Is America Becoming a Fear Society?

From Natan Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny & Terror, pp. 196–197:

For dissidents within the former Soviet Union, these moral lines [between good and evil, right and wrong] were practically self-evident. Unlike philosophers and rights activists in the West, we dissidents did not feel the need to split hairs over the precise nature of human rights.
We knew that to determine whether or not human rights were being generally upheld in a particular country, we only had to ask a few simple questions:
Could the people in that country speak their minds?
Could they publish their opinions?
Could they practice their faith?
Could they learn the history and culture of their people?

We understood that for those living in a fear society, the answer to most of our questions, if not all of them, was no. The structural elements that enable democratic societies to respect human rights—independent courts, the rule of law, a free press, a freely elected government, meaningful opposition parties, not to mention human rights organizations—were all glaringly absent in fear societies. While these structures are not always sufficient to ensure the protection of human rights, our experience had convinced us that without them. human rights would inevitably be crushed. Every political prisoner in the Gulag recognized the moral chasm that separated free societies and fear societies. We recognized that a free society did not guarantee the protection of human rights, but we knew that a fear society guaranteed their violation.

When someone like Phil Robertson is excoriated by society for speaking his mind, for having his opinion published, for expressing his religious beliefs, I have to wonder whether America is not turning into the type of fear society described in Sharansky’s book; when courts are packed with liberal judges who legislate from the bench, when the press blatantly shows its bias for one particular party, when efforts to insist on proper voter identification are characterized by the press and one political party as voter suppression rather than its opposite, when the press and the political party in power try to convince the minority party to remake itself in the opposition’s image, I have to wonder whether America is not turning into the type of fear society described in Sharansky’s book.

Edmund Burke

It's funny how Edmund Burke anticipated the Occupy movement, and its support by the Democrat party, by over 200 years:

The plunder of the few would indeed give but a share inconceivably small in the distribution to the many. But the many are not capable of making this calculation ; and those who lead them to rapine never intend this distribution.

Reflections on the Revolution in France, page 55.

(There have been several earlier passages in this book that have been evocative of current events, but none more so than this.)

OK, I lied.

Well, not  “lied” so much as “made an unwarranted extrapolation” (in that I am willing now to give Governor Romney the benefit of the doubt where, prior to his selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, I was not).

Pray To End Abortion

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I said in an earlier post that, “[r]ather than discard it, we should seek to strive for the ideal.” Thus,  Republicans, after first having sought to end slavery, seek now to end abortion. Meanwhile, the Democrats, after first having been the party of slavery, are now the party of abortion.

And yet the Democrats, in their guilt, must over-compensate—in the case of slavery, with the doctrine of Affirmative Action, which does nothing but to perpetuate what President Bush has called “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” and in the case of abortion, with the push to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, requiring countries to “act in the best interest of the child” (an irony considering that they see no rights for the unborn).

The right to life enshrined in the Declaration of Independence should extend to the unborn; adults have a responsibility to defend the defenseless.

A Primary-Season Poem

With all that Barack & the Democrats have done,
A Republican campaign should be smooth sailin';
But if Rom-i-ney is the nominee,
I'm writing in Sarah Palin.

Do nothing.

I would much rather have a “do nothing” Congress than a repeat of the Pelosi-Obama-Reid Congress of 2008–2010.

What a demagogue.

Ooh, this just pisses me off.

You are not “a warrior for the middle class.” You are a warrior for the low-class, entitlement-class losers who see themselves only as victims. Seriously. Surely everyone knows that the tax rate goes up as one’s income goes up.

The only way “a billionaire [would] pay the same rate as a plumber or a teacher” (rather than a higher rate) would be if Congress were to pass the flat tax.

Doesn’t anybody edit Obama’s speeches?

Doesn’t anybody edit Obama’s speeches? Where are all the teachers’ union employees?

“ ‘Either we gut education and medical research or we’ve got to reform the tax code so that the most profitable corporations have to give up tax loopholes that other companies don’t get. We can’t afford to do both.’ ”

Assuming for the moment that either gutting education and medical research or reforming the tax code to eliminate tax loopholes would reduce the budget deficit, doesn’t he mean that we can’t afford to do neither?

If either of these would reduce the budget deficit, wouldn’t it be better (from a budget deficit perspective) to do both? What does he mean when he says, “We can’t afford to do both.”? By his own logic, doesn’t Obama have this exactly backwards? Who edits this stuff?

The Obama Tax

The fact that Obama seems to like toxic programs that don't take effect until 2013 or beyond, such as Obamacare and the Buffett tax, has given me an idea.

The Republicans in the House should propose and push an explicit Obama tax—a 50% tax rate, across the board (payroll, capital gains, whatever the source)—on anyone making more than $20K that takes effect in 2013 only if Obama is reelected.

Cult of Personality

“ ‘If You Love Me, Ask Congress to Pass My Jobs Bill’ ”?

Who but a freaking narcissist would say something like that? And who but a bunch of sycophantic zombies would go along with him?

What I Want

What I want is for Sarah Palin to announce that she’s running—and to make the race a clear and distinct choice between her vision for America and the vision espoused by Barack Hussein Obama (PBUH).

Just Another Leftist Meme

I have to link to this article just because it’s so stupid. How hard is it to understand? The deficit and the debt are not due to a lack of revenue. They’re due to an excess of spending. Sheesh. Just stop spending so much already, OK? “And he never explained to the American people in plain language the reason for Republicans’ intransigence — that they would rather the United States default on its debt than oblige the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share of the tax burden.” Oh, and the lack of revenue is not due to low tax rates. The lack of revenue is due to oppressive government policies that are stifling economic growth.

