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Is the Real Cultural War Against Men?

Saturday, December 1st, 2012

The Surrender of Adam

One story that garnered some media attention this week was a commentary written by Suzanne Venker at FoxNews.  In the article entitled War on Men, Venker contends that the real war in our culture has been waged against men.  Her conclusions are based on the observation that fewer and fewer men seem to have any interest in marriage, while interest among women is on the rise, but there exists a widespread lament about an alleged dearth of good men.  In the end, Venker concluded that women may bear the blame for this situation, but that conclusion garnered outrage and mockery from the typical leftist outlets.  At the same time, Limbaugh discussed the matter at length, but his conclusions were clearly different than those of the shrill left.  What’s the truth?  Is there a “war” on men?  Is it being waged by women who are unknowingly setting themselves up for failure?  I believe Venker is onto something, but I also think her article didn’t fully explore the ramifications, never mind all the conspirators.  If real, this war has had a silent collaborator or two, and I think rather than casting most of the blame on women, she should have identified all of the  culprits.

It is true to say that the character of women has fundamentally changed, and much of that was driven by the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s.  Women have entered the workplace in unprecedented numbers, and they are now a majority of employees across the nation.  Women now dominate  numerically the college campus, and in many respects, women have managed to displace men entirely.  According to Venker, much of this owes to anger with men, a feeling engendered and supported by our education establishment, much of which is dominated by women.  Writes Venker:

“In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.”

This may not be entirely true, but there is at least a nugget of truth in it.  There is a clear hostility toward men being engendered by the culture, and I think it is safe to say that any number of men might secretly agree with this sentiment, but while Venker seems to focus on the pedestal from which men were knocked, she spends a good deal less attention on the pedestal being abandoned by women. She finally arrives at a statement that some will find offensive, but nevertheless contains a good bit of information about one of the collaborators in this war:

“It’s all so unfortunate – for women, not men. Feminism serves men very well: they can have sex at hello and even live with their girlfriends with no responsibilities whatsoever.”

Here is where Venker both reveals an effect, but slips and falls on the cause.  Spending a good deal of time researching relationships and the culture, Venker should have realized that there is some truth to that old admonishment that “men are only after one thing.”  In the main, and in the short-run thinking of men, that’s probably more often true than not, so that when women climbed down off their once-lofty pedestal in favor of the lower pedestal men had always occupied, it wasn’t true that they were kicking men off, but that men went willingly, at least initially.  The truth is that men hadn’t been kicked off the pedestal so much as bribed off of it. Of course, this is not all the story, but it provides some insight.  When Venker says “no responsibilities whatsoever,” she is mostly correct when viewed from the short-run perspective of men, however those responsibilities would need to be fulfilled by somebody, and therein we shall find the chief collaborator.

While men were busy stepping down from the lower pedestal to which feminism had enticed women, after spending some time on that lowly perch, women were finding it wasn’t all they were promised it would be.  Venker’s point has merit, but the question is: “Why would women so easily leap from the higher perch?”  The roots of this phenomenon may be fundamental to our nature, and has been understood about the nature of people since the beginning of time.  How close does this parallel what the Judeo-Christian ethos regards as the moment of the original sin?  Genesis 3:6 relates:

“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”

This would have made it seem as though Adam had been a bystander, but as 1 Timothy 2:14 records:

“Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.”

 

This line of thinking then begs the question: “Who played the role of the serpent?”  This is the identity of the other collaborator in the “War on men,”, and its name is government. If there is a war on men, there is no institution that has benefited more from the battle.  If it is to be alleged that while Eve was beguiled by the serpent, and thus caused herself to be cast out of the garden, so it is true that men had been complicit inasmuch as they partook also of the fruit, raising no objection, but knowing the fruit would have a bitter aftertaste. Just as the serpent knew to make his case to women, so too have statists. In our modern culture, the aftertaste of this temptation is to be measured in the wreckage of families, both those dissolved and those never fully constituted, and its evidence is seen in the fundamental breakdown of our society that continues at breakneck speed.  It is true that men have shirked responsibility, but the worst of it is not in their roles as fathers, so much as in their role as men altogether.   You see, men didn’t fight for their pedestal because they assumed that if they yielded it, they would partake of the fruit too, and like Adam, foolishly believed they would avoid the consequences.

Now we arrive in a world in which Venker describes women as angry and resentful of men, but I can imagine Eve being resentful of Adam too, as they were cast out of the garden.  “If you had known better, why didn’t you stop me?”  Adam might respond in coy pragmatism: “How was I to stop you?”  His unstated truth had been: “I didn’t want to…”

All of this demonstrates a strong cultural decline that evades description in modern platitudes.  Instead, what drives all of this is a pervasive immorality based on the notion that one can have anything one wants instantly, without consequence or responsibility, and without regard to the costs.  The provider of this temptation has been big government, and those who advance its cause.  Men sought the immediate benefits of the sexual revolution without concerning themselves with some murky consequence in some distant future.  That future has arrived, and if men now find they are bearing the cost, as Venker explains, women are bearing a terrible consequence:

“It’s the women who lose. Not only are they saddled with the consequences of sex, by dismissing male nature they’re forever seeking a balanced life. The fact is, women need men’s linear career goals – they need men to pick up the slack at the office – in order to live the balanced life they seek.

“So if men today are slackers, and if they’re retreating from marriage en masse, women should look in the mirror and ask themselves what role they’ve played to bring about this transformation.”

I disagree with Venker inasmuch as I believe the worst victims of this entire problem are children.  Men are largely absent from the lives of their children, and they’re being raised in a world that diminishes roughly half of them explicitly, but all of them in fact.  We are now more than two generations into this culture of instant gratification, and yet few seem to have been gratified in the long run.

Just as there was a rush by many on the left to screech at Venker, so I expect there will be those who take a similar stance toward me, who will accuse me of some misogyny or other “primitive thinking.”  Apart from the fact that I don’t care who doesn’t like it, the simple fact is that we can measure the tragedy that has arisen in an America transformed by post-modern feminism, and it’s ugly.  I don’t blame women even as much as Venker, because I believe men were tempted by short-run “benefits” just as surely as Adam stood by as Eve was beguiled.  Venker concludes that women can correct all of this, but I disagree:

“Fortunately, there is good news: women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.”

“If they do, marriageable men will come out of the woodwork.”

Men cannot permit themselves to be complicit bystanders, who partake of the fruit but point back at women as the blame. Men have let their own standards slide, and until they raise them a good deal, and for longer than the short-run, it’s going to continue because women will have no cause to change.  Imagine a world in which men are the ones who say “no.” Preposterous? Perhaps, but if our society is to survive, never mind return to a past “golden age,” somebody is going to have to say it, and what Venker’s article reveals is that slowly, men have begun to shift in that direction. Today, they’re saying “no” to marriage in unprecedented numbers. Where Venker sees this as a result of a war on men, I see it as a result of their moral capitulation. Far too many men have adopted the shoddy notion encapsulated in that well-worn misogynist retort: “Why buy the cow if the milk is for free?”  The real question laid before men is now:  Is it so free as you once thought?  On that basis, women are right to ask if the contempt so many women now feel for men is so entirely undeserved as Venker’s piece suggests. If, as the Bible explains, men were to be the moral leaders, one might ask where they had been.  After all, it wasn’t Eve alone who fell into temptation. If the war on men began with the serpent’s whispers in the Garden of Eden, we ought to ask why Adam surrendered so easily.

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Posted in Culture, Ethics, Featured, Media, News, Politics, War | 2 Comments »

Putting to Rest Some Dire Misconceptions About This Disastrous Election

Sunday, November 11th, 2012

So it is said in politics...

I received an email from a reader who was thoroughly angry with me.  I asked for permission to use the text in a blog post, but I’ve not received further communications, so I will paraphrase the writer’s complaints, since I think there may be more than a few who feel this way.  The complaint boiled down to this:  Contrary to what I asserted in my post on the Reasons Romney Lost, Romney didn’t lose because he didn’t talk about important social issues enough, because said this e-mailer, Romney did indeed talk about these issues important to Christians.  If he did, many of my evangelical Christian friends didn’t hear it.  These issues were largely avoided in the debates, as well as in the stumps speeches late in the race.  The perception among many Christians, at least here in the middle of the Bible Belt, was that Romney was uninterested or evasive on issues important to Christians.  You can argue that he did in fact  talk about all of these topics at some point during the cycle, but the perception among evangelicals in my vicinity was that he avoided talk of religion whenever possible.  Again, it matters not whether he actually discussed it, but instead whether he appeared willing to broach these subjects, and in what frequency.  The problems in the Republican party are much deeper than I once thought.  It’s not only the establishment that doesn’t understand the grass roots, but also that different segments of the base fundamentally misunderstand one another.

To conservatives concerned primarily with freedom issues, they really don’t “get” the evangelical voters.  To many evangelicals who comprise a broad portion of the conservative base, faith isn’t supposed to be something you talk about once a week.  It’s something they believe ought to inform the way a person lives, the decisions one makes, and the way one conducts himself toward others.  Evangelicals will be the first to tell you that they aren’t infallible, but the people who comprise this segment tend to try in earnest to live out their faith in daily life.  They put their faith ahead of family, ahead of friends and community, and certainly ahead of politics.  They’re not generally interested in “going along to get along” because that’s not what their faith dictates.  Therefore, when they see candidates who seem less than fully concerned about faith, at least in their perceptions, they tend to be less than concerned about supporting those candidates.  Period.  You can accuse them of being too rigid in their beliefs if you like, but you see, they take that as a compliment.  They intend to be rigidly faithful to their beliefs.  They are accustomed to the left and to moderates who mock them, most frequently comparing them to some sort of westernized Taliban, and it merely steels their resolve. Contrary to the propaganda against them, however, they’re not looking for a preacher in the presidency.  They simply want a person of deep and abiding faith and understanding who isn’t afraid to take a few jeers and lumps from the left on this basis.  They perceived widely that Romney didn’t fulfill that requirement.

Some will immediately say in response that “well, at least Romney is better than Obama, and worth getting him out of there.”  True enough, but please remember: Evangelical Christians will tend to view politics as a thing of this Earth, but they’re less concerned ultimately with Earth than with their salvation.  Some of them genuinely wonder at the consequences of selling out their souls on issues important to their faith for the sake of transitory political expedience.  Once viewed in this light, it is easy to understand how evangelicals would view elections as less important, and with no candidate appearing to fulfill their requirements for support, many were certain to simply walk away.  You may not like that, and you may not agree with that view, but if you want to understand what has happened, this is a part of the formula you ignore at your own peril.

I will also tell you quite plainly that if you believe Romney’s religion had nothing to do with it, you’re making the mistake of projection.  You’re projecting your sense of religious tolerance onto people who widely view Mormonism as a cult.  Of course, I realize this fully because as my wife points out, in her homeland(Germany,) there are widely thought to be two “legitimate”  religions, being Catholicism and the Lutherans, and the Catholics aren’t entirely convinced about the latter.  As children, they learn about their faith, and in much the same way as evangelicals here in the US view Mormons as part of a cult, German Catholics and Lutherans tend to view any church newer than theirs in much the same light. My point to you is this:  There was always going to be a percentage of evangelical Christians who would never support Mitt Romney, and that was one of the risks implicit in nominating him.  Even though Romney won Texas, it wasn’t by nearly so much as one might expect.  I think if candidates like Ted Cruz hadn’t been on the ballot, Romney might have been in some danger here.

Of course, the misunderstanding isn’t all one-way.  They don’t understand why others in the GOP don’t try to live out their faith as a priority in daily life.  They may admire the wisdom and common sense of free market ideals, economic liberty, and all sorts of issues that are mainstays of the conservative sphere, but they don’t really fully understand why anybody would support a candidate who isn’t strong in his or her faith, and willing to testify to that faith in public.  As I said, the misunderstandings run in all directions, between all factions, but in politics, perceptions become realities, whether or not we think that’s right. I’m not suggesting that conservatives ought to yield to false perceptions, but that instead they should challenge them instead of leaving them without refutation.

You see, it doesn’t matter whether Mitt Romney mentioned the issues of abortion and traditional marriage a few times along the campaign trail.  It matters that he didn’t exhibit his beliefs through his actions when he was pro-choice until a few years ago, or amenable to gay marriage while Governor of Massachusetts.  Those things stick.  You will not know this, but early in the primary season, I had to ban some posters for what I viewed as over-the-top assaults on Romney’s faith.  Some were quite lengthy, but I wasn’t about to permit that sort of bashing.  It was real, however, and in retrospect, I’m afraid that in so doing, I may have done a disservice because it stifled those who feel as they do on these matters.  You didn’t get to see some of these comments, and maybe if you had, you might have understood why getting the full body of the evangelical Christian segment of conservatism to the polls for Mitt Romney was going to be a chore in any case.  That’s the truth of it.  What you do with the information is up to you, but if you’re ever to see the sort of full support from evangelicals any national conservative victory will require, you’re going to need to find candidates who satisfy their minimum requirements.  In too many ways, Mitt Romney didn’t.

