Jay Carney offered more excuses on the question of the Benghazi disaster, and this time, he explained it away as having “happened a long time ago.” This corrupt administration continues to stonewall, and after listening to their Secretary of State ask the question “What difference does it make,” we now see the new talking point emerge that Benghazi happened a long time ago. I suppose on that basis, we should simply forget it.
Watch this remarkable example of White House AssClownery:
An Unenforced Law
Speaking of the people who are fiddling while the nation burns, here’s a group happily stoking the fire. While average Americans struggle to keep their heads above water, inside the DC beltway, the same crowd Sarah Palin observed “yukkin’ it up” at the White House Correspondents Dinner are actively plotting the end of the republic. After all, it’s a new week and therefore a new opportunity to shove despicable legislation down throats of the American people to which most of them stand opposed. As Byron York has pointed out in the pages of the Washington Examiner, your criticisms of the bill are being ignored. They know you’re opposed, but they’re pretending not to hear you. As York also reported, despite the fact that the response has been overwhelmingly negative to a page put up by Marco Rubio(R-FL) to take suggestions for improving the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill, there has been no indication that Rubio or other members of the “Gang-of-Eight” have any intentions of backing down. Yes, if there is anybody in Washington DC who is completely out of touch with American people, the Amnesty AssClowns are at the head of the class.
One friend today quipped that the reason Barack Obama is pushing so hard for an amnesty bill is that he will avail himself of the law, but one needn’t make jokes about the President’s questionable origins to get the real point across: If an amnesty bill passes the Congress, the Democrat Party will own the keys to the kingdom in perpetuity. Nobody is more conscious of that fact than Barack Hussein Obama. It represents the opportunity to demolish conservatives in the mid-terms next year, in which a large number of fast-tracked illegals would move down the proposed “path to citizenship,” offering Democrats an opportunity to pass any bill they please.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the attendees at the White House Correspondents Dinner are indeed out of touch with the mainstream of America. In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombings, Americans have been reminded how a lack of enforcement of existing laws has made us more vulnerable at home, so they’re understandably in no mood for loosening immigration policies. Despite the promises of politicians like Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Marco Rubio and the other members of the “Gang-of-Eight,” the American people understand that making allegedly tougher laws with hundreds of gaping loopholes will not improve our security, in part because it’s a logical farce, but also because more than three decades of promises on the issue have yet to be delivered. After all, apart from a majority of New Yorkers, who really believes Charles “Chuck-U” Schumer(D-NY) has the best interests of the nation in mind, rather than the furtherance of the aims and agenda of the Democrat Party?
This week, the Senate will try to move this legislation, and they will try to do it without amendments if Harry Reid can find support. This bill is the Holy Grail for Democrats, but as I explained on Saturday, the reasons so many Republicans are going along is because they’ve either been sold a bill of goods by the Beltway political class, or because they’re out to negate the influence of conservatives in the electorate. There really can’t be any other reason apart from ignorance, or perhaps money, and if you don’t understand how Republicans could sign on for the extinction of their own party as an electoral force, you need only consider the party shift of 1995, in which Democrats moved over to the Republican Party for their electoral survival, not because their views had changed so much as because they wanted to remain in power. Many Democrats who had barely survived the surge of 1994 merely changed horses. If this amnesty bill goes through, you can expect the same thing in 2014, only this time, it will be Republicans jumping ship to join the Democrats.
It’s going to be a difficult fight, and conservatives should expect that the permanent political class in Washington DC will do everything it is able to ignore any outcry arising among the American people, but after more than a week for facts about the Boston jihadis and their subsistence on welfare as legal immigrants, this may turn out to have been the worst possible time for the DC “ass-clowns” to move this legislation. If your response is ferocious enough, Harry Reid could be forced to shelve the legislation to await a more opportune moment. Some blue-state conservatives have confided that they don’t bother calling their senators any longer, because staffers are frequently rude and obnoxious, but the truth is that the members need to hear from their constituents particularly if they’ve been inclined to support this bill. Besides, it’s time to make good on the promise to turn Barack Obama into a lame-duck President. We need this win – America needs this win – and we shouldn’t let the Amnesty AssClowns deter us from being heard.
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Make sure to go by Marco Rubio’s site and politely offer your suggestions. I offered mine, but they’ve yet to be approved.
Irrelevant?
Many of you are Twitter members, but some of you are not, and those who aren’t may not know or even quite realize what all the fuss is about. On Saturday, all the country’s media elites and most-favored-politicians gathered for another iteration of the White House Correspondents Dinner, headlined by none other than Barack Hussein Obama, as is traditional for these events. While the DC elite gathered to laugh and clink glasses, telling bad jokes, the country is burning, and the sad diminution of the nation continues apace, thanks in large measure to the gang of anointed geniuses assembled for the event. Chris Christie was there, and all the fawning celebrities, and it was simply a wondrous display of how in Washington DC, no matter how awful things may be in the rest of the country, and without respect to the endless deprivations outside of their “boomtown,” the show must go on, and in keeping with the tradition of the Obama White House, the party never ends. Then it happened. She happened. Without warning, across the airwaves and through their Twitter feeds, arrived a message that left the tuxedo-clad drooling-class aghast and in shock:
One would have thought that Sarah Palin had thrown a stink-bomb into the room. In a flurry of tweets from the geniuses assembled, and from the throng of leftists on Twitter who saw an opportunity to hurl f-bombs and b-words at Sarah Palin, the shock and awe of the simple statement seemed to leave the whole world atwitter. Yes, in the minutes and hours that followed, the entirety of the Twitter-verse erupted into mass commentary. There were cat-calls of “hypocrisy” from the left, and nasty “Caribou Barbie” and “Trixie Klondike” remarks from the chattering-class, but there was also a fantastic array of Palin-supporters who took delight in the comments, and many an average soul out here in flyover country who remarked that it was nice that somebody, somewhere “got it.” Here’s a favorite:
(For the record, at this hour, the number of re-tweets is over 3000 and growing. Irrelevant???)
Whatever you may think of the tweet’s context, timing, or substance, what must we conclude from its reach and impact? After all, many of the critics of the remark spent most of their one-hundred-forty characters explaining in some form that Sarah Palin is “irrelevant.” If that were so, and she means nothing whatever to the powers that be, or to the zombies of the left, why is it that each and every time she Tweets the first little thing, they descend upon her like the inexorable march of the undead on a feeding frenzy? In point of fact, if she were nearly so “irrelevant” as they seem to contend, she would receive none of these responses, positive or negative. There wouldn’t be tens of thousands of tweets and re-tweets in support of her message, and there surely wouldn’t be the degree or extent of the negative backlash against her. Simply put, however, I think it’s safe to say that some of the negative responses from the chattering class were an expression of envy, constituting a desperate attempt to find relevancy of their own.
For those who wonder about the real power of Sarah Palin, it is evinced by the uproar that invariably follows her remarks on Twitter. For those confused by all of the uproar, having believed the media meme that Sarah Palin is irrelevant, this must come as a complete surprise. How could anybody so “irrelevant” garner this reaction by what is an otherwise pretty standard bit of Twitter commentary? Was it her use of the term “Assclowns?” Seems fitting, given her target. After all, had one of us tweeted this remark, it would likely fall into the vast chasm of Twitter history never to be seen or read again, but it is the fact that she tweeted it, and that she dared comment on the drooling glitterati at the White House Correspondents Dinner that made it into a Twitter event. Say what you will about Sarah Palin, but don’t believe the spin: “Irrelevant” is not a word that applies, and the ongoing pursuit by the walking dead on Twitter proves it.
Meanwhile, fans, supporters, and average common-sense Americans are laughing in sheer delight, and at this moment, the re-tweeting of her remark continues unabated.
Drawing the Line
I realize that at this very moment, you are being attacked on all fronts. Our voices have earned us a temporary reprieve on gun control, but they’re trying to tax sales on the Internet again, and they’re pushing a ludicrous, maniacally self-destructive immigration bill. I realize we’re all a bit depressed by the unrelenting onslaught of big government, and I would understand if fatigue had set in for many of my friends and fellow conservatives. Ladies and gentlemen, we don’t have time to be depressed. We might survive an Internet sales tax, but conservatism will not survive the immigration reform bill now being pushed by the “Gang of Eight” senators, or probably the version being pushed in the House by none other than Congressman and former Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan(R-WI.) The immigration bill must be stopped if conservatives are to retain any political future.
There’s a very good reason the DC establishment has co-opted these “fresh faces:” They know you won’t listen to the likes of John McCain or Lindsey Graham, but you might be convinced to listen to Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio. They walk these younger guys off a plank, in part because they’re more effective than the old bulls, but also in part to dominate them and keep them in check. If Rubio and Ryan are ultimately damaged by the immigration debate of 2013, who will benefit? Setting the inside politics aside, however, let’s be blunt about the ramifications of the immigration bill: If it is enacted, it will destroy movement conservatism as an electoral force for a generation or longer. For conservatives, this is a fight for survival and it must be fought with all hands on deck.
Naturally, there are others who see danger in this bill. Among them are African-American groups who see the potential for making themselves less vital and more disposable to the Democrat Party. Wouldn’t it be astonishing to find that in the House, we may see the Congressional Black Caucus moving to oppose any immigration bill because it represents an almost complete displacement of their power base in the Democrat Party? It is said that politics makes for strange bedfellows, but in this case, we may see an alliance of the extremely liberal members of the CBC with House conservatives to put the axe to immigration reform. Honestly, if it weren’t for the mortal damage this bill would do to our nation, I’d almost be inclined to let it go through unchallenged just to make the Congressional Black Caucus moot. Apart from the fact that the CBC would likely be an unreliable ally, the fact is that this bill would do immeasurable damage to the country and leave us wide open to more of the same we’ve faced over the last decade, with the added “bonus” of the “Californication” of the rest of the nation inside a decade. States that are now light red would become deep blue, and states that were solidly red would become purple or even blue, in the case of Texas, and Arizona. You can forget winning the White House. Just forget it.
This bill’s rejection is as important to the survival of conservatism as was the presidency of Ronald Reagan. If we don’t find a way to stop this, it will finish conservatism for the next two decades. More, it will dispirit conservatives and we will lose the House in 2014, resulting in two years of a lame-duck President who will never be held to account and who will then have two years of a majority in both houses of Congress, a condition that we will find impossible to reverse. If you have any doubts about the seriousness of the implications of this issue, I’d commend to you this clip from Tuesday’s Mark Levin Show. In this clip, Dr. Levin sounds many of the same warnings, and for many of the same reasons I have brought to you previously on Tuesday. You can download the entire show from Mark Levin Show Audio Rewind. Here is the relevant clip:
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If you understand what Dr. Levin has explained, then you must see the seriousness of the threat posed by this bill. We must begin to attack the provisions of the bill, but also the basic concept that they are trying to shove another de facto amnesty down our throats, once again with promises of improved security for which they have no real intentions to enforce. More, it will weaken our security in the face of continued attacks by radical Islamists, with no end in sight. One of the provisions of the Rubio-Schumer bill actually requires that this amnesty must not be applied to any who arrived in the US illegally after December of 2011. The idea is that this prevents the law from acting like a magnet in the short run to draw more immigrants across the border in a mad rush for amnesty. The problem is that there is absolutely no way to demonstrate when they arrived. That’s right, we’re going to take their word for it, since they are by definition undocumented. How many do you suppose will proclaim that they had arrived after that date? Even if there was the slightest willingness on the part of some to faithfully apply such a provision, what is to prevent Barack Obama from simply waiving it? Nothing. There is nothing to prevent the whole thing from blowing up in our faces.
Paul Ryan discussed with Joel Pollak at Breitbart the questions surrounding the immigration bill, and Ryan claimed dishonestly that this would create new economic growth. As I explained on Tuesday in my rebuttal to Senator Rubio, such an argument is a farce. There is no net economic benefit to the people of the US from immigration, and in fact, a notable economic detriment. As Dr. Levin rightly observed in the clip linked above, if we are looking for unskilled labor on the cheap, we could just as easily begin cutting welfare-state benefits to our own citizens and realize a real economic gain, since we would be removing people from the roles and they would begin to fill all of those jobs “Americans aren’t willing to do.” I imagine that if their option is starvation, booted from clutching bosom of the welfare state, they will damned-well become willing.
