It’s been a busy month.

I just finished David Horowitz’s autobiography.

Waah.

You’d think that after 8 years of Bush-bashing, President Obama would recognize the need to take as good as he gives. But no; instead, he just comes off sounding petty and immature.

Esoteric Things My Father Taught Me

OK, just one esoteric thing my father taught me:

When you’re looking for something you dropped on the floor, get down and look across the floor rather than just standing there looking down at the floor.

Books

When I was a young man, my favorite authors were Stephen King, Robert Heinlein, and Ray Bradbury; while I’ve always liked history, I read mostly science fiction in those days.

Now, as a middle-aged man, I read mostly non-fiction, especially history; my favorite author currently is David Horowitz—I’ve just started reading his autobiography, Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey.

Lemonade

A long time ago on a continent far, far away I had learned that the German word for a lemon-lime soft drink was “limonade”.

Many years later, when I had the occasion to go to England, I asked the waitress for “something like a 7-Up”; she said she could give me a lemonade and put some lime cordial in it. It turned out to be a green-colored lemon-lime soft drink; the next day I just asked for a lemonade. I don’t know why it took me so long to make the connection; I don’t know why the waitress didn’t just bring me a lemonade in the first place.

No Mosque at Ground Zero

Anyone wondering why there should be no mosque at Ground Zero has only to learn two things:

1. That Muslims build mosques at conquest sites.
2. That the date of 9/11 was not picked by accident.

Abortion Profiteers

This is just sad.

As if it weren’t bad enough that China’s one-child policy results in so many abortions, or that AGW is a fraud, China is now using the fraud of AGW to justify killing more unborn babies.

Not only that, but China will now be profiting from the abortion of unborn babies.

What’s next? Carbon-offset credits for taking your grandmother to the junkyard?

Happy Birthday, America

Ridiculous.

Especially in a crisis like the Gulf is experiencing now, the regulation should be that you just have to take out more oil than you put in. If you don’t get it all in the first pass, make another pass; if the ship you can deploy quickly releases more back into the ocean than a ship you can’t deploy for months, then deploy the first ship quickly and deploy the other ship later.

Instead, nobody does anything because it’s virtually impossible to meet such a ridiculous standard.

Miscalculation

The Democrats are like Wile E. Coyote in the old Road Runner cartoon where Wile, after accidentally shrinking himself, finally catches the Road Runner and then asks what he’s supposed to do with such a (relatively) large bird.

The Democrats engineered anti-war sentiment to turn the country against the Republican party, starting in 2003; while George W. Bush still won the 2004 presidential election, the Democrat party was the winner both in 2006 and in 2008.

Now that they’ve won, though, they have no idea what they’re supposed to do with the two wars they inherited—and, for some reason, the anti-war sentiment has all but dried up.

Do you think that maybe it was all a political calculation?

Fine. They’re your wars now, Democrats.

Bailout

An article today on state teachers in Ohio retiring and then getting re-hired so that they can collect both a salary and retirement pay had this sub-headline in one of the local papers: “State Teacher Retirement System Seeks Taxpayer Bailout After Investment Losses”.

Gee, it’d sure be nice if my retirement plan—either my 401(k) or my employer-provided retirement plan—could get a taxpayer-funded bailout. After all the taxpayer-funded bailouts, who’s going to bailout the taxpayers?

 Are we seriously supposed to just count on the taxpayer-funded Social Security system for our retirement? Social Security is already paying out more than it’s taking in.

We are in deep doo-doo.

Irony

Does anyone else see the irony in the juxtaposition of this post on Obama’s pledge to mobilize the military to combat the oil’s assault on our shores with the post earlier this week on the forfeiture of a swath of Arizona to Mexican smugglers? Talk about an assault on our shores….

Rush to Judgment

This government will not content itself with administering and governing the masses politically, as all governments do today. It will also administer the masses economically, concentrating in the hands of the State the production and division of wealth, the cultivation of land. . . . All this will demand . . . the reign of scientific intelligence, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant, and elitist of all regimes. There will be a new class, a new hierarchy . . . the world will be divided into a minority ruling in the name of knowledge, and an ignorant majority. And then, woe unto the mass of ignorant ones!

From Rush Limbaugh, describing the Obama administration? No, from “the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, Marx’s archrival in the First International, describ[ing] the political life of the future that Marx had in mind” [quoted on pages 108–109 of David Horowitz’s The Politics of Bad Faith.]

