An Interview with Former Atheist (Now Theist) Antony Flew
Friday, December 10, 2004
Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation
The above article is posted in honour of the recently deceased Fr. Louis Bouyer.
[Lord, please] remember Louis Bouyer, whom you have called from this life. In baptism he died with Christ: may he also share in his resurrection. [Roman Missal Eucharistic Prayer 2: From Masses for the Dead]
May he rest in peace.
The above article is posted in honour of the recently deceased Fr. Louis Bouyer.
[Lord, please] remember Louis Bouyer, whom you have called from this life. In baptism he died with Christ: may he also share in his resurrection. [Roman Missal Eucharistic Prayer 2: From Masses for the Dead]
May he rest in peace.
Why Our Country's Future is in the Red States Not the Blue Ones
Thanks to Laura Ingraham for alerting me to the above link.
Thanks to Laura Ingraham for alerting me to the above link.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Miscellaneous News:
(On Scientists and Mice)
World's Scientists Admit That They Just Don't Like Mice
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND—Nearly 700 scientists representing 27 countries convened at the University of Zurich Monday to formally announce that their experimentation on mice has been motivated not by a desire to advance human knowledge, but out of sheer distaste for the furry little rodents.
"As a man of science, I deal with facts, and the fact is that mice are gross," said Dr. Douglas White, chair of the Oxford biogenetics department and lifelong mouse-hater. "They're squirmy, scurrying little vermin, and they make my skin crawl. I speak for all of my assembled colleagues when I say that the horrible little things deserve the worst we can dish out."
According to a 500-word statement, scientists hate mice for "their beady little eyes," "their repulsive tails," and "the annoying little squeaking sounds they make."
At the press conference, several scientists detailed their involvement in the centuries-long ruse of "conducting experiments" and "curing diseases."
"For years, I've used lab mice to research cell breakdown in living tissue—and I've been lucky enough to make some pretty important medical advancements along the way," said researcher Ellen Gresham of the Harvard Institute for Advanced Studies. "But even if there were no scientific benefit to the work I do, I'd still experiment on mice, just to watch them suffer."
"The truth is, mice are particularly ill-suited for our tissue study," Gresham added. "We could construct a computer model that would yield more accurate results, but we don't care."... For more, please go HERE.
Where would we be in this world if not for the fine crack journalism of...The Onion to reveal these things my friends??? ;-)
(On Scientists and Mice)
World's Scientists Admit That They Just Don't Like Mice
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND—Nearly 700 scientists representing 27 countries convened at the University of Zurich Monday to formally announce that their experimentation on mice has been motivated not by a desire to advance human knowledge, but out of sheer distaste for the furry little rodents.
"As a man of science, I deal with facts, and the fact is that mice are gross," said Dr. Douglas White, chair of the Oxford biogenetics department and lifelong mouse-hater. "They're squirmy, scurrying little vermin, and they make my skin crawl. I speak for all of my assembled colleagues when I say that the horrible little things deserve the worst we can dish out."
According to a 500-word statement, scientists hate mice for "their beady little eyes," "their repulsive tails," and "the annoying little squeaking sounds they make."
At the press conference, several scientists detailed their involvement in the centuries-long ruse of "conducting experiments" and "curing diseases."
"For years, I've used lab mice to research cell breakdown in living tissue—and I've been lucky enough to make some pretty important medical advancements along the way," said researcher Ellen Gresham of the Harvard Institute for Advanced Studies. "But even if there were no scientific benefit to the work I do, I'd still experiment on mice, just to watch them suffer."
"The truth is, mice are particularly ill-suited for our tissue study," Gresham added. "We could construct a computer model that would yield more accurate results, but we don't care."... For more, please go HERE.
Where would we be in this world if not for the fine crack journalism of...The Onion to reveal these things my friends??? ;-)
Points to Ponder:
(On the United Nations)
Don't Mend the UN, End It.
End it. Strangle it. Kill it off and never lament its passing.
Name one international crisis the UN has successfully settled. Just one. We're still in Korea, and the Kim cult still reigns in the northern half of that peninsula thanks largely to a war run ineffectively through--you guessed it--the UN. Wherever the UN sends its "peacekeepers," either the war ends in stalemate or in a win for the bad guys. Former Yugoslavia? Stalemate. Somalia? Warlord victory.
The UN empowers leftist bureaucrats and toadies to tyrants and has become a true menace to national sovereignty. In its proclamations on everything from population to the environment to tax policy, the UN is a menace to freedom of conscience, thought and worship.
Is it possible to reform such a body? I don't think so. So we should put Kofi's cleptocracy out of its misery.
We should replace the UN with something better, something that keeps democracies in and tyrannies out. Something focused on maintaining national sovereignty and consent of the governed and that eschews the socialist claptrap that infects the UN from its skin to its core. This new body--call it the Council of Democracies, the Proliferation Security Initiative, whatever--should function as collective security for its member states and as an incentive to democratize for non-members. No one should get rich working for this body's bureaucracy, and no one should be able to put his or her kids on the payroll either. This new body will not host lavish parties at American taxpayer expense in Pyongyang and will not send troops to rape defenseless refugees in Sierra Leone. It will fulfill its primary function--defend democracy--or it will wither away. What it will not do is become a perpetual home for the chronically cantankerous anti-American crank.
If we "reform" the UN, that means we will be keeping it around for a while. So rather than mend it, it's time to end it...
Whatever you call this new organization, if it has a chairman or secretary general, Vaclev Havel gets my vote. [Bryan Preston circa 12/01/04]
(On the United Nations)
Don't Mend the UN, End It.
End it. Strangle it. Kill it off and never lament its passing.
Name one international crisis the UN has successfully settled. Just one. We're still in Korea, and the Kim cult still reigns in the northern half of that peninsula thanks largely to a war run ineffectively through--you guessed it--the UN. Wherever the UN sends its "peacekeepers," either the war ends in stalemate or in a win for the bad guys. Former Yugoslavia? Stalemate. Somalia? Warlord victory.
The UN empowers leftist bureaucrats and toadies to tyrants and has become a true menace to national sovereignty. In its proclamations on everything from population to the environment to tax policy, the UN is a menace to freedom of conscience, thought and worship.
Is it possible to reform such a body? I don't think so. So we should put Kofi's cleptocracy out of its misery.
We should replace the UN with something better, something that keeps democracies in and tyrannies out. Something focused on maintaining national sovereignty and consent of the governed and that eschews the socialist claptrap that infects the UN from its skin to its core. This new body--call it the Council of Democracies, the Proliferation Security Initiative, whatever--should function as collective security for its member states and as an incentive to democratize for non-members. No one should get rich working for this body's bureaucracy, and no one should be able to put his or her kids on the payroll either. This new body will not host lavish parties at American taxpayer expense in Pyongyang and will not send troops to rape defenseless refugees in Sierra Leone. It will fulfill its primary function--defend democracy--or it will wither away. What it will not do is become a perpetual home for the chronically cantankerous anti-American crank.
If we "reform" the UN, that means we will be keeping it around for a while. So rather than mend it, it's time to end it...
Whatever you call this new organization, if it has a chairman or secretary general, Vaclev Havel gets my vote. [Bryan Preston circa 12/01/04]
Sunday, December 05, 2004
"Grand Theft Auto Election" Dept.
(With Apologies to Steve Miller)
This here's a story about Washington's Democrats
A party of whiners and insolent little brats.
They sit around crying about losing the governors' race
And here is what happens as they attempt yet more disgrace.
They headed down to, ol Olympia
Where they sought to instill a bit of fe'a{1}
Chris Gregoire and her corrupt powerbrokers
Filed a suit to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
From his win Dino Rossi was elated
But he is aware of Chris Gregoire's reputation
Her incompetence as Attorney General's not minor
She made her living off of the public's taxes
Like a very bad horror movie franchise which continues to spin out turkey flicks, the latest installment of "Tuesday the 2nd (of November)" is in full swing up here in the People's Republic of...er...I mean the State of Washington. I am very leery of another recount because the margin is so close that it would not take much for the Democrats to steal this election. And yes my friends, I need not remind most of you that this is (at least) the third attempt by the Democrats to steal a major election in the past four years. But of course I will remind readers of this humble weblog anyway because (frankly) I am so sick of this kind of crap that I am nearly beside myself. Nonetheless, let us review the past four years and if there are other attempted election thieveries by the Demoncats that I am overlooking, I am sure someone among the readers of this weblog will chime in to correct me.{2}
The first obviously enough was Florida in 2000 which can be read about HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. The second was Ohio in 2004 where the attempt to steal the election can be read about HERE and HERE among other places{3} including an outline of the plan HERE. And as the third installment of attempted thievery, we have my home state of Washington where even John Kerry has chipped in money to attempt the heist -see John Fund's article located HERE for details.
It was noted a few years ago that manual recounts are a key way to distort actual election tallys. That is why (of course) the Democrats always prefer them to machine recounts. Machines of course have their problems of this there is no denying. But to my knowledge, no machines used in any recounting can selectively bend, fold, staple, or otherwise mutilate adversarial ballots as partisan hand counters can. And that my friends is precisely why the Democrats want to see a manual recount in the governors race up here. Let us hope that three times is not a charm for them as this state cannot handle another four years of Democratic governorships.
The Demoncats, they see their power slip away
Hence Chris Gregoire's party must resort to foul play
Though now lameducks, but
Still having influence
They'll use the courts to thwart the will of the people
Sing it: they'll try to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
The past twenty years have been very damaging to our business climate out here. That is no small part of the reason why unemployment is higher out here than the national average and has been for a couple of years. I predict that if Gregoire succeeds in her attempted heist of the governorship that the exodus of businesses from this state will only increase. At least with someone who understands business as governor (read: Dino Rossi the winner of the election) we have a chance at reversing the damage wrought by the last string of Democratic governors who made this state less hospitable to businesses. And that is the bottom line really.
Notes:
{1} This is the word "fear" as Democratic Party strategeryman James Carville would say it ;-)
{2} One of the benefits of having such an intelligent reading audience is that when I make an occasional mistake, someone chimes in via email and corrects me -almost like clockwork most of the time.
{3} There is this "chick" on Air America (a network that replaced one of my favourite classic country stations about six weeks ago) who continues to whine about Cuyahoga county in Ohio as some bastion of thievery by Republicans. (Strangely enough, she does not seem to be concerned about Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where the vote margin was closer than Ohio. Is it perhaps because Kerry won those states in the tally???) All I will say in response to this is that there is a good reason why there are more votes than registered voters in places like Cuyahoga county. Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe explains it HERE. I will give you just a taste of Jacoby's article though - you have to pay for the rest:
A recent story that didn't get nearly the attention it deserved was the New York Daily News report that 46,000 registered New York City voters are also registered to vote in Florida. Nearly 1,700 of them have had absentee ballots mailed to their home in the other state, and as many as 1,000 have voted twice in the same election. Can 1,000 fraudulent votes change an election? Well, George W. Bush won Florida in 2000 by just 537 votes.
It is illegal to register to vote simultaneously in different jurisdictions, but scofflaws have little to worry about. As the Daily News noted, "efforts to prevent people from registering and voting in more than one state rely mostly on the honor system." Those who break the law rarely face prosecution or serious punishment. It's easy -- and painless -- to cheat.
I learned this firsthand in 1996, when I registered my wife's cat as a voter in Cook County, Ill., Norfolk County, Mass., and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and then requested absentee ballots from all three venues. My purpose wasn't to cast illegal multiple votes but to demonstrate how vulnerable to manipulation America's election system has become.
It was a simple scam to pull off. "Under the National Voter Registration Act -- the `Motor Voter Law' -- states are required to accept voter registrations by mail," I wrote at the time. "No longer can citizens be asked to make a trip to town hall or the county office. No longer do they have to provide proof of residence or citizenship. In fact, they don't have to exist. Motor Voter obliges election officials to add to the voter list any name mailed in on a properly filled-out registration form. Anyone so registered can then request an absentee ballot -- by mail, of course. The system is not only open to manipulation, it invites it."
As journalist John Fund shows in an alarming new book, "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy," the United States has an elections system that would be an embarrassment in Honduras or Ghana. It is so unpoliced, he writes, that at least eight of the 9/11 hijackers "were actually able to register to vote in either Virginia or Florida while they made their deadly preparations."
How fouled up are the voter rolls? So fouled up that in some cities there are more registered voters than there are adults. So fouled up that when the Indianapolis Star investigated Indiana's records a few years ago, it discovered that hundreds of thousands of names -- as many as one-fifth of the total -- were "bogus" since the individuals named had moved, died, or gone to prison. So fouled up that when a Louisiana paper filed 25 phony voter registration forms signed only with an "X," 21 were approved and added to the voter list...[Jeff Jacoby: How to Steal an Election (circa September 22, 2004)]
In other words, the problems with voting tallys are because of liberal attempts to register en masse anyone and their dog to vote via proposals such as former President Clinton's Motor Voter Bill. I say, repeal that bill and make photo ID a requirement for voting along with proof of citizenship. Those two steps alone would fix a lot of the messes which (dare I say it???) is precisely the reason why it will not be supported by very many Democrats. After all, it is damn difficult to steal elections if there are greater safeguards in place. But one final bit on Cuyahoga county and the supposed Republican "thievery" of that county.
It should be noted and inculcated as often as necessary that all the complaints from the Democrats who allege Republican wrongdoing are a result of the very kinds of voter registration schemes that they have been promoting for the past ten years. But that is not all. Indeed, Libertarian talk show host Neal Boortz has a picture at his site of the voters ballot in that controversial county. Have a look before I say anything further on it:
Just at face value, it would appear that the ballot itself was far more favourable to Kerry than to Bush!!! After all, the instructions on where to vote for Kerry are crystal clear. But notice how a voter attempting to vote for Bush could easily mispunch the card if they were not careful!!! This would not happen necessarily in the voting itself as the card should line up properly in the slot. I refer here to afterwards if they happen to look at their card after removing it from the slot (as I used to do with the punch ballots) and notice that number 4 is not punched. (Despite the "4" being noted in the brochure as the number to punch to vote for Bush/Cheney.)
Of course if they were to punch 4 after already punching 14 (thinking that they must have not punched the card properly to begin with) they would then have a spoiled ballot and those are the sorts which are not counted when ballots are tallyed. Bush still won in Cuyahoga but if anything, there is a much stronger argument that the county was close because of ballots that favoured Kerry causing potential spoiled ballots rather than because of anything the Republicans did.
Now I am not going to say that the ballot layout itself was rigged of course but instead I post it here as a pictoral confutation to the moonbat liberals who are still crowing about Bush camp election so-called "conspiracies" and whose bitching about yet more mythical "conspiracies" (rather than simply facing the fact that most people do not want the swill they are trying to sell) will help them to election losses in 2006, 2008, and beyond if they do not face up to the real reasons for why they keep losing major elections.
(With Apologies to Steve Miller)
This here's a story about Washington's Democrats
A party of whiners and insolent little brats.
They sit around crying about losing the governors' race
And here is what happens as they attempt yet more disgrace.
They headed down to, ol Olympia
Where they sought to instill a bit of fe'a{1}
Chris Gregoire and her corrupt powerbrokers
Filed a suit to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
From his win Dino Rossi was elated
But he is aware of Chris Gregoire's reputation
Her incompetence as Attorney General's not minor
She made her living off of the public's taxes
Like a very bad horror movie franchise which continues to spin out turkey flicks, the latest installment of "Tuesday the 2nd (of November)" is in full swing up here in the People's Republic of...er...I mean the State of Washington. I am very leery of another recount because the margin is so close that it would not take much for the Democrats to steal this election. And yes my friends, I need not remind most of you that this is (at least) the third attempt by the Democrats to steal a major election in the past four years. But of course I will remind readers of this humble weblog anyway because (frankly) I am so sick of this kind of crap that I am nearly beside myself. Nonetheless, let us review the past four years and if there are other attempted election thieveries by the Demoncats that I am overlooking, I am sure someone among the readers of this weblog will chime in to correct me.{2}
The first obviously enough was Florida in 2000 which can be read about HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. The second was Ohio in 2004 where the attempt to steal the election can be read about HERE and HERE among other places{3} including an outline of the plan HERE. And as the third installment of attempted thievery, we have my home state of Washington where even John Kerry has chipped in money to attempt the heist -see John Fund's article located HERE for details.
It was noted a few years ago that manual recounts are a key way to distort actual election tallys. That is why (of course) the Democrats always prefer them to machine recounts. Machines of course have their problems of this there is no denying. But to my knowledge, no machines used in any recounting can selectively bend, fold, staple, or otherwise mutilate adversarial ballots as partisan hand counters can. And that my friends is precisely why the Democrats want to see a manual recount in the governors race up here. Let us hope that three times is not a charm for them as this state cannot handle another four years of Democratic governorships.