This isn’t the time to consider immigration reform that will merely strengthen the Democrats in perpetuity. This isn’t the time to create new and larger holes in our security in exchange for contrived and demonstrably false economic advantage. We are at a point in American history that if we do not rise to fight against this, the loss of our country and all the liberties we have enjoyed is certain. I understand there are those who will see the looming Internet sales tax proposal as the worst threat facing us at present, but I must ask those of that view to reconsider: The Internet Sales Tax can be repealed if it’s enacted, but amnesty is forever, and so is the electoral advantage to be gained by Democrats if it should pass. When even the leftist political site Politico notes the grotesque advantage the immigration bill represents for Democrats, we are right to try to stop this at all costs. The simple fact of the matter is that we can defeat this bill or prepare to yield our shrinking liberties. It’s as simple as that.
Water Carrier?
Breitbart is carrying informative stories on the bogus “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” bill that is being pushed by the “Gang of Eight” senators. I would urge readers to pay close attention to Breitbart.com for more news on the issue. Byron York of the Examiner is also doing fantastic work exposing the gaping holes in this bill. Breitbart’s William Bigelow has revealed another fatal flaw in the supposed reforms offered by the Rubio-Schumer/Gang-of-Eight bill that will leave a giant opening for the administration to do absolutely nothing in enforcing the allegedly strict measures contained in the new law. As reported by the Byron York, via the Examiner.com, the feature of the bill described by Marco Rubio on Mark Levin’s show last week that would create a commission including the four border-state governors is nothing less than a sham. There are no teeth to the provision, and no means by which to guarantee that provided there are recommendations by a commission of four governors, but also six bureaucrats selected by the President, any of these recommendations would see the light of day. York explains:
“It sounded tough, intended to convince skeptical conservatives that reform would be based on stringent border security. But as it turns out, the structure Gang sources described is simply not in the bill.”
York continues:
“In the legislation, the Commission would be formed if the Secretary of Homeland Security “certifies that the Department has not achieved effective control in all high-risk border sectors during any fiscal year beginning from the date that is five years after the enactment of this Act.” The Commission’s “primary responsibility,” according to the bill, “shall be making recommendations to the President, the Secretary, and Congress on policies to achieve and maintain the border security goal” of 100 percent surveillance and 90 percent apprehension. The Commission will have six months to write a report “setting forth specific recommendations for policies for achieving and maintaining the border security goals [specified in the bill].” That report shall contain, according to the bill, “recommendations for the personnel, infrastructure, technology, and other resources required to achieve and maintain [those goals].””
As if this isn’t bad enough, York then delivers what should be the final nail in the coffin of this horrible legislation:
“The bill requires that the head of the Government Accountability Office then review the report to determine whether the Commission’s recommendations are likely to work and what they will cost. And then — the process stops. “The Commission shall terminate 30 days after the date on which the report is submitted,” says the bill.
“There is nothing about the Commission going from “being an advisory panel to a policy-making one.” The strict trigger that Gang sources advertised as being in the bill just isn’t there.
“As far as the “money set aside in escrow” for the Commission and its enforcement plan, the bill specifies that $2 billion “shall be made available” to the Secretary of Homeland Security “to carry out programs, projects, and activities recommended by the Commission.” It is not clear whether there is any directive for the Secretary to actually do anything.”(emphasis added)
What this all means is that when Marco Rubio appeared on Mark Levin’s show on Wednesday of last week to explain the bill, he misled the audience and presumably the host. Levin asked tough questions despite being friendly with the Senator, but it seems that Senator Rubio “dissembled” a bit on some of the details. The Daily Caller quotes Rubio from his appearance on Dr. Levin’s show:
“If, in five years, the plan has not reached 100 percent awareness and 90 percent apprehension, the Department of Homeland Security … will lose control of the issue and it will be turned over to the border governors to finish the job …. which is not a Washington commission, made up of congressmen or bureaucrats. It’s largely led by the border state governors, who have a vested local interest in ensuring that that border is secure … and there’s money set aside in the bill for them to do it.” [Emphasis added]
You can listen to the audio of the segment here, from Mark Levin’s Audio Rewind:
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Unfortunately, as the Daily Caller goes on to detail, this is a bit less than fully honest:
“True, the bill does create a $2B pot of money for the DHS to use to carry out the commission’s recommendations–but there’s nothing that compels the DHS to actually spend it on all of them, or any of them, let alone to actually achieve the “90 percent apprehension” goal.
“Nor, if the goal isn’t reached, does the bill delay the issuance of green cards to the already-legalized former illegals (as Rubio at one point seems to suggest to Levin).
“Oh, and the commission isn’t “made up of the governors” of the border states–they only control four of the 10 commission seats. The other six are “Washington” appointments (see pages 14-15)
“Aside from those things, everything Rubio said about the commission was true.”
Whether the statements of Senator Rubio were intentionally misleading, or whether he is simply being led around by the nose by staff or other senators on the plain language of the bill, what is deeply troubling is that by appearing on the Mark Levin Show, repeating falsehoods(whether or not he knew them to be falsehoods,) Senator Rubio has done much to contribute to the lack of ill will and distrust over this legislation. Whatever other supposed virtues this legislation may have, it’s wrecked by the propaganda being spread in this instance by Senator Rubio.
As this goes on, Rubio’s own spokesman, Alex Conant, is on Twitter comparing immigrants, legal and illegal, to slaves, H/T Twitchy:
@conncarroll We haven’t had a cohort of people living permanently in US without full rights of citizenship since slavery.
If this is the attitude of Rubio’s spokesman, one must wonder about the strategy being employed by Rubio. The claim that immigrant are akin to slaves is a ridiculous notion, and frankly, Rubio should fire Conant. It leaves open the question as to whether Senator Rubio might endorse such notions, and while I doubt that to be the case, it won’t help the Senator’s cause. Likewise, it isn’t helpful when one sees a conservative senator going around arm-in-arm with Charles “Chuck-U” Schumer(D-NY,) one has every reason to believe that Rubio may have relied on the characterization of the bill provided by the likes of Schumer. I wonder if Rubio isn’t being made a patsy, but then again, I’m not sure it matters because there is something disturbing about a purportedly “conservative” senator relying on the explanations of the legislation of anybody. Why isn’t he reading the language?
Schumer has taken a slightly different approach, going on the offense and claiming that some would use the occasion of the Boston Marathon Bombing to stall or obstruct the Immigration Reform legislation. I must say that given the disclosures about the actual provisions of the bill revealed over the last week, I sincerely hope some conservative senators will do precisely that. It makes no sense to pretend that this ridiculous immigration bill will accomplish anything but to make our nation less secure, and the Boston bombing clearly exposes that for the average citizen. The dishonesty being employed by proponents of this legislation is very much like an Obama campaign, and that’s all the more despicable when you think that a rising star in the Republican party may have diminished himself into nothing more than a flash in the pan. That’s a sad prospect, one that could be headed-off if these politicians would simply read the legislation they’re advocating. Senator Rubio owes us an explanation for the incomprehensibly misleading statements made on Levin’s show, but one probably won’t be forthcoming. Draw your own conclusions as to the reason(s).
Breitbart is reporting that a number of secret emails demonstrate that Senator Marco Rubio(R-FL) is conspiring with Grover Norquist and the libertarian, pro-open-borders CATO Institute on messaging for the upcoming Immigration Reform bill. Incredibly, they actually intend to use the Boston Marathon Bombers as an argument for the legislation, rather than as a condemnation of it. In this article, the talking points of Senator Rubio are outlined. From the article, H/T Breitbart:
The message contained three talking points from Sen. Rubio, the first of which argued that the immigration bill would prevent people like the Boston Marathon terrorists from getting into or staying in the country.
“These terrorists came here under the existing system, the one opponents of reform want to leave in place,” Sen. Rubio wrote in his first talking point.
The second Rubio talking point argued that the terrorists “didn’t cross the border” to get into America.
In his third talking point, Rubio argued that authorities only know who the terrorists are because they came here legally to begin with.
Let’s take these one at a time. These terrorists did indeed come here under the existing system, as the talking point asserts, but what the talking point leaves out is that the last four presidents’ administrations have done nothing but undermine the existing laws in a grotesque dereliction of their duties to uphold the law.
Rubio would argue that the terrorists “didn’t cross the border.” What he’s suggesting here is that they were in the country legally, but as a matter of fact, anybody who enters the US is crossing the border, whether they do it legally or illegally. If our immigration laws had been enforced, they might well still have made legal entry, but after the domestic violence conviction, the elder Tamerlan Tsarnaev would have been deported at the very least. Rubio’s twisted attempt to dismiss these facts by dishonestly characterizing the problem with the bombers actually exposes the fatal flaws in his proposed legislation: One would have to believe that this president (or any other) would actually act in earnest execution of that office to deport criminals. We have more than two decades of evidence that this would not happen.
Rubio’s last argument is the most preposterous of all. He implies that by legalizing various people, we would know “who they are” but the fact is that we knew who the two Boston bombers were and it did nothing to prevent their criminal, terroristic acts. He pretends that “knowing who they are” would have improved things, but the salient truth is that because we were not tracking or monitoring them as immigrants, we didn’t know who they were with respect to these bombings and other crimes until they were identified by virtue of footage at the scene of their crimes. It is an embarrassing attempt to deflect criticism of the immigration bill, in part because all he offers is excuses for how the new proposal would improve security despite all the evidence that makes it plain his proposition is fanciful at best.
It’s not uncommon for Charles “Chuck-U” Schumer(D-NY) to lie to the American people, and to attempt to push bad law on the basis of worse arguments, but to see Senator Rubio joining in this tactic is disappointing to say the least. If Senator Rubio had any sense, he’d flee from this as quick as quick can, but it seems as though he’s been captured rather quickly by the Washington DC establishment that rules against the will of the American people.
The plain fact is that the terrorist bombings in Boston should act as a natural brake on this immigration reform bill, but once again, it’s easier to lie to the American people and push ahead with a law they are bound and determined to shove down our throats. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of the betrayals. I’m sick of finding that alleged “Tea Party Senators” are nothing of the kind when it comes to the issues. Where is Senator Rubio’s jobs bill? Where is his budget-cutting proposal? Did he have secret emails with Norquist and CATO over those issues? Hell no. No, instead, he conspires with the likes of Lindsey Graham(anti-Republican, SC) and Chuck-U Schumer(Communist-NY) to give us a “bipartisan bill” that is really an example of one-party rule. It’s the Party of Washington DC, and they generally win, while the American people lose and get stuck with the bill…and the bombings…and the bodies.
Leader?
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s when the national audience that is conservatism gets distracted by stories that seem outrageous while ignoring stories that need their immediate attention, and a goodly dose of their activism. Yes, if it’s true that some unnamed White House official told Bob Woodward that he would regret telling a truth about Barack Obama’s negotiator as the source of the “sequestration” rather than Congress, it is an awful abuse of power and it bodes ill for the future of the freedom of the press. Horrible! Unbelievable! Now that we have this out of our system, remembering that Woodward is a leftist, which means in the long run, he’s apt to recant or later minimize the impact of the story anyway, let me offer that conservatives are paying attention to the wrong damned threat. Woodward will have no problem finding defenders, but you may, and you’re probably going to need them. Why? Unable to push gun control through directly, the Obama administration and the GOP leadership in the House are setting you up to lose your guns by a much more indirect route. As NRO’s Katrina Trinko reports, Eric Cantor is now threatening conservatives with civil war in the GOP caucus.
As Mark Levin explained, under federal law, those convicted of domestic violence lose their right to keep and bear arms. You may be thinking that this doesn’t apply to you, but I would urge you to reconsider. If the Senate version of the Violence Against Women Act(S.47) passes the House, as Eric Cantor is currently twisting Republican arms to do, “unpleasant speech” will be considered a federal crime qualifying as domestic violence. Are you still more concerned about the alleged threat against Bob Woodward? You see, the Senate version of the bill now includes a number of chilling provisions that would turn mundane arguments among couples into the grounds for the loss of one’s second Amendment rights. If you think this is a joke, or that I’m going over-the-top, I would ask you to consider what sort of jurisdiction the Federal government has in domestic violence anyway. Isn’t this an issue for states and local governments? Federalism? Tenth Amendment? Conservatives? Anybody? The only reason to make this sort of law on the federal level is to use it as a vehicle for its legislative side-effects. You are going to be disarmed, and this will be the vehicle.