The Marketing of Evil

I recently finished reading David Kupelian’s 2005 book, The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom.

I found it generally interesting, although I thought his characterization of Catholicism did not make a lot of sense in that he dismissed it for being hierarchical and yet blamed its perceived problems on the seminaries rather than on the hierarchy.

I liked his characterization of the dangers of a leftist, subversive press, though:

[A] subversive press…generates a subtle but powerful pressure on [a Republican] president and other [Republican] leaders. Put yourself in the president’s place. You’re basically always surrounded by the press corps—professional on the surface but secretly hostile to you and, in fact, hostile to the foundational values underlying Western civilization. They’re watching every move you make, recording every word that comes out of your [mouth], looking for ways to undermine you. Remember—they wanted someone else to win the office you hold.

The leftist, subversive press has been anything but subtle and secretly hostile, though, where Sarah Palin is concerned, and she knows it—and so does everyone else, for that matter; fortunately for her, they’ve overplayed their hand, in my opinion, marginalizing themselves instead of her.

The Republican party needs to hold an un-convention…

…with Sarah Palin as the unconventional nominee.

More on The Little Toy Dog

While most of The Little Toy Dog deals with the flyers’ imprisonment in Lubyanka, the part that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end occurred near the end of the book, during their transit back to the United States:

Meanwhile at nine-thirty that morning, the big Constellation from Amsterdam was letting down her landing gear on the approach to snow-covered Goose Bay Field. Bruce Olmstead had slept soundly across the Atlantic since, just before take-off, he had been given a sedative. John McKone had dozed fitfully. When they opened the plane’s door, there by the runway was a cluster of staff cars—in the lead, one flying the flag of a four-star general. For whom could this be? They had no brass like this aboard. At the foot of the ramp the two captains were greeted by the Wing Commander, a smiling bird colonel who told them to pile in, that car was theirs; the Air Force at Goose was giving four-star honors today to its two recovered goslings.

I guess one probably would have to have been in the military to realize the significance of this. Officers above the rank of Colonel are called flag officers because they get their own flags—one-star flags for Brigadier Generals up through four-star flags for Generals. When a flag officer is in his car, the car gets a flag mounted on it; when a car with a flag on it goes past everyone salutes that flag.

The Little Toy Dog

I read The Little Toy Dog this past weekend. It’s the true story of the two surviving crewmembers of a reconnaissance plane that was shot down in the Barents Sea who were imprisoned by the Soviets from July 1960 to January 1961.

I liked the book very much. My favorite part, strangely enough, is from the Preface, where the author talks about the publisher “graciously accepting [the book’s] title against his seasoned judgment,” going on to say:

Anyone in the book trade will realize why he warned us, for our colorless, understated title utterly ignores both the excitement of the shoot-down and the high drama in the interrogations, refers to an utterly unimportant episode in the book, and is meaningless to anyone who has not finished it.

I wonder, though, if the book might not have gotten more notice if the author could have at least settled on a concise subtitle. Instead, there is one subtitle (or no subtitle, but a longer description instead) on the dust jacket, a different subtitle on the half title (which is not supposed to have a subtitle at all), and yet another subtitle on the title page.

And, besides, I wouldn’t call the figurine a little toy dog, anyway. I’d call it a little plastic (or rubber?) dog—or I’d call it a little Snoopy dog. Maybe the publisher couldn’t get permission from Charles Schultz to call it a little Snoopy dog—or maybe Michelle Marie Palm never called it that.

Where is the President on this?

Why isn’t our President speaking out against this lawlessness?
http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=81873

Life is Weird

My recently-graduated-from-college 2nd daughter just officially got engaged. She and her betrothed met at school on the other side of the state (4‐5 hours away) but he and his family live only 1½ hours away from us; we’ve been to his parents’ house and his parents have been to our house. His parents already seem like my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, which feels odd since my mother and my mother-in-law first met on my wedding day and hardly ever saw each other.

When I left home at seventeen, I did not even consider staying close to home—or returning close to home or even living near any of my siblings; it wasn’t until 8‐10 years later, after I’d become a father, that I realized the, um, shall we say, babysitting benefits of living close to family members; I’d be willing to bet that my daughter and her future family will live at least somewhat close to one set of in-laws. What’s more, in this age of e-mail and Facebook, it’s comforting to know that my daughter should also be able to stay in touch with friends from school—something else that at her age I hadn’t really considered important.

Aw, well; at least I can take some comfort from the fact that my daughter does not seem to be repeating all my mistakes.

Best wishes to her.

Will She or Won’t She?

So, will Sarah Palin run or won’t she?

I think she will run. I think it’s stupid to think she could have a stronger role as a “Kingmaker”; I think she would lose all the media attention the moment she announced that she was not going to run.

I think she has to run; the media would have a field day, otherwise, laughing at her and calling her a coward and then ignoring anything else she has to say.

I don’t think she’s a coward. I think she will run and I think she will win.

1984

I just finished reading (re-reading?) 1984. I thought I’d read it before, but what I remembered as my favorite part of the book ... was not even in the book. My new theory is that what I remembered as my favorite part of 1984 is actually a scene from Fahrenheit 451.

George Orwell was a Socialist, in any case. His ideas on Capitalism were seriously flawed.

That is all.