The Demoncats, they see their power slip away
Hence Chris Gregoire's party must resort to foul play
Though now lameducks, but
Still having influence
They'll use the courts to thwart the will of the people
Sing it: they'll try to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
They'll try to steal the governors race
The past twenty years have been very damaging to our business climate out here. That is no small part of the reason why unemployment is higher out here than the national average and has been for a couple of years. I predict that if Gregoire succeeds in her attempted heist of the governorship that the exodus of businesses from this state will only increase. At least with someone who understands business as governor (read: Dino Rossi the winner of the election) we have a chance at reversing the damage wrought by the last string of Democratic governors who made this state less hospitable to businesses. And that is the bottom line really.
Notes:
{1} This is the word "fear" as Democratic Party strategeryman James Carville would say it ;-)
{2} One of the benefits of having such an intelligent reading audience is that when I make an occasional mistake, someone chimes in via email and corrects me -almost like clockwork most of the time.
{3} There is this "chick" on Air America (a network that replaced one of my favourite classic country stations about six weeks ago) who continues to whine about Cuyahoga county in Ohio as some bastion of thievery by Republicans. (Strangely enough, she does not seem to be concerned about Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where the vote margin was closer than Ohio. Is it perhaps because Kerry won those states in the tally???) All I will say in response to this is that there is a good reason why there are more votes than registered voters in places like Cuyahoga county. Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe explains it HERE. I will give you just a taste of Jacoby's article though - you have to pay for the rest:
A recent story that didn't get nearly the attention it deserved was the New York Daily News report that 46,000 registered New York City voters are also registered to vote in Florida. Nearly 1,700 of them have had absentee ballots mailed to their home in the other state, and as many as 1,000 have voted twice in the same election. Can 1,000 fraudulent votes change an election? Well, George W. Bush won Florida in 2000 by just 537 votes.
It is illegal to register to vote simultaneously in different jurisdictions, but scofflaws have little to worry about. As the Daily News noted, "efforts to prevent people from registering and voting in more than one state rely mostly on the honor system." Those who break the law rarely face prosecution or serious punishment. It's easy -- and painless -- to cheat.
I learned this firsthand in 1996, when I registered my wife's cat as a voter in Cook County, Ill., Norfolk County, Mass., and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and then requested absentee ballots from all three venues. My purpose wasn't to cast illegal multiple votes but to demonstrate how vulnerable to manipulation America's election system has become.
It was a simple scam to pull off. "Under the National Voter Registration Act -- the `Motor Voter Law' -- states are required to accept voter registrations by mail," I wrote at the time. "No longer can citizens be asked to make a trip to town hall or the county office. No longer do they have to provide proof of residence or citizenship. In fact, they don't have to exist. Motor Voter obliges election officials to add to the voter list any name mailed in on a properly filled-out registration form. Anyone so registered can then request an absentee ballot -- by mail, of course. The system is not only open to manipulation, it invites it."
As journalist John Fund shows in an alarming new book, "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy," the United States has an elections system that would be an embarrassment in Honduras or Ghana. It is so unpoliced, he writes, that at least eight of the 9/11 hijackers "were actually able to register to vote in either Virginia or Florida while they made their deadly preparations."
How fouled up are the voter rolls? So fouled up that in some cities there are more registered voters than there are adults. So fouled up that when the Indianapolis Star investigated Indiana's records a few years ago, it discovered that hundreds of thousands of names -- as many as one-fifth of the total -- were "bogus" since the individuals named had moved, died, or gone to prison. So fouled up that when a Louisiana paper filed 25 phony voter registration forms signed only with an "X," 21 were approved and added to the voter list...[Jeff Jacoby: How to Steal an Election (circa September 22, 2004)]
In other words, the problems with voting tallys are because of liberal attempts to register en masse anyone and their dog to vote via proposals such as former President Clinton's Motor Voter Bill. I say, repeal that bill and make photo ID a requirement for voting along with proof of citizenship. Those two steps alone would fix a lot of the messes which (dare I say it???) is precisely the reason why it will not be supported by very many Democrats. After all, it is damn difficult to steal elections if there are greater safeguards in place. But one final bit on Cuyahoga county and the supposed Republican "thievery" of that county.
It should be noted and inculcated as often as necessary that all the complaints from the Democrats who allege Republican wrongdoing are a result of the very kinds of voter registration schemes that they have been promoting for the past ten years. But that is not all. Indeed, Libertarian talk show host Neal Boortz has a picture at his site of the voters ballot in that controversial county. Have a look before I say anything further on it:
Just at face value, it would appear that the ballot itself was far more favourable to Kerry than to Bush!!! After all, the instructions on where to vote for Kerry are crystal clear. But notice how a voter attempting to vote for Bush could easily mispunch the card if they were not careful!!! This would not happen necessarily in the voting itself as the card should line up properly in the slot. I refer here to afterwards if they happen to look at their card after removing it from the slot (as I used to do with the punch ballots) and notice that number 4 is not punched. (Despite the "4" being noted in the brochure as the number to punch to vote for Bush/Cheney.)
Of course if they were to punch 4 after already punching 14 (thinking that they must have not punched the card properly to begin with) they would then have a spoiled ballot and those are the sorts which are not counted when ballots are tallyed. Bush still won in Cuyahoga but if anything, there is a much stronger argument that the county was close because of ballots that favoured Kerry causing potential spoiled ballots rather than because of anything the Republicans did.
Now I am not going to say that the ballot layout itself was rigged of course but instead I post it here as a pictoral confutation to the moonbat liberals who are still crowing about Bush camp election so-called "conspiracies" and whose bitching about yet more mythical "conspiracies" (rather than simply facing the fact that most people do not want the swill they are trying to sell) will help them to election losses in 2006, 2008, and beyond if they do not face up to the real reasons for why they keep losing major elections.
Friday, December 03, 2004
Miscellaneous Threads Worth Noting:
The Provisional-Vote Scam
The headline of this article was How Dems could try to hijack the election. Fortunately, the Democrats failed to steal Ohio much as they failed to steal Florida four years ago. Nonetheless, the above article is an excellent reminder of why we need stricter voting laws in this country.
Howard Dean for DNC Chairman in 2005!!!
Yes, there are actually some Democrats who are pushing for Dean in this position out of a belief that he would help their party be viable again. Heck, I would support Dean as DNC Chairman because it would have precisely the opposite effect that the Democrats who want Dean to be Chairman actually want to happen.
To Angry Dems: Upset that JFKerry... was your candidate?
The above link points out whom it was who was pushing for John Kerry when it appeared that he was losing to Howard Dean -and further: who was taking credit for John Kerry winning the nomination in early 2004. Thank you Henry Hanks for the reminder as I (and probably the bulk of the readers of this humble weblog) had forgotten about that.
To My Fellow Democrats
The Backseat Philosopher is on the money in the above link.
President Ronald Reagan in Pictures
A fitting pictoral of Ronaldus Magnus can be viewed above. And finally, before ending this post, a few comments on the upcoming Senate Judiciary Committee hearings and the probable soon-to-be-new chairman of the committee Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
I have been hesitant to say anything much about Senator Arlen Specter in recent years. Part of the reason is because I cannot think of anything he has done since his unmasking of Anita Hill that was worth anything. He seems to pride himself on being "independent" to the point of sacrificing principles for political expediency. Nonetheless, apparently the Republicans in the Senate are actually going to show some backbone here viz. Specter's desire to head the Senate Judiciary Committee. I quote from a Sun Times article by Robert Novak:
Before Sen. Arlen Specter stood beside other Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday and pledged support as their chairman for any judge that President Bush nominates, he had been scared stiff by his colleagues and by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist...
Frist told Specter he must produce a written statement pledging his cooperation as chairman. What he wrote pledged only that judicial nominations would get out of his committee. That was not good enough, Frist told him Wednesday night. He would have to pledge support for Bush judges and declare himself open to a rules change blocking filibusters of judicial nominations. Specter must have been frightened. He wrote a new four-paragraph statement incorporating the majority leader's demands.
Even so, when Judiciary Committee Republicans assembled behind closed doors Thursday, two conservative Southerners still had their doubts about him: Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama and John Cornyn of Texas believe voters across the country on Nov. 2 voted for an end to the tactics that have blocked action in the Senate. Although he never mentions it, Sessions has to remember that Specter helped block his nomination to the appellate court before he ran for the Senate.
In the Thursday meeting, Specter persuaded Sessions, Cornyn and everybody else that he meant what he said in his statement. [Robert Novak: Putting a Scare into Spector circa November 22, 2004]
Time will tell if Specter follows through on his promises or not; nonetheless this is a good development for congressional Republicans who need to start showing some real backbone for a change. Chalk me up as skeptical until they actually do...
The Provisional-Vote Scam
The headline of this article was How Dems could try to hijack the election. Fortunately, the Democrats failed to steal Ohio much as they failed to steal Florida four years ago. Nonetheless, the above article is an excellent reminder of why we need stricter voting laws in this country.
Howard Dean for DNC Chairman in 2005!!!
Yes, there are actually some Democrats who are pushing for Dean in this position out of a belief that he would help their party be viable again. Heck, I would support Dean as DNC Chairman because it would have precisely the opposite effect that the Democrats who want Dean to be Chairman actually want to happen.
To Angry Dems: Upset that JFKerry... was your candidate?
The above link points out whom it was who was pushing for John Kerry when it appeared that he was losing to Howard Dean -and further: who was taking credit for John Kerry winning the nomination in early 2004. Thank you Henry Hanks for the reminder as I (and probably the bulk of the readers of this humble weblog) had forgotten about that.
To My Fellow Democrats
The Backseat Philosopher is on the money in the above link.
President Ronald Reagan in Pictures
A fitting pictoral of Ronaldus Magnus can be viewed above. And finally, before ending this post, a few comments on the upcoming Senate Judiciary Committee hearings and the probable soon-to-be-new chairman of the committee Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
I have been hesitant to say anything much about Senator Arlen Specter in recent years. Part of the reason is because I cannot think of anything he has done since his unmasking of Anita Hill that was worth anything. He seems to pride himself on being "independent" to the point of sacrificing principles for political expediency. Nonetheless, apparently the Republicans in the Senate are actually going to show some backbone here viz. Specter's desire to head the Senate Judiciary Committee. I quote from a Sun Times article by Robert Novak:
Before Sen. Arlen Specter stood beside other Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday and pledged support as their chairman for any judge that President Bush nominates, he had been scared stiff by his colleagues and by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist...
Frist told Specter he must produce a written statement pledging his cooperation as chairman. What he wrote pledged only that judicial nominations would get out of his committee. That was not good enough, Frist told him Wednesday night. He would have to pledge support for Bush judges and declare himself open to a rules change blocking filibusters of judicial nominations. Specter must have been frightened. He wrote a new four-paragraph statement incorporating the majority leader's demands.
Even so, when Judiciary Committee Republicans assembled behind closed doors Thursday, two conservative Southerners still had their doubts about him: Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama and John Cornyn of Texas believe voters across the country on Nov. 2 voted for an end to the tactics that have blocked action in the Senate. Although he never mentions it, Sessions has to remember that Specter helped block his nomination to the appellate court before he ran for the Senate.
In the Thursday meeting, Specter persuaded Sessions, Cornyn and everybody else that he meant what he said in his statement. [Robert Novak: Putting a Scare into Spector circa November 22, 2004]
Time will tell if Specter follows through on his promises or not; nonetheless this is a good development for congressional Republicans who need to start showing some real backbone for a change. Chalk me up as skeptical until they actually do...
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Points to Ponder:
(On Blogging and Freespeech)
Courtesy of Eve Tushnet is the following article on the arrest of five Iranian bloggers. Such news should give those of us who blog in America a bit of additional gratitude that we can do what we do without being arrested - though if we lose this war on terror one of the first freedoms we will lose is the right to public speech. (To be likely followed by our heads for those of us who would refuse to straddle the prayer rug towards Mecca five times a day.) [I. Shawn McElhinney]
(On Blogging and Freespeech)
Courtesy of Eve Tushnet is the following article on the arrest of five Iranian bloggers. Such news should give those of us who blog in America a bit of additional gratitude that we can do what we do without being arrested - though if we lose this war on terror one of the first freedoms we will lose is the right to public speech. (To be likely followed by our heads for those of us who would refuse to straddle the prayer rug towards Mecca five times a day.) [I. Shawn McElhinney]
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
"JunkYard BLOG" Dept.
(A Rerum Novarum Ten Part Slam)
It has been about six weeks since we ran a multipart JYB thread at this humble weblog. In such an time frame, it would be easy to post a large installment ala what we did last time in running a twenty part thread; however, there is enough to cover in just the past ten days so we will keep this thread shorter. As usual, Bryan (and Chris') stuff will be in purple font -though I will put the text in black when they quote a source. My comments will be in regular font.
DR. CONDOLEZZA RICE, SECRETARY OF STATE
If any Democrat had nominated someone anywhere near the caliber of Dr. Condolezza Rice, an accomplished black woman, to become Secretary of State, the nation would have been carpeted with laudatory newspaper biopics, with quickly-produced television documentaries, with rushed-to-print books and maybe even a feature film. It would be a huge, huge gush moment as the entire press and creative community paused to hail the beneficent president and his wisdom and tolerance as exemplified by his astounding choice.
Since Dr. Rice is a Republican, though, we're not getting any of that. What we are getting is a spate of racist editorial cartoons that would have made even Senator Robert C. Byrd blush during his Klan says. Go here for a shocking round-up, and consider what would have happened if the roles had been reversed; i.e. if the nominee had been a black Democrat and conservative cartoonists compared her to Prissy from Gone With the Wind. The rest of the media has met Dr. Rice's accension to one of the highest and most important offices in the land with muted golf-clapping or covert hostility. It's a disgrace, frankly, and it's even more of a disgrace that the NAACP hasn't a) met Dr. Rice's nomination with joy, since that organization is nominally about the advancement of black people and her nomination represents a major advance for a black person; and b) hasn't uttered a peep in protest about the racist garbage the press is hurling at her. The NAACP's national phone number is 401-358-8900 if you'd like to register your opinions on the matter with them.
But back to Dr. Rice. Her hometown paper has published a bio that's worth a read. After reading it, it's no wonder that so many on the left see her as a threat. Her rise exemplifies the left's failures in so many, many ways.
Rice, 50, head of the National Security Council, was raised in Birmingham by parents who believed strongly in religion and achievement through education. Her mother taught at Fairfield High School. Her father was a minister at Birmingham's Westminster Presbyterian Church who also worked as a high school football coach to augment his salary.
By the age of 5, Rice had well-developed reading skills. Her mother, Angelena, wanted her to start school early, but teachers at a local black elementary school said she was too young. So Angelena Rice took a year off from her job at Fairfield High to home-school her precocious daughter.
So much for leftwing educational theories that homeschoolers are wasting their time and harming their kids--Rice was homeschooled, and look where it got her.
During the bombings of the summer of 1963, her father and other neighborhood men guarded the streets at night to keep white vigilantes at bay. Rice said her staunch defense of gun rights comes from those days. She has argued that if the guns her father and neighbors carried had been registered, they could have been confiscated by the authorities, leaving the black community defenseless.
That is exactly the lesson the gun-grabbers hope you and I never learn--that there are times when the right to bear arms can mean the difference between freedom and tyranny, even on a local level. Dr. Rice's history is a slap in the face to every gun control agitator in the coutry, but it's a slap they deserve: Had they gotten their way, there might never have been a Dr. Condolezza Rice because some racist nut might have killed her as a child...Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
As I have already commented on the Condi Rice situation, I will not repeat myself here except to note that (as so often happens), Bryan's take on a political subject meshes well with that of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum.
TERRORISM, BANK FRAUD AND IMMIGRATION VIOLATIONS
The Feds swept up 13 suspected terrorist operators in Seattle:
Federal counter-terrorism agents swept down on homes and businesses in Seattle yesterday, conducting searches and charging 13 men with gun, immigration and bank-fraud violations.
The FBI said it searched 19 Seattle-area homes, businesses and vehicles. Federal agents detained five other people on immigration charges, said FBI Special Agent Robbie Burroughs.
None of the men targeted in the raids is accused under terrorism statutes. However, the federal charges unsealed yesterday allege the ringleader of the bank-fraud case told a paid FBI informant that his "whole Muslim crew" was involved in stealing money because "you can't go to war broke."
According to the complaint, the purported ringleader, a drug felon named Karim Abdullah Assalaam, told an acquaintance that the money obtained through the fraud "goes to help our Muslim brothers and sisters. ... It goes to the cause, not like it goes to me and you."
The bank-fraud scheme involved depositing forged checks into bank accounts and then withdrawing the money through automatic-teller machines before the fraud was discovered. Tens of thousands of dollars were stolen, according to the court documents.