Bad Faith

In reading The Politics of Bad Faith, by David Horowitz, I have finally come to understand that the Radical Left’s protests against the war in Vietnam over forty years ago were motivated not by any high-minded aversion to war in general but, instead, by admiration and support of North Vietnam as a Communist nation and as a surrogate for the Soviet Union. And now the inmates are running the asylum. God help us all.

The Science is Settled?

This passage from pp. 235–236 of Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong, by Jonathan Wells, illustrates perfectly how the myth of Anthropogenic Global Warming was likewise perpetuated:

As we saw in Kevin Padian’s “cracked kettle” approach to biology, dogmatic Darwinists begin by imposing a narrow interpretation on the evidence and declaring it to be the only way to do science. Critics are then labeled unscientific; their articles are rejected by mainstream journals, whose editorial boards are dominated by the dogmatists; the critics are denied funding by government agencies, who send grant proposals to the dogmatists for “peer” review; and eventually the critics are hounded out of the scientific community altogether.
     In the process, evidence against the Darwinian view simply disappears, like witnesses against the Mob. Or the evidence is buried in specialized publications, where only a dedicated researcher can find it. Once critics have been silenced and counter-evidence has been buried, the dogmatists announce that there is no scientific debate about their theory, and no evidence against it. Using such tactics, defenders of Darwinian orthodoxy have managed to establish a near-monopoly over research grants, faculty appointments, and peer-reviewed journals in the United States.

Vindicating the Founders

In an earlier post I wrote about the ideals enshrined in this country’s founding documents. Recently, I’ve been reading Thomas G. West’s Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America; it’s a bit of a slog, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to get all the way through it, but I have found one passage (a quote from “Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president”, actually) that not only vindicates the founders but also puts the lie to the claim that the Civil War was about anything other than slavery:

Jefferson in his forecast had anticipated this [slavery] as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. . . . But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. . . . These ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of the races. This was an error. . . .
     Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.
     This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

Thus, one can see that the Confederate States of America was based on the enshrinement of slavery; the United States of America was not.

Velvet Revolution?

In The Shadow Party, by David Horowitz and Richard Poe, the authors describe George Soros’s funding of “velvet revolutions” in countries such as Croatia, Serbia, and Georgia, using elements of “ ‘civil society’ ” to stage protests and demonstrations in order to bring about what Soros calls an “ ‘open society.’ ”

With the SEIU staging protests in various places, including outside a bank executive’s home, are we starting to see the first signs of Soros’s attempts to fund a Velvet Revolution in the United States?

But…but…but…

Shocker: Radical Islamic cleric advocates killing U.S. civilians.

Aw, shucks, I thought the world was going to be all hopey-changey after we elected Obumbler. How about we put a real man (or woman, as the case may be) in the White House in 2012 and start kicking terrorist @$$ again?

Impeach

Can we just impeach him now? OK, how about next year, after the Republicans regain control of the House and Senate?

Autonomía y Libertad

Instead of criticizing efforts to “ ‘criminalize migration’ ” why doesn’t Mexican President Felipe Calderon do something to address the problems that cause Mexican citizens to risk everything for a chance at a better life north of the border?

Don’t let the Golden Gate hit you on the way out.

If Chris Matthews thinks so highly of the ChiComs, why doesn’t he just move to China?

Finally, A Contemporary Answer

…to the question posed in the title of an earlier post. And it’s in the first full paragraph on page 4 (which is the second page of the Introduction) of Party of Defeat, by David Horowitz and Ben Johnson:

The warriors of the jihad are promised salvation for slaughtering innocents; their highest honor is to sacrifice themselves for Allah by murdering infidels; their goal is to restore an Islamic empire that once stretched into the heart of Europe, until it was defeated in the battle of Vienna on September 11, 1683. Three hundred years later, Osama bin Laden turned this date of humiliation into a day of vengeance—and revival. Striking America’s homeland on September 11, 2001, jihadists murdered thousands of unsuspecting civilians, and came within a terrorist attack or two of destabilizing the American economy and unleashing chaos.

And the book as a whole serves as a very lucid answer, also, to the question of how the war in Iraq fits into the overall Global War on Terror—or, more precisely, the global war on Islamic jihadists.

Disuniter

Why does President Obama insist on arrogantly nurturing divisions among us? Wasn’t he supposed to be post-partisan or something?

Al Sharpton is an Idiot and a Traitor

Why is Al Sharpton so vocally in support of illegal aliens who take jobs away from average American citizens?

Natural Consequences

If men “ ‘experience their sexuality free of consequence’ ” it’s because women let them.

If women would insist that men wait until marriage for sex then men would not experience their sexuality free of consequence. Duh.

