, taking umbrage with my political views and ending our friendship over them instead of ignoring them. This is the saddest part of modern leftist thought - one that says that anyone who disagrees must be a (take your pick) hate monger, H8R, racists, bigot, fear monger, crazed, Bible thumping, wingnut, Tea Bagging, gun toting, ignorant, whack.

It simply wouldn't occur to me to end a friendship over a difference of political ideals. Yet it is my leftist friends, good friends, who abandon the ship of friendship in order to not be offended. Mind you, I don't talk about politics with my friends. I don't push my ideals on anyone. I don't get into arguments with my friends unless they come to me first. But I do write a blog.

Apparently, writing a political blog against leftist thought is enough to break up long-time friendships. Apparently, the only way to get along with leftists is to "shut up" or agree with their political views.

Here are three "responses" from long-time friends, who unfriended me on Facebook because of my blog.

I find your "self evident truths" to be less than self evident. Since I just really disagree with you and find no place to not be insulted by your presentation of your blog, I find it kind of upsetting to find it on my facebook page all the time.... I find it just makes me sad and frustrated to see your blog entry which insults me and what i stand for as a person.

After unfriending me, this note now appears on the Facebook page of one of my best (ex) friends:

IN THE INTERESTS OF FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a political liberal. I cannot stand the likes of Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc. Conservative political propaganda is not welcome here.

I don't listen to the likes of Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc., myself, but apparently perceived association is enough.

That being said, everyone has their right to their own opinion. That is why we are the greatest country in the world, in my opinion. We have the right to live and believe what we want to. But, we also have the right to choose whether we want to expose ourselves to viewpoints that we strongly disagree with. That is why I took you off my friend list.

It is indeed a Brave New World we live in where friendship hinges on taking offense instead of merely ignoring those words from whom we disagree.

Observations on Modern Liberal Thought

2011-04-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

Number 1. The Larch. The Larch.

I awoke this morning to the music of the long-lived Canadian rock band Rush. Years ago, they produced a song entitled The Trees, about the absurdity of the socialist ideal of equal outcomes. This song expresses the viewpoint of the socialist - the class inequity, and the desired goal of equal outcomes. Here are the illustrative lyrics:

Rush, The Trees
There is unrest in the forest,
There is trouble with the trees,
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas.

The trouble with the maples,
(And they're quite convinced they're right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light.
But the oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade.

There is trouble in the forest,
And the creatures all have fled,
As the maples scream "Oppression!"
And the oaks just shake their heads.

So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights.
"The oaks are just too greedy;
We will make them give us light!"
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.

Modern conservatives (classical liberals) have a problem with the equal outcome desires of socialist thought, correctly noting that equal outcomes only serve the socialists' interests while denying the interests of others. Modern conservatives view such socialist equality as duplicitous. Even under the guise of the kinder, gentler welfare state, modern liberalism demonizes any opposition to its aims, refusing to see any other solution to the problem. To the socialist, any means to a perceived equal end is perfectly all right.

On the other hand, classical liberalism acknowledges that the means to the end makes all the difference in the world. Modern liberalism sees equal opportunity as the road leading to the greatest freedoms. Any system that interferes with equal opportunity will only promote one class of people over another - oaks over maples or maples over oaks.

Of course, both sides argue against each other. Leftists try to demonize the right though tactics expressed by Saul Alinsky in his book Rules for Radicals. Leftists spread the idea that modern conservatives are "hate mongers," "bigots," "fear mongers," "racists," and so forth. The duplicity stems from Alinsky's philosophy that never acknowledges that leftists can and do use such speech and thought.

This duplicity of modern liberal thought is evident in such statements as these which came from the last "debate" over the budget:

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY): Republicans came to Congress “to kill women.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): In the Republican budget proposal, “6 million seniors are deprived of meals.”
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL): Ryan’s 2012 budget plan “would literally be a death trap for seniors.”
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.): “This is the functional equivalent of bombing innocent civilians."
USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah: The Republican budget “would lead to 70,000 kids dying."
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas): “...people are being rolled out of nursing homes in wheelchairs, with crutches, some on beds.”
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV): Republicans “want to make it harder... for a woman to get a cancer screening.”

All these invectives from the discussion of a proposed budget which had the audacity to try and shave off less than one percent of the total federal spending - about four day's worth - while trying to also defund public funding for the darling of modern feminism - Planned Parenthood.

Americans as a whole are waking up to the problems with the philosophy of equal outcome welfare. Americans see leftists demonizing entire segments of the population for merely holding differing viewpoints. Certainly there are die-hard modern liberals who see nothing good in returning to the foundational principles of the US, to a market economy, and to greater freedoms for individuals. But with each debate such as the one over the recent budget, more and more Americans can see the duplicity of the leftists who control the country.

Scorpion Hunting: Or, the Insidious Nature of Fighting Leftist Ideologues

2011-04-08T13:05:00.000-07:00

Bark scorpions such as this unfortunately live in the same place I do. Their sting is quite painful and can be quite dangerous to small children and those with allergies. They usually hunt at night but fluoresce under a black light and are thus easy to spot.

"You and your hobbies."

That's what I hear from friends as I recall my night battles to rid my yard of the ubiquitous desert bark scorpions. I hunt them at night with a battery-operated black light in one hand and an old rubber-soled moccasin in the other. (I call it the "Slipper of Mighty Slaying.") I also take a three inch wide putty knife with me to reach into hard to reach cracks.

Battling scorpions takes constant and consistent effort. They are predators and therefore don't reproduce and spread like scavenger bugs - ants or cockroaches for example. But because they predate, scorpions don't act like other bugs. I've seen them march right down the middle of the sidewalk, for example, claws held high, acting as if they own the entire world. "All this is mine for the taking," they seem to indicate, not bothering to scurry or hide like other bugs. They will travel long distances (for example, from the neighbor's back yard wall to inside my house) searching for other bugs to prey on.

That's not to say they aren't quick and won't defend themselves. That tail delivers a sharp, painful sting to anyone or anything that gets in their way. Only when confronted with superior force do they curl into a defensive ball or run full tilt (they are fast) back into the cracks of the cinder block fence where they live.

They are perfectly colored to camouflage themselves and can stand absolutely still for hours on end. They can go for months without food. Bark scorpions are highly resistant to bug spray and exterminators. They can flatten themselves paper thin, to slip into cracks or away from underneath a stomping shoe.

Yet, they do have a weakness. They fluoresce under a black light - glowing bright yellowish-green. They are also susceptible to getting squished under the stress of, say, a Slipper of Mighty Slaying, or to getting cut to pieces by a Putty Knife of Truth. (You have to hit them at an angle. They will merely flatten themselves if you attempt to swat them with a shoe, then laugh at you as they run merrily away.)

Understandably, I don't like them in the house. Hence, I spend time out at night with black light, slipper, and putty knife in hand, on endless patrols to keep the scorpions at bay. It's sort of relaxing in its own way, and quite cathartic.

Which brings me to my now two-and-a-half year-old blog where I've snarked and explained, complained and snarked some more against leftist ideology with its accompanying hedonism, nihilism, and singular attempts to rewrite the founding principles of the US in its own image.

Taking on leftist ideology is a lot like keeping the scorpions at bay, and for the same reasons. Leftist ideology is predatory, insidious, and carries a painful sting. Take my battling bark scorpions as an analogy to taking on leftist arguments, whether those arguments are based on socialism, statist ideals, identity politics, or even pipe-dream utopianism.

It takes constant effort. Yet we are helped along the way by such self-evident truths as the foundational principles of the US: inalienable rights versus invented rights; the rights of the individual versus the rights of the group; limited government versus the welfare state; market economy versus socialism.

Sure the sting of leftist backlash can be sharp and quite painful at times. Yet modern conservatism has the light of the foundational truths of liberal democracy to light the way and send the scorpions scurrying for cover.

Andrew Klavan: Barack the Magic Suit, A Political Fairy Tale

2011-04-07T16:29:00.000-07:00

Andrew Klavan tells a tale of hope and change, of Imagination Land, and the Utopian ideal.

Why The Current Education System Fails: The Self Esteem Issue

2011-04-07T12:31:00.000-07:00

The Speed Bump cartoon by Dave Coverly teaches one, simple reason what's wrong with today's school system. Entitlement indoctrination and feel-good self-esteem teaching panders only to the teachers unions and spineless school administrators. The question remains, do we have the fortitude to change the educational system to teach children how to read, write, and do math? Or do we allow special interests and huge unions to dictate the demise of education?

The University Is Not Welcome to Squelch Conservative or Religious Opinion

2011-04-06T14:35:00.000-07:00

University of North Carolina - Wilmington Professor Mike S. Adams

Mike Adams, a professor of criminology at the University of North Carolina - Wilmington, writes fairly provocative, conservative articles at Townhall.com. A former atheist turned Christian, Adams experienced first hand the overbearing pressure from socialist and feminist administrators and faculty at UNCW when he began to write opinion pieces pointing out the flaws in feminist thought. An award-winning and published professor, Adams the school passed him over for promotion. In turn, he sued the school for discrimination.

As part of that lawsuit, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that Adams' writing is protected by the 1st Amendment, overturning the District Court's decision that Adams' writing was not protected speech and that the school could discriminate against him for having beliefs contrary to those of school administration (source).