Several gun-related cases also sprang from the investigation. Assalaam and four other men were charged as felons possessing firearms, including several handguns, two shotguns and an AK-47 assault rifle...Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
As one who lives in the Seattle area, this was both a comfort and also a disturbance to me. Obviously I want to see these kinds of people rounded up; however, then when it happens, the realization that Seattle is seen as a place for them to infiltrate the country starts setting in. But lest I mull this over too much, onto the next subject: Rathergate.
RATHERGATE UPDATE
As InstaPundit notes, it has been two months since CBS announced it would investigate the 60 Minutes forged documents fiasco, and the world has yet to hear any conclusions from it. In that time, the President that CBS producers and journalists wanted to defeat has been re-elected and Dan Rather has become the butt of jokes.
None of this is stopping 60 Minutes curmudgeon Andy Rooney from weighing in, though. Speaking at Tufts University Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy last Thursday, Rooney said:
"I am very critical of some of the people at CBS who make it apparent what their political leanings are. That's what happened to this thing of Dan Rather's that got out. There's no question they wanted to run it because it was negative towards Bush."
If an old stick in the mud like Rooney sees this, what is CBS waiting for?
Rooney got this story right--the forged doc story is about media bias--but that doesn't mean his opinions on other matters are worth much. On Christian fundamentalists:
Rooney also attributed voters' reliance on religion in the recent election to ignorance. "I am an atheist," Rooney said. "I don't understand religion at all. I'm sure I'll offend a lot of people by saying this, but I think it's all nonsense."
He said Christian fundamentalism is a result of "a lack of education. They haven't been exposed to what the world has to offer."
Let's see...I've lived overseas and visited more than a handful of countries and territories outside the CONUS. I'm a born red-stater living in a very blue state. My child is bilingual because he lives in a bilingual/biracial household. I do in fact have a college degree and probably know more about astrophysics than Rooney knows about anything, yet I'm the uneducated one because I understand that I am not the center of the universe and that my opinion doesn't count for much in the grand scheme of things? Having lived among believers and pagans, the saved and the atheist, red staters and blue staters, it's the atheistic, tunnel-visioned America-hating leftists I pity the most. They are the parochial, self-centered, head-in-the-sand reactionaries who have no understanding of America's role in the world or Christianity's place in history. They just thrive on hating their fellow Americans while apologizing for sadists and maniacs who happen to be fighting against us. These blue-staters just don't get it and probably never will...Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
Well said Bryan (as usual). As far as Andy Rooney goes, he certainly gets the bias of CBS but then again, anyone with a normal intact functioning brain who actually pays attention cannot help but notice it. With regards to his views on religion, the expression "the sun shines on the keister of every dog once in a while" comes to mind.
PROLIFERATION SECURITY INITIATIVE UPDATE
Finally, somebody besides the JYB has noticed that the PSI is a de facto blockade of North Korea. Writing for FrontPage, Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu describes an "anaconda strategy" for dealing with the mercurial Kim personality cult masquerading as a country:
Under the politically convoluted constraints that define the War on Terror, we and our allies often need to pursue strategically critical actions but may not wish publicly to call them what they are. A good case in point is the Anaconda Strategy in Northeast Asia. There is well underway an expanding naval blockade of North Korean. It is not called a blockade because would be tantamount to an act of war under international rules. And a shooting war with North Korea is what we hope to avoid. But the need to intercept North Korean contraband is absolutely necessary.
Most North Korean weapons-narcotics contraband is exported in an aging but seaworthy fleet of merchant vessels flying the North Korean flag. Other ships sailing under flags of convenience are North Korean owned. Many of these ships transit Japan, particularly the port region of Osaka-Kobe. In this largely industrial region of western Japan resides a huge Korean-Japanese population. They are generational descendants of workers imported from Korea during the 1910-1945 colonial period. Many are part of the yakuza, or gangster element. The Kim Jong Il regime has deep ties within this criminal community.
For years North Korean shipping was given a pass by Japanese customs and port inspectors rather than upset the always delicate bilateral relationship. Since 9-11 Japan has actively supported American efforts to combat terrorism worldwide. A large part of this effort has been refocused attention on North Korean shipping. While not engaged in anything resembling a blockade, of course, Japanese inspectors are extremely concerned with safety violations on some of these ships, often requiring repairs and re-inspection that keep them tied to the wharfs for an extended time. Customs and narcotics investigators, meanwhile, sift through cargo to detect the narcotics and weaponry banned by international agreement.......Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
Bryan was definitely ahead of the curve on this one. Nonetheless, those who wonder why we have not taken military action with North Korea as we did with Iraq can mull over the PSI for a while and maybe the penny will drop for them.
BAATH PARTY LIVES ON IN FRANCE
Nazi-occupied Vichy France was the birthplace of the Baath Party. Why should we expect modern France to do anything but try and resurrect its creation?
With the defeat of the Saddam Hussein regime on April 9, 2003, the Ba'th ruling party was outlawed and a committee for the de-Ba'thification of Iraq was established. [1] However, the Ba'th's propaganda machine appears to have found a new abode in Paris, France, whence threats to the U.S. are issued regularly in three languages - English, French, and Spanish. Not surprisingly, the Ba'thist propagandists use the word "resistance" (in French, "la resistance") to underscore the association with the struggle against the Nazi occupation of France during WWII.
The resurrection of the Ba'th Party on French soil was further strengthened by France's proposal that representatives of "la resistance" should participate in any future conference that will be convened to discuss the future of Iraq. This position was clearly stated by Michel Barnier, the French Foreign Minister, in an interview with the French TV station " France Inter."...
The National Council for the Iraqi Resistance, also referred to as the United Council for the Iraqi Resistance, was born in June 2003, comprising Ba'th activists (referred to as militants), remnants of the Iraqi army and Republican Guard, and what are described as "heroes of the national security apparatus."
The membership of the leadership of the Council remains secret, although in an interview with the former Iraqi Vice President, Izzat Ibrahim Al-Duri, he was identified as the leader of the resistance.
These post-Saddam Baathists are using "French speaking space" to try to defeat us in Iraq and then destroy the West:"......Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
Those who were looking for yet more reasons why being on France's bad side is hardly the problem that many in the MSM like to portray it as: consider France's support of Baathists much as they are harbingers of some of the world's worst Anti-Semitism. Consider also that they are sticking the knife in the backs of our fighting men and women in Iraq by collaborating with seditionists. This is true to form for France for she collaborated with the Nazis in World War II and also (more recently) with with Saddam Hussein in the UN oil-for-food scandal.
As far as the Muslim Baathists in France go, I remind you that France's policies for dealing with the Muslim extremists is suicidal as Bridget Bardot and others have asserted for quite some time. Frankly, I do not want to see America become another France -even if we are already well on our way there. It is not too late for us to reverse course. France on the other hand is about a generation away from being Muslim dominated with her heritage as one of the great bastions of Christendom consigned to the ash heap of history. If she does not swerve from this suicidal pathway, all I will say is this: "good riddence France!!!" If you want to kill yourselves feel free to but do not expect America as a nation (or people like myself) to follow you down your delusional path to nationalist suicide. Hopefully you like kneeling on prayer rugs five times a day...
THE DIPLOMAD
I've found a very interesting new blog called The Diplomad. It's written by a nest of conservatives working within the notoriously leftwing State Department. Its two most recent posts--the one on the Marine kill shot and the post on the corruption of the UN --are must-reads. The first makes a point Chris R. and I have talked about but haven't written on yet--that the Pentagon's infowarriors are failing to defend our troops and are terribly inept at managing the critical informational aspects of our post-modern war in Iraq. The latter details just how things work in the UN...Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
Both posts were excellent as Bryan noted they were. Indeed, it seems I have another political weblog to add to the scroll when I get around to updating Rerum Novarum again. (Odds are good it will be in December before Christmas if I can find a stray hour or so to do it.)
"COURAGE"
Dan Rather will step down as anchor of CBS Evening News in March. Among the pajama-clad warriors there will be much rejoicing.
But.
We're being denied a clean victory here. Rather was likely on his way out within another year or two anyway, and the CBS statement indicates that the network plans to keep Dan around for more of his fine 60 Minutes reporting--the very reporting that the pajama-clad hoped would be his undoing. Even airing forged documents in a desperate attempt to unseat the President of the United States won't get you fired cleanly from CBS. If you're Dan Rather, you still get to keep the pension and you still get to fabricate stories until they plant you six feet under.
Couple Dan's limited modified step-down with Jonathan Klein's move from CBS 60 Minutes via TheFeedRoom over to become president of CNN and you can quickly see that the legacy press isn't catching on. Rather has disgraced his profession, and Klein managed to insult the blogosphere --the collective reporting engine that expose Rather's shoddy reporting--in a way that has reverberated ever since, yet both remain essentially unfirable and untouchable. And Klein was defending Rather when he insulted the blogwriting critics who have been since vindicated (I know the CBS investigation is still in progress, but we all know those docs were fakes... ). Shouldn't a prospective president of a cable news network have been a bit more circumspect? Shouldn't he have shown less interest in defending a particular reporter and more interest in getting at the truth?
Any why would a struggling cable news net hire a guy from a struggling online news net with a history at the third-place national TV news net anyway? What part of Jonathan Klein's history screams "success" so loud that CNN just had to make him an offer? LINK
In a phrase: the MSM still does not get it!!! I cannot say that this bothers me really -heck I relish watching the MSM stumble around like drunks unable to figure out why they are continuing to become more and more irrelevant. It is the same relish I get from watching the Democratic Party act in like manner but I digress.
HERO
Uncommon valor is the common virtue among our Marines in Iraq, but one sergeant's actions in Fallujah still stand out:
FALLUJAH, Iraq — Sgt. Rafael Peralta had built a reputation for putting his Marines' interests ahead of his own.
Peralta, 25, as platoon scout for 1st Platoon, wasn't assigned to the assault team that entered the insurgent safe house in northern Fallujah where he died, Marines said. Though his assignment would have allowed him to avoid such dangerous duty, he regularly asked squad leaders whether he could join their assault teams, they said.
One of the first Marines to enter the house, Peralta was wounded in the face by rifle fire, said Lance Cpl. Adam Morrison, 20, of Tacoma, Wash., who was in the house when Peralta was wounded.
Peralta fell to the floor, Morrison said. Moments later, an insurgent rolled a fragmentation grenade into the area where Peralta and the other Marines were seeking cover.
As Morrison and another Marine scrambled to escape, pounding against a locked door, Peralta, still conscious, grabbed the grenade and cradled it into his body, Morrison said. One Marine was badly wounded by shrapnel from the blast. But the Marines said more lives would have been lost if not for Peralta's selfless act.
“He saved half my fire team,” said Cpl. Brannon Dyer, 27, of Blairsville, Ga.
Alpha Company Marines said such a final act would be in character for Peralta, a native of Mexico who lived in San Diego and became a U.S. citizen after joining the Marines.
Peralta signed up for the Marine Corps, then signed on for its toughest fights in its most fierce battle in Iraq. And when his mates were in danger, he died to save them. He deserves a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor. LINK
I concur with Bryan on Sgt. Rafael Peralta: a Congressional Medal of Honour is in order for this kind of valor. May he rest in peace with the souls of the faithfully departed for giving perhaps the greatest sacrifice he could: his life for the safety and security of his countrymen.
DESPERATELY SEEKING VALUES
Does the popularity even in Red states of trashy TV shows like Desperate Housewives, Will & Grace, etc mean Red staters are hypocrites? Are we a "do as I say but not as I do" bunch of folks? Rooftop Blog is asking that question, and I thought I'd chime in.
I don't think the Red state popularity of trashy TV means much beyond a few simple things. First, even in the Red states there are enough Blue staters, or at least residents with Blue state values, to make almost any TV show popular if they all watch it. It's a phenomenon of the narrowcast world of TV these days that it takes a relatively small number of committed viewers to lift a given show in the ratings. My sense is that as Red staters increasingly leave television viewing for other pursuits and activities--family stuff, the web, church activity, etc--and head toward the narrowcast cable channels, it's easier for the networks to pass off tawdry crap in primetime and have the Blue staters, even in the Red states, give that stuff enough ratings to sustain them. I say that's my sense only because I don't have much empirical data to support it, just my own changed habits and those of Red staters I know. We're mostly leaving the networks or have already left them precisely because they've just gotten worse and worse over the years. Pretty soon we'll see some network show trollop showing full-frontal nudity at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and Jeff Jarvis and the rest will be out there attacking the FCC for uttering a peep about it. Frankly I don't even have time to battle against that nonsense when we're at war with a bunch of latter day Nazis who have found sympathy on the American left. I wish Jarvis would get a grip.
My second impression from all this is that even us Red staters are smart enough to separate mindless entertainment from the direction we want our ship of state to go. We have our guilty pleasures just like everybody else, because we're human and we have the modern luxury of leisure time to waste. Just because I love Seinfeld, a show absolutely without values that depicted some of the most morally despicable characters ever to appear on TV, doesn't mean I want a bunch of people like Jerry's four running the country. I can separate the world of entertainment, which is mostly an escape from the everyday, from the real world. I think that separation is lost on Hollywood, which tends to see itself as the center for all knowledge in the universe. The rest of us are just smarter than that, and I think the Redder you vote the more separation you see between Hollywood and the real world. We can watch crap made by people we neither like nor agree with politically, yet vote in a president based on his and our true values. Blue staters tend to think Martin Sheen is actually the President of the United States.
The values that drove part of the Bush vote, as I have explained before, are actually more basic than what we Red staters think on any given issue. Speaking for myself, my values vote was a rejection of the shameless dishonesty and blatant anti-Americanism of the modern Democrat party, as exemplified by Michael Moore, Al Sharpton, Terry MacAuliffe, John Kerry and the rest of that wretched lot. That bunch doesn't deserve power in any way, shape or form. In the case of Moore you have an enemy propagandist embraced by the party; in Sharpton's case, you have a blood-soaked rabble rouser passed off as a responsible voice for the oppressed. What a crock. By their actions and rhetoric since 9-11 the Democrats have proven themselves irresponsible and unworthy to lead a Girl Scout troop, let alone the country in a time of peril. That they can't articulate a clear position on other basic issues, from gay marriage to abortion (other than to demand no regulation or restriction of the latter), just clinches it. They're worthless and destructive, with no positive view of this country or its place in the world. The Democrats have become a shape-shifting set of liars and frauds who will put up a man who once worked with an enemy in the middle of a war. How could I possibly vote for that? I'd vote Green before I'd vote Democrat now. At least the Greens are up front about their Communist tendencies; the Democrats think they're fooling us...Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
From one whose TV viewing has been declining in recent years (and who has seen virtually none of the "new shows" in that time), I see merit in Bryan's analysis above because it applies to my view on the matter too. And like Bryan, I would vote Green before voting Democratic but then again, (i) I have a trackrecord of manifested contempt for the Democratic Party spanning nearly twenty years, and (ii) I have gone on the record more than once supporting certain applications of the third party concept as well so that should not surprise.
AN OPEN LETTER TO EUROPE
Brilliant
An Open Letter to Europe by Harold E. Meyer
Hi. Are you nuts?
Forgive me for being so blunt, but your reaction to our reelection of President Bush has been so outrageous that I’m wondering if you have quite literally lost your minds. One of Britain’s largest newspapers ran a headline asking “How Can 59 Million Americans Be So Dumb?”, and commentators in France all seemed to use the same word – bizarre -- to explain the election’s outcome to their readers. In Germany the editors of Die Tageszeitung responded to our vote by writing that “Bush belongs at a war tribunal – not in the White House.” And on a London radio talk show last week one Jeremy Hardy described our President and those of us who voted for him as “stupid, crazy, ignorant, bellicose Christian fundamentalists.”
Of course, you are entitled to whatever views about us that you care to hold. (And lucky for you we Americans aren’t like so many of the Muslims on your own continent; as the late Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh just discovered, make one nasty crack about them and you’re likely to get six bullets pumped into your head and a knife plunged into your chest.) But before you write us off as just a bunch of sweaty, hairy-chested, Bible-thumping morons who are more likely to break their fast by dipping a Krispy Kreme into a diet cola than a biscotti into an espresso – and who inexplicably have won more Nobel prizes than all other countries combined, host 25 or 30 of the world’s finest universities and five or six of the world’s best symphonies, produce wines that win prizes at your own tasting competitions, have built the world’s most vibrant economy, are the world’s only military superpower and, so to speak in our spare time, have landed on the moon and sent our robots to Mars – may I suggest you stop frothing at the mouth long enough to consider just what are these ideas we hold that you find so silly and repugnant?