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Posted in Conservatism, Culture, Election 2012, Featured, Mitt Romney, News, Politics, Religion | 4 Comments »

Establishment Pundits Miss The Point

Wednesday, November 7th, 2012

There is a simple reason Mitt Romney lost:  Free stuff.  Free phones. Free contraceptives.  Free healthcare.  Free food.  Free housing. Rampant illegitimacy.  There exists a broad segment of Republican establishment punditry today arguing approximately: The Republican party failed to attract Hispanic voters, but while there may be some truth in that, only one party has perfected the act of reaching into one citizen’s pocket to deliver goodies into the hands of those who wish to be kept. That’s it.  The GOP establishment is stating that it’s about Hispanics.  It’s not.  They’re suggesting it’s about amnesty and immigration.  It’s not. It’s more about the fact that too many Americans expect to be provided every necessity of life, and so long as you will sign away your liberties, Barack Obama is only too happy to oblige.  How did we get to this point?  How did we arrive in this bastardized America?  What is the leading demographic change that has affected our fundamental make-up to the extent that Barack Obama’s giveaways are effective?  It’s certainly true that the culture has changed in fundamental ways, lending to the viability of the “free stuff” approach of Obama and Democrats, but it’s much less to do with race or ethnicity than some Republicans would have you believe. My wife called it as we watched the election returns:  It has everything to do with sex.

Once upon a time, a man smarter than me alleged that all human conflicts come down to money, power, and sex. I don’t know if that’s absolutely true, but what I do know is that 60% of children in the country are being born out of wedlock.  We don’t talk about this gloomy statistic much any more, as we’ve so thoroughly normalized the behavior that we don’t utilize the term “illegitimacy” any longer because we dare not offend any who might have contributed to the stats.  Looking at the demographic break-down of the election, what I notice is that married women broke for Romney by almost 20%.  Single women, particularly single mothers, broke for Obama in a big way.  Why?  Because, as my wife observed, he’s daddy.  That’s what it is.  That’s all it is.  For all the hype about feminism, what this election reveals is that a large segment of single women want to be taken care of, but they want the illusion of independence provided by an absence of husbands and a boat-load of freebies from government.  As my wife wryly observed as the election returns came in, many are in search of a sugar daddy to whom their faithfulness is signified only with a vote.

If single mothers/women had broken roughly on par with the general populace for Romney, he’d have won.  They were instead so thoroughly lopsided in Obama’s favor that there was no chance for Romney.  Hispanic votes wouldn’t have mattered.  The whole matter of race would have been moot.  Naturally, the GOP establishment leaps to immigration policy and other pandering measures aimed at Hispanics because amnesty is something they believe they can “give away” like free stuff.  Our problem is much more intractable than this, besides which remains the fact that Obama has beaten them to that punch. Until we come to understand how thoroughly our culture has collapsed, we’re not going to win.  Sure, we are going to win elections here and there, but the trend is wiping us out, but this entire meme about bringing in Hispanics is all about JEB and his electoral aspirations in 2016.  Period.

Our culture has changed, in part by demographic measurements, but in larger measure by the moral bearing that drives the statistics.  Young men don’t want families and responsibilities, and young women don’t want them except for transitory purposes.  Yes, that’s painting with a very broad brush, and I am well aware it’s not universally true, but I am talking about the cultural trends.  My notion here is not to blame women, lest you misunderstand.  My point is that women have become the chief source of the difference between the two sides of the electorate, because we have a welfare state that entices them with all of the benefits of marriage with none of its alleged institutional drawbacks.  There is nothing I know that can reverse this trend, and stalling tactics like giving ground on immigration will only buy a little.  The problem is that in order to fix this, it’s going to need to get ugly.  How ugly?  Pre-industrial ugly.

Conservative talk-show host and Breitbart blogging phenomenon Dana Loesch tweeted this morning, and I responded:

We cannot be Santa Claus.  We cannot be a more thorough sugar daddy than Barack Obama.  We cannot give away the country in order to rescue it.  I think the first thing we need to do is to prepare our people for the worst.  I think we need to ready our families and our neighbors for the inevitable collapse.  The Obama-voting electorate is going to discover all too soon that Santa Claus has delivered them only a lump of coal, and prohibited them from burning it for heat besides.  As I tried to explain to Loesch, it’s more than a tough fight.  It’s nearly impossible, because it’s built upon a base of people that continues to grow, while the pool of those who do the provisioning continues to shrink as a group.  It’s a cultural issue, and like most such problems, no policy can fix it.  It’s gone too far.  What will fix it will be when the inevitable collapse occurs, and the well runs dry, and as I covered when Sarah Palin wrote last year over the debt ceiling debacle, the Sugar Daddy has run out of Sugar.

Unfortunately, thanks to the Republicans led by John Boehner, the truth is that the sugar hadn’t run out.  If the Republicans were to stand a chance of defeating Obama in this election, they should have hardened up and cut off the sugar more than a year ago during that debt ceiling debacle.  Instead, they went wobbly, and as you will remember, it was in part at the insistence of Mitt Romney or his campaign staff. They didn’t want any boat-rocking. One more postponement in order to attempt victory one more time, and once again, we found it was too little, too late.  The Republican establishment set will tell us they need one more chance to try to give something away.  It’s won’t work. We can’t out-giveaway the statists.

The problem we face is one of culture.  Until we grasp the fundamentally corrupting influence of our welfare state, and the fact that our alleged compassion leads only to further depravity and destitution, we will not get the country back on track.  It may take a horrible economic collapse for that spigot to run dry, much worse than anything any of us have known in this country.  When that happens, we’ll be going back.  Way back.  The culture will ultimately correct itself, just as one empire gives way to the next when it falls into moral disrepair.  Frightening?  Yes, of course, and thoroughly so.  I don’t know how we will find any other way to convince the people that their moral choices are killing their country, until it happens. Naturally, by then, it will be far too late.  This is why I don’t want to hear from GOP establishment pundits, because they still believe there is some way to buy our way out of that.  There isn’t. We will either lead and teach, or we will be subsumed into the great cesspool of historic collapses, leaving the teaching to history. We must choose our new course, but we must not permit a lack of clarity.  We must, or we’re finished.

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Posted in Barack Obama, Conservatism, Culture, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics, Welfare State | 6 Comments »

Hating “Extremism”

Friday, August 24th, 2012

When Extremism Is No Vice...

One of the terms that has gained favor in popular culture, particularly on the left, but increasingly in the broader political arena in America is the word “extremist.” I find this word to be a shallow, empty word, used as a bludgeon, but carrying no factual, logical impact while delivering an entirely emotionalized blow.  I’ve been called an “extremist” depending on the issue at hand, and after a while, the term loses its meaning precisely because “extremist” merely refers to a person who had been “extreme” in some facet of their actions, character, or pronouncements.  In this context, the word “extremist” tells us precisely nothing about the matter at hand, but since it’s an ugly-sounding word, it is used by leftists for its emotional impact rather than as the basis for any rational discussion.  When I see the term “extreme” or “extremist” hurled around in this fashion, it has generally been a leftist hurling it, but increasingly, I have seen conservatives begin to wield this same weapon, and what this signifies is how intellectually slothful some on the conservative side of the aisle have become in making an argument, or at the very least how thoroughly they disrespect the intellect of their audiences.  When some commentator, pundit, or writer uses the term “extremist” or “extremism,” whether from right or left, we ought to demand a fuller explanation than that which had been provided by such an empty taunt.

Rather than pulling out Merriam Webster’s dictionary in demonstration of the misuse of the term, I’d prefer that we restrain ourselves to contextual examples. Knowing that I’ve been labeled an “extremist” myself on a few occasions, it might be instructive to view the context in which such a charge has been leveled.  After all, in our culture, the term “extremist” has such negative connotations that one is immediately painted with an easel of colors that suggests a wild-eyed maniac, lurching zealously in pursuit of some particular end.  Of course, therein arises the problem, because the term tells us little or nothing about the nature of the “extremism.”  Instead, due to the negative connotations associated with this word, the presumptive impact delivered is negative, and yet there is nothing inherent in the meaning of the word to suggest a deleterious implication.

For instance, I have been told I am an “extremist” because I refuse to abandon the logically consistent position that life begins at conception, and that if men are endowed by the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God with certain unalienable rights, they must begin to arise at that moment, such that any excuse for ending that life must still ignore the rights of that individual, no matter how new and as yet, undeveloped it may be.  The assertion leveled in my direction is that by remaining inflexible to any other contextual concerns, I have become an “extremist.”  The only thing truly “extreme” about my position is that I refuse to concede the argument on the basis of situational ethics, or relativism.  My support of a right to life for all human beings is therefore branded as “extreme,” and the connotation attending that label is foisted upon me in the same manner that Timothy McVeigh was called an “extremist” without reference to what it had been about which he was extreme, or to what extremes he was willing to go in furtherance of his twisted world-view.  That’s the object being pursued in many instances in which the word “extreme” is so frequently misused: The desire to paint one’s political opponents as being raving lunatics.

I have been called a “Second Amendment Extremist,” because I can read the plain language of that amendment, and because I can see in the construction of the sentence that comprises it everything I need to know about the intentions of its authors.  I note that in that amendment, there is a dependent and independent clause, and that if I identify the two, what is plain is exactly opposite of what leftist, statist legal scholars contend.  They suggest that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is dependent on their proximity to a “well-regulated militia,” but knowing the construction and grammar of the English language, I know they are lying.  The full sentence states:

“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

There are two clauses in this sentence, and you can decide for yourself which is the dependent and the independent.  One definition of the distinction would lead you to test them each as sentences.  “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State…”  Complete sentence, or fragment?  Now try the other: “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”  Clearly, the second clause is independent, while the first clause is dependent on the latter.  You could, in point of fact, place any clause whatever in place of the first, and not change the meaning or impact of the second.  “Ham and cheese on rye being necessary to the fullness of one’s stomach, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Yes, this seems a preposterous remark, but notice that substituting my dependent clause about ham sandwiches does exactly nothing to the meaning or impact of the independent clause.  What we must therefore learn from this is that the author of this Amendment, and those who subsequently adopted and ratified it intended to say “The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”  Why put the other clause there? The intention was to demonstrate one cause relative to governance for which the government must sustain that right, but it was not intended to be the exclusive or sole reason for the amendment.  Instead, it was simply to explain one interest the federal government should recognize so that it does not infringe upon that right.

Naturally, the fact that I would rely on the actual words of the amendment, and the rules of English to recognize its essential meaning simply implies (according to leftists) that I am some sort of “extremist.”  Note, however, that I am only an “extremist” about this subject in the eyes of those who at least contemplate depriving the American people of this right. I might just as easily state that those who would consider such a disparagement of our rights as an “extremist,” and I would contend to you that they are, but I will at least offer you the respect of telling you the nature of their “extremism,” rather than relying upon that word to carry the emotional water I wish to convey.

Of course, this can be applied to many things, well away from the realm of politics.  How about human relationships?  I am certain that my wife would prefer that I remain an “extremist” with respect to my observance of my wedding vows.  I am certain that my friends and neighbors would prefer that I remain an “extremist” when it comes to my honesty in my dealings with them.  I am likewise certain that my co-workers would prefer that I maintain my extreme diligence and thoughtfulness with respect to the work I do.  Of course, if you prefer to remain in the political realm, you could take it from Barry Goldwater who famously asserted:

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” (Sen. Barry Goldwater(R-AZ), 1964 RNC Convention)

Here’s the video, for those who weren’t yet around to witness it:

The Republican Party has been running away from that statement with few exceptions since Senator Goldwater uttered it, and yet it reminds us of a central truth about the nature of our political discourse and the infamy of misusing the language in such a way.  What Goldwater said as he accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for the office of President was a thing we ought to recognize, because at the time, the Johnson Campaign was painting him with the awful and generic brush of “extremism.”  Quite obviously, the most controversial thing about Goldwater’s views at the time lied in the fact that they were perceived as controversial at all. The GOP establishment, even in those days, quickly abandoned Goldwater and left him to fight with an underfunded campaign.

My point in bringing up Goldwater, and the notion of “extremism” as a label of infamy cast about by commentators, reporters, journalists, and even ordinary people like me is that we should question its use, or more properly, its overuse.  I have become accustomed, as have most of you, to being smeared with this label of “extremism” in such repetitive fashion by leftists that is very nearly a badge of honor among actual conservatives.  I am proud to be what the press might call an “extreme conservative,” or what Mitt Romney might call “severely conservative,” or what John Boehner would simply characterize as a “knuckle-dragger.” The term “extremist” conveys no actual meaning of its own, and left in isolation, it’s impossible to judge with certainty whether the “extreme” under discussion is a bad thing or a good thing.  It’s a shoddy method by which to launch an attack with no specificity for its basis, and that should get your attention.