I've followed this case over the years because of similar anti-conservative, anti-Christian attitudes within the administration at the school where I teach. Too many university administrators and faculty are left-leaning and anti-religion. As I've written in other articles, the almost universal prevalence of leftist ideology within the college system has created several generations of indoctrinated students who tend to be hedonistic, nihilistic, and incapable of determining the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning. (For more on this, read Alan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind and Victor David Hanson's Who Killed Homer?) Students have no practical experience with US foundational principles, adopting instead the ideals of leftist ideology.

This is not mere hyperbole, as Adams' ongoing court case indicates. His is a case where even the concepts of free speech and free exercise of religion are put at risk by an overbearing and severely leftist school administration. Adams has the benefit of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) to thank for continuing to fight for the proper interpretation of constitutional rights within the courts.

The ADF takes on many such cases of anti-religious bias within the university and other systems and successfully winning back original interpretations of the 1st Amendment. Recently, the ADF successfully took on the ACLU, getting the Supreme Court to throw out the ACLU's attempt to stifle Arizona law on school tax credits because some of the private schools who received donations were Christian schools (source). In effect, the ACLU sued, arguing that private donations to religious schools were unconstitutional. The Supreme Court disagreed with the ACLU, telling them to stop getting into people's private lives in the name of public interest.

A hearty congratulations goes to Mike Adams who is willing to stand up for his beliefs, to the Alliance Defense Fund for putting up the money and attorneys, and to the 4th Circuit Court for slamming the District Court's attempt to stifle free speech.

Who Will the Republican Party Choose for 2012?

2011-04-05T09:43:00.001-07:00

With Barack Obama kicking off his billion dollar 2012 campaign (that's billion, with a big, fat B) Republicans seem to be in a state of disarray, without a viable candidate to run against the Democratic Party incumbent. With most of the press firmly on the side of the Democrats (FOXNews being the exception), it's difficult to pinpoint anyone who could break through the general chatter and float to the top as someone whom the Republican National Committee (RNC) could run against Obama.

Here is my take on several of the candidates:

Mitt Romney
Romney is well spoken and, unlike Obama, actually understands how the economy works. Clearly viable to the RNC, Romney has several chips against him from the outset, not the least of which is the Evangelicals' and the Born Again Atheists' preoccupation with Romney's religion. If Romney were elected president, I fully expect the ACLU would sue the country for not representing a separation of church and state. Apart from that, the media has successfully labeled Romney a RINO, which should make him the perfect candidate in the eyes of the RNC. He's also been smeared with his connection to Massachusetts' health care bill - a point against him with the Tea Party.

Tim Pawlenty
Pawlenty may be the best bet for the RNC since he looks, acts, and talks like a Republican. He may even be able to convince the Tea Party to throw in with him. His greatest problem is his bland appeal. He isn't the candidate to excite a new generation of Republicans, or old Republicans, or middle-aged Republicans. Let's face it, he's just not that exciting - like I said, a perfect candidate for the RNC.

Sarah Palin
Palin is exciting to Republicans, if for no other reason than she's got a pretty face. She is not, however, exciting to the RNC who will pass her by for a more "electable" candidate. The nearly constant smear campaign from the media since her nomination for vice president in 2008 and her subsequent attempts to stay in the spotlight make her the universal whipping girl of the media, leftists, and Democrats. There's just something about a conservative woman that drives them to frenzy. Most think she really said that she could see Russia from her house.

Michelle Bachmann
While a Tea Party icon and a conservative woman, Bachmann has received the same media welcome as Palin. Admittedly, she's said some pretty silly things like she's visited 57 states with one to go or that she bowled 129 like in the Special Olympics....No, wait. That was Obama. Well, whatever she says, the media is right behind her to tell us how stupid she is. The RNC, however, won't touch her with a 10 foot pole because of her affiliation with the Tea Party.

Mike Huckabee
Huckabee's been pushing really hard for the RNC nomination, even to go so far as to have all records of his time spent as governor of Arkansas destroyed so they wouldn't come back to haunt him in his bid for the presidency. While the RNC may find this endearing, conservatives in the country will take exception to such an action. Huckabee could conceivably get the Christian Right behind him to propel him into the candidacy.

Newt Gingrich
Gingrich may be completely incapable of catching the conservative vote and therefore would be the RNC's most eligible candidate to run against Obama in 2012. There's nothing like an old, has been RINO to capture the imagination of the RNC.

Ron Paul
Although a clear leader among the Tea Party members who captures the flavor of discontent in the US today, he cannot win the nomination of the RNC because he is far too radical and libertarian. If Paul runs as an independent against the Republican nomination and Obama, he will likely split the conservative vote and usher in another four years of Obama.

There are others, of course, percolating up through the system but it seems clear that the RNC has quite a task in front of it to choose a viable candidate to run against Obama. It would be nice if the RNC would realize that it needs America's conservatives strongly on its side and choose a candidate who will best represent conservative values. Alas, the RNC will pick someone who will play political ball with the aging elephant.

Those Darned Fear Mongering Tea Partiers

2011-04-04T17:07:00.000-07:00

Erskine Bowles, co-chair of Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

Leftist vocabulary loves the term "fear mongering." Anything the right does, says, or implies seems to be fear mongering of one sort or another (or bigotry, racism, or wingnut, but I digress). However, is it fear mongering to warn of the consequences of reckless actions, like government's deficit spending and monumentally increasing national debt?

Recently, President Obama's co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform had this to say about the direction of government spending:

The leftist response to such warnings (i.e., fear mongering) should be to inform us why such a statement is fear mongering, why it isn't true, and what grand plan Congress has to correct and allay the uncomfortable fiscal situation in which we find ourselves. Instead, here's a snippet from the left-leaning Slate:

Wonkish, crotchety, and mostly bald, the co-chairs of President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform want you to care about the deficit the way cable television wants you to care about pedophiles.

Thank you, Slate, for your contribution to the question of fiscal responsibility. Even the Republicans in Congress at least pretend that the current fiscal irresponsibility, deficit, and debt should be addressed. (And which, I have no doubt, will royally mess up again.) As it is, all I've heard from the left regarding the current financial fiasco is, "Stay the Course" - parroting George H.W. Bush's ill-fated catch phrase from the Ghost of Governments Past.

That and spreading fear about anyone who dares to speak up in favor of fiscal responsibility.

Steven Crowder: FUN WITH WIENERS! (Featuring Congressman Weiner)

2011-03-31T22:33:00.000-07:00

Steven Crowder is back to his old self, meaning he's returned to the roots of what made his humor poking fun at all things liberal endearing. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Oh, and while you're at it, why don't you send an email to the White House and demand your own waiver from Obamacare? Steven Crowder mentions how.

Andrew Klavan: PBS Exposed! Hidden Camera Rocks Sesame Street

2011-03-24T12:05:00.002-07:00

Andrew Klavan looks at reasons to defund NPR and PBS.

Why Students Are Failing Higher Education

2011-03-24T10:54:00.000-07:00

Admittedly, it's a face only a mother could love, but it does actually care for the students.

I feel badly because of a bit of hate mail I received from one of my recent - now former - students. I received the following in my school email as a reaction to one of my online classes that began just this week:

Hello,
This email will serve as notice that I have dropped your class. I am appalled at the way you conduct yourself. You obviously no longer enjoy teaching as evident [sic] by your introductory letter, syllabus, and assignment 1 questionnaire. A true Instructor [sic] should not begin each class with preconceived notions that everyone is juvenile. Nor should you attempt to satisfy your superiority complex by forcing your opinion on your students. Case in point, "I prefer a classroom and structured learning. Should I take this class?" Obviously the answer you wanted was a regurgitation of your opinion. There are a myriad of reasons why one takes an online class, one of which is the convenience. In my case, convenience does not override academic respect. I will take my hard-earned money and spend it on a class taught by an Instructor [sic] who actually treats a student as an equal and not an insubordinate [sic].

My initial reaction to this email would be to respond with some kind of pointed attack against the student, or at least to defend myself and the class. For example, I've written the syllabus questionnaire after having countless students try to weasel their way out of doing work because they "hadn't been informed" of class policy. Point in fact, too many students act like juveniles and make things more difficult for future students. (As a side note, I'll probably go ahead and make changes to the questionnaire and syllabus again, just because of this student.)

I didn't give in to the temptation, by the way, to send back some snide remarks. I sent off a short note wishing the student luck in future studies. (I didn't even say: "You'll certainly need it." Thought it. Didn't say it.)

However, this email illustrates a brilliant example of why students fail in higher education, as well as failing at life in general. It shows not only a lack of civility and manners, but a strong lack of judgment, which, unfortunately, occurs in more and more students. Here are some particulars:

1) The student deliberately uses inflammatory words such as "appalled," "true Instructor," and "superiority complex." The tone is inappropriate and an ad hominem attack, rather than a statement of dissatisfaction and desire. This points to an inability to argue a case on any rational level, resorting to distorted and overblown arguments based on feelings.

We can perhaps blame some of this on the relative anonymity of the internet and the wonderful and wacky world of texting. We can also note that more students do not grow up with any kind of respect for teachers. This is the mentality of the "me" generation.

2) The student demonstrates a lack of reality with regard to how the world operates. A person who expects respect without earning it only demonstrates an entitlement mentality, expecting the world will revolve around him or her instead of finding a place within it.

As public schools now stand, a student can get through the system having learned nothing more than how to take a standardized test, with no understanding of competition or true achievement. This is the fault of years of failed "feel good" teaching which can only produce students who have no experience with trial and error, or with failure.