We believe that church and state should be separate, but that religion should remain at the center of life. We are a Judeo-Christian culture, which means we consider those ten things on a tablet to be commandments, not suggestions. We believe that individuals are more important than groups, that families are more important than governments, that children should be raised by their parents rather than by the State, and that marriage should take place only between a man and a woman. We believe that rights must be balanced by responsibilities, that personal freedom is a privilege we must be careful not to abuse, and that the rule of law cannot be set aside when it becomes inconvenient. We believe in economic liberty, and in the right of purposeful and industrious entrepreneurs to run their businesses – and thus create jobs – with a minimum of government interference. We recognize that other people see things differently, and we are tolerant of their views. But we believe that our country is worth defending, and if anyone decides that killing us is an okay thing to do we will go after them with everything we’ve got.
If these beliefs seem strange to you, they shouldn’t. For these are precisely the beliefs that powered Western Europe – you -- from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, on to the Enlightenment, and forward into the modern world. They are the beliefs that made Europe itself the glory of Western civilization and – not coincidentally – ignited the greatest outpouring of art, literature, music and scientific discovery the world has ever known including Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Bach, Issac Newton and Descartes...Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
The entire letter is worth reading and I concur with every bit of it. Those who think Europe is all "progressive" and "enlightened" and "intelligent" should be more discerning in what factors they use to make this assessment. For indeed, there are many of us who can read the tea-leaves and do recognize what the policies recommended by European intellectuals (and media elites in this country) will result in if they are implemented. We did not vote for John Kerry and far from being "idiots" or "stupid", the truth is: we know the lessons of history well and have eyes to see what is happening to Europe now as a result of these policies. It is not a pretty sight and I will out of charity spare noting here the true mental acuity of those who would want to see America go down the same path Europe has been traveling for quite some time now.
(A Rerum Novarum Ten Part Slam)
It has been about six weeks since we ran a multipart JYB thread at this humble weblog. In such an time frame, it would be easy to post a large installment ala what we did last time in running a twenty part thread; however, there is enough to cover in just the past ten days so we will keep this thread shorter. As usual, Bryan (and Chris') stuff will be in purple font -though I will put the text in black when they quote a source. My comments will be in regular font.
DR. CONDOLEZZA RICE, SECRETARY OF STATE
If any Democrat had nominated someone anywhere near the caliber of Dr. Condolezza Rice, an accomplished black woman, to become Secretary of State, the nation would have been carpeted with laudatory newspaper biopics, with quickly-produced television documentaries, with rushed-to-print books and maybe even a feature film. It would be a huge, huge gush moment as the entire press and creative community paused to hail the beneficent president and his wisdom and tolerance as exemplified by his astounding choice.
Since Dr. Rice is a Republican, though, we're not getting any of that. What we are getting is a spate of racist editorial cartoons that would have made even Senator Robert C. Byrd blush during his Klan says. Go here for a shocking round-up, and consider what would have happened if the roles had been reversed; i.e. if the nominee had been a black Democrat and conservative cartoonists compared her to Prissy from Gone With the Wind. The rest of the media has met Dr. Rice's accension to one of the highest and most important offices in the land with muted golf-clapping or covert hostility. It's a disgrace, frankly, and it's even more of a disgrace that the NAACP hasn't a) met Dr. Rice's nomination with joy, since that organization is nominally about the advancement of black people and her nomination represents a major advance for a black person; and b) hasn't uttered a peep in protest about the racist garbage the press is hurling at her. The NAACP's national phone number is 401-358-8900 if you'd like to register your opinions on the matter with them.
But back to Dr. Rice. Her hometown paper has published a bio that's worth a read. After reading it, it's no wonder that so many on the left see her as a threat. Her rise exemplifies the left's failures in so many, many ways.
Rice, 50, head of the National Security Council, was raised in Birmingham by parents who believed strongly in religion and achievement through education. Her mother taught at Fairfield High School. Her father was a minister at Birmingham's Westminster Presbyterian Church who also worked as a high school football coach to augment his salary.
By the age of 5, Rice had well-developed reading skills. Her mother, Angelena, wanted her to start school early, but teachers at a local black elementary school said she was too young. So Angelena Rice took a year off from her job at Fairfield High to home-school her precocious daughter.
So much for leftwing educational theories that homeschoolers are wasting their time and harming their kids--Rice was homeschooled, and look where it got her.
During the bombings of the summer of 1963, her father and other neighborhood men guarded the streets at night to keep white vigilantes at bay. Rice said her staunch defense of gun rights comes from those days. She has argued that if the guns her father and neighbors carried had been registered, they could have been confiscated by the authorities, leaving the black community defenseless.
That is exactly the lesson the gun-grabbers hope you and I never learn--that there are times when the right to bear arms can mean the difference between freedom and tyranny, even on a local level. Dr. Rice's history is a slap in the face to every gun control agitator in the coutry, but it's a slap they deserve: Had they gotten their way, there might never have been a Dr. Condolezza Rice because some racist nut might have killed her as a child...Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
As I have already commented on the Condi Rice situation, I will not repeat myself here except to note that (as so often happens), Bryan's take on a political subject meshes well with that of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum.
TERRORISM, BANK FRAUD AND IMMIGRATION VIOLATIONS
The Feds swept up 13 suspected terrorist operators in Seattle:
Federal counter-terrorism agents swept down on homes and businesses in Seattle yesterday, conducting searches and charging 13 men with gun, immigration and bank-fraud violations.
The FBI said it searched 19 Seattle-area homes, businesses and vehicles. Federal agents detained five other people on immigration charges, said FBI Special Agent Robbie Burroughs.
None of the men targeted in the raids is accused under terrorism statutes. However, the federal charges unsealed yesterday allege the ringleader of the bank-fraud case told a paid FBI informant that his "whole Muslim crew" was involved in stealing money because "you can't go to war broke."
According to the complaint, the purported ringleader, a drug felon named Karim Abdullah Assalaam, told an acquaintance that the money obtained through the fraud "goes to help our Muslim brothers and sisters. ... It goes to the cause, not like it goes to me and you."
The bank-fraud scheme involved depositing forged checks into bank accounts and then withdrawing the money through automatic-teller machines before the fraud was discovered. Tens of thousands of dollars were stolen, according to the court documents.
Several gun-related cases also sprang from the investigation. Assalaam and four other men were charged as felons possessing firearms, including several handguns, two shotguns and an AK-47 assault rifle...Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
As one who lives in the Seattle area, this was both a comfort and also a disturbance to me. Obviously I want to see these kinds of people rounded up; however, then when it happens, the realization that Seattle is seen as a place for them to infiltrate the country starts setting in. But lest I mull this over too much, onto the next subject: Rathergate.
RATHERGATE UPDATE
As InstaPundit notes, it has been two months since CBS announced it would investigate the 60 Minutes forged documents fiasco, and the world has yet to hear any conclusions from it. In that time, the President that CBS producers and journalists wanted to defeat has been re-elected and Dan Rather has become the butt of jokes.
None of this is stopping 60 Minutes curmudgeon Andy Rooney from weighing in, though. Speaking at Tufts University Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy last Thursday, Rooney said:
"I am very critical of some of the people at CBS who make it apparent what their political leanings are. That's what happened to this thing of Dan Rather's that got out. There's no question they wanted to run it because it was negative towards Bush."
If an old stick in the mud like Rooney sees this, what is CBS waiting for?
Rooney got this story right--the forged doc story is about media bias--but that doesn't mean his opinions on other matters are worth much. On Christian fundamentalists:
Rooney also attributed voters' reliance on religion in the recent election to ignorance. "I am an atheist," Rooney said. "I don't understand religion at all. I'm sure I'll offend a lot of people by saying this, but I think it's all nonsense."
He said Christian fundamentalism is a result of "a lack of education. They haven't been exposed to what the world has to offer."
Let's see...I've lived overseas and visited more than a handful of countries and territories outside the CONUS. I'm a born red-stater living in a very blue state. My child is bilingual because he lives in a bilingual/biracial household. I do in fact have a college degree and probably know more about astrophysics than Rooney knows about anything, yet I'm the uneducated one because I understand that I am not the center of the universe and that my opinion doesn't count for much in the grand scheme of things? Having lived among believers and pagans, the saved and the atheist, red staters and blue staters, it's the atheistic, tunnel-visioned America-hating leftists I pity the most. They are the parochial, self-centered, head-in-the-sand reactionaries who have no understanding of America's role in the world or Christianity's place in history. They just thrive on hating their fellow Americans while apologizing for sadists and maniacs who happen to be fighting against us. These blue-staters just don't get it and probably never will...Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
Well said Bryan (as usual). As far as Andy Rooney goes, he certainly gets the bias of CBS but then again, anyone with a normal intact functioning brain who actually pays attention cannot help but notice it. With regards to his views on religion, the expression "the sun shines on the keister of every dog once in a while" comes to mind.
PROLIFERATION SECURITY INITIATIVE UPDATE
Finally, somebody besides the JYB has noticed that the PSI is a de facto blockade of North Korea. Writing for FrontPage, Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu describes an "anaconda strategy" for dealing with the mercurial Kim personality cult masquerading as a country:
Under the politically convoluted constraints that define the War on Terror, we and our allies often need to pursue strategically critical actions but may not wish publicly to call them what they are. A good case in point is the Anaconda Strategy in Northeast Asia. There is well underway an expanding naval blockade of North Korean. It is not called a blockade because would be tantamount to an act of war under international rules. And a shooting war with North Korea is what we hope to avoid. But the need to intercept North Korean contraband is absolutely necessary.
Most North Korean weapons-narcotics contraband is exported in an aging but seaworthy fleet of merchant vessels flying the North Korean flag. Other ships sailing under flags of convenience are North Korean owned. Many of these ships transit Japan, particularly the port region of Osaka-Kobe. In this largely industrial region of western Japan resides a huge Korean-Japanese population. They are generational descendants of workers imported from Korea during the 1910-1945 colonial period. Many are part of the yakuza, or gangster element. The Kim Jong Il regime has deep ties within this criminal community.
For years North Korean shipping was given a pass by Japanese customs and port inspectors rather than upset the always delicate bilateral relationship. Since 9-11 Japan has actively supported American efforts to combat terrorism worldwide. A large part of this effort has been refocused attention on North Korean shipping. While not engaged in anything resembling a blockade, of course, Japanese inspectors are extremely concerned with safety violations on some of these ships, often requiring repairs and re-inspection that keep them tied to the wharfs for an extended time. Customs and narcotics investigators, meanwhile, sift through cargo to detect the narcotics and weaponry banned by international agreement.......Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
Bryan was definitely ahead of the curve on this one. Nonetheless, those who wonder why we have not taken military action with North Korea as we did with Iraq can mull over the PSI for a while and maybe the penny will drop for them.
BAATH PARTY LIVES ON IN FRANCE
Nazi-occupied Vichy France was the birthplace of the Baath Party. Why should we expect modern France to do anything but try and resurrect its creation?
With the defeat of the Saddam Hussein regime on April 9, 2003, the Ba'th ruling party was outlawed and a committee for the de-Ba'thification of Iraq was established. [1] However, the Ba'th's propaganda machine appears to have found a new abode in Paris, France, whence threats to the U.S. are issued regularly in three languages - English, French, and Spanish. Not surprisingly, the Ba'thist propagandists use the word "resistance" (in French, "la resistance") to underscore the association with the struggle against the Nazi occupation of France during WWII.
The resurrection of the Ba'th Party on French soil was further strengthened by France's proposal that representatives of "la resistance" should participate in any future conference that will be convened to discuss the future of Iraq. This position was clearly stated by Michel Barnier, the French Foreign Minister, in an interview with the French TV station " France Inter."...
The National Council for the Iraqi Resistance, also referred to as the United Council for the Iraqi Resistance, was born in June 2003, comprising Ba'th activists (referred to as militants), remnants of the Iraqi army and Republican Guard, and what are described as "heroes of the national security apparatus."
The membership of the leadership of the Council remains secret, although in an interview with the former Iraqi Vice President, Izzat Ibrahim Al-Duri, he was identified as the leader of the resistance.
These post-Saddam Baathists are using "French speaking space" to try to defeat us in Iraq and then destroy the West:"......Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
Those who were looking for yet more reasons why being on France's bad side is hardly the problem that many in the MSM like to portray it as: consider France's support of Baathists much as they are harbingers of some of the world's worst Anti-Semitism. Consider also that they are sticking the knife in the backs of our fighting men and women in Iraq by collaborating with seditionists. This is true to form for France for she collaborated with the Nazis in World War II and also (more recently) with with Saddam Hussein in the UN oil-for-food scandal.
As far as the Muslim Baathists in France go, I remind you that France's policies for dealing with the Muslim extremists is suicidal as Bridget Bardot and others have asserted for quite some time. Frankly, I do not want to see America become another France -even if we are already well on our way there. It is not too late for us to reverse course. France on the other hand is about a generation away from being Muslim dominated with her heritage as one of the great bastions of Christendom consigned to the ash heap of history. If she does not swerve from this suicidal pathway, all I will say is this: "good riddence France!!!" If you want to kill yourselves feel free to but do not expect America as a nation (or people like myself) to follow you down your delusional path to nationalist suicide. Hopefully you like kneeling on prayer rugs five times a day...
THE DIPLOMAD
I've found a very interesting new blog called The Diplomad. It's written by a nest of conservatives working within the notoriously leftwing State Department. Its two most recent posts--the one on the Marine kill shot and the post on the corruption of the UN --are must-reads. The first makes a point Chris R. and I have talked about but haven't written on yet--that the Pentagon's infowarriors are failing to defend our troops and are terribly inept at managing the critical informational aspects of our post-modern war in Iraq. The latter details just how things work in the UN...Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
Both posts were excellent as Bryan noted they were. Indeed, it seems I have another political weblog to add to the scroll when I get around to updating Rerum Novarum again. (Odds are good it will be in December before Christmas if I can find a stray hour or so to do it.)
"COURAGE"
Dan Rather will step down as anchor of CBS Evening News in March. Among the pajama-clad warriors there will be much rejoicing.
But.
We're being denied a clean victory here. Rather was likely on his way out within another year or two anyway, and the CBS statement indicates that the network plans to keep Dan around for more of his fine 60 Minutes reporting--the very reporting that the pajama-clad hoped would be his undoing. Even airing forged documents in a desperate attempt to unseat the President of the United States won't get you fired cleanly from CBS. If you're Dan Rather, you still get to keep the pension and you still get to fabricate stories until they plant you six feet under.
Couple Dan's limited modified step-down with Jonathan Klein's move from CBS 60 Minutes via TheFeedRoom over to become president of CNN and you can quickly see that the legacy press isn't catching on. Rather has disgraced his profession, and Klein managed to insult the blogosphere --the collective reporting engine that expose Rather's shoddy reporting--in a way that has reverberated ever since, yet both remain essentially unfirable and untouchable. And Klein was defending Rather when he insulted the blogwriting critics who have been since vindicated (I know the CBS investigation is still in progress, but we all know those docs were fakes... ). Shouldn't a prospective president of a cable news network have been a bit more circumspect? Shouldn't he have shown less interest in defending a particular reporter and more interest in getting at the truth?
Any why would a struggling cable news net hire a guy from a struggling online news net with a history at the third-place national TV news net anyway? What part of Jonathan Klein's history screams "success" so loud that CNN just had to make him an offer? LINK
In a phrase: the MSM still does not get it!!! I cannot say that this bothers me really -heck I relish watching the MSM stumble around like drunks unable to figure out why they are continuing to become more and more irrelevant. It is the same relish I get from watching the Democratic Party act in like manner but I digress.
HERO
Uncommon valor is the common virtue among our Marines in Iraq, but one sergeant's actions in Fallujah still stand out:
FALLUJAH, Iraq — Sgt. Rafael Peralta had built a reputation for putting his Marines' interests ahead of his own.
Peralta, 25, as platoon scout for 1st Platoon, wasn't assigned to the assault team that entered the insurgent safe house in northern Fallujah where he died, Marines said. Though his assignment would have allowed him to avoid such dangerous duty, he regularly asked squad leaders whether he could join their assault teams, they said.
One of the first Marines to enter the house, Peralta was wounded in the face by rifle fire, said Lance Cpl. Adam Morrison, 20, of Tacoma, Wash., who was in the house when Peralta was wounded.
Peralta fell to the floor, Morrison said. Moments later, an insurgent rolled a fragmentation grenade into the area where Peralta and the other Marines were seeking cover.
As Morrison and another Marine scrambled to escape, pounding against a locked door, Peralta, still conscious, grabbed the grenade and cradled it into his body, Morrison said. One Marine was badly wounded by shrapnel from the blast. But the Marines said more lives would have been lost if not for Peralta's selfless act.
“He saved half my fire team,” said Cpl. Brannon Dyer, 27, of Blairsville, Ga.
Alpha Company Marines said such a final act would be in character for Peralta, a native of Mexico who lived in San Diego and became a U.S. citizen after joining the Marines.