First Pitch

So when Sarah Palin is elected President, how will she throw out the first pitch? Fastpitch softball style?

At least she’d have a valid reason to throw like a girl.

Why Public Sector Unions Suck

I’m willing to concede that unions may have their place in the private sector when they work to balance the power of management. All too often, though, even private-sector unions can work to force companies into agreements that are detrimental to both sides in the long term.

Unions do not belong in the public sector at all, though, and here’s why: While private-sector companies have to consider the impact of union agreements on profitability, public-sector entities do not have to worry about making a profit and can agree to anything the union demands. If union demands result in increased costs, all that a public-sector body has to do is to raise taxes; private-sector companies, on the other hand, cannot necessarily just raise prices.

From The Housing Boom and Bust, by Thomas Sowell, p. 97.

“However irrelevant the empirical validity of claims of racial discrimination may be to those who use such claims to advance their own political or financial interests, the truth or falsity of these claims is crucial for the society as a whole.”

Narrative

Once upon a time, the Republican party was the party of Big Business and the Democrat party was the party of the little guy. FDR was able to milk this for eight years—and then was able to milk casting the Republicans as the party of isolationists and appeasers for five more.

Fast forward to today, when the Democrats are the party of crony capitalism while at the same time continuing to paint Republicans as in bed with Big Business.

Meanwhile, the Republican party is the one that can lay a credible claim to being for the smallest of minority groups—the individual.

“May you live in interesting times.”

From The Housing Boom and Bust, by Thomas Sowell, p. 71.

[T]he market learns—even if only the hard way—and adjusts with remarkable speed, when staring financial ruin in the face is the alternative. The question is whether politicians and government bureaucrats learn, especially when they pay no price for being wrong, and are able to deflect blame toward the market with denunciations of “greed,” “Wall Street” or whatever other convenient scapegoats are available.

Resignation Requested

Dear Mr. President,

I think you have made quite enough money, thank you, so please just resign.

Sincerely,
DavidD

Hyperbole

No, we can’t all just “agree that there’s nothing more Nazi than saying ‘Show me your papers[.]’ ”

“Show me your papers” was not the defining characteristic of the Nazis. Cremation ovens in concentration camps was the defining characteristic of the Nazis.

From The Forgotten Man, page 368

“In the decade beginning 1930 you have told us that our day is finished, that we can grow no more, and that the future cannot be equal to the past. But we, the people, do not believe this, and we say to you: give up this vested interest you have in a depression, open your eyes to the future and help us to build a New World.”

 Amen.

More “Ominous Parallels”?

Read The Forgotten Man, about the Great Depression—which lasted as long as it did because of the policies of FDR, whose progressivism and political tinkering are exceeded only by BHO.

Merry Winter Holiday

I saw an episode of “Sid the Science Kid” with my pre-schooler recently where Sid was going to go to Minnesota for the “winter holiday”.

Winter holiday. Bah. One mustn’t offend anyone who practices a different religion—or who practices no religion at all, n’est-ce pas? So why, then, did Sid pretend to be Santa Claus? What winter holiday, exactly, is it that is associated with Santa Claus? Oh, that’s right, Christmas. So if Sid could pretend to be Santa Claus, why couldn’t Sid be going to Minnesota for Christmas? Oh, wait, Sid was just pretending to be Santa Claus. I see now; that makes such a big difference.

Why can’t Sid be Christian without that offending anyone? And isn’t Santa Claus based on the historical figure of St. Nicholas? What religion is associated with St. Nicholas, anyway? Christianity again.

If you’re going to exclude Christmas, please just exclude Santa Claus too.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re looking for someone not to offend, try not to offend the largest segment of the population. Here’s a hint: I find the inclusion of Santa Claus juxtaposed with the exclusion of Christmas to be offensive.

Taxed Enough Already

I find it ironic that the Left will criticize the Taxed Enough Already (TEA) Party movement and yet, at the same time, will press for tax increases to fund pensions for themselves. This group’s demand to raise their taxes is more than a little disingenuous as they are really asking for taxes to be increased on everyone else since they would just use the power of their union to demand pay raises for themselves to offset any tax increases.

TEA Party Signs

I haven’t been able to get to another TEA Party since the little Tax Day TEA Party last year in my current hometown. I was armed then with a Thomas Jefferson quote and a deficit chart.

Here are my ideas for signs I may take to the next TEA Party I attend:

It’s the spending, stupid.

The Palestinians already have a State—it’s called Jordan.