3) The student has some presumptions about what is and isn't a teacher, the most problematic being an unfounded expectation of equality. Students, by definition, don't enjoy equality with the teacher. The teacher has some experience, some information, some way of thinking, and some perspectives on life for which the student spends time, money, and energy to acquire. This is not to say that the teacher can treat students badly (as I suppose this student felt) but the conclusion of equality fails in the definition of the word student.

Is this a superiority complex? The student mistakes ability, years of hard work, countless hours of reading, and real experience in the classroom for a psychological problem. Perhaps the student is correct in this. Maybe all of those things over time creates a superiority complex. (Or maybe the student is the one the with superiority complex, mistaking hurt feelings as better than or equal to years of experience.)

4) The student's preconceived notions of what is and isn't a teacher prevented the student from understanding the intent of the questionnaire. The student's sample question baldly misinterprets the intent, imagining some slight when all I was after was the student's recognition that online classes are different from the in-class experience.

By the way, the question in question obviously worked just fine and weeded out a student who would obviously not be comfortable in my class.

What bothers me the most about this student isn't the rude behavior or the poor argument. What bothers me is that this student demonstrates a lack of understanding of what constitutes a student. Such an attitude simply does not allow learning to occur. The student is so preoccupied with preconceived notions of life that no teaching, no arguments, and no persuasion can possibly break through.

Such students as this don't want to be taught new ideas but affirmed in their own beliefs. Such students as this don't want equality for themselves but superiority over others. Such students as this don't want to learn but only to feel good about themselves with no effort on their part.

I wish this student well in future studies. I really do. Maybe, someday, this student will learn something useful.

But I doubt it.

Obama Never Played Follow the Leader

2011-03-23T12:34:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama leading the US wherever the wind blows:

From Townhall.com cartoon by Bob Gorrell.

Now the wind blows...where?

From Townhall.com cartoon by Nate Beeler.

"‎The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." Senator Barack Obama, 20 December 2007

Barack Obama and Cruise Missile Diplomacy

2011-03-22T17:43:00.000-07:00

Muammar Qaddafi/Gaddafi/Gadhafi/Khadafi/Khadafy

Modern military doctrine teaches that wars cannot be won except by taking territory and territory must be taken through ground occupation. Air power alone cannot win wars, nor can it win territory. The Germans during World War II learned this principle in their attempt to bomb England into submission. The air war over England destroyed people and cities but accomplished no strategic ends except to strengthen the resolve of the English against Germany.

Air power can accomplish certain strategic ends. During in the Gulf War, air power brilliantly destroyed the communications and control centers of Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Army. Modern military doctrine recognizes that air superiority is necessary in order to take territory within countries deploying major armies. It also recognizes the value in disrupting or destroying the enemy's infrastructure. Yet air power cannot win a war and is notoriously inaccurate when it comes to attempting assassination. (How many caves were blown up to try to get at Osama bin Laden?)

President Clinton loved cruise missile diplomacy, so much so that the US actually ran out of them during his administration. Trouble in the Balkans? Lob in a few cruise missiles. Bin Laden getting uppity in Afghanistan? Send out the cruise missiles. Reagan tried an air strike in Libya back in 1986, with little effect and leaving Qaddafi in power.

We are then left to wonder what President Barack Obama's strategy is with regard to Libya in authorizing US Tomahawk missile strikes. As Obama may or may not have stated (his public statements getting more and more vague and irrelevant), the strategy in Libya may or may not be to assassinate Qaddafi. It may or may not be a prelude to a ground-based assault. It may or may not be a means to allow the rebels some breathing room. It may or may not be an appeasement to French policies. It may or may not be because Hillary Clinton chewed him out for his inaction.

It is, however, a clear demonstration of Obama's non-existent foreign policy - a reaction to a situation rather than an action. After a month equivocating on Libya while Qaddafi gathered his forces and nearly destroyed the rebels, Obama decided to "do something." His is a "Fire and Forget" strategy, designed to appease European and (believe it or not) US sensibilities. Obama shows for the moment that he's decisive regarding the instability in Libya and supports the "democratic" uprising.

Yet in a week, two weeks, a month, when the ADD news media focuses on its next "crisis" the news about Libya will blow over like a cloud of radioactive material. Obama supporters will applaud the President's actions to help the poor Libyan rebels. Most of the rest of the people of the US will shrug their shoulders and chalk up Obama's actions as another strange fluke from this strange administration. A few will point out just how much Obama's policies look like George W. Bush's, neglecting to point out that Obama doesn't have the guts to commit large numbers of troops and money to Libya to actually oust Qaddafi.

Can the current administration prove any more desperately that it does not have a grasp of the American mind, domestic policy, foreign policy, or even a concept of how to use military power? With the current oblique strategy on Libya, all we can do is shake our heads and reply: "Yes it can!"

Predicting Weather or How the Federal Government Fails Us

2011-03-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

Predicting Weather
Predicting weather is tricky stuff. Weather patterns are extraordinarily complex and stochastic and never move exactly as expected. We take it for granted that three day, and even five day, forecasts can come close to telling us what to expect. Beyond those few days, all bets are off. Even a few decades ago, predicting weather beyond three days was unheard of. One of the sayings we had when I was growing up was "I wish I could get paid for being as wrong as the weatherman."

Somehow we all know, in a common sense way, that predicting the weather, while scientific, is still inexact. We expect that predictions will have some variation and, occasionally, will be flat wrong. There's nothing wrong with the science. We understand that the weather system is too complex to predict much more than a percentage chance of certainty. (Hence, statements like "There's a 30% chance of rain today.")

Weather prediction has grown more accurate over the past few years. As more weather stations come online in order to measure local conditions, the network of a vast array of sensors can build a more accurate measurement of actual conditions. We measure wind, temperature, and atmospheric pressure at the ground level. Doppler radar stations scan for precipitation. Satellites give a bigger picture, measuring cloud cover, water vapor, and infrared variations in temperature. Since weather is such a complex system, we require thousands and tens of thousands of stations, gathering information, in order to accurately measure what the weather is doing here and now, let alone three days from now.

Complex Systems
It seems common sense and obvious to us that in order to measure such a complex system as weather, we must have information from thousands of sensors - the more the better and the wider the distribution the better. We would consider it folly to establish one, giant weather station in the center of the US (or worse yet, off to the side along the Atlantic coast, just north of Virginia) and expect anything like an accurate measurement of the weather. Understanding the system, let alone predicting it, requires thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of sensors to gather information and report the measurements.

Somehow we lose our common sense when we talk about government and measuring (let alone predicting) the complex system of the US economy or the even more complex US society. It is a fatal conceit¹ to assume that a single, centralized sensor has the smarts or the capacity to measure the myriad processes of a system as complex as society's.

Yet, somehow, we do just that - lose our common sense - when it comes to handing control of our complex system to the centralized planning of the federal government.

The analogy with predicting weather is a good one. Weather is best measured and predicted through a decentralized system. The economy works the same way. In a free market system, businesses understand and respond to the local systems far better than a centralized agency can. A centralized agency can collect and correlate data, helping understand the larger economy as a whole, but should never assume that it can predict or manage the complexity of the system.

The Errors of Centralized Planning
We've known for years and have made endless jokes about the inefficiency of the bureaucracies developed by the federal government. These large bureaucracies fall short of expectations for the simple reason that centralized planning cannot measure, nor predict, nor control the complexities of a widespread system.

Take, for example, the smaller yet still complex problem of health care. In its fatal conceit, the federal government has assumed more and greater-reaching regulation of the local systems, assured in its hubris of being able to judge better than the free market how to best run the health care system. The result is a more complex system with greater costs, spiraling upward ever more out of control. It is not the "greed" of the market that has driven costs up but the regulation of centralized planning.

With the current health care laws, we can predict that the increased federal costs, bureaucracy, and regulation will damage the system. This must happen because centralization produces less information about the complex system, not more. Lacking crucial information that it simply cannot obtain cripples centralized planning. The system operates nearly blindly, ignoring or shutting down local information in favor of a large, "better" design.

Another example will suffice. Lyndon Johnson established the fatal conceit of the Great Society, creating the welfare state and, among other things, federal regulation of local school systems. The intent of federal meddling with the local schools was to create a more equitable system for all Americans, black or white. The intent seems noble and good. Yet, after 45 years of federal interference in the complex system of education and after the "reform" of No Child Left Behind under George W. Bush, US students are doing worse in school than ever before. Illiteracy and dropout rates soar. Children are pushed through a system that resembles a factory more than a school.

In a word, federal interference in all sectors of the school and education system, has failed the education system in the US.

Modern leftist dogma continues to insist that the problem can be fixed as long as we pour more money into the federal system and regulate the system even more. The dogma insists that all will be made right as long as we tweak the system one more time. President Obama admitted as much in a recent speech at a Virginia middle school where he vowed to "fix" No Child Left Behind before next year. As a sad symbol of this bankrupt philosophy, the New Jersey school named after Barack Obama is closing its doors.

The federal system has not, and cannot, fix the problem as long as central planning is the order of the day. The only reasonable way to measure and control complex systems is to decentralize planning, not to create an ever-growing leviathan of centralized government.

It's time to return to the doctrines of Adam Smith and the philosophy of free market. It's time to decentralize the federal system before it collapses under its own weight to take us down with it.

Notes:
1 The phrase is taken from the book by the same name written by F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, W. W. Bartley III, ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989). Hayek presents a compelling argument against central planning and the welfare state, arguing instead the benefits of the decentralized system - the free market.