Peralta signed up for the Marine Corps, then signed on for its toughest fights in its most fierce battle in Iraq. And when his mates were in danger, he died to save them. He deserves a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor. LINK
I concur with Bryan on Sgt. Rafael Peralta: a Congressional Medal of Honour is in order for this kind of valor. May he rest in peace with the souls of the faithfully departed for giving perhaps the greatest sacrifice he could: his life for the safety and security of his countrymen.
DESPERATELY SEEKING VALUES
Does the popularity even in Red states of trashy TV shows like Desperate Housewives, Will & Grace, etc mean Red staters are hypocrites? Are we a "do as I say but not as I do" bunch of folks? Rooftop Blog is asking that question, and I thought I'd chime in.
I don't think the Red state popularity of trashy TV means much beyond a few simple things. First, even in the Red states there are enough Blue staters, or at least residents with Blue state values, to make almost any TV show popular if they all watch it. It's a phenomenon of the narrowcast world of TV these days that it takes a relatively small number of committed viewers to lift a given show in the ratings. My sense is that as Red staters increasingly leave television viewing for other pursuits and activities--family stuff, the web, church activity, etc--and head toward the narrowcast cable channels, it's easier for the networks to pass off tawdry crap in primetime and have the Blue staters, even in the Red states, give that stuff enough ratings to sustain them. I say that's my sense only because I don't have much empirical data to support it, just my own changed habits and those of Red staters I know. We're mostly leaving the networks or have already left them precisely because they've just gotten worse and worse over the years. Pretty soon we'll see some network show trollop showing full-frontal nudity at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and Jeff Jarvis and the rest will be out there attacking the FCC for uttering a peep about it. Frankly I don't even have time to battle against that nonsense when we're at war with a bunch of latter day Nazis who have found sympathy on the American left. I wish Jarvis would get a grip.
My second impression from all this is that even us Red staters are smart enough to separate mindless entertainment from the direction we want our ship of state to go. We have our guilty pleasures just like everybody else, because we're human and we have the modern luxury of leisure time to waste. Just because I love Seinfeld, a show absolutely without values that depicted some of the most morally despicable characters ever to appear on TV, doesn't mean I want a bunch of people like Jerry's four running the country. I can separate the world of entertainment, which is mostly an escape from the everyday, from the real world. I think that separation is lost on Hollywood, which tends to see itself as the center for all knowledge in the universe. The rest of us are just smarter than that, and I think the Redder you vote the more separation you see between Hollywood and the real world. We can watch crap made by people we neither like nor agree with politically, yet vote in a president based on his and our true values. Blue staters tend to think Martin Sheen is actually the President of the United States.
The values that drove part of the Bush vote, as I have explained before, are actually more basic than what we Red staters think on any given issue. Speaking for myself, my values vote was a rejection of the shameless dishonesty and blatant anti-Americanism of the modern Democrat party, as exemplified by Michael Moore, Al Sharpton, Terry MacAuliffe, John Kerry and the rest of that wretched lot. That bunch doesn't deserve power in any way, shape or form. In the case of Moore you have an enemy propagandist embraced by the party; in Sharpton's case, you have a blood-soaked rabble rouser passed off as a responsible voice for the oppressed. What a crock. By their actions and rhetoric since 9-11 the Democrats have proven themselves irresponsible and unworthy to lead a Girl Scout troop, let alone the country in a time of peril. That they can't articulate a clear position on other basic issues, from gay marriage to abortion (other than to demand no regulation or restriction of the latter), just clinches it. They're worthless and destructive, with no positive view of this country or its place in the world. The Democrats have become a shape-shifting set of liars and frauds who will put up a man who once worked with an enemy in the middle of a war. How could I possibly vote for that? I'd vote Green before I'd vote Democrat now. At least the Greens are up front about their Communist tendencies; the Democrats think they're fooling us...Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
From one whose TV viewing has been declining in recent years (and who has seen virtually none of the "new shows" in that time), I see merit in Bryan's analysis above because it applies to my view on the matter too. And like Bryan, I would vote Green before voting Democratic but then again, (i) I have a trackrecord of manifested contempt for the Democratic Party spanning nearly twenty years, and (ii) I have gone on the record more than once supporting certain applications of the third party concept as well so that should not surprise.
AN OPEN LETTER TO EUROPE
Brilliant
An Open Letter to Europe by Harold E. Meyer
Hi. Are you nuts?
Forgive me for being so blunt, but your reaction to our reelection of President Bush has been so outrageous that I’m wondering if you have quite literally lost your minds. One of Britain’s largest newspapers ran a headline asking “How Can 59 Million Americans Be So Dumb?”, and commentators in France all seemed to use the same word – bizarre -- to explain the election’s outcome to their readers. In Germany the editors of Die Tageszeitung responded to our vote by writing that “Bush belongs at a war tribunal – not in the White House.” And on a London radio talk show last week one Jeremy Hardy described our President and those of us who voted for him as “stupid, crazy, ignorant, bellicose Christian fundamentalists.”
Of course, you are entitled to whatever views about us that you care to hold. (And lucky for you we Americans aren’t like so many of the Muslims on your own continent; as the late Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh just discovered, make one nasty crack about them and you’re likely to get six bullets pumped into your head and a knife plunged into your chest.) But before you write us off as just a bunch of sweaty, hairy-chested, Bible-thumping morons who are more likely to break their fast by dipping a Krispy Kreme into a diet cola than a biscotti into an espresso – and who inexplicably have won more Nobel prizes than all other countries combined, host 25 or 30 of the world’s finest universities and five or six of the world’s best symphonies, produce wines that win prizes at your own tasting competitions, have built the world’s most vibrant economy, are the world’s only military superpower and, so to speak in our spare time, have landed on the moon and sent our robots to Mars – may I suggest you stop frothing at the mouth long enough to consider just what are these ideas we hold that you find so silly and repugnant?
We believe that church and state should be separate, but that religion should remain at the center of life. We are a Judeo-Christian culture, which means we consider those ten things on a tablet to be commandments, not suggestions. We believe that individuals are more important than groups, that families are more important than governments, that children should be raised by their parents rather than by the State, and that marriage should take place only between a man and a woman. We believe that rights must be balanced by responsibilities, that personal freedom is a privilege we must be careful not to abuse, and that the rule of law cannot be set aside when it becomes inconvenient. We believe in economic liberty, and in the right of purposeful and industrious entrepreneurs to run their businesses – and thus create jobs – with a minimum of government interference. We recognize that other people see things differently, and we are tolerant of their views. But we believe that our country is worth defending, and if anyone decides that killing us is an okay thing to do we will go after them with everything we’ve got.
If these beliefs seem strange to you, they shouldn’t. For these are precisely the beliefs that powered Western Europe – you -- from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, on to the Enlightenment, and forward into the modern world. They are the beliefs that made Europe itself the glory of Western civilization and – not coincidentally – ignited the greatest outpouring of art, literature, music and scientific discovery the world has ever known including Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Bach, Issac Newton and Descartes...Go HERE to read the rest of the text.
The entire letter is worth reading and I concur with every bit of it. Those who think Europe is all "progressive" and "enlightened" and "intelligent" should be more discerning in what factors they use to make this assessment. For indeed, there are many of us who can read the tea-leaves and do recognize what the policies recommended by European intellectuals (and media elites in this country) will result in if they are implemented. We did not vote for John Kerry and far from being "idiots" or "stupid", the truth is: we know the lessons of history well and have eyes to see what is happening to Europe now as a result of these policies. It is not a pretty sight and I will out of charity spare noting here the true mental acuity of those who would want to see America go down the same path Europe has been traveling for quite some time now.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
On the Election and its Aftermath:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
Now that the campaign is over, everyone and their sister wants to analyze the data and try to formulate theories as to why things went as they did and why they did not. As it is, there are too many factors to account for in a brief weblog entry. Nonetheless, I remind the readers of what I noted back on November 6, 2002 and little has substantially changed in my views of the matter between then and now. The crux of the issue then was summed up in the following terse statement:
The Democratic party is and always will be the party of slavery. The difference is that they have moved from physical slavery to economic and psychological slavery.
The economic slavery element has been done to death by many commentators including yours truly. It seems at this time appropriate to deal with the psychological slavery part of the equation and that will be part of the purpose of this weblog post.
Psychological slavery can take many forms. It would be beyond the purpose of this post to categorize and analyze them all but the root and matrix to them all is the same: a mental barrier that prevents the captive from seeing beyond the inner world in which their subjective perceptions are the only realities that they can grasp. To sum it up in an apt expression: it is solipsism plain and simple.{1}
On top of the latter problems, there is also the manner whereby people of this mindset redefine terms of discourse sometimes to where they mean the exact opposite of what they actually mean. An example of this was present in the congressional budget battles of the 1990's when the Democrats tried to argue that Republican-proposed reductions in spending increases constituted a "cut" in funding.{2} However, this is somewhat understandable in that it is the same mentality that infects our culture to some extent when people are convinced to buy tons of a product to "save" money when in reality, they end up spending more money to do it. Nonetheless, it is a form of psychological slavery because it plays into these people's fears about lacking "security." And that leads to another point that is related to the one we just covered and that is the role of government in the outlook of those from the party of economic and psychological slavery.
For you see, psychological slavery also exists in those who place too much credence on what government could (or should) do for them.{3} When someone approaches the federal government in this manner, obviously they set themselves up as prey for those who will try to convince them that it is the obligation of the government to do things for people -or that individuals have a "right" to various things. The government official who then promises less (or is viewed as providing less) is then seen as "infringing on rights" or taking away what these people would view as something they are "entitled" to. If that outlook is allowed to set in, a form of psychological (and potentially economic) slavery presents itself.
Furthermore, those who are of this mindset are then prone towards theories that serve to confirm this outlook. This is where conspiracy theories of various shapes and sizes come into the picture from{4} and as a former conspiracy theorist myself, I understand the appeal that can lie in these kinds of overly simplistic "solutions" to more complex subject matter. The intellectual involvement (to the extent there is any) is usually spent on bolstering a series of "talking points" on the viewpoints themselves rather than examining critically the presumed validity of these theories and their corroborating theses. For this reason, certain disqualifying features of these kinds of arguments{5} tend to be overlooked -and sometimes they are more than a little problematical to the conspiracy-theorist's weltanschauung to put it mildly.{6} But as this leads back to the subject of solipsism which we have already covered,{7} it seems appropriate to move onto other elements of this analysis and leave the subject of the Democratic party's promotion of psychological slavery amongst the least-informed of the electorate for another time.
Getting back to the election, I was not enthusiastic about supporting President Bush for reasons I have noted many times before.{8} The core reason for this is because he is not an authentic conservative but instead he is a social Democrat for the most part. And this pattern is reflected in much of the Republican Party on key issues. Or to quote this weblog from about a year ago:
[P]erhaps the best way to understand why modern Republicans are not Republicans in the true sense of that term -and further, why I am not and for some time have not been a supporter of the Republican Party in any capacity- is to consider how their leaders view their own party today.
The following discussion between Rush Limbaugh and Ed Gillespie is instructive for one key reason: the Chairman of the Republican National Committee is absolutely clueless about the principles of limited government!!! Limbaugh granted could be more consistent on this subject than he is, but when the head of the RNC quite clearly has no idea what "limited government" is, that is not a minor bagatelle folks. Let me clarify if for you.
Limited government is not [reducing] the size of the increase, as Gillespie claims. How can one claim to be for "limited government" by arguing that [w]hen Bill Clinton left office, he proposed his last budget was an increase of 15% in non-defense discretionary spending. President Bush came in, he brought it down to 6% in his first budget, down to 5% in his second. It is at 2% today, non-defense discretionary spending??? This is a mockery of the entire notion of limited government.
First of all, who cares what the President proposes. The role of setting a budget is that of the Congress. The problem is that the role of impounding funds -shared by every president from Nixon back to Washington- was abolished by President Nixon when he signed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Since then, deficits have skyrocketed and an important check on Congressional excesses was cast aside.
This Act needs to be rescinded. The following article covers the subject in some detail -certainly better than the laughable Congressional article which tried to make the impounding sound like a novel notion of Nixon's...But it was not. And while there were still deficits prior to 1974, the national deficits starting in 1975 increased at an exponential rate...
What needs to be reasserted -and vigorously so- is the ignored principle of the Constitution (and not the only ignored principle of the Constitution) that [t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. That is as good a place to start as any. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum circa October 31, 2003]
This has been a long-standing problem I have had with the Republicans. Authentic conservatism -which is what Bush and company like to campaign on to win elections- is not at all congruent with the kind of legal plunder that Bush and company tend to endorse when they actually govern. For those who are not aware of what I mean by "legal plunder", I quote the classic formulation of this term by the nineteenth century French economist and statesman Claude Frederic Bastiat:
[H]ow is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law -- which may be an isolated case -- is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system. [Claude Frederic Bastiat: The Law (c. 1850) as excerpted from Rerum Novarum circa October 24, 2002]
It is undeniable that what Bastiat feared about legal plunder has taken place in our day -indeed the last nearly hundred years of US history has seen a steady increase in legal plunder in divers parameters. The two party system is replete with people who believe that the federal government is the solution to most if not all major problems. When this is coupled with people in power using that power to enrich themselves and their constituencies at the expense of others -and in ways that private citizens would be arrested for doing themselves- you have legal plunder taking place. The late Senator Barry Goldwater (an obvious student of Bastiat) articulated the classical conservative position on government masterfully when he noted the following in 1960:
I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can. [Barry M. Goldwater: The Conscience of a Conservative (c. 1960)]
There are very few politicians who understand that their role is not to enrich themselves but instead to divest themselves of authority. There are very few politicians who understand that their role is to encourage the maximum of freedom possible that is consistent with the social order. There are very few politicians who recognize that something is not a "right" simply because someone claims that it is. Legitimate rights which transcend any legislation can be categorized around three specific classifications which are (i) the right to life (ii) the right of an individual to exercise their faculties within the boundaries of just public order and the common good of society, and (iii) the rights of an individual to the creation of products or the lawful acquisition of products or property. The classic exposition of Bastiat (which I have often referred to on this weblog) entails "life, faculties, and production" but these can also be denoted as "individuality, liberty, and property" as life belongs to the individual, liberty applies to their execution of God-given faculties, and property is to a certain extent synonymous with production of goods or services.
Now, as every society needs to have some structure for regulating the just aspirations of individuals, this is the purpose of law in society. Law is a negative in the equation much as any form of government is. The purpose of law is to ensure justice for all people.
It is when government uses the law to advance the whims of some people (whomever they are) over and above the fundamental rights of others is when the law is perverted and governments overstep their lawful boundaries. Another way of saying it is that the purpose of any law is to protect the legitimate rights of individuals and not infringe on legitimate rights of some to promote (however explicitly or implicitly) the whims of others. (Which they not infrequently advance under the false heading of "rights".) When the latter takes place, the law is not protected but instead it is perverted: a circumstance under which justice is not (and cannot be) properly served.
To see just what is wrong with both major parties in our country today, consider how law is usually conducted today and also the more concise exposition of Mr. Bastiat on the actual purpose of laws in a just society:
What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
Each of us has a natural right--from God--to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?
If every person has the right to defend -- even by force -- his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right -- its reason for existing, its lawfulness -- is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force -- for the same reason -- cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.
Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?
If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces.And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all. [Claude Frederic Bastiat: The Law (c. 1850) as excerpted from Rerum Novarum circa October 3, 2002]
Now then, it is patently obvious that the Democratic Party is the enemy of the fundamental rights of man and has been for at least eighty odd years. However, "me tooism" began becoming a problem for the Republican Party -particularly after WWII. And though President Reagan did a lot to overcome this problem in his presidency, he did not completely succeed in weeding this noxious plant from Republican soil and it grew slowly throughout the post-Reagan period to return to full-flower in the four years of George W. Bush's first term as president.
Indeed if anyone cares to explain to this commentator how President Bush is even remotely an authentic conservative, it would be interesting to see. For he knows how to run conservatively and govern liberally. Those who hold onto the idea that somehow the Republicans can be saved from the infection of social collectivist ideas do not have history on their side here. In a recent weblog entry on third parties, I phrased it in the following manner:
I do not make distinctions between one part of Reagan's philosophy and another XXXXXXX. Instead, I take into account the entire picture and just as the Democratic Party left Reagan in the 1950's and early 1960's, the Republican Party has left behind the principles of Ronald Reagan the man and the president since 1988. The so-called 1994 revolution was a joke because they did almost nothing they promised to do: unlike Reagan who kept most of his promises.
They could not even close down a single federal department!!! That is ridiculous since so much of the federal leviathan as Reagan recognized was patently unconstitutional. They had the control of the congress and thus the legislative ability to make changes including (if necessary) changing the rules of procedure to make it harder for the Democrats to resist. But they did not. Care to go over the "Contract With America" with me point by point and see how much they actually enacted??? That alone makes my case since if anything the contract was a drop in the bucket of what needed (and needs) to be done to combat the unconstitutional federal behemoth. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum circa November 11, 2004]
These undeniable facts are the reason why I have sought to recapitulate divers strands of conservative views into a coherent synthesis for being able to with greater ease navigate the vast oceans of various viewpoints out there. (To aid those who recognize that there is a lot wrong in this country and do not understand the fundamental reasons why.) This is also why I have put forward into the arena of ideas proposals for rider reform in federal legislation and also recasting the third party concept into a viable vehicle for necessary societal changes to return this country to an understanding of what are fundamental rights and what are not (among other areas). These are not short-term notions being proposed here but long-term overhauls of certain points of presupposition in the modern discourse that are seriously deficient and need to be rectified.
Having noted all of that, it should be obvious that though a "President Kerry" would have been a disaster of potentially unprecedented proportions; nonetheless President Bush himself does not get a satisfactory grade overall as president from me. And we are less than a month since his re-election and virtually every move he has made has (or will logically be) detrimental to authentic freedom. And this is what I sensed would happen when I wrote for this humble weblog an election update thread in the days before the election.
So far, I have seen nothing to change how I was feeling then and (if anything) I am for the most part even less enthusiastic about things now than I was then. The only solace of sorts is that we are a lot less likely to have another 9/11 incident with a Bush presidency than we would with a Kerry presidency for reasons too numerous to note here. But that is merely a case of Bush protecting our lives while contributing (albeit less than the Democrats would) to the suppression of legitimate rights in this country with his promotion (again, less than the Democrats would) of legal plunder. Having noted that, I have to wonder if certain friends who saw in Bush the second coming of Ronald Reagan{9} really want me to bring up my past criticisms of this attempted parallel.{10}
I am not about to say that the Democrats are a party on the wane and may well go the way of the Whigs. The former is undeniable and the latter is something that others have said{11} and to which I happen to think is probable as well. Nor am I going to say that it will be "morning in America" in a second Bush term because his actions thus far have been anything but reassuring here. Instead, I will note that this is more a commentary on what needs to be done as opposed to why what happened in the election happened. The latter was covered more in a recent weblog post where I interacted with the views of a liberal Democrat and fellow Washingtonian whose take on the subject was on the whole pretty good.{12}
In summary, the purpose of this post you are reading is for the most part to outline why most commentators who are crowing about a "great conservative victory" in the 2004 elections are missing the boat in not insignificant ways. As perhaps the best way to do this is to consider the reasons why our Founders declared independence from Great Britain two hundred plus years ago, that is what this post will end with doing by quoting from an earlier Points to Ponder segment circa this very weblog:
Most people if asked about the Declaration of Independence know part of the preamble about the rights which are held to be "self-evident." But often not considered were the various accusations brought against the Crown by the colonists. Let us focus on some of them right now:
--He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
--He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
--He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
--For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
--For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
Consider in light of the today's government situation if these are not viable complaints for us to make today against the very kind of unconstitutional federal leviathan we see today. (And which the Founding Fathers sought so manfully to avoid.) [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum circa January 28, 2004]
Frankly my friends, these same complaints can be registered today at the Democrat and Republican Parties alike without distinction. And that is the bottom line really.
Notes:
{1} Though long implied in my comments on liberal outlooks (among others), I eventually outlined the term explicitly at this weblog and then refined the definition at my Miscellaneous BLOG. To quote the latter source at this time:
[The] epistemological theory of solipsism [is one] whereby the self knows nothing but its own states and their constituent modifications if you will. This is a core philosophical flaw of modern day liberal political views...
This is why certain kinds of people of the extremist liberal mindset such as the Deanings cannot be reasoned with. You can throw all the facts in the world at them and reason until your gray hairs fall out but they will not budge because so much of what you would say does not pertain to them personally. [Excerpt from the Rerum Novarum Miscellaneous BLOG circa February 7, 2004]
{2} It was pathetic to see Speaker Newt Gingrich (at the time) stand before the House with a chart containing pluses and minuses to try and explain with props what to someone with a normal intact functioning brain is obvious. (Though of course those who suffer from solipsism cannot be said to have a normal intact functioning brain.)
{3} To me, the key variable is how they view the proper function of law in a just society. Any candidate that endorses a differentiation between the laws of the individual and the laws of society at large is one who inexorably endorses the plunder of one class of citizens to enrich another class is not a real conservative. And sadly, almost all who run for office under the conservative banner support legal plunder in some form or another. It then becomes a case of ascertaining whether or not their support of legal plunder is based on ignorance of what they are actually supporting or whether they are intentionally in support of it. That is admittedly not easy to determine but a safe norm to follow is to see how much they favour federal involvement or intervention. For the greater they favour those factors, the more they inexorably endorse legal plunder. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum circa May 24, 2004]
{4} Why must conspiracy theorists passively accept the conspiracies of the left viz. George W. Bush??? Now they no longer have to thanks to Jennifer Bishop Fulwiler and her George W. Bush Conspiracy Generator. Select the ingredients yourself and let the conspiracy generator manufacture for you your own Bush conspiracy.
WARNING: Not for the use of children under twelve or liberal whack job Democrats - the latter of which's reasoning capabilities often make it darn difficult to distinguish them from the former. [A Rerum Novarum weblog entry circa January 24, 2004]
{5} Though I have utilized these terms in this manner before, I have never explicitly set them forth in writing prior to my most recent essay. Quoting from that source, I want to provide here definitions for two key terms of discourse: the definition of a theory and the definition of a thesis. Without further ado, here they are within the context of the introduction to my most recent essay:
[W]hen one is dealing with a theory, they are dealing with both abstract notions as well as coordinating dynamic principles of action. One of the author's intellectual mentors once defined a theory as "a set of non contradictory abstract ideas (or as philosophers like to call them 'principles') which purports to be either a correct description of reality or a guideline for successful action."...
Having established a working meaning of the term theory, it is worth noting also that the word thesis according to the Merriam Webster Thesaurus is related to the word theory. (Both of them having a foundation in the term assumption.) A good way of looking at this in the current context is to view a thesis as "an abstract principle or proposition to be advanced and maintained by argument" and a theory as incorporating a thesis -or a series of theses -with a guideline for successful action. The reason for this is because a theory by its nature must involve either (i) a correct description of reality or (ii) a guideline for successful action. For this reason, any viable theory involves several principles if you will which work together.
Or another way of looking at it would be to consider that a theory is being conceived of a series of non contradictory coordinative theses or points of presupposition. When viewed in this light, a theory clearly is only as strong as the theses which support it. [A Rerum Novarum Miscellaneous BLOG entry circa January 14, 2004]
{6} Evidences Against the "Right Wing Media Conspiracy" Theory (circa August 12, 2004)
{7} See footnote one.
{8} Here is one example of many I could list on this subject:
Are the Republicans perfect??? No they are not. But they are the most viable option to turn things around in this country. They are the ones most likely to nominate constructionists to the Supreme Court. They are the ones most likely to take the first steps to prune the government leviathan. And until we can get into power people who take the theory of Frederic Bastiat seriously - who take the Founding Fathers and the Constitution seriously - then we need to try to take it a piece at a time. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum circa March 3, 2003]
{9} I refer here to (among others) Lane Core, Jr. who posited this idea in early 2003.
{10} See these threads for some examples of why the "Bush Jr/Reagan" attempted parallel falls seriously flat:
Why Bush Is Not (At Least Thus Far) "Reagan II" -Part I (circa January 11, 2003)
Why Bush Is Not (At Least Thus Far) "Reagan II" - Part II (circa January 12, 2003)
Why Bush Is Not (At Least Thus Far) "Reagan II" -Part III (circa January 12, 2003)
{11} Senator Zell Miller of Georgia is one who has made this prediction about his own party recently.
{12} "Post-Election Potpourri" Dept. (circa November 20, 2004)
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
Now that the campaign is over, everyone and their sister wants to analyze the data and try to formulate theories as to why things went as they did and why they did not. As it is, there are too many factors to account for in a brief weblog entry. Nonetheless, I remind the readers of what I noted back on November 6, 2002 and little has substantially changed in my views of the matter between then and now. The crux of the issue then was summed up in the following terse statement:
The Democratic party is and always will be the party of slavery. The difference is that they have moved from physical slavery to economic and psychological slavery.
The economic slavery element has been done to death by many commentators including yours truly. It seems at this time appropriate to deal with the psychological slavery part of the equation and that will be part of the purpose of this weblog post.
Psychological slavery can take many forms. It would be beyond the purpose of this post to categorize and analyze them all but the root and matrix to them all is the same: a mental barrier that prevents the captive from seeing beyond the inner world in which their subjective perceptions are the only realities that they can grasp. To sum it up in an apt expression: it is solipsism plain and simple.{1}
On top of the latter problems, there is also the manner whereby people of this mindset redefine terms of discourse sometimes to where they mean the exact opposite of what they actually mean. An example of this was present in the congressional budget battles of the 1990's when the Democrats tried to argue that Republican-proposed reductions in spending increases constituted a "cut" in funding.{2} However, this is somewhat understandable in that it is the same mentality that infects our culture to some extent when people are convinced to buy tons of a product to "save" money when in reality, they end up spending more money to do it. Nonetheless, it is a form of psychological slavery because it plays into these people's fears about lacking "security." And that leads to another point that is related to the one we just covered and that is the role of government in the outlook of those from the party of economic and psychological slavery.
For you see, psychological slavery also exists in those who place too much credence on what government could (or should) do for them.{3} When someone approaches the federal government in this manner, obviously they set themselves up as prey for those who will try to convince them that it is the obligation of the government to do things for people -or that individuals have a "right" to various things. The government official who then promises less (or is viewed as providing less) is then seen as "infringing on rights" or taking away what these people would view as something they are "entitled" to. If that outlook is allowed to set in, a form of psychological (and potentially economic) slavery presents itself.
Furthermore, those who are of this mindset are then prone towards theories that serve to confirm this outlook. This is where conspiracy theories of various shapes and sizes come into the picture from{4} and as a former conspiracy theorist myself, I understand the appeal that can lie in these kinds of overly simplistic "solutions" to more complex subject matter. The intellectual involvement (to the extent there is any) is usually spent on bolstering a series of "talking points" on the viewpoints themselves rather than examining critically the presumed validity of these theories and their corroborating theses. For this reason, certain disqualifying features of these kinds of arguments{5} tend to be overlooked -and sometimes they are more than a little problematical to the conspiracy-theorist's weltanschauung to put it mildly.{6} But as this leads back to the subject of solipsism which we have already covered,{7} it seems appropriate to move onto other elements of this analysis and leave the subject of the Democratic party's promotion of psychological slavery amongst the least-informed of the electorate for another time.
Getting back to the election, I was not enthusiastic about supporting President Bush for reasons I have noted many times before.{8} The core reason for this is because he is not an authentic conservative but instead he is a social Democrat for the most part. And this pattern is reflected in much of the Republican Party on key issues. Or to quote this weblog from about a year ago:
[P]erhaps the best way to understand why modern Republicans are not Republicans in the true sense of that term -and further, why I am not and for some time have not been a supporter of the Republican Party in any capacity- is to consider how their leaders view their own party today.
The following discussion between Rush Limbaugh and Ed Gillespie is instructive for one key reason: the Chairman of the Republican National Committee is absolutely clueless about the principles of limited government!!! Limbaugh granted could be more consistent on this subject than he is, but when the head of the RNC quite clearly has no idea what "limited government" is, that is not a minor bagatelle folks. Let me clarify if for you.
Limited government is not [reducing] the size of the increase, as Gillespie claims. How can one claim to be for "limited government" by arguing that [w]hen Bill Clinton left office, he proposed his last budget was an increase of 15% in non-defense discretionary spending. President Bush came in, he brought it down to 6% in his first budget, down to 5% in his second. It is at 2% today, non-defense discretionary spending??? This is a mockery of the entire notion of limited government.
First of all, who cares what the President proposes. The role of setting a budget is that of the Congress. The problem is that the role of impounding funds -shared by every president from Nixon back to Washington- was abolished by President Nixon when he signed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Since then, deficits have skyrocketed and an important check on Congressional excesses was cast aside.
This Act needs to be rescinded. The following article covers the subject in some detail -certainly better than the laughable Congressional article which tried to make the impounding sound like a novel notion of Nixon's...But it was not. And while there were still deficits prior to 1974, the national deficits starting in 1975 increased at an exponential rate...
What needs to be reasserted -and vigorously so- is the ignored principle of the Constitution (and not the only ignored principle of the Constitution) that [t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. That is as good a place to start as any. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum circa October 31, 2003]
This has been a long-standing problem I have had with the Republicans. Authentic conservatism -which is what Bush and company like to campaign on to win elections- is not at all congruent with the kind of legal plunder that Bush and company tend to endorse when they actually govern. For those who are not aware of what I mean by "legal plunder", I quote the classic formulation of this term by the nineteenth century French economist and statesman Claude Frederic Bastiat:
[H]ow is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law -- which may be an isolated case -- is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system. [Claude Frederic Bastiat: The Law (c. 1850) as excerpted from Rerum Novarum circa October 24, 2002]
It is undeniable that what Bastiat feared about legal plunder has taken place in our day -indeed the last nearly hundred years of US history has seen a steady increase in legal plunder in divers parameters. The two party system is replete with people who believe that the federal government is the solution to most if not all major problems. When this is coupled with people in power using that power to enrich themselves and their constituencies at the expense of others -and in ways that private citizens would be arrested for doing themselves- you have legal plunder taking place. The late Senator Barry Goldwater (an obvious student of Bastiat) articulated the classical conservative position on government masterfully when he noted the following in 1960:
I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can. [Barry M. Goldwater: The Conscience of a Conservative (c. 1960)]
There are very few politicians who understand that their role is not to enrich themselves but instead to divest themselves of authority. There are very few politicians who understand that their role is to encourage the maximum of freedom possible that is consistent with the social order. There are very few politicians who recognize that something is not a "right" simply because someone claims that it is. Legitimate rights which transcend any legislation can be categorized around three specific classifications which are (i) the right to life (ii) the right of an individual to exercise their faculties within the boundaries of just public order and the common good of society, and (iii) the rights of an individual to the creation of products or the lawful acquisition of products or property. The classic exposition of Bastiat (which I have often referred to on this weblog) entails "life, faculties, and production" but these can also be denoted as "individuality, liberty, and property" as life belongs to the individual, liberty applies to their execution of God-given faculties, and property is to a certain extent synonymous with production of goods or services.
Now, as every society needs to have some structure for regulating the just aspirations of individuals, this is the purpose of law in society. Law is a negative in the equation much as any form of government is. The purpose of law is to ensure justice for all people.
It is when government uses the law to advance the whims of some people (whomever they are) over and above the fundamental rights of others is when the law is perverted and governments overstep their lawful boundaries. Another way of saying it is that the purpose of any law is to protect the legitimate rights of individuals and not infringe on legitimate rights of some to promote (however explicitly or implicitly) the whims of others. (Which they not infrequently advance under the false heading of "rights".) When the latter takes place, the law is not protected but instead it is perverted: a circumstance under which justice is not (and cannot be) properly served.
To see just what is wrong with both major parties in our country today, consider how law is usually conducted today and also the more concise exposition of Mr. Bastiat on the actual purpose of laws in a just society:
What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
Each of us has a natural right--from God--to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?
If every person has the right to defend -- even by force -- his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right -- its reason for existing, its lawfulness -- is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force -- for the same reason -- cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.
Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?
If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces.And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all. [Claude Frederic Bastiat: The Law (c. 1850) as excerpted from Rerum Novarum circa October 3, 2002]
Now then, it is patently obvious that the Democratic Party is the enemy of the fundamental rights of man and has been for at least eighty odd years. However, "me tooism" began becoming a problem for the Republican Party -particularly after WWII. And though President Reagan did a lot to overcome this problem in his presidency, he did not completely succeed in weeding this noxious plant from Republican soil and it grew slowly throughout the post-Reagan period to return to full-flower in the four years of George W. Bush's first term as president.
Indeed if anyone cares to explain to this commentator how President Bush is even remotely an authentic conservative, it would be interesting to see. For he knows how to run conservatively and govern liberally. Those who hold onto the idea that somehow the Republicans can be saved from the infection of social collectivist ideas do not have history on their side here. In a recent weblog entry on third parties, I phrased it in the following manner:
I do not make distinctions between one part of Reagan's philosophy and another XXXXXXX. Instead, I take into account the entire picture and just as the Democratic Party left Reagan in the 1950's and early 1960's, the Republican Party has left behind the principles of Ronald Reagan the man and the president since 1988. The so-called 1994 revolution was a joke because they did almost nothing they promised to do: unlike Reagan who kept most of his promises.