One might wonder why Republicans like Eric Cantor would go along with such monstrous, probably extra-constitutional legislation, but the answer remains what it has been since Boehner and Cantor took over leadership: They’re not on our side. They would be only too happy to ban weapons, but they know they’ll get clobbered in 2014 if they go that direction, so instead, they’re looking for the back door to registration and eventual confiscation. The Violence Against Women Act is the path to taking everybody’s guns, because it even changes the burden of proof effectively from the accuser to the accused. That’s right, under this act, if you are accused, it will be nearly impossible to avoid being found guilty because almost anything remotely unpleasant can be considered as “abuse” or “violence.” So much for “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”
Perhaps as insidiously, it adds more classes of people to the legislation, including homosexuals, transgendered, and men too, begging the question as to why it is labeled “Violence Against Women Act.” The answer is clear, however, considering this bill constitutes a continuation of the Obama strategy of denouncing Republicans’ “War Against Women.” As RedState’s Daniel Horowitz observes, it’s impossible to see where this is anything but a social engineering package. With the added implications for gun ownership, it becomes an even darker tool. Again, as Horowitz concludes:
“Yes, they should vote against this ridiculous rule, which is politically motivated. There is no reason they should be considering this bill anyway. Why is a GOP-controlled House taking up leftist legislation instead of bills to block grant Medicaid, repeal ethanol mandates, or reform the Fed? Even if they choose to bring up bad legislation, they should do so under an open amendment process.”
Ladies and gentlemen, such legislation is an abomination to our constitution, and while we may be upset about threats against Bob Woodward emanating from this despicable White House, we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that the threat against Woodward is just one more small token of Obama’s lack of esteem. The Violence Against Women Act should be called the Violence Against the Constitution Act, because it offers to set aside the whole notion of “innocent until proven guilty,” as well as expanding the meaning of “violence” to include “unpleasant words.” If you value your liberty, you must act to stop this bill by calling your House members, and calling Eric Cantor’s office, though I’d suggest the former will do more good. Nevertheless, make those calls. It’s such a despicable situation that Mark Levin announced a “Levin Surge,” and to the degree I am able, let me add my outcry to his: We must stop this act, because it will be used to further destroy the constitution while setting you up for easy removal of your Second Amendment rights. The worst threat this day isn’t the one aimed at Bob Woodward, or even by Cantor against conservatives in the House Republican caucus, but instead the one aimed most squarely at you.
Note: Eric Cantor can be contacted here:
Eric Cantor
303 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2815
Fax: (202) 225-0011
Dr. Benjamin Carson
Last week, I brought you a video from the National Prayer Breakfast speech of Dr. Benjamin Carson. His words were heartening in many respects, and many in conservative media leaped at the notion of his political potential as a candidate. I thought at the time that it was a bit of a fad, and I was therefore surprised to see Hannity run a full hour-long show on FoxNews devoted to talking with Dr. Carson. (You can see the full video, here in parts 1 and 2.) I am glad Hannity had him on because my own caution seemed justified by something Dr. Carson said. As I listened to him address the question of health insurance, it struck me as odd that he sees an inherent conflict of interests between an insurance company seeking to make a profit and its customers seeking health coverage. When I hear such things said, I often dismiss them as the vapid utterances of mindless politicians, but since Dr. Carson has been receiving so much press, including on this site, it’s time to address the matter. What Dr. Carson the practitioner of health-care seems to think about insurance is a common misconception, and it offers one more reason why conservatives must be cautious in their choices of leaders.
Dr. Carson said on Hannity’s show that there exists an inherent conflict of interests between health insurance companies and their insured clients. This is not true. The actual conflict begins a good deal sooner in the process, and as I think you will see, exposes a wider misunderstanding of the problem. Ask yourself this: Who are the majority of purchasers of health insurance? If you said “individuals,” you’re wrong by a mile. The truth is that the largest purchasers of health insurance are institutions, including the Federal and states’ governments, and corporations. The problem here is that the people who consume the service are not the people directly paying for it. Any time you break the connection between the end user and the provider of goods and services, you effectively destroy likewise the natural market signaling that provides feedback in both directions.
As an example, imagine you are a smoker looking for health insurance. If you were approaching insurance companies directly, they would undoubtedly quote you a price many times higher than the one they propose to a non-smoker. Obese? Same thing. This would mean that as a matter of natural market forces, you would either amend your behaviors and condition, or you would bear the burden of higher prices. Insurers would naturally consider everything about you in determining what they would charge for a policy, but perhaps more importantly, you would be free to shop for insurance among many providers. This would act as a restraint upon overcharging, and would also cause them to offer special discounts if you lived an exceedingly healthy lifestyle. In short, personal responsibility would have a good deal to do with how much you pay for health insurance, as it should in a free market. At the same time, a particular company’s profitability would hinge on making consumers happy with their coverages.
What many people ignore is that if one had to pay cash for the whole bill each time one became ill, or injured, most of us would go untreated indefinitely, because few of us have the resources to pay cash for extensive or invasive health-care procedures. Dr. Carson talks a good deal about Health Savings Accounts, but such plans are more useful for mundane purposes of a less critical nature than their utility in life-threatening circumstances. While I support Health Savings Accounts, I believe insurance is a necessary hedge against calamities. If we change our focus from health-care insurance for ongoing maintenance, to a paradigm in which what we insure against are catastrophic circumstances, while letting things like HSAs pick up the slack for ordinary health maintenance, in a market environment, one would see the market begin to perform in a natural fashion. Unfortunately, this means that people would need to shop for insurance like they do any other commodity, and seek out the best deals on their ordinary health maintenance and preventative care, and most Americans have become far too complacent about such matters, expecting it all to be automatic.
The truth of the matter is that if Americans want health-care to improve markedly in the United States, while restraining the growth in costs, without resorting to some sort of death-panel or other government-mandated rationing mechanism, there is a mechanism, however imperfect: The free market. Unfortunately, since the advent of Medicaid and Medicare, and even widespread employer-purchased health benefits(prompted by government wage and price controls,) we haven’t had a free market for health-care in the United States, never mind health insurance. The government is now the largest consumer of health-care services in the country as a direct payer, by many times over, and yet there is still an illusion held by many who receive health-care services paid for or otherwise subsidized through government payments that they are in control of their health-care. They’re not.
If Dr. Carson’s criticism of corporate health insurance providers were true, then it must be even more thoroughly the case that no institution more than government would wish to avoid costs by denying care. Do you need evidence? Consider Paul Krugman, longtime leftist economic propagandist and one-note statist, quoted as follows in a piece at Western Journalism:
“We’re going to need more revenue…it will require some sort of middle class taxes as well…And we’re also going to…have to make decisions about health care, not pay for health care that has no demonstrated medical benefits…death panels and sales taxes is how we do this.” -Paul Krugman
What Krugman is saying is entirely true, but only if government becomes the source and payer for health-care, because otherwise, the free market would regulate prices in the same manner it does for virtually everything else. Some will object, insisting that “health-care is different,” just as they have insisted that every other human need is different, from food to housing to education to Internet service to cellular phones. All of these claims are equally wrong, and equally immoral. These claims all begin by demanding that some basic human needs be met, and all of them end with a gun to tax-payers’ heads. All of them.
I admire a number of positions taken by Dr. Carson, and I have no objections whatever about his participation in the public policy debate, but at some point, if he wishes to keep my attention, he will be required to offer more than platitudes and generalities about Health Savings Accounts. He devoted several lines of rhetoric to the attack of ideologues, but I am always cautious when people attack broad sets of philosophically bound principles in vague terms. I am curious to hear more from Dr. Carson, but I hope there will be a good deal more specificity. Talk of presidential runs and other such notions are fanciful and premature at best, and while I’ve heard a number of truncated statements about various topics from Dr. Carson, what I’ve not heard is a guiding philosophy that informs his opinions. Absent that, I have no grounds upon which to base any opinion of his suitability to any office, much less his qualifications to be President of the United States, and I find it unseemly that Hannity and others would talk of Dr. Carson in presidential terms given that we know so little about his positions. It may turn out that Dr. Carson is wonderful in all respects, but we already have a President who sailed into office through the propagation of vague, nice-sounding generalities, and I do not believe we can afford another.
Enough said about that.
Who Me?
On Friday, Karl Rove was further exposed as misleading and disingenuous. In an email response to his appearance on Thursday’s O’Reilly Factor, in which Rove claimed to have been the Director of Reagan’s 1980 Campaign in Texas, Reagan Biographer Craig Shirley responded via Daily Caller, explaining that Rove was no such thing. In point of fact, Karl Rove ran Governor Clements’ effort for Reagan, but only after George W. Bush was defeated in the primary. Do you understand? Rove was a George H.W. Bush supporter, as was Texas Governor Bill Clements, for whom Rove worked at the time. You see, Clements was a strong Bush supporter throughout the primaries, but there’s more to consider in this story. First, watch Rove plead his case on Bill O’Reilly’s softball show:
You might wonder, watching Rove misrepresent his role in the Texas campaign for Ronald Reagan, whether it’s such a big deal that he first supported George H.W. Bush. After all, it’s not that unusual for a candidate’s supporters to move over to the nominee’s campaign in some role after the primaries. That said, there’s something very important I want you to consider, and it’s obvious as the spin flowing from Karl Rove’s lips:
In 1980, Rove chose Bush. Consider his dubious argument about supporting “the most conservative candidate who can win.” It seems the most conservative candidate did win, but it wasn’t Rove’s choice in the primary in 1980. Instead, Ronald Reagan won, and he was far more conservative than Rove’s choice. Of course, that’s not all you need to know. In 1976, Ronald Reagan was fighting with Gerald Ford for the GOP nomination, and Karl Rove chose a horse to ride in that race too. Ronald Reagan? No, ladies and gentlemen, Karl Rove was all aboard for Gerald Ford. Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, and so it was true that once again, Rove apparently picked “the most conservative candidate who could win,” though neither did.
That’s the truth about Karl Rove. In 1978, Karl Rove ran the losing George W. Bush campaign for congress. In 2000, his candidate nearly lost, and did lose the popular vote. In 2004, his candidate barely squeaked by a very weak John Kerry. In 2006, his strategies lost the House and Senate. In 2012, he backed Romney early and often, and Mitt Romney lost. Karl Rove’s record of picking winners is abysmal. He clearly doesn’t know a conservative from a turnip, never mind a winner. You must stop falling for his strategies, and as Mark Levin pointed out on Friday evening, Rove is attacking Steve King(R-IA) incessantly and dishonestly. I repeat my sentiment to those who hope to reclaim leadership in the GOP: If you want any hope of winning, Karl Rove must go.
Shrugging-Off Levin
Karl Rove appeared on Hannity on Tuesday night to deflect criticism that he’s an agent of the establishment at war with the Tea Party. I don’t buy it, and I believe his own professions in this clip should give you a sense of how he views the rank-and-file conservatives in the country. You see, he explains that it’s the goal of his “Conservative Victory Project” to support “the most conservative candidate who can win.” You may well notice that there exists a mile of wiggle-room in that statement, and it’s made from a deeply held sense of arrogance that is simply undeniable. If you watch carefully, at roughly 3:43 into the clip from Hannity’s show, as Sean asks him a question about the reaction to the Time article, you will see what “Tokyo Rove” thinks of Mark Levin, shrugging him off in derisive dismissal(screen-capture at left.) Watch the segment:
Rove attacked the motives of a wide range of people in the Tea Party movement, both in the blogosphere and in activist endeavors, as seeking some financial end. The irony of such a claim is galling. Mr. Rove insists that his new group exists to support “the most conservative candidate who can win.” This prompts a few questions in my mind, and I’d like to see them answered by Mr. Rove or any of his numerous establishment apologists:
You see, when I answer these questions, I come to several conclusions, and none of them support Mr. Rove’s fanciful explanation on Hannity’s show. Karl Rove has shown no understanding of conservatism. His relentless appeal for immigration reform, his attacks on other conservative causes, candidates or efforts, and his involvement in the Bush administration with the passage of very liberal programs suggest to me quite strongly that Karl Rove is not an appropriate or even qualified judge of conservatism in any respect.
Since when is Mr. Rove the final arbiter on who is able to win? He told us throughout the primary season that only Romney could win, and through the general campaign that Romney would win, and that it might be a big win(though he did not quite go down the fantastic rabbit-hole with Dick Morris who predicted a Romney landslide.) Still, if 2012 is the measure of Mr. Rove’s ability to pick winners and losers, I’d say he did pretty poorly, and on his performance in 2012 measured against his own predictions and his own direction of funds, I would suggest that a blind-folded ape flipping coins could have done as well, and probably much better. For somebody who now indicates he supported Steelman in Missouri, it’s funny that he twice refers to her as “Deb,” though her name is Sarah. I can’t say it adds much to his credibility.