History's on the Side of Japan

2011-03-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

While predicting Japan's future in the wake of last week's 8.9 earthquake, tsunami, damage to the infrastructure, and nuclear reactor shutdowns, we can see that the Japanese people as a whole can and have historically emerged from such disasters stronger than ever.

One thing recent events have shown is the civility and adaptability of the Japanese people in the face of extreme conditions. These are a strong people who face an uncertain future. This is a society which emerged stronger after the Great Fire of Meireki in 1657 which burned for three days and destroyed the capital city of Edo (Tokyo), killing 100,000 people. The Japanese emerged stronger from the Kanto earthquake which killed between 100,000 and 142,000 people. The Japanese emerged from WWII, the firebombing of Tokyo and the destruction of its army, strong enough to rebuild and become the world's second greatest economy (now surpassed by China).

Japanese politicians have argued recently that Japan needed to reform and revitalize Japanese industry and society. While no one could have predicted the heart-wrenching disaster and human tragedy of March 11, Japan once again finds itself at a historic turning point. And history demonstrates that it is on the side of Japan, which will emerge stronger.

Modern Liberalism Versus Liberal Democracy

2011-03-15T14:59:00.000-07:00

I am a liberal democrat. My political ideology, however, has nothing to do with modern American liberalism and even less to do with the Democratic party. These two systems have become antithetical to the original ideals of liberal democracy.

During the 17th and 18th Centuries, Western political thought came of age when it acknowledged certain ideals: individualism, limited government, the social contract, freedom, and liberty, to name a few. We call this ideal of government liberal democracy: based on democracy and accountable to the people it represents. At the time, liberal democracy was quite radical in contrast to European monarchies. It gave power to the common person, broadly based on principles derived from classical Athenian and Roman democracy. The founders of the United States based the US government on the principles of liberal democracy, tempered with republicanism, and placed the new government before the world as a grand experiment.

Intellectuals of the 18th and 19th Centuries, especially in France, uncomfortable with the unregulated and (as they viewed) anarchistic society developed under liberal democracy, reacted against liberalism by favoring the ideology of socialism. Socialism has its roots from ancient times but the modern political manifestations began as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution. "To [the socialist intellectuals,] socialism meant an attempt to 'terminate the revolution' by a deliberate reorganization of society on hierarchical lines and by the imposition of a coercive 'spiritual power.'" (Hayek, p. 76)1

The philosophical ideals of socialism took on many forms as politicians applied its principles to a variety of government systems. We're familiar with the extreme forms of socialism, embodied in the totalitarian Communist governments of the 20th Century. We're also familiar with the slower-growing statist forms applied in democratic socialism. Instead of sudden, and usually severe, takeovers of government, social democrats opted for gradualism, replacing liberalism bit by bit with, as F.A. Hayek put it, "hierarchical" government and "coercive spiritual power."

What this meant to European states, was the replacement of monarchies with welfare state governments which exercised control over its citizens while paying lip service to the ideals of democracy.2 Among the intellectual elite in the US, democratic socialism has nearly supplanted liberal democracy as the preferred system of government, yet the original ideals of liberalism still have a strong influence. The "spiritual power" of socialism has not yet taken hold over the original liberal ideology.

Modern liberalism, which originally called itself "progressivism" is the inheritor of socialist thought of the 18th and 19th Centuries. Socialism in this sense, is not necessarily Marxist (although his thought influences all modern socialism) but rather is considered a reaction against such liberal democratic ideals as individualism and liberty. As the socialist intellectuals of the 19th Century found liberal democracy dangerous, so also modern liberalism finds liberal democracy too individualistic, too liberal, too uncontrolled, and hence, too dangerous.

The 19th Century historian, Alexis de Tocqueville had this to say about the differences between liberal democracy and socialism: "Democracy extends the sphere of personal independence; socialism confines it. Democracy values each man at his highest; socialism makes of each man an agent, an instrument, a number. Democracy and socialism have but one thing in common - equality. But note well the difference. Democracy aims at equality in liberty. Socialism desires equality in constraint and in servitude." (Tocqueville)2

Of course, the servitude Tocqueville denounces can take on the forms from enslavement of the population (as Stalin did to his own people in the former Soviet Union) to subjugating the population to dependence on government, tied with a tenuous thread of taxation and welfare (as the US government does).

Because modern liberalism derives from 19th Century anti-liberalism, its ideology includes a distrust of liberal democratic principles. For example, individualism is at the heart of liberal democracy. The concept of individualism derives from deep roots in Western Civilization, based on the moral foundations of Christianity, the Greeks, and the Romans. This individualism expresses the ideal of absolute self-government – producing the prospect of a society with limited government which never interferes in self-regulation.

Admittedly, this presents an unattainable utopian ideal to liberal democrats, one which could very well lead to anarchy. Yet the principles of self-government have a human appeal and are deeply entrenched in the American psyche. These principles are also deeply entrenched in the formation of Western Civilization itself, creating the roots from which the US system emerged.

The economic manifestation of individualism - the free market - also appears dangerous to modern liberalism. To modern liberal thought, the unseen and uncontrolled forces of the market must be regulated under a "benevolent" government. Free exercise of the market produces too many variables, too many troughs which in turn can do harm. Rather than risk the free market, at the expense of individualism, modern liberalism prefers the safety net of government control.

This is not to say that some sort of government control isn't necessary. Far from it. If anything, socialism is pragmatic, finding solutions to economic and social problems. The cost for modern democratic socialism (modern liberalism) is the steady, increased intrusion of government into the lives of its citizens. The danger lies in the possibility of creating an authoritarian or totalitarian state, where the benefits of both social welfare and of liberal democracy are lost to government assumption of total control.

In a world where absolutist regimes, such as Russia and China, have "discovered" and implemented liberal democracy's free market principles and applied them with great benefit to their social and economic structures, does it make sense that the US should pursue a headlong advance into socialism? Does democratic socialism make sense when the European system pushed many countries in the EU to the brink of bankruptcy? Does it make sense to deny the deep roots of liberal democracy in the US in favor of a political system at odds with it and which holds the ideals of statism over self-government? And does it make sense to stifle the American spirit at the expense of our liberty?

Sources
1 F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007).

2 Alexis de Tocqueville, “Critique of Socialism” found on The Forum at the Online Library of Liberty.

Notes
I speak of the welfare state in terms of socialist ideals which are based on the principles of equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity, the redistribution of wealth in the form of taxation to fund public programs, government regulation of the economy, and the reliance on public intrusion into private concerns.

Andrew Klavan: Behold! Your Public Sector Unions at Work

2011-03-10T12:32:00.001-07:00

Another Andrew Klavan Brilliancy

The Snarky Files - Euripides' Views on the Week (The Blatant Sex Edition)

2011-03-08T22:57:00.002-07:00

The Snarky Files. Snarky means several things. I prefer the definition of "sharply critical." Here's my take on some news stories this past week. No real news here, just snark. And blatant sex.

Advances in Education
A Northwestern University psychology Professor J. Michael Bailey, who teaches a course in human sexuality (is that really a course or is it just "legal" pornography?), decided to have an extra-special guest presentation. After his regular class, he presented a couple who had sex on the floor in front of the remaining class members. Apparently the demonstration included the use of power tools.

Excusing the demonstration of live pornography to his class, Bailey defended his actions by stating: "I certainly have no regrets concerning Northwestern students, who have demonstrated that they are open-minded grownups rather than fragile children." Student reactions were mixed. "What're we supposed to take away from that?" asked one student. Apparently, the sex itself wasn't the biggest concern of those who protested the classroom demonstration - it was the use of power tools that put the whole thing over the edge in their eyes.

Can we just go ahead and call the modern concept of higher education a complete waste of time?

Read the story at The Daily Beast if you must.

Kids Go Wii
A new Wii game developed in France has received a rating for ages 12+. The problem? The game is geared for adults to dabble in kinky sex-related practices. The tagline for the game "Flirty Fun for All" apparently includes prepubescent teens learning about homosexuality and sadomasochism.

It's another brilliant product designed to promote pornographic practices in the comfort of your living room. At least you can get the Wii workout while playing it.

Watch the commercial at The Sun if you must.

The President Weighs In on Marriage
President Obama weighed in on his views of what constitutes marriage when Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the administration would no longer defend parts of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. According to Obama, neutering marriage "remains one of my highest priorities. We’re going to get it done." (The Daily Beast)

I'm certainly glad that neutering marriage and refusing to defend federal law ranks right up there on the president's to do list. And is Obama changing his message from "yes we can" to "get 'er done?"

Startling Statistic
According to The Daily Beast, "a new study claims HPV, the STD linked to cervical cancer, may be found in half of all adult men."

Half of all adult men? Half of all adult men? The statistic staggers the mind. This means that half of all adult men not only have the STD, it also means that half of all adult men have absolutely no self control.

The solution to the problem, according to the "experts," is education and pushing vaccines on young girls to keep them from contracting HPV. How's that liberalized sex education working for ya'll?

Young Granny
The Sun reports that a woman named Rifca Stanescu is a grandmother at age 26.

You do the math. I can't seem to wrap my mind around that one.

Crazy Old Charlie
OK, this one doesn't have anything to do with blatant sex. Actor Charlie Sheen, who seems to have hijacked all available news stories over the past few weeks made this memorable statement: "And if they can't condemn it, they'll like [explicative] turn me into a God and worship it, and realize I'm behind them, cutting their throats, and their children's...." (Daily Mail)

Sheen, being a leftist liberal, makes certain that he doesn't promote violence by using obscene references to guns and shooting. This is a kinder, gentler promotion of throat-cutting violence by a bona fide unhinged whack job.