WE ARE AMERICANS AND WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DEBATE AND DISAGREE WITH ANY ADMINISTRATION! – Hillary Clinton, 2003.

Drawing the Wrong Message from the Bible

I understand how some could claim that Christ was a socialist, given that the early Church was communal (Acts 4:32-35 RSV).

I know that Christ was not a socialist, though, because socialism in its fullest flower, i.e., National Socialism (Nazism) and Communism, is irreligious, even militantly anti-religious.

There was no religious freedom in Communist Russia; the Nazis persecuted Catholics—as did the French, by the way, after their own revolution. (It should go without saying that the Nazis also tried to completely eradicate the Jews.)

It’s the spending, stupid.

’Nuff said.

A Prediction

I’ve said before that, with Democrats in control, higher taxes are coming. The Democrats will never see the truth in the assertion that lowering taxes can increase revenues—they’ll just squeeze and squeeze until we’re all bled dry.

I predict that, if the Democrats retain control of Congress after the 2010 mid-term elections, we will see tax increases the likes of which have not been seen in this country since the early 1960s.

Why 9/11?

I recently finished reading Robert Spencer’s Stealth Jihad; I’ve also read Mark Steyn’s America Alone. In reading both of these books, I was struck by the omission of any explanation for the timing of the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

For that, you’d have to read Hillaire Belloc’s The Great Heresies, originally published in 1938, in which you would learn of the defeat of an Islamic army of conquest near Vienna on September 11, 1683.

Does He Even Listen To Himself?

From the mouth of Vice President Joe Biden:

They [Republicans] still believe … that we’re a bunch of socialists – all these things you hear. I think the healthcare debate put a big stake in the heart of that argument.

No, Joe, the healthcare debate confirmed the argument that the Democrats are a bunch of socialists. Sheesh. What is ObamaCare if it’s not socialism?

A New Light

Professor Jacobson over at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion quoted Michelle Obama from a couple of years ago:

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

I read these words today in a new light.

She’s right, but not in the way she meant.

None of us will ever go back to our lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

My Wishlist

If I were President (heck, if Barry proves anything, it’s that the old promise that “anyone can become president” is actually true):

1. Withdraw from the United Nations; kick the United Nations out of New York City and make them hold their meetings somewhere else.
2. Overturn all court decisions based on international law rather than on the Constitution of the United States; protect America’s sacred sovereignty.
3. Recognize the rights of the unborn to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

There may be more to come; this is just what came to me on the spur of the moment.

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.

I finally realized today another, more devious reason, besides wanting to hide the costs, that the benefits in ObamaCare do not start until 2014.

It’s so that Obama can insist that he has to get reelected or the benefits will never kick in—that if he’s defeated the bill will be overturned. And he’s right.

O Fortuna, from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana

Having a classical tune in my head, and being able to tap out a tune by ear on the piano, I did a Google search for something that would allow me to search for a song by doing just that.

Having then found Musipedia, I tapped out what turned out to be O Fortuna, from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. It took just a bit more poking around on Wikipedia, though, because what Musipedia was able to find for me, while consisting of the right notes, was not the right tempo and was definitely not the right orchestration—at least Musipedia found something from the larger Carmina Burana, anyway, which was enough.

Seriously, what did people do before ubiquitous access to the World Wide Web?

Perpetuating an Entitlement Mentality

I received a letter in the mail today from the Director of the U.S. Census Bureau telling me that my response to the census will “help [my] community get its fair share of government funds”, which is to say “its fair share of” the money the government confiscates from me anyway.

I thought the point of the census was to be able to determine representation, both at the State and Federal level, to ensure that my interests were adequately protected. I didn’t know it was so that the redistribution of tax dollars could be “fair”.

 Is it “fair” to distribute the money to all communities equally based on population percentages? Is it “fair” to distribute the money based on relative income levels, so that communities with higher income levels get less (or more?) government funds?

What’s “fair”, anyway, and who determines what’s “fair”?

“Those are my government funds and I’m entitled to get them.” Yeah, right. How about, “Those are my tax dollars and I’m entitled to keep them.”

Obama, the Late-Night Talk-Show Host

What, did Obama have a laugh track and applause lights during today's speech? He must think he's a late-night talk-show host. Listen to this video, at about 2:10. I wonder if it was all just nervous laughter.

A Letter to the Program Director of My Local Radio Station

Dear [Program Director],

I find it ironic that, between segments of conservative talk radio from Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, your radio station would air Democrat talking points passing as legitimate news updates. I refer specifically to today’s stories about Senator Bunning’s refusal to go along with unanimous support for cutting off debate on a spending bill that does not meet the Democrats’ own pay-as-you-go standard—stories that do not even mention the pay-as-you-go standard.