Hannity’s apologetic interview with Karl Rove does nothing to convince me that Rove intends anything but that which has already been said. His history of efforts against the grass-roots of the Republican Party are evidence enough for me that what he’s after is not conservatism, and certainly not victory. Translated, “the most conservative candidate who can win” means: “Vote for the people we recommend, or we’re going to destroy your candidate, depriving your candidate of just enough votes to make them lose.” It’s clear to me that Rove and his bunch would just as soon lose as have an actual conservative win office, and I’m not inclined to believe a word Mr. Whiteboard has to say in his own defense. Sure, the article at the beginning of this latest flap appeared in the New York Times, and I’m certain there’s a bias there, but it hardly excuses Rove’s past actions, and doesn’t explain away his current ones either. One of these days, conservatives will begin to catch on that an “R” following somebody’s name doesn’t necessarily imply the first damned thing about their philosophical leanings.
22nd House Speaker
There’s no denying the fact that as we watch the behavior of the Republican insiders, every action and proposal is aimed at shifting the party toward the left. More and more, Republicans have ceded the ground on so-called “social issues,” where questions of right vs. wrong take precedence over matters of right vs. left. On such issues, they would rather not engage, preferring instead to avoid the ugly potential fall-out with moderate and leftist voters if some candidates uses the clumsy or foolish language to describe their views. They support old bulls of the Senate like Dick Lugar(R-IN) over upstarts like Richard Mourdock(R-IN,) but when Lugar could not win the primary, like saboteurs, the establishment wing arrives on the scene to campaign for the Democrat. It’s not accidental that the establishment Republicans seem to agree so frequently with the statist left. After all, they know who butters their bread, and it’s obvious that they’re gaining more than their congressional retirement benefits. They claim leadership over a party largely composed of people they detest as “purists,” and you might wonder about the character of those who openly mock purity. You might ask yourself what kind of Republicans these are, and as Jeffery Lord writes in the American Spectator, history holds the answer: Rove and his ilk are modern-day “Cotton Whigs.”
As Lord reminds us, the “Cotton Whigs” had been that branch of the powerful Massachusetts Whig Party that acted in most respects like today’s Republican establishment. Their opponents, the “Conscience Whigs,” opposed slavery and were uncompromising in that pursuit. In issue after issue, and election after election, the Cotton Whigs did all they could to undermine Conscience Whigs, often siding with the pro-slavery Democrats out of a desire to forestall addressing the slave trade. Like our contemporary Republican establishment, they claimed to sympathize with Conscience Whigs, but underlying that sentiment, they wanted to hold the country together and continue making money indirectly through the continued use of slaves. It was this divide that ultimately led to the building of the Republican party, and the abandonment of the Whigs. Lord’s conclusion is that modern-day Cotton-Whigs are making a similar error, and that Karl Rove and his fellows in that group may soon find themselves kicked by history against the political curb.
It is also fitting that one of the so-called Cotton Whigs had been Robert Winthrop, who served as speaker of the House, whose close ties to the textile industry in Massachusetts made him a less than enthusiastic supporter of abolition. You see, much like modern day Republican establishment types, he couldn’t or wouldn’t take a firm stand against slavery, not because he agreed with it in principle, but because in practice, he profited from it. Fast-forward to John Boehner and the rest of the Republican establishment, and you find the same sort of principles of convenience that cannot be tolerated if they interfere with profits. I warned my readers in 2011 that there were any number of Republican establishment types who were fine with Obama-care, because a.) they wouldn’t be affected personally, and b.) they had figured out a way to profit from it. These are your putative leaders, and they bear an eerily resemblance to the Cotton Whigs of Massachusetts.
I agree with Mr. Lord’s appraisals of the modern-day Cotton Whigs, because much like their political forerunners in pragmatism, establishment Republicans are not interested in conservative approaches to social issues because they threaten to undermine the status quo. Let us be blunt in admitting that the GOP establishment is comprised of people who have figured out how to make substantial fortunes from the growth of big government, and that they have no concern for underlying issues of morality so long as the cash continues to run freely from the treasury into their accounts through various devices of public expenditure. They have sold their souls in exchange for ill-gotten loot, and they are willing to destroy “conscience conservatives” in order to continue on their way. They side with Democrats in every issue in which their money or power comes up against doing what is right.
There are some who will interpret this as an attack against wealthy Republicans, but such is not the case. It is a matter of examining who is enriching themselves not by entrepreneurial endeavors, but instead by graft and rampant cronyism. In most respects, the modern day Cotton Whigs are the frequent beneficiaries of government expenditures. What do they care if tax rates go up if their take from the treasury increases many times over? Just as the Cotton Whigs were happy to profit from slavery, thus turning away from consideration of the moral aspects of the issue, so too are today’s “Cotton Republicans” willing to ignore the bondage into which you and your children are being cast. The Democrats play roughly the same part they played a century-and-one-half ago, happy to take such assistance as Cotton Republicans will offer while dividing and destroying Republican strength in opposition to their pro-bondage agenda.
Jeffrey Lord must be credited here with seeing an accurate analog to our current political troubles, reaching back to the founding of the Republican party to make it plain how rank-and-file conservatives, concerned as much with the long-term social and moral aspects of our country are again being overwhelmed by well-heeled interests who continue to profit from the bondage we must in good conscience oppose. Whether the particular issue is abortion, crony capitalism, immigration, or an outrageous health-care mandate, the “Cotton Republicans” live on the wrong side of every issue, not wanting to stop the gravy train to which they’ve hitched their caboose. What these charlatans offer is that one can gain the whole world, and to devil with one’s soul. There is one other person who deserves a hat-tip in all of this, because it had been Sarah Palin warning the GOP establishment that they might well end up going the way of the Whigs. Who better than the Alaskan crusader against crony capitalism and corruption to have pointed out the similarities between our modern Republican establishment and the Whigs? The time may have arrived in which her unheeded warning will be made fact by the intransigence of the Beltway political class.
There’s no sense pretending that the GOP establishment is on our side. In fact, it’s so bad that we ought to stop considering them as Republicans at all, or abandon the party to them, as had been the ultimate result with their philosophical forbears, the “Cotton Whigs.” One thing about which we must be careful is that some of them don’t manage to infiltrate our movement in order to co-opt it. Given the opportunity, they will quickly set up shop and begin all over again, leaving us right where we started. If you don’t think they’re willing to stoop to that tactic, I’d urge you to think again. Wise conservatives will observe the actions of some of our newer brethren, judging their actions rather than merely listening to their words. If Mr. Lord is right, and I must admit that he has struck a chord with me, a single defeat or a string of them will not banish these Cotton Republicans from our party, whether in six weeks or six years. We will be required to practice resolve and vigilance to keep them at arms length, because I believe that if one can keep them at bay for long enough, they will shed their masks and simply join up with Democrats who are their natural allies. If the GOP establishment wants to find unity with the Democrats, I strenuously suggest we let them. Put another way, as Jeffrey Lord aptly reminds us, from the historical precedent he offers:
Briskly remarked a young Charles Sumner, another Conscience Whig (whose defiant anti-Cotton Whig leadership would eventually make him a Republican U.S. Senator from Massachusetts) of the differences with Cotton Whigs: “Let the lines be drawn. The sooner the better.” Said Sumner: “Thank God! The Constitution of the United States does not recognize men as property,” adding at another point “I am willing to be in a minority in support of our principles.”(emphasis added)
We should heed Lord’s analogy, but we should be willing also embrace Sumner’s advice. In order to clean out the Cotton Republicans from our midst, we may need to be willing to briefly remain a minority party. That will be the immediate cost of ejecting or abandoning the GOP establishment, but it is a cost we can’t afford to avoid for much longer. They are unifying with the Democrats, adopting their arguments and their tactics, and isolating conservatives while claiming the mantle of conservatism. It’s time we give up our fixation on winning at any cost. If we stick to the fundamentals of our principles, rejecting statist arguments outright, victory will come in due course. If we stand on principle, the American people will ultimately notice, and when the Republic begins to collapse, they will remember who refused to yield. If we don’t believe that much at least, for what are we fighting anyway? I am calling on all of my conservative brethren to reject the GOP establishment no matter the short-run cost, so that we may go on about the business of saving the country. We must be a people of no lesser a character than our predecessors, the “Conscience Whigs.”
One of the things I have grown to detest is the absolutely biased media coverage in the wake of tragic events such as the Sandy Hook shooting. The event was awful enough, but must news coverage also be biased with such regularity in favor of the leftists’ agenda? Naturally, the invariable answer is “yes,” and as we were treated to the sad testimony of parents who have just been through heart-rending disaster being exploited by politicians and media who are reliably intent on pushing their agenda, it is clear the media will never give coverage to the whole story. Here is Newtown Connecticut resident Bill Stevens giving testimony regarding the ongoing attack on the right to keep and bear arms in the wake of the tragedy at the school his own daughter attends, a clip I am fairly certain you did not and will not see on your evening news.
As usual, Mr. L is on point. He takes on the same moderate Republican whiner I took on here. It’s ridiculous to think that guys like James Arlandson comprise any more than a tiny fraction of Republican thought, but somehow, they always manage to get the press. Always. Meanwhile, as Mr. L rightly points out, the RINO, Mini-Dem, Neo-Liberal front continues to pretend it’s our place to submit. Endlessly. Check out Mr. L’s rebuttal to James Arlandson below. Be sure to let him know what you think over on his website. Here’s the video:
RINOism Dead!
There should be no mistake about what Mark Levin believes, or even the vast reach of his influence over the debate about government. Many left-wingers and not a few establishment Republicans accuse Dr. Levin of being a yelling mad-man, but that ignores the extent to which he influences the public debate. At an event last year in support of Ted Cruz, in the run-off that made him the Republican candidate, one attendee asked quite simply: How can we stop the construction of Ameritopia? What was stunning wasn’t the fact that the Senate Candidate knew full well what the questioner meant, being a friend with Dr. Levin and a campaign season guest on his show, but that all around the room, heads nodded up and down, because they knew the meaning of the question too. When the Senator answered, he demonstrated an understanding of the implications with respect to the US constitution, but unlike your typical rally of Democrats, the audience understood his points in part because some of them are lifetime students of our civil society, but also because among them were many listeners of Mark Levin’s show.
On Tuesday evening, frustrated with the talking points and narratives of establishment Republicans who wish to blame conservatives for last November’s losses, Levin launched:
Alternative content
Dr. Levin holds a special contempt for so-called RINOs, or as I have recently dubbed them, “Mini-Dems.” They don’t believe in conservatism, or near as one can tell, much of anything. Instead, theirs is the worship of a brand of vague pragmatism that ends in Republican defeats. Of course, Dr. Levin realizes the RINOs aren’t going away, but here I think the larger point is that the underlying strategies and arguments that comprise RINOism are dead, as demonstrated by their repeated failures in election after election.
Levin’s reach into the blogosphere is deep and wide, as almost daily, some blogger somewhere, much as I’m doing now, is posting a vital clip from his show, and this acts as a spark for debate, not merely between left and right, but more importantly in the wake of last November’s election defeats, between and among Republicans and conservatives. This is because Levin spares no feelings, or at least not many, in making the essential and incisive points that establish the conditions of the debate. This may explain more than anything else why Levin’s show has grown while others have remained fairly static. He engages one’s mind, and he demands you follow the logic. He makes no apologies for supporting the Tea Party, or the conservative wing of the party, as Levin came up in politics in the watershed year of 1976, campaigning for Ronald Reagan. Though Reagan lost that election, it set the stage for his nomination and election in 1980, and Levin was there to learn the critical lessons.
Most listeners to Levin’s show comprise a group of studious, committed pupils, attending a a constitutional classroom in which the principles behind the founding of the country and the framing of its constitution are the daily lesson plan. What’s more, while it’s relatively early to draw this conclusion, as conservatives are searching for answers to their current political morass, it seems as though more are turning to Levin for the answers. It’s not as though Levin claims to be an all-knowing font of wisdom on what ought to be conservatives’ course, but his determination to fight and keep moving is enough because what becomes plain to his listeners is his unfailing commitment to see the battle through, whatever form it takes. Part of this may owe to the fact that in the wake of the 2012 election, conservatives are looking for a strong, articulate leader to make their best case for liberty, but I believe it’s a good deal more substantive than that. Levin seems almost instinctively to understand what the left will try next, which may explain why the stories he reads on one day so often become the topic of discussion throughout the blogosphere on the next day.
It’s been true on this site, almost from its inception, and on many occasions, I have brought readers audio from Dr. Levin’s show. My readers will have no idea on how many occasions Dr. Levin had stolen my thunder by covering a stories that I had in draft form as Levin’s show began, only to later discard them because on topics of substance, he generally leaves so little to be explained. That’s fine by me, but it highlights another important point about Levin: He’s plugged-in, and he works tirelessly outside the confines of his show, not merely to prepare for his daily three-hour lesson in liberty, but because in other efforts, he’s at the tip of the spear. The Landmark Legal Foundation is his other instrument of our republic’s defense, taking up cases of constitutional import on behalf of a grateful people. This level of involvement means that unlike so many other talkers, he’s in the trenches with us, and often as the point-man out ahead of us, spotting danger and directing the initial engagements.