What I am astonished to see in this campaign season is when bloggers,  columnists, commentators, journalists, and writers ostensibly on our side resort to this sort of lazy language to attack not only our opponents, but also some of our own. “Extreme” and its derivatives are words we who cover politics should refrain from using without contextualization and definition.  It’s a dastardly attack because of its presumptively negative connotations, but absent any context, it loses its meaning. I might posit the notion that “Voters don’t like extremists,” but what information have I conveyed if I provide no context or meaning to the term?  What sort of extremists do voters not like?  Is there a sort of extremist they might like?   Having permitted the reader to define the term for his or her self, I haven’t said anything substantial, and in that case, perhaps I’m better off had I instead refrained from saying anything at all.

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Posted in Conservatism, Culture, Ethics, Featured, Media, News, Philosophy, Politics | 12 Comments »

This Country Is Doomed – Video of 6yo Rapper

Monday, July 9th, 2012

Exploited

I really haven’t much to say about this.  It’s sad and depressing, and merely shows what has become of our popular culture.  Anything goes.  This video depicts a six year old rapper, and I won’t post it on this site.   I feel bad for what is being made of this poor child’s life.  I tremble with rage that an adult could turn a child into this sort of sideshow.   That any parent would use their child in this way signifies a complete breakdown of a growing segment of our society for which it’s difficult to imagine any possible repair. You don’t need to watch the whole thing, and in fact, you don’t need to watch any of it.  Knowing that some adult thinks it is a good idea to have one’s 6yo rap: “I can make your booty pop” is enough.  H/T Iowntheworld.com:

I am stunned.  This kid needs to be rescued from the adults around him. We are doomed.

Posted in Culture, Media, News, Video | 3 Comments »

Inverted America

Monday, July 9th, 2012

Home of the Depraved?

Everything is upside-down.  Do you work for a living?  If so, you’re punished.  Are you an entrepreneur?  You’re punished, and you’re going to be punished more severely, too.  Are you a lay-about?  No problem.  You qualify for earned income tax credits, welfare, and food-stamps.  You will be rewarded for your ignorance, your sloth, and your commitment to ride through life on your neighbors’ backs.  Do you follow the rules?  Pay your taxes?  Did you wait until, oh my, marriage before you began having children? Did you and your spouse restrain your reproduction in the name of not falling into poverty?  Too bad!  While you’ve been frugal, others have not, and you’re going to pay for their children too!  Did you serve in the Army?  Earn those college benefits by doing your nation’s bidding?  That’s too bad.  You could have merely gone on the public dole, taken endless student loans and Pell Grants, and gotten the same thing without the slightest chance you might get your ass shot off in some hell-hole halfway around the globe building fake democracies.  No?  You don’t like that?  This is what we have permitted to happen: Doing right is punished, but doing wrong is rewarded.  The whole damned thing is upside-down. Welcome to inverted America.

Politicians lie.  There’s news!  What you may not realize is that the more shamelessly they lie, the more apt they are to succeed, where success is measured by trip after trip back to Washington DC.  If they tell the truth, they won’t be tolerated by a nation of people who enjoy the sweet lies more than the truth.  Politicians who spend the nation into oblivion are rewarded with additional terms, while those who warn of this impending disaster are sent packing because they might dare to vote for measures to stop the bleeding.  We’ve now arrived in a situation in which it is so bad, and so insurmountable that even our somewhat more sober public officials are beginning to pretend it doesn’t matter.  A century ago, the American people were astonished by the reckless spending of some public officials.  Now, some notice, but not enough to matter much, as their fellow citizens join the chant for more.

What has happened in America is that we have abandoned morality, but I do not mean only the morality prescribed by commandments that begin with “Thou Shalt not…”  I mean also the morality made plain by such simple wisdom as “a penny saved is a penny earned.”  I mean such trivial matters as associating one’s material wealth to one’s actual efforts.  One of the biggest frauds I see on a day-to-day basis is the self-delusional proposition of those who live so far beyond their means that they spend the entirety of their life juggling debt payments.  Big house, really fancy car, nice clothes, expensive jewelry, and all the trappings of success, only, what have so many forgotten?  Oh yes, the “success” part.  Too many people have adopted the tired, self-defeating delusion that “if only I can look like a million bucks, I will be worth one million dollars.”

This basic disrespect for the law of causality traditionally pervaded only the left, and the perfectly insane, or those well under twenty-five.  It’s a petulantly childish wish to be able to have things without having earned them, but when one decides one can impose the costs of that wish on others through force of government, an adult becomes a thief and a murderer.  If you examine what our culture has become, and how it has begun its devolution, from the pinnacles of human achievement toward the mires of ancient miseries, you, the rational among us, ought to know the cause.  There can be no reversal of cause and effect, just as one may not put the cart before the horse in expectation of locomotion.  The universe simply does not work that way, despite our most foolish attempts to pretend to ourselves that it may.

Sunday evening, I was baffled, nay, astonished to read that there are people who actually expect to benefit from Obama-care.  I cannot conceive of the fool who might convince himself of such a thing, except that there are many who do.  They expect to benefit precisely because America has adopted an inverted morality, where virtue(s) is punished, and vice is rewarded.  Those who practice any vice are treated as victims.  It calls to mind the case of the Menendez brothers, on trial for the murder of their parents.  Their defense team painted them as poor, tortured souls who were now orphaned, while every sensible person in the country screamed at their televisions: “But THEY MURDERED their parents!”  This tendency among many to let others off the hook for their poor choices must stop.  It simply must. The rest of us are being held to pay for these bad decisions, and sadly, there exists some number of us who are willing to pay on the basis of the unspoken proposition that we might one day permit ourselves to act with equal irresponsibility.

This is not the nation of our founders, and if this is what has become of the United States, perhaps we are better off if it dies.  There are too many who refuse to see that which is before them.  They’re too busy pretending up is down and down is up to notice that the country is sinking.  The only hope this country has is that those remaining who do not accept an inverted morality begin to speak up.  It may not be possible to reverse at this late date, but if it can be, it will only be done by those able to speak the unvarnished, heretofore unspeakable truth of America in the 21st century: Our country is dying of a terminal cancer, and its cure is reason.  Effects follow causes, and we should begin to reaffirm that relationship.

 

 

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Seeing Red: You’re Damned Right – I’m Mad

Sunday, July 1st, 2012

Afraid to Know?

I’ve received a few emails asking me if I’m so angry as it seems on the surface.  I’ve politely responded that I’m actually much angrier than the printed word permits me to express.  I’ve made mention of something else on that score, and in so doing, you’d think I’d crossed the Rubicon.  Maybe I should.  I’ve admitted openly that I am not only angry at the Congress, the President and the Court over this Obama-care monstrosity, but that I’m likewise furious at my fellow Americans who aren’t equally furious!  I’ve been asked what I expect the anger to get for me, and the truth is that I don’t know.  I’ve never been quite this angry before, and I’ve never muttered so many oaths under my breath, and within the confines of my own head as I have these last few days.  I’ve asked this question in other forms before, but few have seemed willing to take it up.  One of the reasons the statists continue to do things like this to us is because we’re peaceful, law-abiding people on the whole, but just as in the case of the contraception mandate in Obama-care, I am beginning to conclude that perhaps we are the problem.  They seem to poke at us like a moron prodding a grizzly with a stick, safely from beyond the bars of a cage at the zoo.  We never seem to grab the stick, pull them close, and rip their faces from their thick skulls, and it is this that makes them all the more smug each time they poke at us:  We hold the key to the cage.

I’ve been asked too how it is that we can express this anger.  I suppose we could resort to pitchforks and torches, but I expect that’s precisely what the statists want.  In the mean time, we’ll wait peaceably for them to ban pitchforks and torches.  They’ve already made incandescent light-bulbs illegal.  How long can it be before torches are banned both as a matter of public safety and as a matter of environmental concern?  Pitchforks may require a better excuse, but I’m sure they’ll do something like limiting their length.  No, the way to express our anger comes down to something simpler, but even this, I’m afraid most people are too timid to attempt:  We can simply say “no,” and mean it.  Ayn Rand put forward the solution in Atlas Shrugged, but since few can be bothered to read a book of that epic length any longer, I suppose I had better give a brief summary: Those who work, and earn and build are convinced to simply stop, leaving nothing to the statists from which to subsist.  All the little moochers, and all the crony capitalists find they cannot survive without those who produce, and they quickly move to a post-Apocalyptic society where anarchy reigns for a time, until the looters ultimately reduce themselves to insignificance.

The basic idea is this:  All of this is done by our consent.  The ghastly welfare-state, the crony-capitalism, the corruption, all of it, every piece, because in part, some of us are corrupted by it, and in part because we are too fearful to simply say “no” and thereby undergo the temporary misery of a rapidly collapsing society.   Only our productive endeavors keep this monster alive.  Each time we go to work, invest our money, or shove some of it into a savings account, we’re feeding the beast.  We’re keeping it alive.  It is by behaving as a parasite on our life-blood, our productive enterprises, our labor, and our jobs that this is all kept going.  Without our daily/weekly/monthly/annual ‘contributions’ to their system, their system would quickly starve and die.  The idea of leaving this all behind has come to be termed “going Galt,” a hat-tip to the book’s hero, John Galt.   In Rand’s novel, he was the first to abandon the society to its own devices, determined that he would no longer to provide it any form of support, material, or otherwise.  He then set about the task of convincing others to join him.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am on the cusp of “going Galt.” Being as this site is named “Mark America,” perhaps the act would come to  be known as “going America,” and that would be fitting, indeed.  Our country has fallen into the depths of a sickness from which the only recovery will be when we decide to impose it.  We have the power to treat this disease.  We have the ability to starve it of nourishment.  Do we have the courage?  Somehow, while I would love to credit Americans with the courage of the ages, still, I get the nagging impression that too many among us would be comfortable as slaves so long as the bellies are full, the roofs don’t leak, and the rivers don’t rise.  It’s a depressing state of affairs.

Are there any willing to starve the beast, even at the cost of their own temporary, although probably somewhat protracted discomfort?  None can say.  None dare say.  Meanwhile, let’s be angry.  Without corresponding action, it doesn’t fix much, but it sure feels good.

 

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College Loans and Who Should Pay For Them

Saturday, April 28th, 2012

The Choices We Make

If you’re a college student, you may want to pay attention.  With the nationalization of student loans under Obama, you’re going to be slaves to the system if you use their loans.  It’s the ultimate racket.  You pay interest to the government at a higher rate than you would have in the previous system where private banks made loans, and the government guaranteed them, and of course, the government has the IRS to strip your future earnings from you.  I listened to a caller named “Jonathan” on Mark Levin’s show Friday evening, and I was astonished at his sniveling over the interest rates.  He insisted that it is “for the greater good” that he took out a total of $220,000 in student loans.  He’s not upset, he says, about the principal amount, but at an interest rate of more than seven percent, he’s having trouble making ends meet.

Let me save all of you aspiring college students some time and trouble:  Most universities don’t teach you much anyway.  You’ll learn more on your own if you want to do so than any college will ever teach you, and it will be more valuable.  I know, I know… The field into which you’re going requires a college education, maybe an advanced degree, perhaps medicine, or the law.  That’s fine.  Go to a cheap school.  Seriously.  All they’re giving you is a piece of paper.  The rest, you get on your own, and it’s the height of foolishness to go into debt to the tune of more than two-hundred-thousand dollars in order to fatten the higher education establishment.  It’s absurd, and our kids should be steered away from this nonsense.

I went to college.  I was thirty-one years old when I enrolled.  I was thirty-five when I graduated.  My ‘student loan officer’ was a nice gentleman with a crew-cut I met in the recruiting office of the United States Army when I was seventeen.  I loaned the government my backside for seven years, and in exchange, they matched my own contributions to a college fund.  Along the way, they taught me to be a hard-charging ass-kicker, and also some practical skills that I would one day convert to civilian use for the purposes of feeding my family.  It was likely the best deal I ever made.  The truth of the matter is that I learned a good deal more in those seven years than any college could teach you in twenty.   Nevertheless, once I was out of the Army, I used the aforementioned skills to make a living, and before long, only six years later, I was on my way to college.

Now I can almost hear caller Jonathan’s retort to such a proposition: “But, but, but,” he might stammer, “I wanted to go to a top twenty-five law-school.  It’s the only way to get work at some places.”  That sound you may be hearing in the background is the sound of the world’s smallest violin, playing just for Jonathan.   My answer: “Then shut up, and pay the interest you promised to pay when you took out the loan!”  You see, the problem is that Jonathan is finding it hard to make ends meet while paying his obligations, and he’s finding that paying for his debt is causing him to delay some gratification as a young attorney.  Boy-o, that’s what happens when you aren’t “born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”  Get over it.