If I wanted stories like that, I’d watch MSNBC.

I wonder if your station couldn’t find a different source for its news updates—something a little more fair and balanced, perhaps.

Sincerely,
DavidD

P.s. For more on this subject, see this fine post from theblogprof:
http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2010/03/liberal-msm-no-checks-for-jobless.html

Insulation From Feedback

Here’s a three-page passage from Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, pp. 247 ff., that sums up the whole book:

Insulation From Feedback

The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else? In everything from avant-garde art, music, and drama to exotic animals and “radical chic” activities, the stress is on their own differentness, their specialness. A chorus of public outcry against what they are doing or advocating is not a reason to reconsider but music to their ears. To disdain “public clamor,” as it is called when court decisions are protested, is a badge of distinction. All this, of course, contributes to the sealing off of the vision of the anointed from feedback from reality.

Consistent with this pattern of seeking differentiation at virtually all cost has been the adoption of a variety of anti-social individuals and groups as special objects of solicitude—which is to say, special examples of the wider and loftier vision of the anointed. From multiple murderers to smelly vagrants, these anti-social elements have been adopted as mascots, much like exotic animals. The stigmas put on these mascots by the rest of society merely provide yet another occasion for the anointed to blame society itself for failing to “solve” these people’s “problems.” Again, having committed themselves to this disdainful view of the benighted masses, the anointed have cut off their own path of retreat when evidence begins to pile up that their mascots have both richly deserved the stigmas they have received and are unlikely to be magically transformed by any of the innumerable programs and projects that the anointed have created for their benefit. Another avenue to reality is sealed off.

One symptom of divorce from the constraints of reality is the tendency to treat numbers as if they had a life of their own—for example, to make extrapolations from statistics without any serious analysis of the actual processes from which these numbers were generated. This has been common, not only in “overpopulation” projections and exhaustion-of-resources projections, but even in the claim that it is wrong to criticize the courts for the soaring crime rates that followed the criminal law revolutions of the 1960s because of “the abnormally low base from which the crime of the 1960s and early ’70s began.” In other words, these numbers were apparently due to go up anyway—not for any specific, discernible reason, anchored in reality, but simpley because they were “abnormally low.”

One could just have easily have said that the crime rate was abnormally high when the country was expanding, with a lawless frontier still being settled, and when its cities had an unprecedented growth of a crowded, polyglot population of immigrants—and that when these and other adverse influences faded over time, crime rates likewise subsided. But to say this would be to say that the numbers did not have a life of their own, but reflected actual social processes—and that in turn would suggest that the soaring crime rates which followed the judicial revolution in the criminal justice system were also a result of actual facts in the real world. but the reluctance to say that people are responsible for the consequences of their action—even in a causal sense, much less in a moral sense—is here extended to judges.

Such an approach is part of a more general pattern among those with the vision of the anointed, a pattern exemplified by the use of the word “epidemic” to describe chosen behavior, including drug use and such consequences of sexual behavior as pregnancy and AIDS. Without a sense of the tragedy of the human condition, and of the painful trade-offs implied by inherent constraints, the anointed are free to believe that the unhappiness they observe and the anomalies they encounter are due to the public’s not being as wise or as virtuous as themselves. Both their conceptions of social issues and the vocabulary in which they discuss them are pervaded by notions of “protecting” this group and “liberating” that one—in both cases, obviously from the benighted or malign actions of other people. It is a world of victims, villains, and rescuers, with the anointed cast in the last and most heroic of these roles. Thus, in this vision, the Third World is poor because the more prosperous nations have made them so, and problems within the black community are caused by the white community, women are less represented in given occupations because men keep them out—and so on and on. Alternative explanations of all these phenomena are neither lacking nor without evidence, but alternatives to the vision of the anointed are sweepingly and sneeringly dismissed.

Those with the vision of the anointed are especially reluctant to see human nature as a source of the evils they wish to eradicate. Instead, they seek special causes of particular evils. Nothing so exemplifies this approach as the perennial attempts to get at the causes—the “root causes,” as it is phrased—of crime. There seems to be no awareness that people commit crimes because they are human beings. That is, that people’s natural impulses are to favor themselves over others and to disregard the harm they create in trying to satisfy their own desires in the easiest way. If most people do not behave this way with complete shamelessness in most things, it is because they have been through a long process of becoming civilized—and because this process is buttressed by law enforcement. Civilization has been aptly called, “a thin crust over a volcano.” The anointed are constantly picking at that crust.