Given all this, you’d think more Republican politicians would heed his advice, but where Dr. Levin is fearless, all too often, elected officials won’t follow his lead, out of a fear frequently masquerading as an overabundance of prudence. Levin understands this, and he often asks politicians questions that he then suggests they not answer, instead completing the thought on his own, knowing the precarious state of any official’s office. Levin’s show is probably also the largest network of plugged-in conservative activists in the general right-wing sphere, and his audience is unashamed to lean on politicians and to begin with the phrase: “I heard on Mark Levin’s show that you were going to vote for…” It is for this reason that so many of the DC Republican establishment tunes into his show, and while most won’t admit it, the fact is that they are well aware of Levin, and they feel his electoral influence. Politicians on the receiving end of his support love to hear the phrase “Levin surge” pronounced on their behalf, just as they cringe when they pop up on Levin’s radar for the sake of a well-deserved critique. They know they’re about to find their email and voice-mail full, and they’re going to get it both from Levin on the radio as well as from their constituents.
What may make Levin the most compelling and influential of the talkers and political media figures is that he expresses his contempt for the malfeasance of politicians and parties in the context of legal concepts on which he daily refreshes his audience. Apart from this blog, and rare few like it, you will not often witness a discussion of the principles underlying our supreme law. Law can be a minefield as any layperson will know, but there’s something precious about the ability to breath life into the collection of words, explaining their meaning and the context in which they were formulated in a manner that both educates and engages listeners. Very often, listeners to Dr. Levin’s show evince a reverence for our republic’s charter that is both touching and sincere, but also ironic in light of how easily their alleged “betters” dispense with both its words and spirit inside the beltway.
This kind of reformation movement isn’t religious, but its most ardent supporters would contend that while they may cling to their guns and their bibles, they haven’t turned-loose of their constitution either. Listening Tuesday evening, as Levin mentioned the effect he suspected his show might have on the national dialogue, I wondered aloud in response to my deaf computer screen as to just how many of the people I know are now loyal Levin listeners, and the truth is something staggering. I may live in rural Texas, where we tend to value liberty more than the average, but even friends from the distant large cities, in this state and out, all seem quite familiar with Levin’s show, his daily “lesson plans” frequently filling my morning inbox: “Did you hear what Mark [Levin] said last night?” There’s no denying he’s a bold and entertaining talk radio phenomenon, but more than this, he’s also the commander of constitutional defense headquarters on a national scale. When people seek the low-down on the latest Obama executive usurpation, they tune to one show on the dial and in streams across the Internet, because for better or worse, they know they’ll find the answers.
Dr. Levin can be heard Monday-Friday, 6-9pm Eastern, both on terrestrial radio and streaming from his site, as well as affiliates. If you miss the live show, he also offers free downloads of his podcasts here.
Miniature Look-Alike
In the ruinous ashes of Republican defeat at the hands of Barack Obama, a number of Republicans have popped-up in media to dutifully serve the narrative that the election had been the fault of conservatives. Not only is this preposterous conclusion untrue, but also a proxy for any actual examination of why Republicans lost in 2012. One of the favored approaches of these critics is to suggest that if conservatives wouldn’t be, well… so darned conservative, there’s some chance Republicans could have won. One writer has even fashioned a new term to apply to staunch conservatives, but it’s not hard to notice that by the connotations of his term, he doesn’t mean to win them over. James Arlandson, writing in the American Thinker, has coined a new term for most of you and I, and I don’t believe he intends flattery, although the combative part of me likes the label even if inaccurate. He suggests we “might be Hyper-conservatives if…” and in the form of Jeff Foxworthy, goes on to list a number of conditions he believes characterizes the class. Myself, I’ve devised a different label for folks like Arlandson because I believe it captures the essence and spirit of their fundamental philosophical frailties, to the extent they adhere to any ideology at all. These philosophically smallish Republicans would honestly make better “Mini-Dems.”
Arlandson’s approach to the matter is straightforward, if a bit muddled. He alleges that there are certain aspects of some in the conservative wing of the general Republican universe that must disqualify their opinions because he believes certain positions are beyond the pale. He lists a number of these conditions, and right off the top, he asserts a falsehood without substantiation. What makes it interesting is his use of a term to describe those who vote libertarian. We’ve heard this term before, and it’s another I’m not afraid to wear. Arlandson says those who wish to eliminate too much government too quickly(while bothering to define neither scale) are “too severe.” The only other person I know who in recent memory used that term to describe conservatism was Mitt Romney, describing himself, for Pete’s sake.
He then insists that we might be hyper-conservatives if we cry “third party” every time we don’t get our way. Actually, I haven’t cried “third party” every time, but only when the party completely undercuts its purported principles for the sake of political expediency, an approach Mr. Arlandson would seem to approve. The fact that these betrayals are happening with increasing regularity plays no role in his formulation. His claim is that “grownup conservatives” (ostensibly such as he) “must be willing to suck it up and fight harder for the (imperfect) brand that has the best chance of winning — R.” Let us imagine we take his advice. The imperfect brand with the best chance of winning actually won, with the other imperfect brand following his advice. Hint to Mr. Arlandson: That’s a “D” – Not an “R.”
He argues that we might be hyper-conservatives if… “[We] refuse to work with Dems(even after [we] lose an election.)” Exactly what work would Mr. Arlandson suggest we take up with the Dems? Shall we help them ban semi-automatic firearms? Shall we work with them to more rapidly bankrupt the country(an object Republicans in DC have apparently taken up?) Shall we stand by and watch the Democrats rape, pillage and burn, or does the mere suggestion of the truth of the situation brand me irrevocably as a “hyper-conservative?” I know one he intends, but he gets to that in a separate line-item, and so shall we.
Let’s apply his faulty strategy to any other human endeavor in which one side wins and the other sides loses. In war, should we now work with al-Qaeda, since its apparent that despite more than a decade of conflict, our current administration seems committed to failure? Too late, the President Arlandson suggests we’re no longer to substantially oppose has already done that. Even in sport, is a beaten football team supposed to work with its rival? Should a defeated boxer pummel himself in order to work with his opponent? I’m trying to understand the mentality that permits one to believe any of that is possible without simply joining the other team, but I think Mr. Arlandson is fairly-well ahead of me on that score. This serves as the unmistakable clarion call of an approaching Mini-Dem.
He argues that if we fantasize about shredding or scrapping the school lunch program, we might be hyper-conservatives. I suppose that cinches the matter, and I should confess, because if this is the standard, I am guilty as charged, and this issue must serve as my hyper-conservative bona fides. I would also suggest that this is the sort of issue where the Mini-Dem is likewise exposed. You see, I may be hyper-conservative, but I also know that the ultimate aim of any such program must be the intent to become obsolete by virtue of a growing prosperity, a quantity and quality that will remain out of our reach so long as we continue to fund dependency. While Arlandson likes to wave Ronald Reagan around with zest, here he instead peddles “compassionate conservatism,” a theory that when turned to practice actually demonstrates neither. As he decries those of us who would cut government programs “like drunken lumberjacks,” I’m looking around for some whiskey, and where did that blue ox run off to? It seems Mr. Arlandson has forgotten that Reagan maxim that we should measure compassion not by how many are on government programs, but instead by how many no longer need them.
Naturally, it didn’t take long for him to get around to the discussion of immigration. After all, it’s a good opportunity to work with Democrats who will be the primary beneficiaries of so-called “comprehensive immigration reform.” Those who want illegals deported are apparently some sort of back-woods rednecks right out of the script of The Deliverance, at least where Arlandson is concerned. Says he:
“Honestly, I would self-deport from your America if she were ever made in your image. The DNC is gleeful.”
Honestly, I too would be gleeful at the prospect of your self-deportation, Mr. Arlandson. He offers us sage counsel, as if we’re too stupid to know it, or too lacking in compassion to care, chiding us:
“Immigrants, even illegal ones, are humans. Never forget that.”
If there’s one thing a hyper-conservative hates, it’s to be the object of condescension by a Mini-Dem, and here, Mr. Arlandson goes too far. My wife happens to be an immigrant. I know everything I need to know about the issue, and I am well aware of the hurdles, the obstacles, and the myriad difficulties, but guess what? None of that stopped me or my wife from observing the law. Put another way Mr. Arlandson, stuff it. How’s that for hyper-conservatism?
He apparently supports the made-up holiday Kwanzaa. Why should I care? In his view, admitting the entirely contrived nature of the holiday is to express some part of that quality that Colin Powell would term “a dark vein of intolerance.” I suppose he needs to take this complaint up with Ann Coulter who famously dislikes the holiday, if she’s not too busy tying Chris Christie’s shoes. This is one more glaring reason that our country should never be entrusted to Mini-Dems, any more than it should be left to the mercy of the full-size imbeciles. They’ll accept any absurdity in order to appease others, particularly if those others comprise a significant voting bloc that Republicans will never likely capture.
He says hyper-conservatives get side-tracked too easily by hobbyhorses. Like berating conservatives critical of Kwanzaa? One example he offers is the desire among many conservatives and libertarians to eliminate the Federal Reserve. He dismisses the notion with a thoughtful and retrospective view of the history and function of the Federal Reserve by simply saying:
“Ain’t gonna happen.”
That’s a nifty assertion, but let me offer a different view to Mr. Arlandson, although he may well reject it as the product of hyper-conservatism: Nothing made by men lasts forever, so that whether it happens as a result of a seemingly inevitable monetary collapse birthed by that very institution, or instead because the United States of America ceases to exist as a political subdivision on this Earth, it most certainly will happen at some point whether you like it or not. The question is not “if the Fed will die,” but instead “when,” and perhaps also “how.” I love it when people like Arlandson deify themselves and make such preposterous declarations, as if they had any power whatever to make it come out the way they dictate. It’s another tell-tale sign of a Mini-Dem. Apparently unhappy with their station in life as the weaker ideological sister to either left or right, they tend toward grand pronouncements easily debunked by adolescent logicians. Notice, however, that Arlandson does not answer whether the Federal Reserve ought to exist, or whether it is doing more harm than good, instead merely asserting that it does exist, and on such basis must remain in perpetuity, or perhaps at least until he gets tired of it. Naturally, he takes on those who get caught up by media questions about the age of the Earth, as though it had been a perfectly settled matter, but he is unable to acknowledge that the sun will burn out, the world will end, the United States will dissolve, and the Federal Reserve system will come to an end. Apart from the direct intervention of God, these things will all come to pass, but while He might have some interest in the first two events, I suspect the Almighty isn’t spending much of His infinite time pondering the possibility of life on Earth without the Federal Reserve.
Arlandson goes on a bit more, about “birthers” and rape, and the age of the Earth, along with other pressing issues to conservatism, in each revealing his general competence for the description of Mini-Dem. Like so many Mini-Dems, he wields Ronald Reagan in selective references like a sword, much like full-size Democrats do, but he is careful to remember only that much of “the Gipper” that will buttress his points, but no more. He quite predictably flees to that age-old taunt about “hyper-conservatives” being too “simplistic.” What this really denotes, as ever, is a willingness to forgo discussions of precise right and wrong; simple truth and falsehood; moral white and black. This is the signature cop-out of a Mini-Dem, because what they assert is that things are not so simple as to be reduced to a string of binary choices and decisions, though every computer on the planet proves otherwise. It’s the same old dodge with the same old flavor: Create gray areas to obscure one’s [intended]wrongdoing.
As a matter of clean-up then, I suppose it’s time to explain what I mean by “Mini-Dem,” and therefore permit you to decide for yourselves whether Mr. Arlandson fits the description:
A “Mini-Dem” is Republican who never has a single big idea. Big ideas are too risky for Mini-Dems, because the larger (and smaller) part of what defines them as such is their abiding lack of political courage. They refuse to confront difficult challenges because it’s so much easier to surrender. To conservatism? No, never. To Democrats? Who else? Mini-Dems would rather join with Democrats and assist their victory than bend their will to conservatism, because they possess the imbecilic need of a teenager to be accepted by the crowd, while actual conservatives realize that saying “no” is necessary job of responsible adults. Part of the problem may owe to their conception of political courage, in Mini-Dem terms defined by criticizing conservatism to the endless glee of the left-wing media.