The Name is Blonde. James Blonde.
Daniel Craig, the actor best known for his portrayal of James Bond, stepped up to the plate to dress in drag in a video in order to raise consciousness on just how tough a job women have competing in the workplace.

I don't know which is more disturbing about the video: the implication that children are merely annoyances that get in the way of women's fulfillment, or the visual image of Daniel Craig in drag.

Watch the video if you must.

TMI
The National Journal wrote a human interest piece on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Among the tidbits of information we learn about her: "One day after I'd been questioned endlessly, for weeks at a time, I was so frustrated by the minutiae of what I was being asked about and said to a friend, 'I think they already know the color of my underwear.'"

I'm guessing tighty whities, but thanks for sharing, Justice Sotomayor.

The Welfare State Versus Free Will: A History Lesson

2011-03-07T13:49:00.003-07:00

Alexis de Tocqueville - a 19th Century observer of US democracy.

Those of us who have lived long enough to see the changes in society over the course of time have a unique perspective of comparison from decade to decade. Having grown up during a time when most people took responsibility for their own actions and where the concept of equal opportunity did not mean equal outcomes, I’ve come to appreciate the liberty of thought and action we used to enjoy. Such liberty has been chipped away, restrained, by the enlarged and ever-growing welfare state we’ve allowed our government to assume. By welfare state, I mean those socialist ideals which are based on the principles of taxation to produce equal outcomes, distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for private concerns, such as providing health insurance or running a corporation.

The difference of the past 80 years is also evident in the statist attitudes and reduced will of Americans. By will, I mean the human will to self-determination. We’ve lost, as Americans, over the course of the years a steady amount of self-will. Instead of retaining our free will, we’ve allowed government to assume the responsibility over much of our lives. Instead of exercising free will, collectively, we’ve allowed the ideals of the welfare state, Marxist doctrine, and social engineering to rob us of our human nature and suppress our free will in order to conform to the social and political pressure of such a state.

The welfare state, as it has grown up since the Great Depression, has not only increased the numbers of people it purports to help, but also has grown to become part of the national psyche – the status quo of the purpose and function of government. The welfare state took a large leap in size during the Johnson administration, with his ideal of the war on poverty. Subsequently, government entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, assistance to low-income families, and most recently health care subsidies, all have multiplied and grown to make up a substantive percentage of the national budget.

The reason for the growth stems from the seductive nature of the welfare state. Expressing and maintaining free will takes energy, education, dedication to principles maintained in a free state, and the participation of all of the citizens. The welfare state, on the other hand, promises a certain quality of life without the pains of an unfair world. The welfare state seduces its participants into lethargy, dulling the mind and the will with promises that we will be taken care of with or without effort on our part. Under such a system, effort is not rewarded. Only perceived oppression is rewarded.

The 18th Century historian and political thinker, Alexis de Tocqueville recognized the problem some 170 years ago. In his book Democracy in America, he notes the following about the dangers of despotism to democracy. I’ll make the connection here with our current trend toward the despotism of the welfare state:

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.1

What the welfare state does, based on the debunked principles of Marxism and other versions of socialism, is alter the character of the American people. Such alteration doesn’t take place overnight, it is a gradual process, taking decades to suppress action until government can step in to fill the perceived voids of injustice. The state extends welfare as an act of compassion, owing to the great compassion of the American people. However, the welfare state creates an imperfect compassion, unequally applied, yet expecting final results of equal outcome.

Little by little, year after year, Americans get used to the idea of the welfare state, accept it, and allow the government greater leeway to collect taxes to fund entitlements. Americans eventually come to expect the government to assume total control, to “fix” all the problems of the world with a snap of its fingers.

In effect, we give up our own will to struggle with the problems of the world, expecting that government will take care of us and protect us from the worst abuses of an unfair world. Where inequities exists, government will step in and make them equal. Where suffering occurs, the government will create a new program to alleviate it.

The danger lies in two areas: First, in order for American democracy to function, its people must be free to exercise their free will and take control over their own lives. Second, the government trend toward the welfare state creates a real possibility of eventually becoming a totalitarian state.

1) The democratic principle demands that people exercise free will. When a government gets in the way of free will, even through subtle coercion, such as politicizing school curriculum or by supporting contrary ideologies over the principles of liberal democracy, the liberty of its people is in danger. The counter to this problem is self-determination and education.

John Stuart Mill (considered a gradual socialist himself) put it this way:

Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.2

This area of the democratic principle deserves a deeper and more complete treatment than I give it here. It is enough to note, however, that the welfare state suppresses human will to the point where the government “practices a social tyranny” on Americans, urging us to conform to the social mandates of such a society while alienating those who don’t conform.

2) History teaches us that when people turn to the state for absolute safety, government takes liberty away from its people.

F. A. Hayek, in his book The Road to Serfdom bases his thesis on this principle. As he says:

The unforeseen but inevitable consequences of social planning create a state of affairs in which, if the policy is to be pursued, totalitarian forces will get the upper hand.3

I've mentioned Hayek's writings in other posts. The point here is the recognition of the deleterious effects on human character and free will under the growing American welfare state. Giving such power to government chips away at our own ability toward self-determination and places us at risk to create a totalitarian state.

Notes:

1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), vol. 2, book 4, chapter 6, p. 319.
2. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, (Indianapolis: Library of Liberal Arts).
3. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 50.

U.S. Funding Mosques in Mideast

2011-03-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

Here's a question for you. Should the US be spending billions in foreign aid money when our government literally has to borrow money to keep afloat? How about spending that money fixing up Muslim mosques in the Mideast?

Take a look at this ABC video. Maybe we ought to rethink our priorities?

Exposing $105 Billion Already Dedicated to ObamaCare

2011-03-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

Hat Tip to one of my favorite bloggers Opus #6 at American Perspective.

Planned Parenthood Lies About Contraception and Abortion Rates

2011-03-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

I found this information about Planned Parenthood interesting, especially since it comes from the left-leaning website The Daily Beast. Planned Parenthood, usually associated with government money and abortions (although staunchly denying that any government money is used to fund abortions), needs a reality check. From The Daily Beast article, we learn some interesting things about Planned Parenthood and its stated mission:

1) Planned Parenthood claims that without its contraception services, more women would get abortions. Yet:

Over [the past decade], the U.S. government has funneled billions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, in large part because the organization claims to provide services to avoid unplanned pregnancies – a laudable goal. Yet despite a robust budget—Planned Parenthood reported a total annual revenue of $1.1 billion in its last financial filing—the organization has done absolutely nothing to change the fundamental dynamics of the United States' abortion rate....

To preserve its federal subsidy, Planned Parenthood continues to claim that without its contraception services the abortion rate will go up. This deception smacks of a fleecing of taxpayers in an effort to promote an ideological agenda, rather than a sincere effort to help women plan families.

2) Planned Parenthood publicly claims its goals are to protect women's health. Yet:

According to its most recent tax filing, the purpose of Planned Parenthood Federation of America is to provide leadership in "[a]chieving, through informed individual choice, a U.S. population of stable size in an optimum environment; in stimulating and sponsoring relevant biomedical, socio-economic, and demographic research."

So it is, in reality, a population-control organization.

This infomation doesn't come as any surprise to those who disapprove of Planned Parenthood's hidden agenda and abuse of taxpayer money. It does point to a group, aligned with leftist ideology, which cannot tell the truth about its purposes and goals for the simple reason that few people would support such an ideology. And if Planned Parenthood lies about contraception and population control, what other things does it hide?

It's time to defund Planned Parenthood. Let's see how it survives in the market economy.

We Told You So: Greenspan Says Surge in Government 'Activism' Is Hampering U.S. Recovery

2011-03-03T16:21:00.003-07:00

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan - the guy everyone loves to hate.

Bloomberg reported on an article written by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. In the article, Greenspan condemns the immediate past and current administration's fiscal irresponsibility as hampering the recovery of the US economy. In effect, he's condemning Keynesian ideals as untenable.

To get an idea of Keynes' ideas, as well as a response to the failed Keynesian ideals, take a look at this amusing video:

Greenspan's thoughts on the current government "plan" to improve the economy are telling:

A surge in U.S. government "activism," including fiscal stimulus, housing subsidies and new regulations, is holding back the economic recovery....

At least half of the shortfall in companies' capital spending "can be explained by the shock of vastly greater government- created uncertainties embedded in the competitive, regulatory and financial environments." (Bloomberg)

I agree here with Greenspan. The economic principles of leftist doctrine, based on failed Keynesian ideals, is bad for the economy. Stimulus overspending doesn't create wealth - it merely redistributes it. Housing subsidies hasn't helped the loan industry recover to allow for business growth. New regulations keep us, me included, from having any confidence in future investment strategies.

Along with reigning in Obamacare, federal spending, and executive power, the current Congress needs to focus on stabilizing regulations to allow private sector businesses to invest and create wealth.

No More Federal Protection of Marriage?

2011-02-28T09:55:00.001-07:00

Cartoon from Townhall.com by Lisa Benson.

When President Obama refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in the federal courts, he left the door open, allowing any one state to define marriage for all the states. For example, say a same sex couple who got married in Massachusetts (where such "marriages" are legal) sued to have their marriage upheld in Florida (where such "marriages" aren't legal). If the case were taken into the federal courts, the US Attorney General's office would no longer defend the federal law which protects states' rights to define marriage.