The dangers in a vision come not simply from the answers it gives, but from the very way it frames the questions. The concept of “income distribution,” for example, causes statistics to be looked at with certain preconceptions, so that the transient positions of individuals are seen as the enduring relationships between classes. The habit of looking at policy issues in terms of the goals they proclaim and the values they represent, not to mention the unconstrained options they assume, leads in a wholly different direction from an analysis of the incentives being created, within the constraints that exist, and the probable outcome of such incentives and constraints.

It is the intertwining of the intellect and the ego which is so dangerous in making the vision highly resistant to any facts that threaten the existing framework of beliefs and assumptions. Cultural wars are so desperate because they are not simply about the merits or demerits of particular policies. They are about the anointed’s whole conception of themselves—about whether they are in the heady role of a vanguard or in the pathetic role of pretentious and self-infatuated people.

Media Bias

So when does the mainstream media start reporting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

How is it that the mainstream media can get away with reporting only part of what someone says or with failing to challenge people to reconcile past and current statements?

Gone, Gone, Gone

Dear Madame Speaker:

You work for us.

And, come November, you’re fired.

Just Asking II

So what happens once the Democrats in Congress realize that they've already blown their chances for reelection, no matter what they do over the next eight months? What kinds of mischief could they cause? Talk about the nuclear option….

Total Recall

I propose a Constitutional amendment allowing for recall elections for President.

A Final Review of The Ominous Parallels

Having recently finished reading The Ominous Parallels, I can now say that the book’s main premise is that the reason for Hitler’s rise to power was that in Weimar Germany even the so-called “Right”, the so-called “Conservatives”, had succumbed to what Thomas Sowell would call “The Vision of the Anointed” by accepting the philosophy of the times, which said that capitalism and individual freedom were evil.

The antidote, in Leonard Peikoff’s opinion, is the philosophy of Objectivism; he seems to think that neither Constitutional principles nor religion and morality can stop a civilization’s slide into statism and, in fact, blames religion for helping to cause this trend.

As I have said earlier, I don’t agree with his criticisms of Christianity, preferring instead to believe that the animating principles of Christianity are responsible for the rise of Western civilization in the first place and, if followed, will allow Western civilization to continue to prevail.

Scales

If the scales had not already fallen from my eyes with regard to the truth of Conservative principles, reading Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy would have made it happen.

Serendipity

So I’m watching the Nascar Nationwide Series race since Danica Patrick’s in it (I usually only watch the Sprint Cup races) and I get the idea to wonder whether anyone has written anything linking her with Sarah Palin, which caused me to do a Google search and find this on a blog I hadn’t read before; then I went to the top of the blog and found that the author has recently started suffering symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, which had struck me about nine months ago, so I posted a comment with a recommendation for alleviating the symptoms.

Cue the music to It’s a Small World….

Help Wanted

Can someone tell me the supposed faults with Capitalism? Anyone? C’mon, there has to be some Leftist out there somewhere who will see this and comment.

(And, if the comment’s on topic, I’ll even approve it.)

A Note to the Clueless Roland Burris

Chicago gangsters like Al Capone were criminals who engaged in illegal activities and acts of violence. Is this truly how you expect the President of the United States to act? And to think that people called President Bush a fascist….

I, Me, Mine

President Obama needs to get himself some new speechwriters—maybe some people who recognize how narcissistic he sounds when his speeches use “I” all the time.

On second thought, why bother? It’s not like I want to see his image improve. 2013 can’t get here fast enough.

A Partial Review of The Ominous Parallels

As you can tell from many of my recent blog posts, I’ve found a lot about The Ominous Parallels, by Leonard Peikoff, that’s made sense. I don't agree with his criticisms, in Chapter 5 especially, of Christianity, though, and recommend How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization and The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success for an alternate perspective.

“What’s Past Is Prologue”

From p. 156 of TOP:

Liberalism, according to Weber, means an end to illusions, including the “illusion” of human progress—along with an attitude of endurance, “endurance [in Lilge’s words] to bear the destruction of all absolutes, with no sentimental turning back or rash embrace of new faiths, only the strength to hold out in the radical though bleak veracity of a cleansed mind.” As to selecting the proper course of action, Weber told the gathering, each individual has to decide the ideals that are “right for him.” Since only questions of means, not of ends, fall within the province of science, he said, ends must be chosen subjectively, by reference to feelings.