Theirs is the position of interminable surrender. Who wants to go through all that fighting, and after all, “can’t we just get along?” It’s not that they never contemplate a fight, but instead that at the first imagined spilling of political blood, they go running of in search of another excuse for their cowardice. It’s always “we’ll get’em next time,” but when it’s this time, the “getting’em” is always delayed until next time. Next time never comes. Ever. If you want to see Mr. Arlandson’s prescribed approach in action, watch the abandonment of all reason and principle by the House Republicans over the Debt Ceiling. Last time, they said “next time,” but when the next time came, they said again “next time, not this time.” Do you notice the pattern? They talk about conservatism, but when the time demands conservatism in practice, it’s always next time. My own conclusion is that this owes to small hearts, small minds, weak constitutions, and over-indulging parents. (All right, fine, maybe not that last, but it just felt right.) In short, they’re almost exactly like Democrats in practice, their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.
I think that which defines the larger part of the psyche of Mini-Dems is a preternatural fear of being disliked. It’s like the teenage emotional state of panic that occurs when they realize everybody is looking at them as though they had the world’s largest zits on the ends of their noses. It’s that kind of sheer terror that reveals the Mini-Dem, and it’s another reason why we continue to lose elections. Their panic at the embarrassment of a naturally occurring dermal disturbance sends them screaming out of the room to the roaring laughter of their peers, not because they had pimples, but because they had freaked out over them. It makes a more solid conservative wish to grab and shake them. “Get a grip, man: Zits happen.”
The rise of the Mini-Dem was inevitable after moderate Mitt was defeated. The idea is to excuse Mitt’s moderate or liberal positions, as possible reasons for his loss. The problem is that these had been most of the cause, but just as Mitt refused to fight over the Benghazi issue after Candy Crowley flat-out lied to the debate audience, this lack of combativeness typifies the Mini-Dem. We mustn’t have a big and ugly spectacle lest some one notice those zits on our noses, don’t you know? Therefore, what defines the breed is an near-absolute unwillingness to stand on any principle lest they be mistaken for us. What are we? Apparently, we’re hyper-conservatives because we don’t fear losing much of anything save for our souls. Then we’d be Mini-Dems.
All Hate, All the Time
If you’ve ever wondered about the motive driving the anti-Palin left, sufferers of Palin Derangement Syndrome(PDS,) or other venom-laden spittle disguised as reporting, wonder no longer. Willing to twist or omit facts, relying instead upon the absolute gullibility of their audiences, their intention is to propagandize by virtue of one-thousand easily discredited cuts, knowing that their less-than-curious audiences will buy almost anything without question or critical analysis. In most cases, the manner in which a supporter of Sarah Palin will defend against such garbage is to first attack the fraudulent author’s propaganda, presenting the facts that negate the false charges leveled by the propagandist involved. The problem is that these people are so despicable that they don’t care if they’re caught lying by the sane world, as they know their Low Information Audiences won’t ever discover the truth. I’m going to do it somewhat differently, because I want you to experience the shock value of knowing the real story before reading the propaganda. For once, you ought to know what it must be like to be Sarah Palin, or anybody else who is attacked in this manner, because having lived reality, it must be shocking to see facts about oneself twisted into such devious propaganda.
Let’s consider a story that had appeared in the Anchorage Daily News, way back in October of 2008, as Sarah Palin was busy campaigning for the office of Vice President with Presidential candidate John McCain. During the previous summer, before Palin had been chosen as McCain’s running mate, an investigation by authorities had concluded with a recommendation by Lt. Gen. Craig Campbell, the state’s military and veterans affairs commissioner that an all-volunteer militia led by Brig. General Thomas Westall, created to assist the Nation Guard, ought to be disarmed of state-owned and provided weapons over potential liability issues for the state. This investigation had stemmed from a complaint filed by a member, Larry Wood, because he felt the militia commander might be issuing arbitrary orders and dismissals to members, he himself having been dismissed for unclear cause by his own account. In short, this was a situation in which responsible Alaska State officials were heading off any potential liability situation for the state. This sort of action is undertaken by any responsible state official who is concerned with making policies and taking decisions consistent with their official mandates. It had been concluded by investigators that the militia had insufficient policies and procedures, such that its control and direction had come into question. The article in the ADN had been: Defense Commander Resigns After Complaints.
If you’re at all like me, you look at the facts of the story, and conclude that the State of Alaska had been concerned there could be some sort of monkey-business going on with the force, known as the 49th Military Police Brigade since 2004, and the state rightly did not wish to take on liability for a force that had not such proper procedures and policies in place to deal with personnel matters, or much of anything. Nobody was criminally sanctioned, or in any way prosecuted, but the state simply decided that they could not permit this force to be armed in its name any longer. That’s not so unusual, and bluntly, no public official wants a poorly-organized force armed with State authority to carry on much of anything in an official capacity. Who could blame either Lt. General Campbell, or Governor Sarah Palin for taking what can only be categorized as perfectly natural and responsible actions? Well, there is somebody, and predictably, that somebody is a professional propagandist of the organized left.
Now that you’ve read through the originating story, and are at least familiar with the facts of the case, I now wish to present to you the fantastic tale of Palin anti-gun hypocrisy cobbled together by certified PDS sufferer Sarah Jones, of Politicususa. If ever you have wondered what it is like to be Sarah Palin, imagine if you will what one must feel when reading the following nonsensical, inane and distorted headline, knowing what you already do:
The Right Calls Obama a Dictator, but Sarah Palin Disarmed the Alaska Civil Militia
The first thing that should grab you is that the story changed title, becoming more dishonest, thereby venting more rage in Sarah Palin’s direction. Examing the URL of the story tells the tale. Notice that the author changed the label of the disarmed group from “Defense Force” to “Civil Militia” in order to cause readers to wonder if Palin had disarmed ordinary citizens. Titles have been:
Given the nature of the website in question, we might well expect the next mutation of the title to be:
Don’t laugh. I expect that title to appear at any time. Part and parcel of that site’s schtick is to paint all conservatives, but particularly Sarah Palin, with the broadly damning brushes of racism, “extremism,” violence and hypocrisy. These are pathologically broken individuals, based on the content of their stories, but fortunately, only what must be considered a “Low Information Voter” could possibly believe the nonsense authored there.
The second thing one ought to notice is that the story cites the Anchorage Daily News story, but never provides a link to it anywhere in the text of the story, instead requiring readers to accept the premise and the facts as outlined in the Sarah Jones piece. The problem is that the Jones piece constructs an entirely fictitious narrative, positioning Governor Sarah Palin “disarming the militia,” against Sarah Palin the citizen, who is an advocate for gun rights and a longtime gun owner as well as lifetime member of the NRA, a fact they shamelessly mock. The object is to discredit Governor Palin by presenting her as a hypocrite, an accusation that can stand only if you believe the dishonest narrative presented by the Jones hit-piece. Since Jones provides no links to source materials, it’s easy to conclude that she had hoped she could simply create a believable impression and that her audience of dullard leftists would lap it up like kittens at a milk-bowl.
Jones screeched:
“All you need to do in order to represent second amendment “freedom” is pose with guns and put cross hairs on your opponents. You can disarm the militia in your state without DESTROYING THE CONSTITUTION so long as you have an “R” after your name. Also, posing while leaning on the flag in short shorts helps (warning: do not try this as a Democrat or you will be branded a hater of the troops and an enemy of freedom).”
Naturally, the posting features an image of Governor Palin with a gun, and the comments section is full of those self-same dullards posting their continued vile attacks against Sarah Palin, based on their hatred created by previous propaganda precisely of the sort that includes the very dishonest article on which they are commenting. Don’t bother trying to post a response pointing out the dishonesty, or the lack of an actual link to the story, because it will be moderated out of existence, and the parade of dullards will be prevented from ever learning the truth is that Jones has fashioned a whopper disguised as a news story based on contrived narratives and a more than four-year-old routine news story appearing without controversy on the ADN site. By the way, you can fully expect some of the dullards to make their way to this site to castigate me, as well as you. I also expect that at some point, Jones may get wind of this exposure, and she may then edit her story to include the missing link(to the ADN story – no, not her bio,) but I’ve captured the page as was for posterity. Naturally, I’m far from alone in noting the insanity of Politicususa, as the discussion among these Freepers has witnessed.
Neither does it enter the Palin-hating minds that while carrying out what is intended to be a propaganda piece about Sarah Palin’s mythical hypocrisy on guns, it might be a good idea to at least pretend they wouldn’t hate her if she had taken one position or the other according to their fantasies. Sadly, they at once bash her for being an alleged “gun-grabber” while also bashing her for being a “gun nut,” if you follow the gist of their bizarre tale. This reveals the other truth about this twisted crew of leftist lie-volcanoes: There exists no circumstance in which they would not criticize Governor Palin, irrespective of her position on an issue, or the actions she had taken. No, they will hate her equally, every time, without fail. Some decades from now, when Sarah Palin leaves the stage for good as must we all, these whack-jobs or their brain-addled philosophical offspring will be there to dump on her. It’s the way they roll, and it’s merely evidence of another notion I’ve accepted as a truism for quite a long while: Liberalism and sanity are mutually exclusive frames of mind.
Now, returning to my thesis, imagine you’re Governor Palin, more than four years after the fact, running into this absurd rearrangement and invention of alleged “facts” about you. What are we to conclude? I realize Governor Palin is an extraordinary woman, with amazing strength and resilience even in the face of this kind of garbage, but to realize that people actually concoct such junk, from the pits of the irrational hatred they bear in their souls, it must be disconcerting at the least to know that some who hate you do so with such fervor that they cannot permit even a glimpse of the truth about you to be known. This particular Jones article was pointed out to me by a Facebook friend, in whose time-line it had mysteriously appeared, under the innocuous heading: “News about Sarah Palin.” I’m not in the habit of polluting my brain with the sort of garbage that is produced daily by the cadre of leftist PDS-ers, never mind the bile-raising zoo at Politicususa, where decent people go only to see how the animals live, but I think it’s time for the rest of us to once again pick up some slack in opposition to it. What such stories reveal about Sarah Palin is absolutely nothing, save only her incredible endurance, but what it reveals about the drones of the left is a pathological hatred of reality so intense that they feel driven to create their own.
Liberalism is a psychological disorder after all.
Inaugural Reviews
It’s hard to believe that so many Americans can be so gullible. Limbaugh calls them “Low Information Voters,” but you might call them something less flattering. The same electorate that produced two victories for Barack Obama is the same general grouping of people who believe that Sarah Palin said that she could see Russia from her home in Alaska, despite the fact that it had been a parody on Saturday Night Live. This sort of tragic ignorance in which people are so easily manipulated by entertainment media speaks to a country now dominated by people who are largely plugged into movies, television, comedy, and all the other facets of pop-culture, but who will not take the least little opportunity to educate themselves with facts, news, political study, or philosophical contemplation. On Jimmy Kimmel’s show, a show I don’t watch, on a channel I don’t receive, the host sent out a crew to do a man-on-the-street segment to ask people about their appraisals of the inauguration of Barack Obama’s second term, an event that will not happen until Monday. Here is the video, as played on Greta Van Susteren’s show, passed along to me by a Facebook friend:
Listening to the poor, wretched “Low Info Voters” who responded to the question, I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that they could be manipulated so easily by the questioner. Obvious hoaxes, like “throwing bears into the crowd,” or “giant cake” didn’t stop them from acknowledging these events as not only real, but as the highlights of the inaugural festivities that have not transpired. They even concocted notions of what Obama had said in a fictional speech that never occurred, and yet these are the people who think the rest of us should surrender our right to keep and bear arms to their emotional whims? It’s a shocking display of grotesque, popularized ignorance, but it also speaks to something more chilling: The people answering these questions had to at least mentally fill in blanks with knowledge concocted in their own minds. I have heard it said that “liberalism is a mental disorder,” but if ever you needed proof of that thesis, it is in full demonstration here.
One might wonder, looking at recent poll or election results, how many of the participants are fueled by such abject stupidity, but it’s a depressing proposition and I suspect there were at least some who knew they were being scammed even if their rejection of the spoof landed on the cutting-room floor. I must believe that, or accept that the country is irretrievably lost, and I’m simply not willing to draw that conclusion just yet. What videos like this one should accomplish is to provide you with firm evidence that we have a serious problem in our populace, and that the rest of us have a good deal of work yet to do. That any American adult doesn’t know when Inauguration Day is or isn’t suggests a complete failure of our education system, our news media, our polity and our cultural priorities.
One can only guess at how many of these respondents could speak with clear-minded authority on the cases of disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, or hoaxed Notre Dame football player Manti Te’o. While they keep up with the latest developments in such cases, they haven’t a clue about what’s being done to their country, or by whom, and how their self-imposed status as “Low Information Voters” is lending assistance to the very people who are wrecking their futures.