Honest to goodness, $220,000 is a fantastic sum of money to me even now.  When I was that age, if somebody had lent me that kind of money, I’d either be a billionaire, or be locked away in debtor’s prison by now.  Or not.  The point is that to take out loans totaling $220K and then complain about having to pay the interest is a farce. Sure, it will probably take poor Jonathan a decade or more to pay off those loans, but what of it?  Was he making an investment in his future or not? No, you see, that’s not enough for young Jonathan: “For the greater good,” we should all be investors in his future.  Sorry, but I’m not interested in that sort of ‘investment.’

Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure young Jonathan is a fine man, and he’ll probably make a great slip-and-fall lawyer one day, but in the mean time, he’d better pay up with a big fat smile on his face.  You see, I actually had this very conversation with a young person recently, who was looking at the costs of attending the school from which he hopes one day to receive a degree, and I offered the other options open to him, and even offered my story about my own ‘loan officer.’  He replied in a matter-of-fact tone that “Well, you made your choices, and you took the path you did.”  His intent had been to dismiss my story, and yet as I the grin widened on my face, he looked confused at first, and then it hit him: “Okay, yes, I guess I see your point.”

It was somewhat amusing to hear his laments about how he’s now “over a barrel.” He can either continue his education, accruing more debt along the way, or he can quit, and begin repaying the loans immediately.  As I explained to him, “life has us all over a barrel.”  Of course, I understand how the government is going to financially wreck so many of these youngsters.  Now that the government is the sole source for guaranteed student loans, the government is going to wreck as many youngsters as they can hook into this system.  Naturally, the education establishment is only too happy to continue to increase tuition, because I can guarantee you that the faculty lounge won’t suffer.  This is the inevitable result of letting government intrude where the private sector should exist.  They created the government-guaranteed student loan program in order to entice lenders into loaning money to students for college, since they had been such an historically awful risk.  Once the government guaranteed the loans, it was inevitable that some Marxist would nationalize the program.

I am fairly certain that was the intention from the beginning.  After all, you can’t walk away from federally guaranteed(and now issued) student loans through bankruptcy, much like income tax debt, and everybody beyond the age of thirty understands that socialists love captive markets.  If we did that with healthcare, we wouldn’t have the insurance problems we do, but that also wouldn’t enable government to grow larger and reach into another market, ultimately nationalizing it, as they intend with seemingly everything.  At some point, this country is going to be faced with a choice about whether we wish to fix all of these things permanently, or simply implode and become a full-bore communist state.  I’ve seen the latter up close, and I’m afraid that’s where we’ve been heading, but young Jonathan doesn’t know that, and his professors aren’t likely to have told him.  Instead, they’ve probably filled his head with notions of how “the greater good” is the sole consideration, but what they’ve never told him is who will be determining what constitutes the greater good, or the public interest.  He believes he will have some say in the matter.

At every level now, the Federal government reaches into everything, but the simple truth of the matter is that this can generally happen only because people invite it in.  Too many people suffer under the delusion that the government is able to fix anything and everything, and that since there’s no immediate and obvious cost to them, they are quite happy to have the “help.”  All of this ignores the tendency of government to resemble a mob loan-shark, or a gang of mobsters in general.  Once you accept the help, there’s no ridding yourselves of them.  More, it’s a bit like the drug pusher, who gets people hooked on “free samples” but once addicted, the new junkie would kill his family to obtain another fix.  In other words, it’s about us.  Just as the pusher can gain no ground so long as you tell him “no,” so too is it the case that if we begin to tell the government “no,” it will lose its power.  That means doing something most people are tested to do:  Say no to themselves.  Young attorney and Levin caller Jonathan could have told himself “no.” That would have been difficult, with a degree from a “top 25 law-school” dangled before his ambitious eyes.  Now that it turns out his eyes may have been a little larger than his belly, he’s not happy about it, but I’m sure there was no dissuading him at the time.  Somebody needs to tell him “no.”  Waive the interest?  No.  Delay payments?  No.  Forgive the debt?  Hell no!

“No” is the most effective word on Earth against socialism, but it’s the word too many in this country are now afraid to utter, to their children, their neighbors, fellow citizens, but most particularly, themselves.  Until we learn to say it and mean it, poor kids like Jonathan will never understand its power.  Government bureaucrats will never understand their limits.  Politicians will never cease in their abuses.  We will never be happy.  Learn to say “No” and stand by it.  Refusing your consent is the one thing that cannot be taken from you.  Jonathan could have said “No” to the interest he’ll now pay, simply by refusing the loans.  Having taken them, he has found that he now has no right to refuse.  Do I feel sorry for Jonathan? Do you?

No…

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Posted in Capitalism, Conservatism, Culture, Education, Mark Levin, News, Politics | 1 Comment »

Running on Empty: Petrol Panic in UK

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

Could We Face the Same?

I recommend my readers check out this piece over the UK Telegraphon what is going on with our friends across the pond.  They’re experiencing a fuels shortage to the extent that the government is being urged to begin an emergency program of rationing.  The issue began when a union of truck drivers who deliver fuels threatened to go on strike, and a government official, Francis Maude, a Cabinet Officer advised people to fill up their tanks and store fuel in storage containers.  Quite naturally, the people responded by doing just that, emptying filling stations everywhere.  While telling the people not to panic, the British government incited a panic, and the resultant run on fuels, in a shortage so severe that first responders there are having difficulty finding fuel to run their ambulances.   What we should learn from all of this are at least two important lessons, and I hope my readers will take note:  Governments cause panics by their actions, but more importantly, our fuel supply is more vulnerable than most people think, because of the structure of the supply chain.

If you drive to your favorite filling station, most days there will be no problem.  You’ll simply dispense the fuel, pay and depart, and there’s no fuss about any of it.  What most people don’t realize is that the amount of fuel out at filling stations is based on the expected, ordinary quantity demanded, and while there may be some small amount in surplus, it’s really not much more than a day or two extra under ordinary conditions.  Fuels are dangerous to store in large quantities, and EPA regulations have made the job harder, but most important is the notion of just-in-time inventory management which means retailers don’t keep more on hand than they will immediately sell under normal conditions.

The reason this matters to consumers is that it means that any small fluctuation upward in quantity demanded can quickly lead to a shortage. As we should have learned in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, anything that causes a shortage at the margins in one locale can quickly spread to others.  If there’s a run on fuels in just a few key locations locally, it can spread like a wildfire as displaced customers shift their demand to other locations, driving those to shortage, and thus pushing the shortage around.  As the shortages spread, panic takes hold, so that people descend on every location for fuel they can find.

This tells us a little bit about the psychology of the market and why such shortages can materialize for no apparent good reason, looking at the matter on a macro scale:  Is there enough fuel for immediate demands? Had people simply gone on with their ordinary purchasing patterns, would there have been a serious market-wide shortage?  No.  The problem lies in the fact that people can be moved by fear and uncertainty regarding the immediate future.  The notion that some days in the future, tanker drivers in the UK might be on strike, and might cause a shortage, was enough to cause a government official to make remarks that started a panic.  Even if the strike never materializes, it will take days or even weeks for the UK to restore things to the normal flow.

What this also should remind us is that on-hand supplies at retail outlets is never nearly what the whole market might demand at once.  At any one time, the capacity of every filling station is just a small fraction of the total capacity of every vehicle’s tank.  When everybody goes to fill up at the same time, the situation is made evident, because the on-hand retail supply can in no way match the condensed time frame of such a move by consumers to tank-up.  In the UK, they’re openly talking about rationing now as a way to restore the normal flow.

The more interesting part about this problem is the human psychology implied: When faced with potential shortages, we tend to horde in response, and this can clearly add to the problems.In the US, where we are much more dependent on fuels to maintain the course of our daily lives, commute and travel distances being so much greater, we’re especially vulnerable to panics generated by short-run, geographically-limited marginal shortages. For this reason, the US can be subject to very small-scale shortages turning into regional or even nationwide problems.  It doesn’t take much.  If a few gas stations over a metropolitan area run short, it can ripple outward and spread like a virus. People begin panic-buying almost as soon as they hear that there is a shortage somewhere nearby.

This is why our current situation is actually so precarious.  It doesn’t take much but a day or two of delayed replenishing in distribution to cause a serious problem.  This is also another reason we should seek to increase not only the amount of oil we produce domestically, but also to increase our refining capacity. The situation underway in the UK  is small compared to the impact such a panic could cause here, primarily because the geographical expanse of our country means that public mass transit isn’t economically viable in most areas.  In short, we need our fuel, and our lives have evolved to depend upon it.  It’s bad enough when governments do idiotic things like start a panic, but what’s worse is when they’re so utterly unprepared when they happen without government prompting.

The American people should be made aware that panic hoarding only worsens the problem and increases the span of time before a situation driven by natural disasters is resolved.  The goal in such a situation should be to delay purchase as long as possible, but that’s so counter to our nature that I don’t expect many people to react in perfectly rational ways.  The other problem we face is political, in that too few Americans understand just how fragile this system has become, and with it, all the dependencies upon which it relies.  If more Americans understood just how reliant they really are on an energy supply to maintain their standard of living, they might bring more pressure on politicians to get out of the way.

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Posted in Capitalism, Culture, Economics, Emergency Preparedness, Energy, Featured, News, Politics | 6 Comments »

Governor Palin on Hannity Discussing Vile Attacks (Video)

Saturday, March 24th, 2012

Governor Palin on Hannity

On Friday evening, former Alaska Governor and 2008 Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin appeared on Hannity on FoxNews to discuss a range of topics, relating to the vile attacks she and her family have endured over the last four years since John McCain chose her to be his running mate.  Hannity prefaced the segment with a number of disturbing video clips of various media personalities saying the most obscene and ridiculously insulting things about Gov. Palin and other members of her family, and given the nature of some of the things that have been said, I remain amazed at her poise and strength of resolve in confronting it all.  Bill Maher, and David Letterman, among others headline this bunch of shameless media vermin, but Governor Palin was most perturbed by the attacks on her children.

Perhaps the most shocking of attacks has been on her young son Trig who was born with Down Syndrome, and has been the focus of disgusting ridicule and ridiculous conspiracy theories.  As a parent, it’s horrible to witness attacks of any kind on your children, but the despicable attack on a child with special needs is particularly abominable. Frankly, I consider the purveyors of this alleged “comedy” aimed at defenseless children the signature of pure evil.  Here’s the video:

Naturally, there have been attacks on all her kids, and some of them stunningly vile.  The question of President Obama’s hypocrisy came up, since one of the SuperPACs supporting him accepted one million dollars from professional pig Bill Maher.  Hannity also highlighted Bristol Palin’s blog in which she asked President Obama directly:  Mr. President, When Should I Expect Your Call?  The hypocrisy is evident, but that’s not particularly bothersome to leftists, who must adopt every manner of contradiction in logic and morality to hold their positions.  The Governor’s eldest daughter did an excellent job of demonstrating the clear hypocrisy through his remarks to the press on the Sandra Fluke story.

The left loves to profess their love and reverence for the rights and dignity of all women, but when it comes right down to it, what’s really important to leftists is ideology.  Women only qualify for their respect if they happen also to be leftists.

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Posted in Culture, Leftist Cabal, Media, News, Politics, Sarah Palin | 2 Comments »

The Real Woman-Haters Aren’t Conservatives

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

Lefties Need Not Apply?

Over the last week, we have been regaled with the notions of respect that Democrats have for women, and the love and compassion liberals always show them, while simultaneously being told that those mean old white guys in the GOP simply don’t understand women, their issues, or why misogyny of the sort they allege Rush Limbaugh displayed ought to be considered a generalization about all conservatives.  Of course, while offering all of this, they conveniently ignore a few things that might be relevant to this argument.  For one thing, they ignore all the leftist men who have done much more horrendous things to women in recent memory.  For another, it’s clear that despite all their posturing, the independence of women is not their actual concern.

Do we hear about how Anthony Weiner treated women on Twitter or his own wife?  No.  Do we here about John Edwards and how he treated both his wife and his mistress?  No.  Do they mention Bill Maher’s disgusting remarks about Sarah Palin?  No.  Do they bother to say a word about how Bill Clinton treated a long line of women?  No.  Do they say anything in defense of the women abused by leftist men in ways far worse than anything Rush Limbaugh ever said?  Hell no.  Teddy Kennedy? No way.  Chris Dodd? Not a chance.  Worse, when any of these liberal men came under fire, the general theme was to attack the women and question their credibility, and attack their character, in a bid to portray them as “gold-diggers” or, yes, “sluts.”  Where were the “slut-walks” in protest of all of this, then?

What you quickly realize when evaluating all of this is that while Rush Limbaugh seems genuinely sorry about his remarks, his remorse is frankly unmatched by the others mentioned above.  More, it’s astonishing how few feminist activists went after any of those mentioned above, but who can’t wait to slam Rush Limbaugh.  There is one reason for this disparity in treatment, and the answer is as plain as the nose on your face:  It’s all about politics.  These feminists who drop their professed principles when it is a liberal man involved are simply guilty of renting themselves out for the sake of ideological brothers.  There’s a name for that, but at the moment, it escapes me…

You see, the problem is that these alleged proponents of the rights of women quickly forget all of that when they think the source from which their bread is buttered may be under threat.  At that point, all of their haughty talk about their ideals and their principles most frequently goes out the window.  What you realize is that they’re really all about one thing, and nothing more: Abortion.  Anthony Weiner, and Bill Clinton, as well as Bill Maher, are rabidly pro-abortion.  Rush Limbaugh has two strikes against him, and they are that he is conservative, and he is pro-life.  This makes him a target for them from the outset, and his pro-life views have always made him a target.

Limbaugh has long poked the feminist front, casting out terms like “femi-nazi” to describe the most virulent of the post-modern feminist movement.  He’s right about them, too, and that’s the reason he’s been the object of their scorn since he first took to the airwaves.  They monitor him closely for any indication that they will have a new excuse to renew the vigor of their war against him.  The truth is that Limbaugh has a good deal of fun at the radical feminists’ expense, and truth be told, I think that’s what he set out to do in this case.  Clearly, he didn’t think it through, and said two words that have begotten all of his current troubles.

Now comes the story that Bill Maher has effectively donated one million dollars to an Obama SuperPAC.  This is the same sick man who flung the “t-word” at Sarah Palin.  Shouldn’t Obama urge the SuperPAC to return the funds, not wanting to take cash from a misogynist like Maher?  Of course, this dual standard is evident most of the time.  Occasionally, as in Maher’s case, the National Organization for Women will make some token statement about the leftist, but that’s where it generally ends.  There are no boycotts, and no demands to get the offender off the air, or any of those things, and let’s be honest:  The things Maher has said about some women make anything Limbaugh said seem quite tame by comparison.

The left claims to care about women and their issues, but the truth of the matter is that rather than seek independence for women, what the radical left seeks is to simply change upon whom it is that some women are dependent.  They seek to make government into a sugar-daddy for dependency, as a way to usher more women into the hands of socialism.  This is part of the left’s desire to re-order society in their Utopian vision, where women will be reduced to walking bearers of babies who will then become the next generation of worker-bees in the hive that is their model society.  As they posture in false bravado on behalf of Sandra Fluke, let’s not forget what these people really seek and who it is that they will ultimately harm most deeply if they have their way, and it’s not men.

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Posted in Culture, Feminism, Leftist Cabal, Media, News, Politics | Comments Closed

Limbaugh: Establishment Republicans Scared to Death

Monday, February 20th, 2012

Cultural Conservative v. Moderate

Romney is looking weak in Michigan.  Rush Limbaugh opened his show on President’s Day with a monologue on the GOP panic over the rise of Rick Santorum and the diminution of the “inevitable nominee” Mitt Romney.  What Limbaugh has identified is a trend we’ve been watching for some time, whereby the GOP insiders are doing everything they can to put Romney over the top.  It’s true to say that Romney is in trouble, but he’s clawing his way back a bit in Michigan, as the media continues to hammer on Rick Santorum, suggesting that he’s too conservative.  It’s not clear that Rick Santorum is really so conservative as they pretend, and it shows the problem the establishment has with its man Mitt:  While they try to convince us that Romney is conservative, they detest cultural conservatism.

The juxtaposition is laughable.  On the one hand, the GOP establishment tells us Mitt is a conservative, Romney himself saying he was “severely conservative,” but the conservative wing of the Republican electorate knows better, simply by examining his record. Romneycare is merely the most egregious example of Romney’s flat-out liberalism, but it’s far from the only one. Meanwhile, Rick Santorum is too conservative on social issues, although the fact that he is really doesn’t make him a well-rounded conservative because he stood with a number of big-spending plans, like the Medicare prescription drug program implemented by President Bush.  If nothing else, what this should provide to you is a template for which leg of the conservative stool the GOP establishment would like to be sawed-off.

Abortion? They don’t want to talk about it.  Matters of faith or conscience?  They’re simply not interested.  Questions of moral concern?  They won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.  They run shrieking into the night rather than confront such issues, and the reason is simple:  When it comes to these issues, important to a vast swath of the GOP electorate, they only pay lip-service but never deliver.  These are the people who know they cannot nominate a pro-abortion candidate, so they trot out candidates who will claim they are personally pro-life, while their voting or governing history indicates something different.  I will never forget how at the end of their respective presidencies, the two former Bush first ladies each in their turn came out to speak their minds on abortion, parting company from their respective husbands.

This is significant, because what it should demonstrate to you is how these RINOs are culturally distinct from the conservatives whose votes they know they need.  This is particularly true with respect to Christian conservatives who live out their professed faith as best they can.  The GOP establishment considers them rubes and bumpkins, and pawns in their struggle to maintain power.  This is the deadly secret of the GOP establishment, and it’s the basis of their secret fear: They hope you will not notice that theirs is a philosophy that avoids the discussion of cultural conservatism because they see it as divisive.  They’re right:  These issues are divisive, but what they divide is the establishment from the greater body politic that is conservatism.

This is the meaning of their view of a “big tent.”  They think the big tent should take anybody, and accommodate its rules, traditions, and values to any who wish to join in, but the problem with that is the mush that is made of those things by this procedure.  More, as cultural conservatives begin to realize that their views are no longer respected, they begin to slip away out under the tent flaps, unwilling to be associated with the amoral circus to which they are then witnesses.  As Rush Limbaugh said today, to the establishment Republicans, a guy like Santorum, a devout Catholic, is some kind of “three-eyed monster.” This is undeniably true, and it’s why you shouldn’t be surprised, if you’re a conservative Christian, that they view you in much the same way.

To them, your faith and your adherence to it are evidence that you’re faulty, and that you should be ignored, but they’ll pander to you just enough that you’ll vote for them if it comes to it.  This is what they’re hoping is true with Mitt Romney, and that in the end, they can scare you away from real conservatives.  To them, religious convictions should be abandoned at the exits of your church.  They want Christian votes, but that’s as close to them as they’re willing to stand. Their push for Romney is more evidence of this bias, because Romney’s record on cultural issues has been flaky at best.  If Romney fails to close the deal in Michigan, they may look to somebody altogether new, who has a somewhat more “acceptable” view to Christian conservatives.  If so, it’s likely to be another Bush family friend, if not Jeb Bush himself, as they hope to freeze out cultural conservatives.  Their approach is basically in opposition to mainstream conservatism, the goal of which is and ought to be to get the most conservative nominee possible who can win.  The GOP establishment wishes to get the least conservative nominee they can make to pass muster with Christian and cultural conservatives in the GOP, because they wrongly surmise that this is the path to electoral victory in the general election.  They’re wrong.

 

 

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Posted in Conservatism, Culture, Election 2012, GOP Candidates, GOP Establishment, Mitt Romney, News, Politics, Religion, Rick Santorum | 7 Comments »

Call Me a Fuddy-Duddy

Sunday, February 19th, 2012

Do We Need A Double-Dose?

Let it never be said that I hadn’t warned you. I have listened to the discussion of Foster Friess’ remarks about “an aspirin between the knees,” and I am not offended, or even vaguely perturbed, and I don’t understand the fuss.  What Mr. Friess was suggesting in terms apparently no longer politically correct is that abstinence is the best form of contraception there has ever been.  You might not like his delivery, but can you argue with his point?  I realize the some believe I suffer from PCS (that’s: Premature Curmudgeon Syndrome,) but I have always acknowledged that I am an old-fashioned sort of guy.  I believe in abstaining until marriage, and I further believe that applies equally to both sexes.  I’m not one of those who views the nature of men as irretrievably primitive, but instead believe that what makes us human is the ability to choose in opposition to our primitive impulses.  In other words, you can call me a fuddy-duddy, and I’m fine with that description.  Apparently, I’m not alone, and there’s a new generation of fuddy-duddies coming along behind me.

Let me state for the record that I loathe shopping, and in fact, it would be correct to say that I never shop.  When I visit a retail outlet, I already know what I want before I arrive, and I carry it to the check-out where I pay and get the hell out of there.  I’m not a big fan of idle gawking, or perusing products just for the sake of burning time, but the other day I was in a retail outlet that had a bargain bin of DVDs and the bin was next to the stand featuring “New Releases.”  I fumbled around in the bin looking to see if I could find something worthwhile to add to my collection, but as usual, most of these are in the bargain bin for good reason.  As I was contemplating whether I wanted to buy a copy of The Longest Day, three young women were at the New Releases display to my right.  They were chit-chatting and as I weighed the benefits of competing war movie classics, I heard an interesting conversation ensue over a movie of which I’d never heard and the conversation turned briefly nasty.

The movie is titled What’s Your Number?  One of the young women was extolling the virtues of the film, while giving the others an overview of the story line.  She described it as the story of a woman looking for the love of her life she missed out on somehow, and that she was going back re-examining her last twenty relationships. At the very moment that in my mind, I was doing a mental face-palm, one of the other two young women let out a sound: “Eeeewwww. Twenty?  Slut…” She had her back to me, but I could see the faces of her two friends, who looked at her with derision and scorn as they fell silent, before one of these two rolled her eyes and mockingly spat: “Well, we can’t all be twenty-two-year-old virgins,” as the other of the two nodded in a sort of grim affirmation.  What came next was funny to me as I began to walk away, when the third young woman asked in response: “Can’t be? Ever hear of the word No?”

As I walked away with a smile in my brain, walking to the checkout with my new set of grilling utensils and a copy of the Don Knotts Reluctant Hero Pack, I pondered the exchange I had inadvertently witnessed.  This is symptomatic of our cultural battle.  Here was one young woman who apparently sees her virtue as, well, a virtue to be preserved.  Her two companions clearly had other views, and I wondered about the culture that had produced such distinctly different, and completely incompatible outlooks. That’s when it became more clear to me than ever that we are no longer a single, homogeneous culture, but at least two distinct ones with altogether different mores and values.  These two cultural views are very much at war, and clearly, the warfare is continuing into another generation, although the popular culture would never admit it, insisting the battle is won.

It’s fine.  I’m satisfied with being called a fuddy-duddy, or a curmudgeon, or whatever else people of that other culture would like to heap upon me as if it were an insult, but I’m not offended, and not the least bit put off by the characterizations of my views as such.  Folks can call me whatever they like, but I know what I believe, and I was gratified to know that there are still those who despite being of a younger, presumptively more promiscuous generation, adhere to values that speak highly of their respect for themselves, and the virtue that saying “no” represents.  Yes, I’m being judgmental again.

Tough.

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Palin Derangement Syndrome Part II: The Mania Continues

Saturday, February 18th, 2012

"She must be up to Something!"

I must admit that when I read the theories put forward by the PDS crowd, I always get a chuckle, because they’re like one of those bad parody movies. On the one hand, their hatred of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is maniacal, but on the other, it is just another expression of their sadly disjointed thinking.  The latest furor arises from her remarks over the last week about the possibility of a brokered convention, and all their attempts to explain it.  Of course, to a certain degree, Palin supporters  wonder about the same things, but theirs is a view with a hopeful leaning.  That’s not true of everybody who is considering the meaning of her remarks on the subject, and watching them flail is actually a bit entertaining until you remember the hatred that drives it. There’s something disturbing about the conflicted, self-contradictory theories they offer to their unsuspecting audiences, but that doesn’t deter them so much as to whip them into a frenzy. I’ll leave it to my readers to judge which is the most frighteningly insane, but the take-away is this: In leftist lunatic land, “she must be up to something.”

The first theory from the blogging space-balls is that Governor Palin is a modern day Sun Tzu, applying his maxim that “All War is deception.” In this theory the woman who they have recently demeaned as “Caribou Barbie” and other smears aimed at describing her as an airhead is instead an evil genius who has conducted a stealth campaign by which she will swoop in at the supposed brokered convention just in time to steal away with the nomination and make  her way to election day without so much as a whimper from any other would-be candidate within the Republican party.  Of course, I know many Palinistas who wish fervently that this would come to pass, but that the same liberal minds with a four-year history of portraying Palin as less than brilliant now find it suits their purposes to propose that she is instead cunning, and has been sand-bagging all along is a remarkable study in self-contradiction.  Of course, these are the same half-wits who still insist on bizarre conspiracy theories that Trig isn’t really Palin’s biological son, so logical consistency isn’t exactly their strong suit.

Yet another theory proposes that this is Governor Palin’s way of becoming relevant again, because if there was a brokered convention, she’d become a power broker in its outcome even if she wasn’t the ultimate nominee.  Of course, this manically blinded theory presupposes something that is undeniably false:  Sarah Palin is now irrelevant in this theory.  The problem with that goofy idea is that she’s not irrelevant, not now, and not recently, as her speech at CPAC demonstrated, plus her clear impact on the South Carolina primary.  We know this much:  She’s more relevant than either Nikki Haley, or Chris Christie, at least to the voters of South Carolina.  Of course, this may explain the leftists’ view of her as irrelevant, because after all, they think the voters of South Carolina are irrelevant too.  The fact that there is a legion of media that still follows in her footsteps wherever she goes offers substantial repudiation of their thesis, but that’s never enough when it comes to Sarah Palin.  No, somehow she is irrelevant against all evidence to the contrary, and she is in a constant struggle to regain it. Again, their inability to see the plain truth is more evidence of their own dubious relevance rather than telling us anything of merit about Governor Palin’s.

The last is, of course, the pièce de résistance in what can best be described as a litany of kookiness.  In this theory, Governor Palin is a stealth establishment power-broker, working to put Jeb Bush or Mitch Daniels or even Paul Ryan on the throne, and she’s in league with them, and maybe even Karl Rove, and this whole push for a brokered convention is simply her way of serving her masters.  Yes, that’s it.  By this theory, not only is Palin seeking to restore her relevancy, but also a closet sell-out and puppet.  In this theory, there’s no need for her to be an evil genius directing the assault from far-away Wasilla, but instead a servant actor who will play her role as directed.  Frankly, I’m just waiting for them to throw in the Koch brothers to complete the narrative.  Taking it further, the Daily Kos actually compares  Palin and Bush to Mafia types, and in typical shrill indifference to fact, goes on a complete [il]literary bender over it.  This is what the depth of the Palin-Derangement Syndrome on the left has wrought, and it’s a frightening cacophony of the most ludicrous theories and the most convoluted psychic contortions one might ever imagine, and if we weren’t talking about the craziest of the crazies, one might expect that that with a little constructive chemistry, they might find relief, if not a cure from the madness that drives them.

This is the state of Palin Derangement Syndrome today.  It’s no less deranged, and in fact may be seeking new heights, but I’ll be damned if I can guess what their small minds will concoct next as they imagine possible motives for everything Palin has done, will do, never did, and would never do.  The truth is that this bunch doesn’t need an excuse to see Sarah Palin as the devil, the dumb-bell, the diva, and the drag-queen.  They believe she is all of these and more.  Given a little time, they will concoct some evidence to support it, too, as they look for new ways to remain relevant themselves.  One would have thought that after her October 5th announcement, they’d have concluded “our work here is done,” but apparently, they will leave no stone unturned in search of evermore deranged reasons to manufacture new anti-Palin smears. PDS is alive and well in lunatic-lefty-land, and they’re not even slightly embarrassed.

Not once, in all of their bizarre speculating do they ever consider that Governor Palin has simply said what she believes.  Instead, their malevolent small minds must imbue her with some ulterior motive, and it must be altogether crazy, evil, and/or stupid.  For me, that speaks to the questionable state of their sanity, but it also offers a clue as to their own character.

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Posted in Brokered Convention, Culture, Election 2012, Media, News, Politics, Sarah Palin | 16 Comments »

Santorum Becomes Media Punching Bag

Saturday, February 18th, 2012

Is He Really a Neanderthal?

Of the remaining GOP candidates, I am inclined toward supporting Newt Gingrich, so I don’t really want to be told I’m in Sen. Rick Santorum’s corner, except that in this case, I am.  The media has been trying to make the Obama administration’s contraception mandate into something other than an attack on religious liberties, and by the middle of the week, they saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.  They portrayed Rick Santorum unfairly as wanting to impose his personal views on contraception on the rest of the nation, but this is a bold-faced lie.  He actually went out of his way to say that he wouldn’t  impose his values through law, but instead that it is proper to raise the issue as a matter for national discussion.  For this, we should throw him under the bus?

That Santorum has reason to believe contraceptive measures each imply risks for women is really not so controversial as the media pretends, and frankly, I’m a bit tired of the licentious view of human sexuality that says “anything goes,” without respect to the consequences that are frequently ignored until they are realized.  That Santorum is willing to speak to this issue is no crime.  There is no need for me to rattle off the litany of solid science that supports Santorum’s view, but then again, in our current culture, some of this may be news to some of you. You are free to site all the opposing science you want, but the truth is that the following are irrefutable:

  • The best and most effective way to avoid pregnancy is to abstain from sexual intercourse.  There.  I said it.
  • The best and most effective way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases is still to abstain from sex.  There.  I said that too!
  • The best way for a child to avoid a life of poverty is to be born into a two-parent household in which the parents are both married and monogamous.  Yes, I said it.  Don’t like it?  Tough.  It’s true, and remains so irrespective of your personal feelings on the matter.

Part of what Santorum suggests is that our culture promotes a sort of narcissistic mindset that ignores all of these facts, and that various forms of contraception, never mind abortion, give too many people a false sense of security that all too frequently leads to one or more of the negative alternatives to the truisms listed above.  You may not like it.  You may not want to be told that, and it is understandable that you wouldn’t necessarily want Rick Santorum imposing his views on this through law, but since he’s specifically said he has no such intentions, and since his voting record in Congress supports that claim, the only reason to hold this against Rick Santorum is that some would rather not hear it.

Why?  It’s simple, isn’t it?  People hate to be told they are wrong, or that they are making bad choices, particularly when they are in the midst of making them, and especially when they have made the same bad choices repeatedly.  In listening to Karl Rove running his mouth on Friday night’s Hannity show on Fox News, he said that social conservatives shouldn’t “appear to be judgmental.”  What?  I suppose that’s the preferred position when you’ve divorced your wife and had Dana Perino handling the press on the occasion, but part of the problem in this country is that all too frequently, we’re not judgmental enough.  We didn’t arrive at a situation where sixty percent of births are to unwed mothers because we were too judgmental.  We didn’t arrive in a situation in which we now honor with lowered flags those who died at their own hands because we are too harsh in our judgments.  We don’t have an all-encompassing welfare state because we were too harsh in our pronouncements about the idle poor, or the causes of their condition.  Our prisons aren’t packed to overcrowding with repeat-offenders because we punished first-time offenders too harshly.

This country isn’t suffering from an surplus of judgment.  While some may part company from me on this point, I actually find it refreshing that a candidate is willing to speak to the moral decay of our country.  I heard the Tea Party Patriots’ Mark Meckler being interviewed by Mark Levin on Friday, and he said that we have a distinct advantage over our founders in that they created the framework upon which our efforts to restore our country can rely.  While I understand his meaning, I couldn’t help but think that if I had to choose the framework of law embodied in our Constitution, or the moral character of our people circa 1790, I would choose the latter because they were able to construct and abide by the former.  I see little evidence for hope that the inverse postulate is true, and that by some magic, people who have neglected their constitution will suddenly re-adopt it and thereby be improved in all measures.  It was the character of the nation and her people that created the US Constitution, and not the reverse.

While the media goes on to tell us why Rick Santorum is too judgmental, I think it’s time we consider what it is that the “bully pulpit” of the presidency is intended to be, and while it certainly isn’t the proper platform from which to ceaselessly castigate the American people for our various moral failings, it is the proper venue in which to gently chide people to return to the better angels of our nature.  Thus far, what I’ve heard from Rick Santorum on these issues doesn’t resemble the former nearly so much as the latter, and I am quite satisfied that he knows the proper boundaries.  Of course, the Romney crowd in establishment media is helping to drive this theme against Santorum, so it’s really not surprising to see theses criticisms rising in volume, but I think it’s fair to point out that much of this criticism is undue.  In a culture in which casual sex has been normalized, out-of-wedlock-births comprises a clear majority, and the welfare state raises more children than do parents, it may be time that we begin to discuss these issues, not as a matter of legislative priority, but as a matter of judgment.  That Rick Santorum seems willing to do so against the tide speaks well of him even if the media won’t.

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Posted in Conservatism, Culture, Election 2012, Media, News, Politics, Rick Santorum, Welfare State | 16 Comments »

Flags at Half-Staff for Whitney Houston – What’s Wrong With Chris Christie?

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

Ruler of New Jersey

The fact that a man is elected to high office does not entitle him to re-order the high standards we set for those who we honor and memorialize by displaying the flag at half-mast.  It’s not a privilege of office to discard what has always been the long-standing tradition of honoring those who have served and died by deciding that a celebrity is due the same respect as those whose service to a grateful nation we thereby honor.  This tradition isn’t intended for every person upon whom we wish to heap recognition, and this act by New Jersey governor Chris Christie reveals more about him than it does about his state or its people.  Whitney Houston was a fine singer, maybe the best, when she had been young and at the height of her singing power, but she died not in service to her nation, but in a bathtub, apparently the victim of her own addictions.

Please don’t misunderstand me:  I admired Houston’s singing long ago when she started out, and as I’ve written, I’d prefer to remember her that way.   How she finished her life is another matter, and while it is sad, it is not worthy of remembrance by lowering the symbol of state to half-staff.   To place her on the same pedestal that we reserve for our deceased leaders and for our national days of remembrance reveals a scandalous disregard for what the gesture means.  It’s not intended to show support, attract attention, or curry favor as a political act.  It’s a sign of respect and in mourning, it is intended to highlight the length of the staff above the flag where nothing is now present, indicating the loss for which the mourning is intended.  As a matter of official mourning, it is proper to display the flag at half-staff:

  • Following the death of the President or a former President, the flag should be flown at half-staff for 30 days.
  • Following the death of the Vice President, the Chief Justice, a retired Chief Justice of the United States or the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the flag should be flown at half-staff for 10 days.
  • Following the death of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, a Secretary of an executive or military department, a former Vice President, or the Governor of a State, territory or possession, the flag should be flown at half-staff from the day of death until interment.
  • Following the death of a Member of Congress, the flag should be flown at half-staff the day of death and the following day.

The President may order the flag flown at half-staff, and so can the Governor order the flag of his own state lowered. Ordinarily, however, other than the list above, it is only flown at half-staff on the following days of remembrance:

  • Memorial Day
  • Patriots’ Day
  • Pearl Harbor Day

That’s it. Now, as for Governor Christie and his decision to lower the flag to half-staff in memory of Whitney Houston, I am unwilling to listen to his buffoonish, irresponsible answers to criticism because he has not bothered to inform himself of any of the foregoing.  It’s not his place to pick and choose which citizens upon whom to bestow such an honor in such a careless fashion.  It’s not his place to decide that he is the arbiter of what is proper.  We already know what is proper, and Whitney Houston, while a great singer, is not a suitable recipient of this honor.  According to USA Today, Christie said the following:

“I am disturbed by people who believe that because her ultimate demise — and we don’t know what is the cause of her death yet — but because of her history of substance abuse that somehow she’s forfeited the good things that she did in her life,” said the governor during a briefing in northern New Jersey. “I just reject that on a human level.”

This jackass of a liberal disguised as a conservative is simply offering bad excuses.  That he rejects it on a “human level,” whatever that means, is irrelevant, because he is not a dictator, and this is not about his person, or his humanity, or any of those things.  Instead, he is the Governor of New Jersey, and his job in this matter is not to act as the official voice of the state.  The State of New Jersey should remain neutral to Whitney Houston’s death as a matter of official conduct.  Christie’s intransigence to this fact is simply stunning, and the fact that he would inflict his personal preferences on this practice is a shocking display of disregard for his office and this tradition.  Last year, he order the same distinguished honor for Clarence Clemons, the saxophonist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.  What it appears that Christie is doing is to use this as a hat-tip to celebrities of note from his state, or something along those lines, but I think it could be something even more cynical.

USA Today also reports the remarks of an Anna Simpson, who was at the New Hope Baptist Church, where Houston’s funeral will be held:

After Houston became famous she continued to make regular trips to the public school she attended in East Orange and to which her family has directed donations be sent in lieu of flowers.

Simpson said she admires Christie for honoring Houston because “if it were Bruce Springsteen or Jon Bon Jovi, nobody would bat an eye.”

“I don’t agree with a lot of things that he does, but I admire him for that,” she said. “Whoever don’t agree, they will get over it.”

What Anna Simpson is implying is that any who complain are motivated by race.  Leave it to USA Today to dig up such an opinion.  The truth is, Governor Christie shouldn’t be doing this for any celebrity, whatever their race, sex, age, or state of addiction.  That’s not the meaning of this tradition.    One New Jersey woman whose son died recently in Afghanistan is offended over this, and for good reason.  It’s not the role of the state to worship at the altar of pop culture, and I don’t care if it is Bruce Springsteen or Jon Bon Jovi(whoever he is,) so perhaps rather than leading his state like a cheer-leading section for celebrities, perhaps he could impart to his own service in office a bit of the dignity expected of our leaders.  We should expect our leaders to remember with solemn reverence the actual meaning of such official gestures by the state, and one would think Christie would have known better.

Then again, perhaps not.

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Supernova: The Death of a Superstar

Monday, February 13th, 2012

The First Time I Saw Her

In astrophysics, the concept is simple, and the phenomenon we witness among Earthly stars seems to mimic nature.  The largest stars in the cosmos burn bright, furiously so, consuming all their energy to maintain their volume against the gargantuan force of gravity that will inevitably destroy them, born of their vast size.  In short, the bigger the star, the faster it burns, and the quicker its light will be extinguished in a flash, usually in a few million years.  Small stars like our own Sun haven’t the mass to go out quite like this, and they never achieve supernova, so instead they become a stable engine for life to spring into existence and thrive for billions of years before expending the energy contained in their mass.  Our Earthly stars often seem to follow a similar pattern, with a stunning ignition that clears all debris from their vicinity, but the energy required to maintain their towering stature often undermines it in the end.  Too often, as we have seen with so many others, the decline for some of our pop culture stars is as sudden as their ascent.  So it has been with Whitney Houston, dead at age 48, apparently the victim of her incapacity to cope with her own early, brilliant successes.

I was a young solider when Houston erupted onto the scene, and her initial string of hits grew, but somewhere along the way, she was morphed slowly from a “nice girl” into some kind of “diva.”  This happens to a large number of stars, as the marketeers try to take them from some form of clean-cut beginnings into a bad-boy/naughty-girl cast.  I’m not really sure why, except to appeal to more people, or to create some sort of marketing narrative, but it seems always to coincide with their move from blossoming star to mega-star.  After that, it seems always a fight to maintain that pinnacle, and so outrages are common fare, but one wonders if that’s all there really is to it.  While it seems almost programmatic at times, I also note that this is when they start to benefit more wildly from their newly-minted wealth.  In one sense, it may be like the lottery winners’ syndrome, and I expect this rapid move from modest means to previously unimaginable wealth plays a role in the problem.

By the early to middle 1990′s, I had begun to separate from the pop-culture in a significant way, but just as I did, some stories about the growing tribulations of Whitney Houston’s life had surfaced.  I shook my head, as I walked away from the entire pop-culture scene, knowing what must ultimately happen to Whitney Houston.  Strictly speaking, it wasn’t inevitable, but from my increasingly cynical point of view at the time, I did not see how she would escape what I suspected would come.  It took just a little longer than I thought, and apparently, she made a number of attempts at a comeback, but to survive the drugs and the entire range of problems she was by then experiencing takes a life of near-perfection without failures and back-slides along the way.  Few have the ability to come back from all of that, or at least so it seems.

What I believe happens in most of these cases is a sort of disconnect between their new wealth and their understanding not only of how to keep it, but how they acquired it in the first place. Many young stars in that position seem to suffer from a misplaced sense of what brought them success, and they shift from trying to be successful as singers to being successful at maintaining their fame.  It doesn’t help that as soon as they “make it,” they are descended upon by a parade of parasites who all seek to skim a little money and a little fame for themselves.  People who wouldn’t give them the time of day only a short time before suddenly won’t go away, as hucksters and charlatans can’t wait to thin out their accounts.

It is in this circus atmosphere where the trouble usually begins, and as so often is the case, it revolves around booze, drugs, or both.  Once the addictions begin in earnest, they may do a number of stints in rehabilitation when they collide with the law, but in the main, they are on their way down.  All of the hangers-on already begin to sense the end, and rather than abandon ship, they make a conscious decision to “get while the getting’s good,”  and the rate of the loss of wealth accelerates.  They’re bleeding money, and they’re generally losing their ability to produce more, either from a lack of the ability to function, or the fact that they’ve harmed themselves in such a way that their former talent is reduced to a memory.  How bad must it get for a singer who smokes crack or even marijuana?  What does it do to their voice, and their capacity to hold an extended note?  More, since most of these drugs either deaden or modify one’s senses, one’s own perception of one’s performance will likely be skewed.  No longer are they as demanding of themselves as when they first ascended the ladder to success.

This leads to declining fortunes, and declining returns on their inferior efforts.  In turn, they start to lose fans, and when this happens, it delivers a crushing blow to their egos, and thus it is that they fall more deeply into the clutches of their various addictions.  Unable to meet their fans expectations any longer, they collapse, and then without intervention, it’s usually a quick trip to the bottom with the only question being how long they will linger.  They attempt comebacks, but the problem is that they’re accustomed to being treated as a star, only few treat them this way any longer.  Those in their inner-circle are often vultures, as they hide from family and friends who were close before their fame how far they have fallen.

Of course, many people in this instance immediately think of Michael Jackson, because the totality of the picture is not all so dissimilar.  In truth, it’s shockingly the same.  Of course, not all are singers as we can remember many in sports, and all forms of fame who have fallen into similar situations.  Of course, there have been a lot of singers, as I recall Elvis Pressley of a two generations before.  There was another young star who burned bright, fell and attempted comebacks, but ultimately succumbed at least in part to his addictions.  He managed to hold onto more of his wealth, but still, the general pattern applies.   You can list them, the whole long line of them, and when you do, you’ll realize how frequently this pattern repeats.

Last Pictured on Friday

It shouldn’t be inevitable, because people are not stars, in fact, but merely people, and when we elevate them to that status, it seems the go off on a course that frequently imitates the natural objects.  They burn brightly indeed, and their end is never pretty, but one sees the birth of a new star and hopes briefly that this one, perhaps, will not end up the same as the others.  Whitney Houston had been a powerful singer, and a remarkable young woman when  I first knew of her, but the poor woman who died in Los Angeles Saturday evening at the young age of 48 was no longer that woman.  Dejected, or even depressed, and addicted without the reserves of discipline she once had in her youth, she succumbed, and like so many supernovas in nature, she ended leaving only a prematurely cold body from which light would no longer shine onto our world.

I mourn her passing, as a powerful voice still singing with memories from my youth, but also as one more solemn warning to the superstars of tomorrow.  They needn’t mimic the giants of nature, as all life is a choice, and one hopes that somehow, those who loved them before fame and fortune  could set them straight early on, but they so seldom are.  As long as we have superstars, we’re likely always to have supernovae, but unlike in nature, their early passing needn’t have been inevitable, and it’s a shame.

For my part, I choose to remember Whitney Houston as she was when I first became aware of her entrance onto the music scene:

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Posted in Culture, Media, News, video | 2 Comments »

Blaze Writer Calls C4P Writer “Whore”

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Ablaze or Abusive?

I’ve seen some pretty low-brow things come from some of the folks at the Blaze, or associated with it. I’ve also seen some underhanded tactics used by their writers but what has bothered me most is their animosity toward most all things associated with Governor Palin.  As you will know, Governor Palin was asked by the folks at the Daily Beast to write a story about life with a special needs child at roughly the time Rick Santorum’s child Bella, also with special needs, took ill on the eve of the Florida primary.  Governor Palin wrote a touching article that expresses the love of a mother for her son against all the particular struggles he faces as a special needs child, and how much joy he adds to their family.

This didn’t sit well with one Blaze writer, Eddie Scarry, who launched an assault on Palin based upon the faulty premise that she was writing this article as some sort of opportunism on her part, completely ignoring the fact that the article had been requested by the publication in question.  From there, Conservatives4Palin writer Stacy Drake did what she does so often, and so well, which is to correct the record about Governor Palin, and place the idiocy of Mr. Scarry in its proper perspective.

In so doing, Drake ran afoul of the Beck media mafia, and when she voiced her incredulity with the write-up by Scarry, and she dared to tweet about it, Scarry called Drake a “whore” via twitter. The tweet has been deleted subsequently, but Breitbart has preserved it for posterity while also taking Scarry to task for his remarks. That tweet is captured here:

This sort of thing is part of the reason that The Blaze has come under fire before.  The Blaze has some excellent writers, but it also apparently employs some people who are juvenile jack-asses.  Mr. Scarry is one of these, judging by both his article, and his response to the obviously valid criticisms of it.  More, Stacy Drake is a fine writer, and a fine human being, and to respond to her in this way makes it clear that Scarry is merely trying to shift the focus from his own inane article to Ms. Drake and her person, rather than her fact-based criticism of it.

When I see this sort of re-direction and smearing going on, I know I am dealing with child-like minds, and when it happens on multiple occasions, one can identify a trend and realize that there’s something else at work here.  For me, the first was when The Blaze gave coverage to the ridiculous smear-heap by Joe McGinnis, and the second was when GBTV, a related Glenn Beck operation, also ran the ‘comedian’ Brian Sack mocking the Palins based on garbage allegations in that same book.

To me, and for my part, it has begun to look like a trend, and some of you will have noticed that I once had a link to The Blaze on my page, but it’s gone away, simply because I came to realize that Governor Palin is not being treated fairly on that site.  I also think I understand why:  Palin has kept this primary season alive, and that seems to run counter to the clear slant on The Blaze and in any Beck-owned media in favor of Mitt Romney, and staunchly hammering Newt Gingrich. Beck claimed to be for Bachmann, and then Santorum, but he seems also to be a stealthy advocate for Romney more frequently.

In any case, I encourage you to surf on by Conservatives4Palin and ready Stacy’s article.  She shines the light of truth on the ridiculous writing of Eddie Scarry at the Blaze.  Such garbage really doesn’t deserve a platform, never mind one so prominent as The Blaze, but Beck hires who he wants to write the sorts of stories he wants. Suffice  it to say that I stand with Stacy Drake, and as I have watched her defend Sarah Palin over the years against similarly scurrilous attacks, I’ve grown to appreciate her talent, her skills and devotion, and for Eddie Scarry to say this about her is to announce to the world that he’s not worth a damn.  Not only does he write poorly researched articles in pursuit of a political agenda, but he also reacts against criticism by personal attack.  It’s garbage, and nobody should mistake it for anything else.

Posted in Culture, Media, News, Politics, Sarah Palin | 21 Comments »

Enjoy the Cake With Your Circus

Sunday, February 5th, 2012

Got Cake?

Are you enjoying the ball-game?  When is it over?  I ask because it’s being televised on a broadcast newtwork(I think NBC) and I don’t get any of those.  Truth be told, even if I did receive the signal, I wouldn’t be watching.  The reason is simple:  While most of the country falls into this annual coma, or any of the other things with which we pollute our senses, our country is collapsing.  Sure, they will offer you the sweet embrace of some rigged statistics to put your mind at ease, but for most of us, the wallet is telling a different tale.  As you watch the game and pour out your frustrations, or eat and drink them, Iran is planning to ruin your next Super Sunday in advance.  The Euro, and the dollar with it, is on the verge of collapse.  Your President plots against you, but then so does the establishment of “loyal opposition.”  I long for the day when Americans wake up, but apart from a fairly narrow group, most Americans couldn’t care less as they watch somebody or other carrying a football across some line on fake grass.

Yes, I know, it’s a “necessary release” or some other term in rationalization our culture stamps upon this event, but while you may think me a party-crasher, I think it’s entirely appropriate to crash a party that seems out of place. Will you feel fulfilled in two hours or more empty?  Will your life be improved or unchanged?  I’m trying to understand the fixation on an event that barely concerns most of the residents of the two areas from which the teams come, never mind the rest of the country.  What does it get you?  Why do you care?  What does it promise you?  Excitement?  Thrills?  The “agony of defeat?”  In truth, I’m not sure quite when it happened, but at some point in my life all of this lost its allure.  Is it merely the distraction?  If the shoes are too tight, do you put on earrings to pinch and take your mind off the discomfort of your feet?

I must admit “not getting it,” and I suppose that’s my own affair, but I worry about a country that can place such attention on a thing about which most of the viewers won’t care tomorrow, and didn’t care yesterday. I know there are those of you who will suggest that I’m just a stick-in-the-mud, and that I’m “out of  touch” with American culture.  If this is what American culture has become, thank you, but please leave me out of it.

One can wonder, however, what will happen if the Iranians get their way and return us to a virtual stone age with some sort of electromagnetic pulse(EMP.)  What will you do next year to take your mind off the disconnected world in which you will then live?  Swat flies?

Never mind me. Enjoy your game.

 

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Posted in Culture, Media, News, Politics, Sports | 23 Comments »

Fighting Liberal Professors – Time to Go Back to School

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

Should We Fill These Seats?

We all know how useless many of our public schools have become, but have you examined the things that are now delivered as “education” in our publicly-funded universities?  You might believe the worst of had been confined to the elite schools of the Northeast, but in fact, leftists have taken over nearly all the country’s universities and colleges, from the large bustling campuses to the tiny community colleges in middle America.  My adult daughter attends a community college, as she works to finish her degree, but the problem is that even in our small town, the liberals are running the community college.  In a history class this week, she was taught that capitalism is bad, that unions are good, and that socialism is good for workers,  and all of this in the context of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.  Too many paying adults throw their money too casually to the institutions of “higher learning” in which their children are propagandized in the destruction of their own beliefs.

My daughter prides herself on the fact that she confronts these sorts of things.  A few semesters ago, she got herself into some trouble for contesting another history professor’s malevolently biased portrayal of historical events, and worst of all, doing so in the classroom setting.  The professor, unaccustomed to being challenged by students, was dumbfounded and became angry in typical leftist fashion.  It resulted in a bit of an issue that wound up before the Dean and ultimately led to a withdrawal from the class and a refund of tuition for it.  These thuggish professors continue to shove their left-wing views down our kids’ throats, and almost nobody is there who can or will challenge them.  When somebody does challenge them, they bully, cajole, and mock, and hope to swing the class to their support, essentially hoping to shut down any dissent or questioning that may go on.

There is an answer, and in the name of justice, and all that is good in the world, I for one will pursue it, but I want to suggest to you that you consider the same action.  We of more experience and knowledge should enroll in classes, basic history, government, and economic classes we’ve taken before, and sit in those classes with the specific goal of challenging very leftist talking-point of the professor.  It would help to know in advance which are the leftist professors, but even if you throw darts at a class schedule, you’re likely to land on a leftist, because they constitute the vast bulk of professors.  When the summer term begins, I am going to see about enrolling in such a class, and I have the professors all picked out.  It will cut down on my blogging two nights per week, but it will certainly give me more about which to blog.

Somebody must oppose these people.  They’ve been wrecking the political understanding of our children for generations, and if we are to have any hope of stopping the bleeding, we must do it here.  This is where the propaganda is hammered in, and it’s why we’ve lost control of our culture. It’s been a long while since I’ve sat  in a college classroom, and even then, since I went to college as a well-informed adult, I intimidated professors by virtue of the fact that in my early thirties, I was more than willing as a husband, father, businessman, and employee to challenge whatever a college professor might say if I suspected it was biased or false.  Now, nearing fifty years of age, I am not only willing, able, and informed for the chore, but now I know fully how they have been abusing their tenure, and I look at it as sport.

The college professors who infect our universities with their leftist bilge had better worry if this sport catches on.  Rather than mocking conservatives, the free market, and the rest of American culture, for once, we have every chance to turn tables on them.  I hope you’ll find time to do similar in your own communities, and join me in starting upon our long road back.

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Posted in Activism, Culture, Education, History, News, Politics | 22 Comments »

Titanic 2.0: Why the Elite Can Vote for Lefties

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

Too Few Lifeboats

Many of us wonder how it is that people who ought to have known better can possibly bring themselves to vote for the statists who are undermining the country.  Much like when the Titanic went down one-hundred years ago this coming tax-day, the elite are boarding the life-boats ahead of all the rest of us second-class and cargo-hold passengers.  Another of the rich and famous is making his plans for exit to New Zealand, as this time Hollywood director James Cameron is looking to get out of Dodge.  This should clear up the seeming contradiction, and just as I have told you that the elite don’t fear Obamacare as you must, if you love your life, for the same reasons, these same people don’t fear the collapse of the United States.  They’ll simply get themselves to the front of the line for the lifeboats, as America hits the last in a string of icebergs and heads to the bottom.

Don’t worry!  They love you!  They have compassion for you.  It’s just that, well, they don’t want their necks stretched when the rioting begins, so they’re going to get the hell out, which is an option that won’t be open to you.  No, you won’t be able to liquidate your assets and pull out for safer harbor, because after all, in a collapsing economy with a crumbling currency, to whom will you sell your homes and your chattel, and in the world in which you’ll be selling it, what do you suppose it will be worth?

No, these elites can come up with all the excuses under the sun, but their actions speak louder than their words. It’s about to get exceedingly ugly, and as they lock you down in the cargo hold, singing the praises of the captain of our stricken ship of state, we’re stuck.  They’ve made this mess, and now it will be we who will pay for it.  Don’t worry too much, however, because we’re safe until we see them actually flee for their faraway havens.  At that point, we’ll know.  You shouldn’t fail to prepare as best you can.

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Posted in Civil Unrest, Culture, Emergency Preparedness, News, Politics | 3 Comments »

Romney Still Doesn’t “Get It”

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

"Safety Mitt"

In Romney’s response on CNN Wednesday morning, in which he said he wasn’t “concerned about the very poor,” he went on to make another remark we ought to examine.  I realize what he was trying to say, but what his full statement revealed is that he doesn’t understand why the country is on the verge of total collapse.  In stating his lack of concern, he mentioned that “we have a safety net” and that if it’s broken, he’ll “fix it.”  This is the problem with Romney:  We don’t need to “fix” the safety net.  Instead, we need to dismantle it.  What his reflex reveals is what conservatives have known about Romney from the outset:  He is a big government Republican who wants to “patch” the system, but he has no vision for overhaul of a welfare state that dehumanizes, and converts Americans into a permanent underclass, rather than to help them restore their dignity.

Conservatives understand that the welfare state “safety net” cannot be maintained in its current form because it functions too well as a hammock, but not so much as a trampoline. This difference is something Gingrich well understands, and was at the heart of his rebuke of Juan Williams in the Fox News Debate in South Carolina two weeks ago. Taking the approach of Gingrich was a stunningly successful rebuke of the leftist talking points that will predominate in the general election when the Republican nominee squares off against Barack Obama.  Romney doesn’t seem to grasp this, and it’s because he’s part of the Northeast liberal Republican establishment that tends to view the underclass as the object of their own well-intended welfare statism.  They think that people in poverty cannot lift themselves, and they concede the matter by collaborating on the growth of the welfare state with all the other liberals.

It is this fact that should worry you about Mitt’s alleged “electability,” and it further demonstrates why Mitt simply doesn’t get it.  He can’t identify this thinking, because his blue-blooded reflexes are in agreement with lefties’ views of the poor.  He sees them as the inevitable victims of life’s lottery, and not as people who should be launched into productive, self-sustaining lives of prosperity.  In effect, he sees them with the same underlying contempt as liberals actually feel, and expects them to remain a perpetual burden, with no hope of re-training, education, growth, development, or anything that would lead them to an earned prosperity.  If you want to understand the failings of Mitt Romney, it is here you must begin your journey, because what this small slip-up helps you to understand is that at his fundamental root, he suffers all the same moral and philosophical failings of a leftist.  He is one of them.

This is where his tendency toward allegedly benevolent big-government programs is born, and it is here that he aborts conservatism.  In his first reflex, when it counts most, his response is to push people toward a safety net built not of voluntary private actions by citizens in outreach to others among their own number, but to reckless big-spending government programs that convert individual poor people with momentary life issues into a permanent, institutionalized underclass that will never escape, and can never prosper, and must forever be a burden to their fellow men.  It is a hopeless, wilting view of humanity that surrenders to the notion that some people are helpless, from birth, by virtue of their environment, or both.  It assumes that people may be left in such circumstances until doomsday, with no expectations that they will ever lift themselves from that condition.

This giant hole in Mitt Romney’s understanding of conservatism is one of the larger reasons he cannot win in November 2012, because what it admits is a view of the poor much in line with Barack Obama’s, and it pays homage to the same faulty preconceptions about those who languish in our welfare system, where opportunities are seldom recognized, much less pursued.  It explains his inability to connect with conservatives too, because in this view of the poor, Romney prescribes precisely that which will not help those so-afflicted.  He’s admitting that he will be another governmental enabler, like the government programs in which the methadone substitutes for other chemicals, keeping the user strung out in lifelong stupor, but yielding no rehabilitation, either in addiction, or dignity. This is Mitt Romney, and it’s why after more than a half-decade in pursuit of the presidency, he still doesn’t “get it.”

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Posted in Conservatism, Culture, Election 2012, GOP Establishment, Mitt Romney, News, Politics, Welfare State | 4 Comments »

U.S. Spells ‘Us’ – Patriotic Song and Video

Monday, January 30th, 2012

I ran across this via Twitter, and I must say it’s well done, and tasteful. I hope you’ll enjoy it, and while you enjoy it, the artist(ColinAmerica) is apparently selling his song on iTunes, so if you’re interested, definitely take a look. All the proceeds go to Veterans of Foreign Wars(VFW.)

That’s a cause I can heartily support!

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Posted in Art, Culture, News, Veterans, video | 3 Comments »

Bringing the Next Generation Along

Sunday, January 29th, 2012

On the Right Path

I’m a middle-aged man, and so while I’ve not yet seen all the world has to offer, I’ve learned a little.  Back when I was a very young man, raised in a liberal Democrat household(at least by the balloting,) I entered adulthood with some pretty liberal ideas. Service in the Army started me out on my path to philosophical reconstruction, and subsequent marriage and fatherhood helped speed along the process, along with a healthy dose of life’s realities to teach me the hard way.  When I joined the service, I went in thinking that Ronald Reagan was the devil, but by the time I had seen the real world on the border between East and West, and witnessed his speech at Brandenburg Gate, I had changed.  We’ve all heard the saying that “a young conservative has no heart, and an old liberal has no brain,” meant to describe the transition many make as they age from the liberal leanings of youth(if for no other reason than rebellion,) to the wiser thinking of somebody who has learned a few lessons.  In considering this mid-life transformation that so many people go through, one of the things you note is that there are those who never make the transition.  More, there are those who change parties, because life’s realities show the way, but they never fully reconcile the two contradictory positions in their thinking.

As an example, I have one friend who is by all estimates conservative now, but when we talk about the political history of the last two decades, a strange thing happens: The further back along the time-line we go, the more liberal my friend sounds, because she begins to almost slide back into her earlier thinking when she was a rabid liberal.  In her youth, given her politics of the day, Newt Gingrich was the devil. For this reason, she has great difficulty looking at him now, some fifteen years later, and seeing him as anything but the devil her college professors, friends and family had described him as being.  It’s not even that she can say why he was the devil, so much as it is a sense about him, or an image, rather than any concretes.  At one point some months ago, she had made a remark about never being able to support him, and I asked why that was.  She hesitated, and started to make an argument from her politics of old against him, but tapered off as she realized it was no longer what she had once believed.

This presented her with a problem, and she finally said to me: “I may need to re-think Newt, not that I’d necessarily support him, but because my view of him was built…a long time ago.”  To a thirty-five year old, fifteen or twenty years is a long time in their past, indeed.  The important thing to notice, and the thing I tried to point out to her is that when people go through political and philosophical transformations in their twenties and thirties, or any time, really, what they frequently fail to do is to go back and re-evaluate the past in light of their current views.  This makes for a significant break, a sort of philosophical and historical discontinuity that leads to difficulties in one’s judgments.  I find this to be most common among people in their thirties, and I also think this is what begets many of our “independents” and “moderates,” because they never reconciled fully between their younger, liberal views, and their elder conservative realizations.

The fact may be that you probably know some number of people who fit this description, or may in fact be one yourself, although based on comments and emails I receive from readers here, I think most are somewhat more settled into a consistent view of the world.   You may want to keep this in mind when you’re listening to such people, and the way to “help” them through it is to reach back to historical touchstones and ask them what they think about some issue or person or event from the political past. If I’m talking to a thirty-five year old, I know the reference points will be in 1990s, because that would have been when they first started formulating views and making judgments.  Bill Clinton and the Lewinsky scandal, and Newt Gingrich and the Republican takeover of the Congress are two of the touchstone events, together with personalities that shape the thinking of many such people still.  Gently pointing them to reconsider those people and events in light of what they now know often helps make the difference between somebody of the squishy middle and a true conservative.

After all, when we evaluate these persons and political or social events, we do so with the lenses with which we were equipped at the time.  Often, we change lenses along the way, but we seldom go back to re-examine them with our better, well-focused glasses.  This explains in part why a character like Newt Gingrich still has such high negatives in the twenty-five to thirty-five year old group, because their views of Gingrich were formed when they held different views altogether.  If in 1995, you viewed Gingrich as a political demon, you would likely have problems some seventeen years later viewing him as anything else.  The mainstream media knows this too well, which is why they work so hard to demonize conservatives, and champion liberals. It’s not simply a matter of your political choices of today they wish to influence, but those of your distant future as well.

As people who have seen it all and firmed up our thinking, upon reaching middle age, we ought to cast a long glance back at the history we have known, and how it’s viewed by others, if only because sometimes, we need to go back and correct the record.  Nothing is harder for people to do than to point back to a time when they now believe they had been wrong, and this natural resistance to such an admission plays a role in shaping one’s views, but also one’s political choices.  I think it’s important for those of us who have obtained a little more wisdom by virtue of our own lengthy struggles to reach out to our younger brethren and help them realize where they may be stuck.  Of course, that’s always a touchy situation, but there’s nothing wrong with asking questions, and letting people draw their own conclusions.  In fact, that’s a larger part of what this site is all about.

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Posted in Conservatism, Culture, Election 2012, History, Media, News, Newt Gingrich, Politics | 5 Comments »

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