The current Attorney General, Eric Holder, made the following statement: "Classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny" (US Justice Department). This means, that without any court precedent, without any laws, Obama and the Justice Department have created protected class status based on the self-identifying factor of sexual orientation. What this also means is that Obama has taken the powers of both the judicial and legislative branches of the federal government in the matter of same sex marriage.

This opens the legal door to all sorts of federal and state abuses. If the Obama administration ignores the constitutional mandate to uphold the law, then the rule of law becomes meaningless. When the executive branch of the federal government takes on both legislative and judicial powers, the possibility for abuse follows, including the possibility of dictatorial powers.

The agenda of those who support same sex marriage is blatantly clear. Nothing can stand in the way of supporting gay ideology to obtain protected class status based on self-identified attributes of same gender attraction. Gay activists and others will cheer the statist decisions of Obama while ignoring the latent dangers of his decision.

Preserving the institution of marriage is no longer a question of "marriage equality" that same sex marriage advocates tell us it is. Protecting the institution of marriage is no longer about gay rights the gay advocates tell us it is.

With the Obama administration, protecting marriage now becomes a matter of protecting the rule of law, protecting states' rights, and protecting the country from statist ideals that would grasp power wherever it finds it convenient to do so.

The Plague of Moral Cowardice

2011-02-26T19:41:00.001-07:00

This past week, my friend's husband left her. He was a friend as well. Their family and mine have know each other for a long time. Their oldest son is good friends with my son. They play video games together. They cheer on each others' choice of sports.

The husband and father just up and left his family, saying that he'd had enough. This came out of the blue. My friend had no clue, no idea that her husband felt the way he did and was shocked when he left so abruptly and so completely.

The news saddens me because of lost friendship, sympathy for the remaining family, and because this man's actions diminish the overall good in the world. His actions demonstrate the paucity of moral courage lacking in today's world. His actions say that it's easier to give up instead of working to make something better. His actions are indicative of a growing social sickness that values self more than others.

I see such family tragedies all the time now - among relatives, among neighbors, among friends. While such tragedies of family frequently occur, I find the ever increasing and often the attendant viciousness of family break ups a symptom of the greater problem of the moral courage to look beyond the self.

Selfishness is the easier path but it doesn't produce "the better" in humans. The utter and lonely focus on self, on the "me," on "what I want," rather than on the needs and concerns of others, especially the concerns of spouse and family, produces a plague of moral cowardice. Selfishness produces attitudes of entitlement. It blames others for misfortunes. It seeks comfort in belittling and denigrating others, in attacking what is right and good, and in seeking to replace happiness with excesses and excuses. It seeks justification for poor decisions and actions.

The danger to family stability is one manifestation of moral cowardice. Other manifestations occur in broader relationships between people, in business and in politics. We see a rise in uncouth speech, especially directed anonymously through the internet and texting. We see a need to bring others down, to lower others to the basest levels. We see name calling and accusations - all symptoms of a lack of moral courage to stand up for what is good and right - to stand up for "the better."

We have few role models to show us true moral courage. Our politicians nearly universally sink to the lowest common denominator of selfish behavior. Bill Clinton perjured himself in court to avoid admitting to his extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky. George Bush pressed for statist powers far beyond the limits of the Constitution, signing the onerous Patriot Act. Barack Obama ignores the Constitution all together claiming executive authority to sidestep Congress and the Court. Obama also bows before foreign governments, showing weakness and moral weakness in the face of dictators and autocrats.

More than with any previous president, Barack Obama reminds me of a quote by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the famous novelist and Soviet dissident, from a speech he delivered at Harvard University in 1978:

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.

Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

May we find the moral courage: to stand up for what is right; to stand up for the institution of the family; to consider selflessness and commitment; to think less about ourselves and more about others; and to stand up against a bankrupt political philosophy that would lead us further and further into paths of moral cowardice.

Andrew Klavan: Multiculturalism Explained

2011-02-25T16:51:00.000-07:00

Andrew Klaven explains all about the pillar of modern leftist doctrine - multiculturalism.

Obama's True Colors: Libya and DOMA

2011-02-24T17:31:00.000-07:00

Source: townhall.com by Michael Ramirez.

How about that President Obama? After wallowing apologetically in US foreign affairs, after running up the national debt to obscene levels, after creating a score of new healthcare entitlements, and after equivocating on same sex marriage for two years, he suddenly decides that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) passed in 1996 in the Clinton Administration is unconstitutional against states that have adopted same sex marriage and therefore should not be defended?

Here's a new brand of statist and leftist doctrine: If the executive branch doesn't agree with a law, it merely has to neglect to uphold the law in court. In another such instance, then California Attorney General Jerry Brown (now governor) refused to defend Proposition 8 - saying that California's constitutional amendment was unconstitutional. Now Obama's Attorney General, for the sake of identity politics and political expediency, declares that federal law will bow to the states when it comes to the topic of same sex marriage.

Both Obama's and Brown's precedent are dangerous, usurping the authority of the courts and using the executive branch to decide issues of constitutionality of law. Despite where you stand on the issue of same sex marriage, these tactics are dangerous extensions of executive power.

Just remember, when you cheer because "your" politician usurped power to benefit you, what happens when the next guy comes into power and uses the same political doctrine against you?

The Snarky Files - Euripides' Views on the Week (02/18/11)

2011-02-18T13:48:00.009-07:00

The Snarky Files. Snarky means several things. I prefer the definition of "sharply critical." Here's my take on some news stories this past week. No real news here, just snark.

Wisconsin Woes
As the Wisconsin state legislature set to vote on limiting collective bargaining for certain public employees in order to help balance the state budget (what the Mainstream Media calls an "anti-union" bill) state senate Democrats fled the state, refusing to take part in the vote (Yahoo).

Here's another shining example of statist ideology at work in our government. What's the message? If you won't vote the way we want, despite the democratic process, we're going to take our ball and go home.

With such tactics as this, who needs democracy?

Obama Weighs in on Wisconsin
President Obama weighed in on the protests against Wisconsin's Governor Walker and the state legislature by sending community organizers to help protest (Washington Post).

The president's political machine worked in close coordination Thursday with state and national union officials to get thousands of protesters to gather in Madison and to plan similar demonstrations in other state capitals.

Thank you, Mr. President, for proving once again what a community organizer you are - obstructing the democratic process by sending federal organizers to interfere in state matters. You certainly show your true colors in this matter. Why not just send in the National Guard next time? That would certainly tilt government more in your favor.

Jesse Jackson the the Rescue
Jesse Jackson also showed up in Wisconsin to rally protests against the governor because....well, because, quite frankly, Jesse Jackson was feeling left out and hadn't gotten any press lately.

Of course Jesse Jackson also said that the protests in Wisconsin were akin to those in Egypt and Tunisia, I suppose because the people of Wisconsin are now ruled by a dictator and must take to the streets to overthrow the system and send Governor Walker into exile.

Good News
An aide to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told Democrat Chiefs of Staff that a government shutdown is likely due to the wrangling over passing a budget (Politico). Pelosi couldn't shove through a budget of her own last year despite the Democrat majority, the current Senate under Harry Reid refuses to pass anything that comes out of the House, and Barack Obama says he'll veto any budget the Republicans come up with.

And yet, Pelosi's aide reports that it's the Republican's fault?

I just don't get what the problem is. Help me out here: Shutting down the federal government is a bad thing because...?

No More Janet?
The LA Times reports that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will not run for the Senate seat to be vacated by Arizona Senator Jon Kyl in 2012. That means that once Obama does not get reelected, we can also be free of Napolitano as well.

To Obamacare or not to Obamacare
House Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz complained to the Chairman of the House whether the "disparaging" term Obamacare should be allowed to be spoken on the House floor (The Hill). This is a typical leftist tactic - renaming things in disparaging terms (see the note above about Wisconsin's "anti-union" bill. Is it any wonder that the Republicans have adopted the tactic?

What's in a name? A nose by any other name would still smell. And so does Obamacare.

Orson Scott Card Quote: How Truth Speaks to Power

2011-02-14T22:44:00.002-07:00

Orson Scott Card writes excellent science fiction and fantasy. His book, Ender's Game is an all-time classic.

I found this gem in Orson Scott Card's latest book Pathfinder:

A regime that wraps itself in the flag of truth fears truth most of all, for if its story is falsified in the slightest degree, its authority is gone.

We're seeing the agenda of the institutional left unravel when held up against the great and timeless principles of the Constitution. We, as a people, are starting to emerge from the deep sleep of decades of spoon-fed socialism from our schools and from our government, telling us that government programs are necessary, that we must maintain entitlements, that any other path is "mean-spirited," "racist," or full of "hate." We're finding that such leftist ideals as political correctness and the blame game are attempts to silence those who would speak out for what is good and true.

The resurgence of ideals to conserve the US Constitution, the rule of law, the principle of limited government, and real civil liberties speaks truth to the shrouds of socialism that have seduced and blinded us for so long. And with the truth of the founding principles, the authority of socialist ideals is gone.

Andrew Klavan: Stop the Hate!

2011-02-10T21:09:00.000-07:00

Andrew Klavan explains everything we need to know about right wing hatred and what we ought to do about it.

Schoolteacher Suspended Over Blog About Students

2011-02-09T21:54:00.001-07:00

School teacher Natalie Munroe vents here real feelings online.