The Will of the People

From The Ominous Parallels, for comparison purposes:
“The will of ‘the people,’ it seemed, was unmistakable. The [Socialists], however, had grasped the lesson of Hegel and were undeterred: they understood that the people does not know what it wills.”

From President Barack Obama to George Stephanopoulos:
“ ‘I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we're making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.’ ”

Live-Blogging My Way Through The Ominous Parallels

I’ve been reading The Ominous Parallels off and on for about three weeks—I really need to start carving out some time to devote to it.

Several of my prior posts have been on the book; I have a couple of other posts to make on bits of it I’ve read recently. Part of the reason I’ve held back is the sense of live-blogging; another part is the fear that the book will disappoint me in the end.

I just read a passage, though, that demands a blog post of its own. This book is just full of what seem to be ominous parallels between conditions in Weimar Germany and current conditions in these United States:

The culture of Weimar Germany advocated irrational emotion. The economy demanded it. It provided conditions which allowed men no other mode of functioning.

The Republic was a mixed economy, the kind established by Bismarck and mandated by the nation’s new constitution. There was an element of economic liberty, and there were growing government controls—direct or indirect; federal, state, or municipal—over every aspect of the country’s productive life. The controls covered business, labor, banking, utilities, agriculture, housing, and much more. As a rule each new set of controls conferred benefits on some German group(s), at a cost. The cost was incurred by other groups, whose forced sacrifice paid for the benefits. The victims responded predictably.

Confronted with increasing British exactions one hundred and fifty years earlier, the American colonists did not decide to beef up their lobby in the English court; they heralded the rights of man and decided to throw off the yoke. There were no such ideas in Weimar Germany. The Germans did not question the code of sacrifice or the principle of statism. These ideas, they had been taught by every side and sect within their culture, specify how man ought to live and the only way man can live. They define the moral and the practical.

. . .

The authors of the Weimar constitution had believed that a controlled economy in the hands of a democratic government would foster peaceful cooperation among men, as against the “ruthless competition” and “war of all against all” which they held to be inherent in a free market. What the mixed economy produced instead was a ruthless competition among groups, a collectivist “war of all against all.”

. . .

Neither the warring groups nor the parties which courted them had any means to know what favors to insist on, when, or at whose expense, or when to yield to the demands of their antagonists, who also had to survive. By the nature of the system there was no principle to follow; no one could devise a rational way to divide a nation into mutually devouring segments, or an equitable way to conduct the devouring. Every group, therefore, swung at random from the role of beneficiary to that of victim and back again, according to the passions, the tears, the fears, the alliances, the front-page propaganda, the back-room deals, and the expediency of the moment.

Life, Spengler said, has “no system, no program, no reason.” It is not necessarily true of life itself. It was true of life in Germany’s mixed economy.

That kind of life has consequences. In 1923 the Germans discovered one of them.

1089 and a Wake-Up

’Nuff said.

Someone Else for President in 2012

With all the times he’s reversed himself, and with all his broken campaign pledges, running against President Obama’s record in 2012 would be too easy. The Democrats are going to have to nominate someone else—someone who will say, “Oh, I won’t do any of those things President Obama did.” But will the country believe her?

Unintended Consequences(?)

Why are all the Democrats’ programs anti-family? Why do the Democrats insist on programs like child care tax credits? Why don’t the Democrats ever stump for programs that support the traditional family, where the mom wants to stay home and take care of the children herself rather than send them to daycare? Why is the Democrat vision of a family one in which both parents work outside the home? Why is the Democrat vision of a family one in which there is only one parent?

Pop Philosophers

Leonard Peikoff, from The Ominous Parallels, p. 139:

Today Americans no longer seek philosophic guidance from philosophers, but from whoever fills the place philosophers have vacated: politicians, economists, psychologists, gurus, etc.

No, it’s worse than that. Americans today, as a general rule, seek philosophic guidance from celebrities—pop singers, movie stars, etc.; basically, whoever is the box office draw du jour. At least politicians, economists, and psychologists are generally well-educated and can be expected to read a book once in a while.

Thank God for Rush Limbaugh

’Nuff said.

Pragmatism

Obama’s supporters call him a pragmatist like that’s supposed to be a good thing.

From The Ominous Parallels, p. 53:

Thinkers for decades had been saturated with the Kantian view that facts “in themselves” are unknowable, and with the voluntarist view that action has primacy over thought. As a result, a growing chorus—helped along by Schopenhauer, Marx, and Nietzsche, among others—began to suggest that men should dispense with any concern for facts or reality. Ideas, it was increasingly claimed, all ideas, are merely subjective tools designed to serve human purposes; if, therefore, an idea leads in action to desirable consequences, i.e., to the sorts of consequences desired by its advocates, it should be accepted as true on that ground alone, without reference to the (unknowable) facts of reality.