They could not even close down a single federal department!!! That is ridiculous since so much of the federal leviathan as Reagan recognized was patently unconstitutional. They had the control of the congress and thus the legislative ability to make changes including (if necessary) changing the rules of procedure to make it harder for the Democrats to resist. But they did not. Care to go over the "Contract With America" with me point by point and see how much they actually enacted??? That alone makes my case since if anything the contract was a drop in the bucket of what needed (and needs) to be done to combat the unconstitutional federal behemoth. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum circa November 11, 2004]
These undeniable facts are the reason why I have sought to recapitulate divers strands of conservative views into a coherent synthesis for being able to with greater ease navigate the vast oceans of various viewpoints out there. (To aid those who recognize that there is a lot wrong in this country and do not understand the fundamental reasons why.) This is also why I have put forward into the arena of ideas proposals for rider reform in federal legislation and also recasting the third party concept into a viable vehicle for necessary societal changes to return this country to an understanding of what are fundamental rights and what are not (among other areas). These are not short-term notions being proposed here but long-term overhauls of certain points of presupposition in the modern discourse that are seriously deficient and need to be rectified.
Having noted all of that, it should be obvious that though a "President Kerry" would have been a disaster of potentially unprecedented proportions; nonetheless President Bush himself does not get a satisfactory grade overall as president from me. And we are less than a month since his re-election and virtually every move he has made has (or will logically be) detrimental to authentic freedom. And this is what I sensed would happen when I wrote for this humble weblog an election update thread in the days before the election.
So far, I have seen nothing to change how I was feeling then and (if anything) I am for the most part even less enthusiastic about things now than I was then. The only solace of sorts is that we are a lot less likely to have another 9/11 incident with a Bush presidency than we would with a Kerry presidency for reasons too numerous to note here. But that is merely a case of Bush protecting our lives while contributing (albeit less than the Democrats would) to the suppression of legitimate rights in this country with his promotion (again, less than the Democrats would) of legal plunder. Having noted that, I have to wonder if certain friends who saw in Bush the second coming of Ronald Reagan{9} really want me to bring up my past criticisms of this attempted parallel.{10}
I am not about to say that the Democrats are a party on the wane and may well go the way of the Whigs. The former is undeniable and the latter is something that others have said{11} and to which I happen to think is probable as well. Nor am I going to say that it will be "morning in America" in a second Bush term because his actions thus far have been anything but reassuring here. Instead, I will note that this is more a commentary on what needs to be done as opposed to why what happened in the election happened. The latter was covered more in a recent weblog post where I interacted with the views of a liberal Democrat and fellow Washingtonian whose take on the subject was on the whole pretty good.{12}
In summary, the purpose of this post you are reading is for the most part to outline why most commentators who are crowing about a "great conservative victory" in the 2004 elections are missing the boat in not insignificant ways. As perhaps the best way to do this is to consider the reasons why our Founders declared independence from Great Britain two hundred plus years ago, that is what this post will end with doing by quoting from an earlier Points to Ponder segment circa this very weblog:
Most people if asked about the Declaration of Independence know part of the preamble about the rights which are held to be "self-evident." But often not considered were the various accusations brought against the Crown by the colonists. Let us focus on some of them right now:
--He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
--He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
--He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
--For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
--For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
Consider in light of the today's government situation if these are not viable complaints for us to make today against the very kind of unconstitutional federal leviathan we see today. (And which the Founding Fathers sought so manfully to avoid.) [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum circa January 28, 2004]
Frankly my friends, these same complaints can be registered today at the Democrat and Republican Parties alike without distinction. And that is the bottom line really.
Notes:
{1} Though long implied in my comments on liberal outlooks (among others), I eventually outlined the term explicitly at this weblog and then refined the definition at my Miscellaneous BLOG. To quote the latter source at this time:
[The] epistemological theory of solipsism [is one] whereby the self knows nothing but its own states and their constituent modifications if you will. This is a core philosophical flaw of modern day liberal political views...
This is why certain kinds of people of the extremist liberal mindset such as the Deanings cannot be reasoned with. You can throw all the facts in the world at them and reason until your gray hairs fall out but they will not budge because so much of what you would say does not pertain to them personally. [Excerpt from the Rerum Novarum Miscellaneous BLOG circa February 7, 2004]
{2} It was pathetic to see Speaker Newt Gingrich (at the time) stand before the House with a chart containing pluses and minuses to try and explain with props what to someone with a normal intact functioning brain is obvious. (Though of course those who suffer from solipsism cannot be said to have a normal intact functioning brain.)
{3} To me, the key variable is how they view the proper function of law in a just society. Any candidate that endorses a differentiation between the laws of the individual and the laws of society at large is one who inexorably endorses the plunder of one class of citizens to enrich another class is not a real conservative. And sadly, almost all who run for office under the conservative banner support legal plunder in some form or another. It then becomes a case of ascertaining whether or not their support of legal plunder is based on ignorance of what they are actually supporting or whether they are intentionally in support of it. That is admittedly not easy to determine but a safe norm to follow is to see how much they favour federal involvement or intervention. For the greater they favour those factors, the more they inexorably endorse legal plunder. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum circa May 24, 2004]
{4} Why must conspiracy theorists passively accept the conspiracies of the left viz. George W. Bush??? Now they no longer have to thanks to Jennifer Bishop Fulwiler and her George W. Bush Conspiracy Generator. Select the ingredients yourself and let the conspiracy generator manufacture for you your own Bush conspiracy.
WARNING: Not for the use of children under twelve or liberal whack job Democrats - the latter of which's reasoning capabilities often make it darn difficult to distinguish them from the former. [A Rerum Novarum weblog entry circa January 24, 2004]
{5} Though I have utilized these terms in this manner before, I have never explicitly set them forth in writing prior to my most recent essay. Quoting from that source, I want to provide here definitions for two key terms of discourse: the definition of a theory and the definition of a thesis. Without further ado, here they are within the context of the introduction to my most recent essay:
[W]hen one is dealing with a theory, they are dealing with both abstract notions as well as coordinating dynamic principles of action. One of the author's intellectual mentors once defined a theory as "a set of non contradictory abstract ideas (or as philosophers like to call them 'principles') which purports to be either a correct description of reality or a guideline for successful action."...
Having established a working meaning of the term theory, it is worth noting also that the word thesis according to the Merriam Webster Thesaurus is related to the word theory. (Both of them having a foundation in the term assumption.) A good way of looking at this in the current context is to view a thesis as "an abstract principle or proposition to be advanced and maintained by argument" and a theory as incorporating a thesis -or a series of theses -with a guideline for successful action. The reason for this is because a theory by its nature must involve either (i) a correct description of reality or (ii) a guideline for successful action. For this reason, any viable theory involves several principles if you will which work together.
Or another way of looking at it would be to consider that a theory is being conceived of a series of non contradictory coordinative theses or points of presupposition. When viewed in this light, a theory clearly is only as strong as the theses which support it. [A Rerum Novarum Miscellaneous BLOG entry circa January 14, 2004]
{6} Evidences Against the "Right Wing Media Conspiracy" Theory (circa August 12, 2004)
{7} See footnote one.
{8} Here is one example of many I could list on this subject:
Are the Republicans perfect??? No they are not. But they are the most viable option to turn things around in this country. They are the ones most likely to nominate constructionists to the Supreme Court. They are the ones most likely to take the first steps to prune the government leviathan. And until we can get into power people who take the theory of Frederic Bastiat seriously - who take the Founding Fathers and the Constitution seriously - then we need to try to take it a piece at a time. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum circa March 3, 2003]
{9} I refer here to (among others) Lane Core, Jr. who posited this idea in early 2003.
{10} See these threads for some examples of why the "Bush Jr/Reagan" attempted parallel falls seriously flat:
Why Bush Is Not (At Least Thus Far) "Reagan II" -Part I (circa January 11, 2003)
Why Bush Is Not (At Least Thus Far) "Reagan II" - Part II (circa January 12, 2003)
Why Bush Is Not (At Least Thus Far) "Reagan II" -Part III (circa January 12, 2003)
{11} Senator Zell Miller of Georgia is one who has made this prediction about his own party recently.
{12} "Post-Election Potpourri" Dept. (circa November 20, 2004)
Monday, November 22, 2004
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Points to Ponder:
Congratulations to all American people and to our Iraqi people for this great outcome of the American Elections. This was a great statement by the American people; a statement showing the quality and backbone of this people and affirming their worth and qualification as world leaders. Now that this matter has been settled in satisfactory manner, in my humble opinion; we should emphasize that this is no time for division and rancor. Senator Kerry has acted in very dignified manner when he did not allow the matter to drag, and has shown his patriotism and sense of responsibility and awareness that the interests of the country at these times require national unity and putting this election campaign behind our backs to concentrate on the momentous tasks ahead. Yes at times of war and conflict, the unity of the nation and putting higher interests above partisan considerations is the mark of a great people.
All those who have been following my blog from the start should know how I feel towards El Bush, the Avenger, the Lion-Heart and I cannot hide my happiness for this outcome, purely from a personal feeling of gratitude for what he has done for us, despite all the pain and hardships that we suffered and still do. But the objective is so great and so important that all sacrifices and difficulties pale when contemplating the benefits and goals that are hoped for.
And now that we have this campaign behind us, it is time to roll up our shirt sleeves and attend to the urgent business ahead. We are liberated from electoral worries and can start talking business. So for the near future I plan to tell you some of my ideas in plain and frank terms in the hope of stimulating a serious debate about how to win this war and achieve the desired objectives.
Meanwhile I don’t want to spoil this sublime moment; and raise my hand in military salute to honor our great Allied American people and their fighting men and women, who have demonstrated their true fiber and true worth through civilized democratic choice.
Hail the People’s Republic of the United States of America. It is you who have the right to use such a title and no one else. [Alaa: Excerpt from his weblog The Mesopotamian (circa November 3, 2004)]
Congratulations to all American people and to our Iraqi people for this great outcome of the American Elections. This was a great statement by the American people; a statement showing the quality and backbone of this people and affirming their worth and qualification as world leaders. Now that this matter has been settled in satisfactory manner, in my humble opinion; we should emphasize that this is no time for division and rancor. Senator Kerry has acted in very dignified manner when he did not allow the matter to drag, and has shown his patriotism and sense of responsibility and awareness that the interests of the country at these times require national unity and putting this election campaign behind our backs to concentrate on the momentous tasks ahead. Yes at times of war and conflict, the unity of the nation and putting higher interests above partisan considerations is the mark of a great people.
All those who have been following my blog from the start should know how I feel towards El Bush, the Avenger, the Lion-Heart and I cannot hide my happiness for this outcome, purely from a personal feeling of gratitude for what he has done for us, despite all the pain and hardships that we suffered and still do. But the objective is so great and so important that all sacrifices and difficulties pale when contemplating the benefits and goals that are hoped for.
And now that we have this campaign behind us, it is time to roll up our shirt sleeves and attend to the urgent business ahead. We are liberated from electoral worries and can start talking business. So for the near future I plan to tell you some of my ideas in plain and frank terms in the hope of stimulating a serious debate about how to win this war and achieve the desired objectives.
Meanwhile I don’t want to spoil this sublime moment; and raise my hand in military salute to honor our great Allied American people and their fighting men and women, who have demonstrated their true fiber and true worth through civilized democratic choice.
Hail the People’s Republic of the United States of America. It is you who have the right to use such a title and no one else. [Alaa: Excerpt from his weblog The Mesopotamian (circa November 3, 2004)]
Saturday, November 20, 2004
"Post-Election Potpourri" Dept.
It should be noted at the outset that this is not the thrice-promised post election commentary and analysis.{1} Instead, what you are about to read is my interaction with a liberal Democrat and fellow Washingtonian (Scott Salyer) who actually gets it...well...much of it anyway viz. the recent election trends. His words will be in black font.
An Open Letter to Democrats Everywhere
As a public service, We at Rerum Novarum will give this man's views some airtime here -though not without Our comments of course.
The Presidential election of 2004 was not a fluke.
Agreed.
George W. Bush did not win because his people rigged all the machines or because provisional ballots weren't counted in Ohio.
Agreed.
Karl Rove is an evil genius, but he alone is not responsible for the outcome of the election.
Well, Karl Rove is at least hit and miss to some extent. I remind the readers that the stupid amnesty for illegals idea that President Bush is again actively supporting was Rove's idea. However, there is truth to the statement that Rove is on the whole a brilliant campaign strategist. I would say he is to President Bush what Dick Morris was for President Clinton: a strategist who politically guesses right a lot more than wrong.
Fox News did not manipulate middle America into voting Republican.
Agreed.
The people of the Midwest, Ohio, and the South are not stupid, homophobic racists.
Agreed.
None of this means, however, that the Republican argument is a superior one.
All that Mr. Salyer is saying here is that what is noted above does not ipso facto prove a stronger case for the Republicans: to which I must register agreement yet again.
Kicking Ass and Taking Names
Somewhere along the way, the Democrats stopped fighting.
I am not sure this is completely accurate. I remind the readers that a lot of Bush's judicial nominees were not seated as a result of senatorial filibustering tactics by the Democrats. And the problem is not that they do not fight but how they go about doing it. After decades of lies about fiscal responsibility viz. the budget resulting in "throwing grandma out of the nursing home", "taking away grandma's social security", and the like, this well-worn refrain of trying to win by scaring the electorate is not working anymore.
The turning point for this was 1994 but in all honesty, I think the rise of alternative media is the primary reason for this.{2} In summary, it is how the Democrats have sought to fight rather than them not fighting that is the problem: running not on ideas of their own but more of a "vote for me because my opponent is Hitler" strategy.
Not hard-working average Joe and Jane, but the elected leadership.
See my previous comments.
It didn't happen all at once, but if there was a turning point, it was the triumph of Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in the 1994 mid-term election. From then on, they chose a message and pounded it and pounded it for 10 years until they broke through.
It is certainly true that the Republicans have run on a message and the Democrats have not. But the idea that the Republicans had to "pound and pound" an issue for "years" to "break through" is not one that I concur with. This country is more conservative than most people care to want to admit to and the Republicans have had dominating election wins in those years (1972, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004) where they campaigned as unambiguous conservatives against the Democrats. I know Mr. Salyer could point to 1974, 1976, 1982, 1986, 1992, and 1996 as liberal triumphs but there are good reasons to mitigate against the idea that they were the result of liberals winning on the issues.{3}
No, it is not a vast right-wing conspiracy.
Agreed.
It's an ideological culture. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Robert "Leaky" Novak, don't have to be told to tow the line. They don't hold secret meetings to coordinate. Like Nike sponsored athletes, they just do it.
It bears noting here that those who share certain elements of a common view (as Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, and Novak do) will tend to have similar views on issues. As far as "tow[ing] the line", they do so with the Republicans much the way counterparts in the mainstream media generally do for the Democrats.{4}
The point here is not that the Republicans kicked the crap out of the Democrats for a decade. It's that the democrats sat there and took it. They didn't fight discriminatory laws, the dismantling of environmental regulations, or the nomination of ideologically-motivated judges.
As I noted already, what is said about the judges by Mr. Salyer is not true. As far as "discriminatory laws", that is a broad statement that would need quantifying before I could comment one way or the other on it. As far as "the dismantling of environmental regulations", it is also a bit broad but for the most part is probably accurate. The Democrats at the congressional level are about as interested in the environment as they are in helping people get off of government assistance programs: in short, not at all.
A few months ago, I wrote about a perfect example in which Jim McDermott from my home state of Washington purposely omitted the words 'Under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance, then denied it at the first sign of Republican resistance. In short, the Democrats have nobody to blame but themselves for laying down.
McDermott has done a lot worse than this but I digress.
A False Choice
The questions and regrets from 2000, the cultural wedge issues, and the venom for George W. Bush are obscuring the more immediate identity crisis within the Democratic party.
Agreed.
The consecutive losses by Al Gore and John Kerry are not sad coincidences or isolated incidents, but urgent symptoms of a larger problem.
Agreed.
Republicans were able to portray Gore as a fake and Kerry as a waffler because, well, they are. In eight years, the Clinton Administration did little to nothing on civil rights, the environment, workers rights, and a host of other historically Democrat issues.
Yet again we agree. They ran on those issues (among others) much as President Bush ran in 2000 on a conservative message. And much as there was little that could be legitimately called "conservative" in President Bush's first term, President Clinton did not exactly govern true to the manner whereby they campaigned - indeed I am sure Mr. Salyer would agree that President Clinton had to make some compromises that irritated the liberal base who heavily supported him.{5}
Gore would have been no different.
This is true. Gore would have been a lot truer to Clinton's policies than Bush Sr. was to Reagan's.
Kerry voted to give GWB authority for action on Iraq to show he was a hawk, but voted against the funding to show Deaniacs he was a dove.
Indeed.
The American people know a fake when they see one and right now the Democrats are a party full of them. This is why Bush successfully pulled off his strong leader bit while fumbling and misleading the country into war and mortgaging the future wholesale.