I'm not sure which side to applaud in this story. Natalie Munroe, a Pennsylvania school teacher was suspended for venting her feelings for her students in her online blog.

On the one hand, I completely understand Ms. Munroe's frustration with her students. Over the years I have taught, the increasing entitlement mentality of students wears my patience thin. More and more students spend their time trying to figure out how little work they need to do in order to pass a class. Rather than just doing the work, they complain of the work they have. They read as little as possible and write poorly. While I don't think students are getting more stupid, they are indeed growing more ignorant.

On the other hand, Ms. Munroe went a bit too far when her frustrations turned into personal attacks. She reportedly wrote about her students: “Frightfully dim,” “Rat-like,” “Am concerned your kid is going to open fire on the school,” “I hate your kid,” and “Seems smarter than she actually is.”

I can't agree to such ad hominem attacks, especially on children.

Still....

Is it too far of a mental stretch to recognize Ms. Munroe's honesty, albeit rude honesty, in her condemnation of school kids these days?

The Arguments Gay Marriage Advocates Use

2011-02-09T00:11:00.000-07:00

Those who advocate neutering marriage use any and all manner of arguments of the heart.

These arguments all have common characteristics and share common fallacies.

Whenever a news article appears talking of the continuing law suit against California's Proposition 8, or other court or legal battles surrounding the question of same sex marriage, gay activists and other supporters fill the comments section with countless arguments, condemning all who disagree in the slightest with their position. Such comments and arguments have many fallacious elements in common. Here are the most common arguments.

Arguments Based on Identity Politics
Identity politics is an ideology based on the socialist concept of class oppression and the uprising of the proletariat. With regard to homosexuality, identity politics replaces class struggle with the politics of sexual preference.

The arguments based on identity politics claim analogy with racial identity, which is a false analogy. Sexual preference is not race, nor does any perceived same sex attraction and subsequent homosexual activity correlate to race. Yet, because both reside within the same category of identity politics, same sex marriage advocates use the language of race to condemn anyone who disagrees with their ideology.

The arguments take the following forms:

You are a bigot.
Allowing civil unions but not marriage is a reinstatement of separate but equal station.
Banning same sex marriage is equivalent to anti-miscegenation laws.
This is Jim Crow all over again.
You are an intolerant homophobe.
Your argument is hate speech.
You are a closet gay.

Judge Walker, in his decision to overturn California's constitutional amendment granted by Proposition 8, argued almost entirely from the perspective of identity politics, rather than relying on the law. In effect, he said there is no rational basis for denying same sex couples marriage and that the Californians who voted to pass Proposition 8 were therefore irrational, bigoted, and acting out of hatred for homosexuals. Walker invented the gay protected class status, then applies any support for traditional marriage as proof of anti-gay sentiment.

Arguments Ad Hominem
Arguments along the lines of "you are a bigot" cross over into attacks against the person. These types of arguments are often quite forceful and difficult to answer to, yet they are nonetheless fallacious. These arguments often blur identity politics with direct attacks. Besides the name calling and labeling of bigotry - intolerance, homophobia, H8R, and so on ad nauseam - those who post comments will frequently flag any views protecting the institution of marriage as offensive, and many times succeed in getting any other comments removed from the comments.

These tactics are intended to shame or silence any opposition for the simple fact that most arguments in favor of same sex marriage cannot survive the marketplace of ideas.

Arguments which Misapply the Law
The most persuasive arguments in favor of same sex marriage appeal to the complexities and misapplications of law. Some of these arguments go like this:

The courts have identified a natural right to marry, so homosexuals must be granted that right.
We must let the courts decide with regard to gay marriage. We don't vote for civil rights.
Keep your laws out of the bedroom.
Gays as a class are protected under the 14th Amendment and therefore must be granted equality in marriage.
Women never would have gotten the vote if it weren't for the courts.

And so on. Yet, each of these presents a logical or legal fallacy:

The natural right to marry does not legally extend to same sex couples.
Civil rights are those rights granted by the Constitution or by laws. Laws are created by vote. Civil rights are not natural rights.
While anti-sodomy laws were indeed struck down as unconstitutional on the basis of privacy, marriage is a public institution long regulated by governments for the public good.
There is no such thing as a protected gay class, having, at the least, the problem of proof of membership and of definition.
Women were enfranchised to vote after the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1920. Ratifications of amendments require state legislatures to vote. Many states had women's suffrage long before the 19th Amendment.

Arguments of False Analogies
Similar to same sex marriage arguments based on identity politics, many argue through false analogies. I've noted the false comparison of same sex attraction to race (or stretched even further), the comparison of a gays to race. We can also take note of the following false analogies:

Denying gays marriage is the same as anti-miscegenation laws.
Homosexuals have no choice in their attraction, so they should enjoy the equality of marriage.
Those who "ban" gay marriage are fascists, no better than the KKK. (See the section on ad hominem arguments.)

Arguments of Redirection
A favorite tactic of same sex marriage advocates, indeed of modern liberals, is to redirect the argument away from the core issue into obscurities and sophistries. Here are some examples:

Get with the times and stop living in the 16th Century.
Divorces hurt marriages more than gay marriage ever will.
You've destroyed marriage with your divorces.
Most of the younger generation support gay marriage.
Gay marriage is inevitable.
Every study shows that gay marriage doesn't hurt children.
We need to stop living in the dark ages.
Marriage is an antiquated system based on nothing more than dividing property.
The Greeks had gay marriage.

Besides the "so what?" factor, each of these is a red herring fallacy, redirecting the argument away from the question of same sex marriage, and muddying the waters in irrelevant and tangential directions. They all suffer, as well, from the fallacy of reduction, taking a complex idea (for example the problem of divorce) and simplifying the blame and harm to use as, once again, an ad hominem attack against anyone who defends traditional marriage.

These also have the effect, as red herrings will, of derailing the argument into so many different areas that the original idea can become irretrievably lost.

Arguments against Religion
These are a specialized ad hominem attack, defying or debunking religion in order to attempt to demonstrate some moral superiority over religion. Here are some examples:

Keep your religion out of my face.
The Jesus I know would never be so intolerant as you are.
Jesus was gay.
Religion is a mental disease.
How will gay marriage hurt your religion?
The Old Testament may have condemned homosexuals but it also says you should stone a woman caught in adultery. You just pick and choose which laws you want to follow.

These all overlap other fallacious arguments.

Arguments that are Baseless (Silly)
A large category of arguments in favor of same sex marriage have no basis in reality, relying instead on gut feelings and emotional outbursts to make a point:

Divorce has already destroyed marriage (it's already broken, so same sex marriage can't hurt it any more?).
Gay marriage will save marriage and families (because the gay lifestyle is so much more moral than other lifestyles?)
Gay marriage will prevent bullying and teen suicides (because teen angst will be wiped away once gays can marry?)
Being gay isn't a choice (and neither is sex or marriage?)
There's no difference between the sexes (?????).
There is no gay agenda (...besides forcing a change in the definition of marriage, and creating a gay protected class, and enforcing laws to favor gay behaviors, and allowing gays to serve openly in the military, and enforcing sanctions against those who don't agree with the gay lifestyle, and...).

These all relate to emotions, argued, as modern liberals often do, from deep rooted feelings and not from rational thought. And, while we admit that people have feelings and usually "feel" their way through arguments instead of "thinking" their way through them, we must recognize these sorts of arguments for what they are, baseless attacks on those who disagree with the concept of same sex marriage.

The idea of same sex marriage is ideologically driven, based on self-identified same sex attraction, and manifested in homosexual behavior. In a nutshell, while same sex attraction may or may not be inborn, the outward expression of sexual preference is a moral question and not a question of innate consequence, nor is it a civil right. These common arguments of same sex marriage advocates demonstrate the inherent fallacies of their position.

Barack Obama's Ideology

2011-02-07T17:16:00.001-07:00

Is President Obama a leftist ideologue?

Well, yes. The real question is just how dangerous to American values is such leftist ideology.

I watched FOX News' Bill O'Reilly's interview of President Obama conducted as part of the Superbowl pregame activities. (No, I didn't watch the game.) O'Reilly asked several questions of Obama concerning his leftist ideology, to which the president merely laughed, indicating either he doesn't believe he's a leftist, or that he thinks the question is too stupid to warrant an honest answer.

The question isn't whether or not Barack Obama is a leftist ideologue, clearly he is. Yet it would be a good exercise to point to just where Obama stands in the political spectrum. Here's what his past two years in office have demonstrated of his ideology.

Obama is a Socialist
Despite the bad rap conservatives have taken for using and abusing the term in relation to condemning government's control and regulation over the economy, the fact remains that principles of government control over the economy derive from socialist ideals. Democratic socialism, while still allowing the people to vote to give up economic control, ends up at the same place as other versions of socialism. When O'Reilly asked Obama of his socialist trend, Obama made a big point of saying that he had reduced taxes over the past two years, as if taxation were the only measure of democratic socialism. (Whether he's reduced taxes or not can be saved for a later discussion.)

Obama's record, on the other hand, demonstrates anything but the founding principles of classical liberalism. The Affordable Care Act alone demonstrates a whole new batch of entitlements handed out by government, funded with (you guessed it) new taxes, in order for the government to assert more control over the medical market. Just that piece of legislation alone would land Obama squarely in the socialist camp. Take into account his support of Cap and Trade legislation, supporting tax increases for the rich, and his "spread the wealth" comment during his election, and we have enough indicators to point the socialism finger.