This new approach reached its climax and found its enduring name in America, in the writings of William James. James called it: pragmatism.

Two Minutes Hate

George W. Bush is the Democrat party’s Emmanuel Goldstein. Barack Obama ran against George W. Bush in the 2008 presidential election. Martha Coakley is running against George W. Bush in the 2010 Massachusetts special election. The Democrat party plans to run against George W. Bush in the 2010 off-year House and Senate elections.

Obama Then and Now

Before the 2008 presidential election, candidate Barack Obama claimed he was going to be post-partisan.

Before the 2010 special election to replace Teddy Kennedy, President Barack Obama warned that a Republican win, by eliminating the Democrat party’s supermajority in the Senate, would put an end to his agenda.

If President Obama were truly going to be post-partisan, what need would he have for a Democrat supermajority in Congress?

More from The Ominous Parallels

From The Ominous Parallels, pp. 93–94, with some minor edits:

On what moral grounds, even in the privacy of his own mind, could a man, accepting the [party’s] ethics, object to or resist any decree, no matter how brutal or monstrous, issued to him by the spokesman and embodiment of the [people]? On the grounds that the decree destroys his personal values—his goals, ambitions, happiness, life? Qua altruist, he has been trained to the view that he must learn to sacrifice for the sake of others. On the grounds that the decree visits suffering, expropriation, and death upon other men, who are innocent? Qua altruist, he has been trained to the view that they must learn must learn to sacrifice for the sake of others. On the grounds that the decree violates his conscience, his independent moral judgment? Qua social subjectivist, he has been trained to the view that moral judgment is not his prerogative but society’s. On the grounds that the decree violates his principles? Qua pragmatist, he has been trained to the view that whatever works, as judged by the [spokesman and embodiment of the people], is right. On the grounds that the decree commands an absolute evil, which must be fought to the end? Qua relativist, he has been trained to the view that there are no absolutes.

Yes We Can

From page 42 of The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff:

“To all doubts and questions,” said Rosenberg, “the new man of the first German empire has only one answer: Nevertheless, I will!”

Talk about an ominous parallel….

Deceptive Advertising

I heard a commercial today hyping something called the “National Grocery Stimulus Program”; I heard another commercial today hyping a “bailout” program for credit card users.

I just love how some companies will latch onto terms in the public consciousness like “stimulus” and “bailout” to try to give themselves an aura of respectability.

It probably says just as much about the ineffective “stimulus” effect of the U.S. government’s own “bailout” programs—after all, the reason these terms are in the public consciousness is the hype given them by the mainstream media; if they worked, the media wouldn’t need to hype them.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

I read recently that Oliver Stone wants to “rehabilitate” Adolph Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, Joseph Stalin, and Joseph McCarthy, saying that they “ ‘have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history.’ ”

It’s interesting that he would lump McCarthy in with three totalitarian dictators responsible for regimes that murdered millions. Hitler, Mao, and Stalin are heroes of the Left whereas it is the Left that has vilified McCarthy. The only thing McCarthy did was to accuse some Communist sympathizers of being Communist sympathizers.

The mistake McCarthy made was in waiting until the Communist sympathizers had gotten too firmly entrenched. I’d be interested in seeing McCarthy's image rehabilitated if it were someone other than Oliver Stone taking up the job.

Get a clue!

Please, get a clue, PRESIDENT Obama.

The country does not just want to see your Justice Department investigating terror attacks. The country wants to see your Homeland Security Department preventing terror attacks—that is, stopping terror attacks before they happen.

An Apt Description

I’ve just started reading Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. I’m still in the middle of another book, so I don’t know when I’m going to read past Chapter 1, but I found something in the first chapter that seems to be an apt description of the strategy employed by the Left in hyping the AGW myth:

Despite the great variety of issues in a series of crusading movements among the intelligentsia during the twentieth century, several key elements have been common to most of them:

1. Assertions of a great danger to the whole society, a danger to which the masses of people are oblivious.
2. An urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe.
3. A need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few.
4. A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by unworthy purposes.

Given that Thomas Sowell’s book was published in 1995, it’s amazing that Al Gore—and Barack Obama—can still get away with playing this game with regard to anthropogenic global warming; it’s amazing, in fact, that they can get away with playing this game at all.