I realize that the vast bulk of the readers of this blog don’t fit into that category, not merely because they may tend to be in rough philosophical alignment with me, but because they’re here at all. The sort of people who make up the respondents to Kimmel’s hoaxing are the sort of people who will never find their way to a site discussing seriously the matters of state and culture that I cover, but they’re also the sort who will be taken by surprise when the world they’ve taken for granted comes crashing down. At best, they skim headlines, filling in the blanks with imaginary remembrances of events, to which they were not witnesses, but to which they will happily add their own fictional appraisals. It’s small wonder we’re losing the country, as we’ve lost the attention of the pop-culture-absorbed audience. Cakes and circuses, indeed!
Now, what do you think of Obama’s second inaugural address, that he hasn’t yet delivered?
Once again, James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas were out there catching lefty hypocrisy on video. This time, they were demonstrating how the same people who can’t wait to publish the location of registered gun owners don’t like any attention coming to their own homes. Some of the people have armed guards outside to protect them given the recent backlash against the new organization, but naturally, none are willing to place a sign saying “Gun-Free” in their yards. Why not? I would think they’d invite the attention, but no, they’re liberals which means they’re free-riders who wish to have the status of their gun ownership in doubt. As you will remember, the Journal News and Star Ledger published pin-maps of registered gun-owners in their respective areas. Now, these same people don’t want their homes labeled as “gun free.”
Imagine that you’re a doctrinaire leftist who believes that people shouldn’t own guns, to the extent that you’re willing to publish a pin-map of all those who do, in order to bring pressure(and perhaps harm) to those gun-owners. To then be shocked and surprised when there is a public outcry over your publication is obnoxious. Now, confronted by O’Keefe’s group posing as anti-gun activists, you see their reactions. These are hypocrites. They don’t wish to advertise their own status as unarmed homes, but would instead like to leave the matter in doubt. Why?
Simply put, they benefit from all those who are armed, and they benefit from the doubt as to whether a given home might have become armed since their publication. They want the benefits of criminals believing they may be armed, but not the responsibilities of being armed. This is the height of hypocrisy. It also demonstrates the pure cowardice of the leftists in media. I would have a good deal more respect for their position if they’d accepted O’Keefe’s signs, proclaiming proudly that theirs are gun-free homes. At least that would be putting their money where their mouths are, but no such character was exhibited in this video. Mostly, at the homes of the Journal News and Star Ledger folk, O’Keefe’s band of spoofers were turned away.
So much for commitment to their espoused ideals.
Hard-Hitting Facts
If you ever wanted to know how thoroughly bankrupt the arguments of the gun-grabbers are, all you need to do is watch this video. Watch the liberal host, Bray Cary, get sucker-punched repeatedly by WVCDL President, Keith Morgan on the State Journal’s Decision Makers. The WVCDL is the West Virginia Citizens’ Defense League. If Alex Jones had been the model for how not to win an argument, then Morgan’s calm and collected demeanor is an excellent example of how to corner the left with their own nonsense, rather than coming off like an unhinged lunatic. What this video reveals is the fear-driven mindset of liberals in media who want to get rid of guns. Cary doesn’t really want to have a rational discussion, for all his posturing to that effect. Listen carefully as a plainly rational man de-fangs this leftist vampire who eventually looks as though Morgan had been wielding holy water, a stake and mallet:
Here is a perfectly reasonable man attempting to have a logical conversation with a leftist who turns out to be simply another ignorant talking head. As the host ultimately admits, he simply doesn’t think private citizens should be armed. More, the moment Mr. Morgan corners him, he becomes almost desperate to go to break and end the segment, particularly once Morgan begins to describe the lie that is the claim that so-called “assault weapons” have never been used in defense against criminals. This is a blatant lie, and it been debunked so frequently that it’s astonishing it keeps being re-told.
Here’s one example, from 2011, in which a 15-year-old in Houston defended his home and his sister from home invaders with an AR-15. The original story and video posted here at KHOU’s website. You can watch the video below:
So much for the faulty assertion that none have ever defended their homes with an AR-15. The truth is that most instances of defense never involve the discharge of a weapon, but merely the display of one. There is no statistic on how many times guns were brandished or displayed causing would
Voice of Reason?
The only thing worse than a has-been is one who won’t acknowledge that status and simply fade away. Former Secretary of State and general Republican malcontent Colin Powell has for two presidential election seasons endorsed Barack Obama over moderate Republicans who ought to have been to his liking. Since Powell desires nothing more than to avoid the charge of hypocrisy because he rose to prominence due in part to misguided policies of affirmative action, and since he is obsessed with maintaining his allegedly “moderate” position, I think it’s time for him to leave the Republican Party. It’s not that I care about the Republican party so much that I desperately wish for him to leave it, as it is the fact that this ideological garbage-receptacle is hauled out by the media as some kind of authority on Republicans and conservatism, as though despite his last two endorsements, he could possibly preserve any credibility with those who fit these approximate descriptions. Colin Powell is a fraud, but the media gives him airtime precisely because it’s his goal to damage conservatism in exchange for positive press. In the venue that is the study of political philosophy, Colin Powell is a circus madhouse of self-contradictory posturing who provides a good deal of haughty noise but evinces no substance.
Consider this video as the latest exhibit in evidence of my thesis:
Seldom will you see aggregated in such a fashion the grotesque spectacle of a mind at war with itself. Contrary to what some might assert, this does not make the former Secretary of State “thoughtful,” but merely muddled and confused like a football player who’s taken one-too-many shots to the head. There is no virtue in his convoluted positions, to the degree they are discernible among the loosely connected philosophical wreckage, but let us imagine that we were to seriously consider the things this man has said, and so examine them in light of the facts.
Let us examine his claim that “there is a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party.” The first “evidence” he goes out of his way to offer as evidence is a statement by Sarah Palin about President Obama’s “shucking and jiving” over Benghazi, suggesting that this was a racially-tinged statement. Apart from the fact that Governor Palin has never exhibited the first inclination to racism, apparently, Colin Powell believes that phrase has been used exclusively to describe the behavioral pattern of blacks held in bondage during slavery, and through the pre-civil rights era. That’s an utter falsehood, but leave it to Powell to be so racially tuned as to mind-meld with the crowd which professes these myths to our youngsters on college campuses around the country. A “moderate Republican” such as he takes the opportunity to attack Sarah Palin for alleged racism in the party? I think it is only through the lens of focused, narrow-minded racism that one could begin to assert such an underlying motive on her behalf due solely to the choice of that phrase. In truth, the term “shuck and jive,” despite its ancient origins, is exactly as racist in contemporary terms as the pronouncement of our President’s middle name, and for precisely the same dishonest reasons.
Three times during the course of this interview, Powell couldn’t wait to push the immigration mantra of the GOP establishment, and it boggles the mind that any person, least of all Colin Powell, doesn’t understand the grave national security risks in the continuance of our current open-borders policy. Here is a man urging Republicans to bend to the pragmatism of changing demographics while he continues to push for acceleration in that change. Does he seriously expect to win an argument with right-thinking people who note wryly that far more people are murdered each year by illegal immigrants than by so-called “assault weapons” since that term of weapons classification became law in 1994? [1]
The problem is that Powell isn’t satisfied with a conservative party, or one even vaguely trending in that direction. If you listen carefully to his litany of top policy priorities, it sounds like the platform of the Democrat National Convention, circa 1992. Health-care, global warming, immigration, education, and the whole sorry statist menu is also his agenda. Back in the mid-nineties, I called Rush Limbaugh’s show one day to offer my opinion, since there was much talk about Colin Powell as a potential GOP candidate in the upcoming 1996 election cycle, and I asked quite bluntly: “What’s the difference between this guy and Bill Clinton?” Rush argued that he didn’t think we could say with certainty, but if that’s so, what must we now conclude? Apart from the fact that it has been clear for most of the last two decades that Colin Powell is a Republican in precisely the same fashion that Ted Kennedy had been a Catholic, sharing precisely the same devotion to bedrock principles, the simple truth is that he loathes the so-called “right-wing,” which is to say: Average, everyday Americans who make the country work.
Another key to Powell’s confused philosophy is his claim that we must “help those less fortunate than us.” Who is the “us” he describes? I think it’s clear that he’s referencing people he perceives as well-off, so that what you have here is another appeal for higher taxes on the so-called “rich.” What Colin Powell obviously doesn’t understand is that many people who fit that description on paper are entrepreneurs who do not have vast wealth. Being that Powell has seldom held a non-political job since at least the 1980s, it’s easy to see how a man captive to the DC cocktail party circuit could conclude that a certain gross income equates to a significant wealth, but I know individual filers with seven-digit gross incomes that wind up living on well under six figures in order to keep the business going, since the vast majority of that revenue is plowed into paying for employees, supply vendors, and capital investments in plant and equipment. In other words, this is much less money than a General or a Secretary of State receives, even retired.
Colin Powell speaks of a disconnect between the Republican Party and its people, and if there was one idea he conveyed with which I can whole-heartedly agree, this would be this notion of a party disconnected from its base, except that his concept of this disconnect is exactly backwards. As expressed through his critique of so-called “birthers,” one is left with the sense that the General is accustomed to top-down organizations dictating the course and the direction without input from the poor saps below. On the matter of the so-called “birthers,” he asked:
“Why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party?”
General/Secretary Powell, has it occurred to you that the senior Republican leaders tried very hard to dismiss and discount the entire “birther movement?” Let us be honest shall we?
The left also calls those concerned with the eligibility of Barack Obama to the presidency “birthers,” but there is nothing inherently wrong, evil, misguided, or otherwise faulty about demanding that our politicians demonstrate their legal eligibility to office. Why is it that Powell thinks this is somehow evidence of the great problems in the GOP? What he ought to consider is that rather than being dismissive of the issue from the top down, had the party actually addressed the issue with diligence from the top, it would have been dispensed with in one way or another several years ago. Instead, by acting to suppress the discussion as he insists they should (albeit apparently with insufficient vigor to suit Powell,) what happened instead was to keep the issue boiling without final resolution.
Powell is the sort of elitist who thinks that a political party is or ought to be like a military chain-of-command, but this neglects the distinctly populist view that has been the tradition of American politics since at least our founding. The parties are conduits for the ideas and the will of their members, or at least that’s what they ought to be, and it’s the job of top party leaders to guide rank-and-file without trying to drive them like a herd, and to accept their input on the direction of the party, understanding that without them, there could be no party. Part of what leads Powell to his mistaken conceptions of party structure is undoubtedly his military service, where one does as one is commanded, or else… I think the bigger measure of his problem may be that he’s lived an insular existence within the Beltway of DC for thirty years, and he has come to believe that what he sees of the party in DC is representative of the party at large. It isn’t, and it hasn’t been, despite the view one might develop on the cocktail party circuit.
Powell is a product of his political upbringing, and the pinnacle of his career’s successes came under two Presidents named Bush, but neither of them had been conservative, despite their strong inclinations to national security. Both were Republicans of the mold to which Powell is inclined, which is to say that they remained in perpetual struggle with much of the base of their party over fiscal and social policies, because the Bush family is not comprised of conservatives with moderate leanings, but instead moderates with a bare few conservative notions. If Powell is right about anything, it is that sense he expresses that he doesn’t belong in the Republican party, not because it has moved rightward as he asserts, but precisely because it hasn’t. It’s because he and his ilk have moved instinctively leftward, away from the mainstream of those who consider themselves to be Republicans, never mind conservative. Powell’s conceptualization of Romney’s 47% remarks may have been the giveaway, because Powell and his moderate friends are intent upon increasing that number given their continuing commitment to growing the welfare state. If Republicans had a party leadership worth a tinker’s dam, they would call Powell aside and tell him to pack his bags, and move with deliberate energy to the other side of the aisle. If this is an example of our alleged “friends” in the DC Republican elite, truly, who needs enemies?
The one thing Powell’s interview makes plain is that he’s out of touch, and mortally so, with those who comprise the vast bulk of Republican voters, whatever their party identification. It’s absurd to believe as Powell does that the whole of the party should rush to seek his favor. Why should they? What would such a surrender to his leanings gain for them? An endorsement of Joe Biden in 2016? Thank you, no. I’d just as soon General/Secretary Powell depart the Republican party, or anything else even vaguely related to the concept of conservatism. He’s not our friend, and offering him authority to speak for the Republican party merely provides him a platform from which to aggrandize himself, but nothing more. I think we who are conservatives, and have been the lifeblood of the Republican party have had quite enough of this sort of paternalistic counseling. Leave already, General Powell! The elephant in this room is wearing a general’s stars, but it might do the retired Secretary of State well to understand that if the Republican party is broken, it is because he and his moderate friends have been running it for a generation or more. Add to this his malignant misunderstanding of conservatism, and it’s well past time Powell is discharged.