Obama is a Keynesian
Keynesian economics uses the fear of the economic boom and bust cycle in order to push in favor of massive government overspending during economic recession. Interestingly, Obama ran for president blaming George W. Bush's government overspending and regulation policies for the current recession. Then, once in office, Obama approved massive spending on a scale never before seen in the US, assuring us all the while that the only way out of our economic woes was through government borrowing and spending.

The problem with Keynesian economics can be summed up by noted economist F.A. Hayak's observation that public money can never work as efficiently or well as private money, and will actually slow down the economy - the opposite of Keynes' ideas. Although economics is the great, debatable social science, history shows us that Keynesian spending has indeed slowed down recovery and growth. Deficit spending also brings with it a whole set of its own problems, not the least of which is the increased insolvency of the US government.

Obama is a Multiculturalist
Multiculturalism is the idea that no culture has any value above that of another. This translates into the ideal that indicates if one culture seems better than another, it must have cheated, or oppressed, or destroyed that culture in order for it to have emerged on top.

This is a dangerous and misleading ideal. It implies that the only reason that the US is culturally exceptional is because the American system is the most evil, oppressive, manipulative regime in history. It ignores the exceptional qualities of the founding principles of the US, such as the God-given rights of life, liberty and property, the principles of individualism, the concept of limited government, the civil right of free speech, or the free exercise of religion. Instead, it says that all cultures are good, and if one culture appears to do evil, it is only because it has been oppressed by more successful systems.

Of course, few multiculturalists will come out and say that the US is evil, but the ideal remains and pervades most public education. Multiculturalists condemn the US for the very culture that made it exceptional in the first place. Hence, they are free to blame the US for the atrocities of 9/11. It's the fault of the US that those Muslim nations are so oppressed and Americans deserved their retribution. Illegal immigration? That's the fault of the US for imperializing Mexico away from the Mexicans so many years ago. Our very success proves that the US is the aggressor and in the wrong.

Obama spent his first year in office apologizing for the "evils" of the US, a clear indication that his ideology falls directly into the multiculturalist camp. What other phenomenon explains why Obama would rewrite history to attribute Western Civilization to Islam or to apologize to the Chinese for Arizona's immigration law?

Obama adheres to Identity Politics
Identity politics is an ideology based on the socialist concept of class oppression and the uprising of the proletariat. Identity politics replaces class struggle with such things as race, gender, or sexual preference. Yet, because of identity politics, the classical liberal concepts of liberty and equality have been subsumed into a system that must maintain race or gender warfare well past the point of equality under the law, replacing it instead with a perpetual tension based on a continually changing system of invented rights and entitlements.

Part and parcel of identity politics is the ever-changing struggle we call political correctness. In order to maintain the tension of racial struggle, for example, identity ideologues must continually redefine terms and conditions of acceptance in order to maintain the existence of an oppressed class. Words are redefined, history is rewritten, books are scrubbed "clean" of offensive language (consider the republication of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn where "offensive" material has been edited out).

Hence, Obama's support of the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, shows us that he is more interested in maintaining his ideology of identity politics than in the wishes of the people of the US, let alone those in the military. Obama can acclaim the benefits of women's choice over the principles of the right to life. Obama condemns "the rich" for their evil excesses, while enjoying and living the life of the elite and privileged class.

Conclusions
These ideologies are dangerous to the American foundational principles of individualism, life, liberty and property. According to The Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, in 2010 the US index fell from the ranks of the economically free for the first time. Socialist and Keynsian principles have finally taken their toll in reducing the economic freedoms of Americans.

Multiculturalism threatens the bedrock of our democracy - the educational system. As more of our youth are indoctrinated into believing the worst lies about the American system, we place ourselves at risk of becoming a nation that will continue to accept government as the solution, rather than the problem.

Identity politics threatens our court system, turning our courts into centers of legislative action and social redefinition. It also threatens to maintain a society of oppression and discrimination since identity politics cannot survive without some system of continued class warfare.

Solutions aren't easy. At the least we should support presidential and congressional candidates who don't preach these doctrines in direct contradiction to true freedom, liberty and justice. Modern democratic socialism is seductive, bribing society with entitlements and government solutions. Yet, such seduction is, to coin a phrase from Marx, the opiate of the masses.

The Heritage Foundation: We Still Hold These Truths Video

2011-02-05T13:41:00.001-07:00

The Declaration of the United States. Is it still relevant or not? Does it speak to some truth or is it merely an old piece of paper with no value to the modern day?

The Heritage Foundation produced the following video. Sit back, relax, and enjoy a journey through the founding principles of Self Evident Truths.

The Great Divider - Barack Obama Sets Another Record

2011-02-04T09:23:00.001-07:00

President Barack Obama indicates the size of his public support.

A new Gallup Poll shows that President Barack Obama's approval rating for his second year holds the most polarized percentage between the two parties, beating out Ronald Reagan by a full 12% and George W. Bush by 24%.

Take a look at this Gallup chart for a comparison. (Click on the photo to make it larger.)

Also telling is Obama's ratings compared with all time record holder George W. Bush.

The second chart, besides indicating that Barack Obama is not a great president, also shows that party politics has become quite divisive over the past ten years than ever before. This indicates a clear reason why independent America now outnumbers either party. Considering Obama's Bush-like policies of deficit spending and of continuing war in the Mideast, and considering that no one believes that he has the ability to change into Clinton mode, it looks as though his divisiveness among the parties can only widen.

The Snarky Files - Euripides' Views on the Week (02/01/11)

2011-02-01T18:14:00.001-07:00

When democratic ideals and calls for the right to vote are stirring the imagination of young people in Egypt and Tunisia and other parts of the world, we in California can’t say now is the time to block a vote of the people. (LA Times Blogs)

Is Governor Brown comparing the rioting in Tunisia and Egypt to the stirring of the democratic process? I suppose if he has his way, when the citizens of California take to the streets in riots, he'll be able to say "Mission Accomplished."

Is this also the same Brown who, when blocking the vote of the people of California in passing Proposition 8, refused to defend the law as California's Attorney General?

Global Warming
Al Gore keeps spreading his global warming doctrine. According to his ideology, any climate change verifies global warming with absolute certainty:

A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species. (Al Gore Blog)

It's completely obvious to anyone except climate change ideologues that they can blame any kind of weather on man-made global warming and still be perfectly consistent. Of course, if we go back to the 1970s, all the same hysterical predictions were made about global cooling. (Wikipedia) Meanwhile, the climate changes while the ideologues stay the same.

The Feeling's Mutual
Egyptian President Mubarak stated today that he won't run for another term as president. (NY Times)

In other news, Mubarak called President Barack Obama and suggested that he should follow his lead and also not run for another term as president.

Unconstitutional Healthcare
US District Court Judge Roger Vinson ruled that the Healthcare mandate for Americans to purchase healthcare insurance was unconstitutional and therefore the entire law must be declared void. (WSJ)

As part of Judge Vinson's ruling, he pulled out this gem: "If a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house." (Washington Times)

The source of this dissenting view of the healthcare mandate? Barack Obama, of course, in an election debate with Hillary Clinton.

Flip Flopping Leftists
In responding to Judge Vinson's ruling, defenders of Obamacare all took pretty much the same position. Here's a sample:

"We don't believe this kind of judicial activism will be upheld and we are confident that the Affordable Care Act will ultimately be declared constitutional," Assistant to the President Stephanie Cutter said in White House blog post. (Bellingham Herald)

In a decision that constitutes radical judicial activism run amok, Judge Vinson declared the "individual mandate" portion of the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. (Huffington Post)

The judge's ruling, like the rulings in similar lawsuits in Virginia and Michigan, is sure to excite commentary about the proper role of judges in our society. And tragically little of that commentary will actually involve an honest debate about either the Constitution or the important role judges play in enforcing it. (Huffington Post)

He then took the opportunity to insert his political philosophy into public policy, striking down the entire law! This decision flies in the face of fourteen other decisions, contradicts decades of legal precedent, and could jeopardize families' health care security. And to make matters worse, this is the very kind of judicial activism that most conservative justices and politicians have argued against for years. (Huffington Post)

The bottom line is this case, from our perspective, is and always will be about the law and not about the judge who decides it.... The appellate courts are going to focus on the law. (Huffington Post)

Oh. Wait. That last one was a leftist praising the decisions of activist Judge Vaughn Walker when he ruled in favor of the leftist position favoring same sex marriage. Of course, judges are only activist when leftists disagree with their position.

Or, perhaps, judges aren't the bastion of measured thought and opinion that we seem to think they are? Which is it, oh Ye Defenders of American Social Justice? Do judges act in their own interests or don't they?

Aren't They the Bad Guys?
Wikileaks released documents showing that three suspected terrorists involved with the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are still at large. (Telegraph) In addition, the documents seem to reveal a plot to use nuclear materials to manufacture and set off a nuclear "dirty" bomb.

Wasn't Wikileaks supposed to be the Bad Guy? I guess if you're pretending to be a news agency, like The New York Times (a former newspaper), anything Wikileaks produces is underhanded and suspect.

Andrew Klavan: The Highway to Hell, Leftist Remix Edition

2011-01-28T08:44:00.000-07:00

Andrew Klavan explains what conservatives have known all along - that leftist ideologies have bankrupted political and social institutions. The conclusion? It's time for real change to our social structure - changes based on what is prudent and pragmatic, not changes based on feel good policy.