On the war subject, I have held to the same core position ever since February of 2003 when I finally (after months of musing on various threads) systemized my outlook into a concrete position in support of the war. Nothing I have seen since that time has made any dents of significance in my position as formulated there and developed somewhat further in additional weblog posts since that time -most recently HERE.
As far as President Bush "fumbling", I cannot argue with that because in some spots he has. As far as "mortgaging the future" goes, I cannot say I disagree with Mr. Salyer on that point either except that (of course) my recommended solutions for this are probably not ones that he would generally concur with.{6} So on the last three points, we basically concur on two of them and "two outta three" is not bad according to that great western philosopher Meatloaf ;-)
It's why Republicans can frame liberal arguments as valueless. It's why Democrats have lost the trust of roughly half of the American people. It's why they lost this election and why they will hemorrage votes in the years to come if they don't find their soul again.
Well, we have some areas of disagreement but Mr. Salyer is right on a lot of points here that his allies had better take seriously if they want to become politically viable again.
There was a true Democrat in this year's presidential race (not to mention 2000), but it wasn't John Kerry. The only person speaking out about the problems of corporate power, the struggle to earn a living wage, environmental injustice, equality for all people, and democratic reform, was Ralph Nader.
Whether or not these are "true Democrat" positions or not, Mr. Salyer is right that Nader was the only consistent enunciator of an agenda that liberals could rally around.
The mere mention of his name is a dirty word for most Democrats, [maybe because he reminds us that the (D) after our leaders' names is supposed to stand for something] but he stood up to the elite powers in this country, spoke to my issues, and won my vote. Votes should be earned and I refuse to let mine be taken for granted by any party.
I have a hunch that Mr. Salyer and I have similar views on the two party system.{7}
It isn't just the Democratic Party that's in trouble, but democratic ideals. Democrats have turned their backs not only on their principles, but democracy itself.
I concur with this. Heck, this was the reason that Ronald Reagan left the Democratic Party in 1962 -a point I noted in one of the third party topic threads from earlier in the month.
The voice of the Democrats, historically America's strongest voice for equality and freedom has gone noticably hoarse (and not from the vehemence of its protests). As a result, we are experiencing an electoral drift to the right. This is dangerous for all citizens, not to mention the system of democracy we depend on.
With regards to the idea that the Democrats have been "historically America's strongest voice for equality and freedom", I am of the view that the Democratic party was the party of physical slavery in the nineteenth century, of economic slavery in the twentieth century, and is increasingly becoming the party of psychological slavery in the twenty-first century.
As far as this being a "system of democracy", I have noted before that (i) this is a republic not a democracy and (ii) between the two there is a distinction with a difference. I will agree with Mr. Salyer that the Democrats have been failing to persuade voters but not for some of the same reasons that he states.
Promise
There is still good news however. Without framing the debate, while abandoning their principles and turning their backs on their base, the Democrats are still hanging tough.
With so many allies in the mainstream media, this is not hard for them to do.
The American people believe so much in the principles of the Democrats, that they've been able to retain a large voter base whose only reason to support them is the hope that they will soon return to their prominent roots.
I could not disagree with Mr. Salyer more than on the idea that the American people "believe...in the principles of the Democrats". Despite a good track record in most of what he says thus far, he is 180 degrees off base here and that would not be difficult to demonstrate.{8}
And here's some even better news. The one inviolable rule of the American democracy is that the only true power rests in the hands of the people.
Again, America is not a democracy and it never has been. The power is vested in representatives who govern with the consent of the people -a policy that basically means that the people can change their political leaders at different intervals. (Two years for State Representative, four years for President, six years for State Senators.)
Although the Democrats own much of the blame for their failures, it is all of us who can and must demand better of them, because hoping and waiting may not be enough.
Agreed. The Democrats who are interested in saving their party had better take a lot of what Mr. Salyer says here seriously. And though I view the words in his final sentence as being well off the mark, I will nonetheless give him the final words in this thread - noting only that the full text I just interacted with can be read in sequence HERE.
If the Democrats pick up their principles, dust them off, and put them to work, the Republican frames will no longer fit the picture and they will have the chance to live up to the promise of their forebears and the expectations of their citizens.
Notes:
{1} The promised post-election commentary and analysis thread is about two thirds done as of this writing. I am on pace to post it prior to Thanksgiving as I promised to do in an earlier audioblog post.
{2} This is a point I have noted a number of times in various forums including this weblog. (One example of which can be read HERE.)
{3} For example, 1974 was the year that President Nixon resigned and the fallout from that was the Republicans getting creamed in the elections. In 1976, there was still stench from Watergate and President Ford had to deal with a strong challenge in the primaries from California Governor Ronald Reagan and he made a few blunders in his debate with Governor Carter. On top of that, Carter was not then the disgrace that he has become in recent years but was viewed as a moral and religious man. That explains why 1976 went the way it did.
{4} If memory serves, the polling data of media journalists and reporters shows a pretty constant 85% or more voting pattern for Democrats.
{5} Welfare reform comes to mind here: something that a Democrat congress never would have supported and which -when the Republicans did produce a program of some reforms, President Clinton signed the legislation. Another is the balanced budget situation in the 1990's: only after the Republicans took over congress did this become a "priority" with President Clinton.
{6} Some of this has been dealt with in past musings to this weblog and other places. I will be touching on some of it and other related bits in my post-election commentary and analysis. (Indeed most of the material that will be posted for that was already written before I was aware of Mr. Salyer's statements interestingly enough.)
{7} My most recent musings on those threads are viewable HERE and HERE.
{8} Heck, the mere individual fact that so much of the liberal agenda has had to be obtained by courts inventing rather than interpreting laws is the most significant shell hole below the waterline of Mr. Salyer's theoretical vessel. (I could list several others but this will suffice in brief to establish my point.)
It should be noted at the outset that this is not the thrice-promised post election commentary and analysis.{1} Instead, what you are about to read is my interaction with a liberal Democrat and fellow Washingtonian (Scott Salyer) who actually gets it...well...much of it anyway viz. the recent election trends. His words will be in black font.
An Open Letter to Democrats Everywhere
As a public service, We at Rerum Novarum will give this man's views some airtime here -though not without Our comments of course.
The Presidential election of 2004 was not a fluke.
Agreed.
George W. Bush did not win because his people rigged all the machines or because provisional ballots weren't counted in Ohio.
Agreed.
Karl Rove is an evil genius, but he alone is not responsible for the outcome of the election.
Well, Karl Rove is at least hit and miss to some extent. I remind the readers that the stupid amnesty for illegals idea that President Bush is again actively supporting was Rove's idea. However, there is truth to the statement that Rove is on the whole a brilliant campaign strategist. I would say he is to President Bush what Dick Morris was for President Clinton: a strategist who politically guesses right a lot more than wrong.
Fox News did not manipulate middle America into voting Republican.
Agreed.
The people of the Midwest, Ohio, and the South are not stupid, homophobic racists.
Agreed.
None of this means, however, that the Republican argument is a superior one.
All that Mr. Salyer is saying here is that what is noted above does not ipso facto prove a stronger case for the Republicans: to which I must register agreement yet again.
Kicking Ass and Taking Names
Somewhere along the way, the Democrats stopped fighting.
I am not sure this is completely accurate. I remind the readers that a lot of Bush's judicial nominees were not seated as a result of senatorial filibustering tactics by the Democrats. And the problem is not that they do not fight but how they go about doing it. After decades of lies about fiscal responsibility viz. the budget resulting in "throwing grandma out of the nursing home", "taking away grandma's social security", and the like, this well-worn refrain of trying to win by scaring the electorate is not working anymore.
The turning point for this was 1994 but in all honesty, I think the rise of alternative media is the primary reason for this.{2} In summary, it is how the Democrats have sought to fight rather than them not fighting that is the problem: running not on ideas of their own but more of a "vote for me because my opponent is Hitler" strategy.
Not hard-working average Joe and Jane, but the elected leadership.
See my previous comments.
It didn't happen all at once, but if there was a turning point, it was the triumph of Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in the 1994 mid-term election. From then on, they chose a message and pounded it and pounded it for 10 years until they broke through.
It is certainly true that the Republicans have run on a message and the Democrats have not. But the idea that the Republicans had to "pound and pound" an issue for "years" to "break through" is not one that I concur with. This country is more conservative than most people care to want to admit to and the Republicans have had dominating election wins in those years (1972, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004) where they campaigned as unambiguous conservatives against the Democrats. I know Mr. Salyer could point to 1974, 1976, 1982, 1986, 1992, and 1996 as liberal triumphs but there are good reasons to mitigate against the idea that they were the result of liberals winning on the issues.{3}
No, it is not a vast right-wing conspiracy.
Agreed.
It's an ideological culture. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Robert "Leaky" Novak, don't have to be told to tow the line. They don't hold secret meetings to coordinate. Like Nike sponsored athletes, they just do it.
It bears noting here that those who share certain elements of a common view (as Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, and Novak do) will tend to have similar views on issues. As far as "tow[ing] the line", they do so with the Republicans much the way counterparts in the mainstream media generally do for the Democrats.{4}
The point here is not that the Republicans kicked the crap out of the Democrats for a decade. It's that the democrats sat there and took it. They didn't fight discriminatory laws, the dismantling of environmental regulations, or the nomination of ideologically-motivated judges.
As I noted already, what is said about the judges by Mr. Salyer is not true. As far as "discriminatory laws", that is a broad statement that would need quantifying before I could comment one way or the other on it. As far as "the dismantling of environmental regulations", it is also a bit broad but for the most part is probably accurate. The Democrats at the congressional level are about as interested in the environment as they are in helping people get off of government assistance programs: in short, not at all.
A few months ago, I wrote about a perfect example in which Jim McDermott from my home state of Washington purposely omitted the words 'Under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance, then denied it at the first sign of Republican resistance. In short, the Democrats have nobody to blame but themselves for laying down.
McDermott has done a lot worse than this but I digress.
A False Choice
The questions and regrets from 2000, the cultural wedge issues, and the venom for George W. Bush are obscuring the more immediate identity crisis within the Democratic party.
Agreed.
The consecutive losses by Al Gore and John Kerry are not sad coincidences or isolated incidents, but urgent symptoms of a larger problem.
Agreed.
Republicans were able to portray Gore as a fake and Kerry as a waffler because, well, they are. In eight years, the Clinton Administration did little to nothing on civil rights, the environment, workers rights, and a host of other historically Democrat issues.
Yet again we agree. They ran on those issues (among others) much as President Bush ran in 2000 on a conservative message. And much as there was little that could be legitimately called "conservative" in President Bush's first term, President Clinton did not exactly govern true to the manner whereby they campaigned - indeed I am sure Mr. Salyer would agree that President Clinton had to make some compromises that irritated the liberal base who heavily supported him.{5}
Gore would have been no different.
This is true. Gore would have been a lot truer to Clinton's policies than Bush Sr. was to Reagan's.
Kerry voted to give GWB authority for action on Iraq to show he was a hawk, but voted against the funding to show Deaniacs he was a dove.
Indeed.
The American people know a fake when they see one and right now the Democrats are a party full of them. This is why Bush successfully pulled off his strong leader bit while fumbling and misleading the country into war and mortgaging the future wholesale.
On the war subject, I have held to the same core position ever since February of 2003 when I finally (after months of musing on various threads) systemized my outlook into a concrete position in support of the war. Nothing I have seen since that time has made any dents of significance in my position as formulated there and developed somewhat further in additional weblog posts since that time -most recently HERE.
As far as President Bush "fumbling", I cannot argue with that because in some spots he has. As far as "mortgaging the future" goes, I cannot say I disagree with Mr. Salyer on that point either except that (of course) my recommended solutions for this are probably not ones that he would generally concur with.{6} So on the last three points, we basically concur on two of them and "two outta three" is not bad according to that great western philosopher Meatloaf ;-)
It's why Republicans can frame liberal arguments as valueless. It's why Democrats have lost the trust of roughly half of the American people. It's why they lost this election and why they will hemorrage votes in the years to come if they don't find their soul again.
Well, we have some areas of disagreement but Mr. Salyer is right on a lot of points here that his allies had better take seriously if they want to become politically viable again.
There was a true Democrat in this year's presidential race (not to mention 2000), but it wasn't John Kerry. The only person speaking out about the problems of corporate power, the struggle to earn a living wage, environmental injustice, equality for all people, and democratic reform, was Ralph Nader.
Whether or not these are "true Democrat" positions or not, Mr. Salyer is right that Nader was the only consistent enunciator of an agenda that liberals could rally around.
The mere mention of his name is a dirty word for most Democrats, [maybe because he reminds us that the (D) after our leaders' names is supposed to stand for something] but he stood up to the elite powers in this country, spoke to my issues, and won my vote. Votes should be earned and I refuse to let mine be taken for granted by any party.
I have a hunch that Mr. Salyer and I have similar views on the two party system.{7}
It isn't just the Democratic Party that's in trouble, but democratic ideals. Democrats have turned their backs not only on their principles, but democracy itself.
I concur with this. Heck, this was the reason that Ronald Reagan left the Democratic Party in 1962 -a point I noted in one of the third party topic threads from earlier in the month.
The voice of the Democrats, historically America's strongest voice for equality and freedom has gone noticably hoarse (and not from the vehemence of its protests). As a result, we are experiencing an electoral drift to the right. This is dangerous for all citizens, not to mention the system of democracy we depend on.
With regards to the idea that the Democrats have been "historically America's strongest voice for equality and freedom", I am of the view that the Democratic party was the party of physical slavery in the nineteenth century, of economic slavery in the twentieth century, and is increasingly becoming the party of psychological slavery in the twenty-first century.
As far as this being a "system of democracy", I have noted before that (i) this is a republic not a democracy and (ii) between the two there is a distinction with a difference. I will agree with Mr. Salyer that the Democrats have been failing to persuade voters but not for some of the same reasons that he states.
Promise
There is still good news however. Without framing the debate, while abandoning their principles and turning their backs on their base, the Democrats are still hanging tough.
With so many allies in the mainstream media, this is not hard for them to do.
The American people believe so much in the principles of the Democrats, that they've been able to retain a large voter base whose only reason to support them is the hope that they will soon return to their prominent roots.
I could not disagree with Mr. Salyer more than on the idea that the American people "believe...in the principles of the Democrats". Despite a good track record in most of what he says thus far, he is 180 degrees off base here and that would not be difficult to demonstrate.{8}
And here's some even better news. The one inviolable rule of the American democracy is that the only true power rests in the hands of the people.
Again, America is not a democracy and it never has been. The power is vested in representatives who govern with the consent of the people -a policy that basically means that the people can change their political leaders at different intervals. (Two years for State Representative, four years for President, six years for State Senators.)
Although the Democrats own much of the blame for their failures, it is all of us who can and must demand better of them, because hoping and waiting may not be enough.
Agreed. The Democrats who are interested in saving their party had better take a lot of what Mr. Salyer says here seriously. And though I view the words in his final sentence as being well off the mark, I will nonetheless give him the final words in this thread - noting only that the full text I just interacted with can be read in sequence HERE.
If the Democrats pick up their principles, dust them off, and put them to work, the Republican frames will no longer fit the picture and they will have the chance to live up to the promise of their forebears and the expectations of their citizens.
Notes:
{1} The promised post-election commentary and analysis thread is about two thirds done as of this writing. I am on pace to post it prior to Thanksgiving as I promised to do in an earlier audioblog post.
{2} This is a point I have noted a number of times in various forums including this weblog. (One example of which can be read HERE.)
{3} For example, 1974 was the year that President Nixon resigned and the fallout from that was the Republicans getting creamed in the elections. In 1976, there was still stench from Watergate and President Ford had to deal with a strong challenge in the primaries from California Governor Ronald Reagan and he made a few blunders in his debate with Governor Carter. On top of that, Carter was not then the disgrace that he has become in recent years but was viewed as a moral and religious man. That explains why 1976 went the way it did.
{4} If memory serves, the polling data of media journalists and reporters shows a pretty constant 85% or more voting pattern for Democrats.
{5} Welfare reform comes to mind here: something that a Democrat congress never would have supported and which -when the Republicans did produce a program of some reforms, President Clinton signed the legislation. Another is the balanced budget situation in the 1990's: only after the Republicans took over congress did this become a "priority" with President Clinton.
{6} Some of this has been dealt with in past musings to this weblog and other places. I will be touching on some of it and other related bits in my post-election commentary and analysis. (Indeed most of the material that will be posted for that was already written before I was aware of Mr. Salyer's statements interestingly enough.)
{7} My most recent musings on those threads are viewable HERE and HERE.
{8} Heck, the mere individual fact that so much of the liberal agenda has had to be obtained by courts inventing rather than interpreting laws is the most significant shell hole below the waterline of Mr. Salyer's theoretical vessel. (I could list several others but this will suffice in brief to establish my point.)
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