1.]According to FBI statistics, in 2010, there were 348 murders with all rifles, which includes so-called “Assault Weapons” but also includes ordinary hunting rifles. At that rate, it would take a decade to equal the number of murders by illegal immigrants in a single year.(click to return)
Jones Launches
As a resident of Central Texas, I’ve been familiar with Alex Jones for more than a decade. When I first heard him, he w as on KLBJ-AM radio in Austin on weekends, as well as a daily Internet broadcast. Jones has always been easily convinced of conspiracies, and while he bumps into a number of real ones, he never seems to have the self-restraint to realize that not everything is a conspiracy, and not everything bad that happens is strictly the result of some conspiratorial actions of some shadowy elites. I knew I could never listen to him again once he proposed that the twin towers were brought down by controlled demolition. All of the video from that day shows the real cause of the collapse, and it wasn’t a thermite plasma device, or a series of smaller explosives, but the structural failure of steel load-bearing members weakened by heat and bearing much greater and more asymmetric burdens then they had ever been designed to bear.
It was from that moment on that I dismissed Alex Jones as an overblown crackpot. The sad part is that he does more damage to his own credibility than his adversaries ever could, and it’s too bad because Jones is right about a number of things on the issue of freedom, and the never-ending growth of government. On Monday night, he appeared on Piers Morgan’s show on CNN and scored some excellent point before melting down and making a complete ass of himself. The freak-show may have been entertaining in some respects, but ladies and gentlemen, he is a loose cannon, and conservatives shouldn’t rely on him to carry the banner of liberty. I get as angry as the next conservative when I see what the left is doing to our country, but most of us realize you can’t win an argument if you appear to be off your nut. Jones never saw that memo.
The first thing Jones should have known was that he was being set up like a carnival side-show freak. If Piers Morgan had wanted a serious debate about guns, there are much more authoritative sources he might have interviewed. John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime would have demolished Morgan without challenging him to a boxing match. As soon as Morgan began pummeling Jones over his beliefs about 9/11, it was clear that his entire aim was to discredit gun-owners by association with the likes of Jones. Of course, by then, Jones was quite angry because he knew he had been set up, but the problem with Jones is that he never knows when to shut up, and his own kooky pet theories know no bounds. One would think that with his conspiratorially-tuned mind, he’d have been looking for a big ambush after his run-in with TSA on his way to this interview.
It’s not to say that Jones doesn’t air real issues of consequence, like the extensive coverage he gave to UN Agenda 21 long before it got any mainstream media coverage. Jones is a constant critic of TSA, and the Department of Homeland Security, but one needn’t be a conspiracy nut to see that those agencies are fatally flawed and reprehensibly managed. Jones seemed determined to point out Morgan’s hypocrisy, and yet with his inability to maintain his composure, a lacking he’s suffered for all the years during which I’ve been acquainted with his work, he comes off sounding like a ranting loon, and if there was a conspiracy this day, Jones was too incensed to see how he is being used as a propaganda score against the very cause he went to CNN to defend.
I think Alex Jones firmly believes he is doing as he should, and that he believes he is advancing the fight for liberty in America, but each time he gets drawn into one of these battles, he looks the part of the fool he had been selected to play, and he never quite seems to recognize that in the mainstream of America, he’s not going to score points with average viewers by screaming at the interviewer. Instead, he looks like a raving maniac to most viewers. Rather than ranting, he should have mentioned the stories in support of his thesis that big multi-national corporations are helping government to disarm Americans, like Bank of Americaca that seems to be hostile to gun manufacturers banking with them, or how the Obama Administration is on record as seeking the assistance of big business in getting rid of guns. Instead, he sat there flipping verbal channels like the ultimate expression of ADD/ADHD, and in so doing, squandered an opportunity to speak to the issue at hand in a cogent, sensible manner.
Jones went to the interview armed with crime statistics, but as he rightly complained, Morgan was prepared to pepper him with factoids on the subject of mass shootings. The problem is that sensing the snare, like a trapped animal, he exploded in rage, and rather than making his best arguments, he came off as a clown or a nut. It’s not to say he didn’t say anything correct or worthwhile, but that the way he said it in combination with all of his extensive conspiracy theories made him look like a raving maniac. It’s too bad, because he made some great points until Morgan got him off-kilter, and from there on, Jones was in purely ballistic trajectory. He spews tenuously-linked tidbits of stories, strung together like a flow of lava from an erupting volcano, and it makes Jones seem unbound and disorganized like a library shelf full of books suddenly deprived of their bindings, but that is also the nature of many of his conspiracy theories.
Here are parts 1 and 2 of the interview, as aired on CNN, H/T
Again, I think that Jones is probably sincere in his efforts, but sincerity is not a substitute for reason. I think he’s right when he asserts that a gun ban will result in greater violence, and I also know he’s got an important story to tell about such things as the seeming correlation between some psychiatric medications and mass shootings, as WND reported on Monday. As you can see by that article, WND was careful not to assert that the linkage is certain, but they relied on a variety of cases that are well documented and sourced, rather than innuendo and supposition.
In stark contrast, Jones frequently relies on a trail of bread-crumbs that he spots on a bakery floor, making more of them than might be reasonable. Again, it’s not to say that Jones and his website don’t present important information, as they were among the first to run the story on the unbelievable amount of small-arms ammunition being purchased by the Federal Government, numbering nearly two billion rounds, for the Department of Homeland Security and other civilian agencies. In Jones-speak, that’s enough to kill every man, woman and child in America nearly seven times over. As I said, it’s not that he covers all nonsense, or that all of them are made-up, fanciful conspiracies about globalists, but it is to say that it’s hard to pick your way through it all to separate the wheat from the chaff, and all too often, there’s a good deal more chaff than hard news.
I rather like Alex Jones, in the same way I liked the entertainment value of other loudmouths in media from time to time, not as a steady diet, but as a diversion. I know that with Alex Jones, what you see is what you get, and most of the time, it’s not smoke indicating fire but steam warning that the pot is boiling. Watch and listen to Jones at your own risk. At times, he says some very sensible things, things I have said myself, for instance indicating today in his interview that no entity has committed more murder than statist governments over the last century or so. It’s undeniably true, and it’s likewise true that in each of the countries in which that occurred, the people had been more or less disarmed without significant struggle. You see, Jones will say that with the passion it deserves, but when he then follows-up with one of his more outlandish theories, it wastes it all. One might be tempted to take him seriously if he didn’t follow up every good point with two bad ones, an absurd one, and a challenge to a boxing match.
The most disconcerting thing about Jones is that he doesn’t understand the power of propaganda when he is made into its instrument for the other side. CNN will make the most of Monday’s freak-show, and haul it out every time something bad happens and they want to discredit patriots, Tea Party folk, libertarians, Republicans, and conservatives. They will hold Jones forth as exemplar of the nuttiness of the so-called “right,” but naturally, he’s not representative of any of those groups. He’s one man, with a very loud mouth, and a microphone, and he appeals to some people, particularly young men, under thirty, because he’s angry and he’s loud and he’s obnoxious, but he is not the voice of reason. Most of his audience outgrows him like a pair of high-water pants, wanting more depth and substance than the yelling man from Texas can provide. If only he would stick to what he could prove, ditch the bizarre theories, and tone down the yelling a bit, he might just find himself with a larger audience, but after nearly twenty years of his yelling, conspiratorial rants, there’s not much chance of that.
No Ma’am!
Joshua Boston is the former Marine who published a letter on December 27th, informing Senator Dianne Feinstein that he would not obey any law that demanded he register or surrender his firearms and his right to bear them. Corporal Boston’s letter was a response to all the talk about gun bans, and particularly Feinstein’s proposed legislation. CNN interviewed him, and he figuratively stuck to his guns, telling the CNN interviewer that an unconstitutional law is no law. The interviewer naturally seemed argumentative, but that’s to be expected when a Marine talks to the press. Watch the interview here, courtesy of Mediaite:
Feinstein’s office responded, saying she respected the Corporal’s service, but like most leftists, I believe the Senator from California is lying through her teeth. If she had any regard or respect for Corporal Boston or any of the millions of other veterans who have worn the country’s uniform, fought it battles around the globe, and kept the nation secure against all threats, she wouldn’t be considering this sort of legislation. Among other things, in his interview on CNN, Boston said:
“Whatever happens happens. I have a right granted to me by the Second Amendment in our bill of rights and it says ‘shall not be infringed.”
In his original letter, Boston in part made his case this way:
“I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.”
What I find interesting in this interview is the demeanor of the CNN interviewer, who seems to hold his remarks in contemptuous, laughing disdain.
“The law is the law, right?”
As the 8-year veteran observes, an unconstitutional law is no law.
This is another example of what I explained in my piece on Sunday about Confronting Ignorance About Guns. These people in the newsrooms are frequently factually ignorant of almost everything relevant to the issues they cover, and it is perfectly understandable why conservatives and conservatism never seem to get even-handed coverage in media.
To his credit, Cpl. Boston acquitted himself well in the interview, and he did the Marine Corps proud.
Semper Fidelis!
Let it go…
It’s time for conservatives to realize that the Republican party doesn’t want us, surely won’t serve our interests, and will not fight to restore our constitutional, representative republic. The Republican Party is a walking corpse, a zombie that feels nothing, knows nothing, except to feed like their cohorts in the Democrat Party. One person I chatted with on Twitter made the point that “at least we didn’t get Pelosi as Speaker,” but I wonder if that’s not a hollow victory. In real terms, what would have been the difference? I have had some difficulty in distinguishing between the two parties of late, and I’m not sure we’d be any worse off with a devil in the open uniform of Hell than a demon in Republican guise. After all, you wouldn’t be tricked by Pelosi, but by Boehner, you might well be. I have thought for some months that the Republican Party had become a useless hulk, from its insipid primary process, to its disgusting anti-conservative convention, and on through an election wherein conservative principles were often implied, but never stated, and certainly never adopted. No, I won’t do it any longer. As Alan Keyes details in other words, the GOP has nothing to offer but slavery to a different master. If this country is to be saved, we will need to do it without them, around them, and over them, but we can no longer rely upon them.
In that vein, I am looking for a few good conservatives. Perhaps more than a few. It’s time to discover if we can begin to put together a party that will displace the Republicans as the Republicans displaced the Whigs. It’s been 150 years since that happened, and I think it’s time to start over again. I certainly can’t do it alone, but if you’re interested, let me know, and we’ll get started. We have nothing more to lose but the rapidly disappearing shreds of our liberties, and left to Boehner and his Crybaby Caucus, we won’t retain that for long. Today in making his re-election speech as Speaker, he said that members should focus not on the demands of their constituents, but instead the demands of the times. I want that to sink in, and I want you to hear the ugly meaning implicit in that declaration. He’s not interested in what you think, what you believe, or what some scrap of decaying parchment may say. No, he is going to be a “man for the times,” and he expects his members to do so also. In short, the only rule Boehner will abide is expedience.
The irony is that our crisis is as timeless as human nature. It’s born of all the same vices, but rather than oppose them, he and his party have become the exemplars and enablers of them. It’s time for us to stop talking about it and begin to get on with it. If the longest journey is birthed in a single step, we must commence or never depart. If you’re satisfied to watch it all cave in around you, with your liberties dying by the truckload, join Boehner and the Crybaby Caucus. As Ambassador Keyes writes in his excellent piece:
“The GOP has become the political vehicle in which this power-mad elitist clique gathers the conservatives who are willing to be used by the elitist faction to legitimize the political sham behind which they mean to sell out and shutter liberty’s house once and for all. Then, like disposable cameras, the duped conservatives will be thrown away, along with the liberty they profess to cherish, yet fear truly to serve. But for this faithless fear, they would get out of the GOP now. It’s late, but not too late.”
Shall we begin, or shall we whine about it? Shall we recognize the truth of Keyes’ reproach? It is not yet too late, but it is very late. Short of getting out now, to return to our principles outside the bonds of that broken party, conservatives will perish for lack of the courage to walk away. It really is about the choice we face between cowardice and courage. If conservatives permit themselves to linger in confused, half-evasive hopefulness that the GOP will somehow regain its way, we are already lost. They will not, and we cannot force them to it by any means. No, it’s time to wave goodbye to the Republicans as they careen toward the ash-heap of history, our only role in their midst remaining to deliver to them the final shove.
First there was Kathy Griffin’s disgusting display on CNN with Anderson Cooper. Now there’s this pathetic display by William Kristol making a fool of himself, on Foxnews courtesy of Breitbart:
