They call it plausibly deny ability. The speech Obama gave was written and rehearsed. He talked about change and calling it one thing (change didn't make it change). This gave him the cover he needed to call Palin a PIG. Just like he flipped Hilary off. He is a Chicago thug politician. Bill Clinton can see one, it takes one to know one.
Somethings never change sometimes they get worse. This from
We have to watch for our soverigncy to be taken in International Treaties. Take a look at this example!
Iran Schoolbooks Teach Jihad, Martyrdom, Study Shows
By Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
March 12, 2008
Washington (CNSNews.com) - When third grade school children in
Iran turn to page 113 of their textbook "Let's Read," they find a
passage that says, "At that time, the Israeli officer pounded
(three-year-old) Muhammad's head with the rifle's stock and his warm
blood sprinkled upon his (six-year-old brother) Khaled's hands."
The
Iranian textbook was published in 2004, before the controversial
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president of Iran in 2005. In another
third-grade text, "Gifts of Heavan," an illustration of a monster
wearing the Star of David is seen going through a tidy Muslim town
leaving garbage everywhere.
While those examples could seem
shocking to some, it gets worse, said Arnon Groiss, director of
research at the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, who recently
completed a study of 115 Iranian school textbooks. (Most of the books reviewed in the study had been published in 2004.)
"Indoctrination
is less felt in the lower grades and increases in the higher grades,"
Groiss said, speaking at a forum Monday on the topic at the
conservative Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.
The books
are part of an overall indoctrination effort aimed at school children.
This effort includes rewritten Iranian history and the inclusion of
Jihadist political views in science and geography texts, he said.
The
seventh grade text "Islamic Culture and Religious Instruction," which
refers to the West and Israel as the "Arrogant Ones," tells students
that war is unavoidable and victory is guaranteed "in order to continue
with all our power our revolution against the Arrogant Ones and the
oppressors."
An eighth grade text says the "army of Islam would make the Arrogant Ones fall in holy Jihad and heavy attack."
"This
is a form of child abuse rejected by all civilized countries," said
Groiss, who for 30 years was an Arab-language journalist and is
currently deputy director at Israel Broadcasting Authorities Arabic
Radio. "This pictures a regime bent on global war to the point of
self-destruction."
On page 20 of the high school textbook
"Humanities," the United States is described as an "imperialist
country" that "does not refrain from massacring people, from burying
alive soldiers of the opposite side and from using mass-destruction
weapons. It makes use of atomic bombs. ... It creates the greatest
dictatorships and the violent and torturous security-oriented regimes,
and defends them."
The good news could be that most Iranian
families dismiss the teachings in the books, telling their children to
simply memorize the material for the test, but nothing else, said the
Iranian-born Shayan Arya at the forum.
"To the Iranian youth,
America is the most popular country," said Arya, a member of the
Constitutionalist Party of Iran - an international group of one-time
Iranian citizens pushing for the establishment of a liberal democracy
in that country. However, even a small number influenced by the books
could be damaging, he said.
"The Islamist regime does not need
to be 100 percent successful, only a small portion," Arya said. "If 10
percent are exposed, that's 5 million. If 1 percent is exposed, that's
500,000. If it's a half of a percent, that's 250,000. That's more
troops than we have in Iraq."
It was only a matter of time until even the Dems figured out that choice in education is the only way to go . The education unions are over. We can no longer protect bad teachers at the expense of our kids. This is a matter of national security.
Source: TownHall.com
Inner City Kids Benefiting From School Choice
By Dr. Matthew Ladner
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Democratic activist Steve Barr, founder of the Rock the Vote campaign, has dived into school reform in Los Angeles. Predictably, this has run him straight into the teeth of opposition from the education union. Barr has been busily kicking out those teeth.
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Barr’s Green Dot is a group of charter schools with a strong record of accomplishment with very disadvantaged students. Public school teachers in Watts have been using a California law to secede from the dysfunctional Los Angeles district to join Green Dot as charter schools. The education establishment in the city, led by the education unions, has fought Barr every step of the way. But so far, Green Dot is winning.
Barr is no union buster; his schools have school-level associations. Barr’s take-no-prisoners style, however, includes no patience for urban schools that systematically fail kids. Barr will not tolerate tenure or other impediments to quality learning.
Barr makes it clear, in sometimes colorful language, that the purpose of state education spending is to educate children, not to provide job security to underperforming adults. He told LA Weekly, “Where are these … (expletive) teachers going to go? Where are these lifetime benefits going to go? What will happen to all of these groups protecting their interests and their jobs and their construction contracts? The political puzzle of this is really fascinating. But I have no doubt that within five years, you’re going to see our impact. And it’s going to be huge.”
Green Dot Schools in the toughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles have an average high school graduation rate of 80 percent. The first two Green Dot schools also had high percentages of graduates attending four-year accredited colleges and universities. The school model focuses on getting resources away from bureaucracy and into the classroom and an unflinching commitment to academic achievement.
Susan Estrich, manager of the 1988 Dukakis presidential campaign, blasted the Los Angeles school board for trying to stop Green Dot. Estrich describes the dire need:
The graduation rate at the local high school, one of the absolute worst in Los Angeles, is 3 percent…Green Dot was ready to go in Watts. It had the money to open the schools. It had the support of the community. It met all of the legal requirements for its charters to be approved. Indeed, the School Board staff advised the members that their only legal option was to approve the charters... But who cares about the rule of law when the teachers’ union is saying no?
TV personality Drew Carey recently filmed an internet program on Green Dot’s takeover of Locke High School in Watts for the Reason Foundation. Approximately 75 percent of 9th graders entering Locke do not graduate in four years, and less than five percent of Locke students go on to four-year colleges. In the 2003-2004 school year, there were three sex offenses, 17 robberies, 25 batteries, and 11 assaults with a deadly weapon at Locke. In the “no good deed goes unpunished” world of dysfunctional public school districts, the principal who tried to turn the school around was hounded by the unions.
Barr is not alone as a Democrat defying the prerogatives of the education unions. Democrats for Education Reform is a new group that is making a big splash. In 2007, the group held an event in which U.S. Representative James Clyburn (D-SC) stressed the importance of parental choice and innovation in education. Clyburn, the House Majority Whip and the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, supports both charter schools and private school tuition tax credits for middle-class families.
At an earlier event held by the group, Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. discussed “alarming dropout rates” and the dangers of a “monopoly” filled with failing schools. “We must explore options,” he said. “Every option for every American child so that every child might have the high-quality education they deserve in their lifetime…We need more competition in the system.”
Jackson Jr. mentioned that his parents sent him to the elite St. Albans Episcopal School in D.C. when he was a child. He said he plans to push the envelope to make Democrats approach education with a more open mind.
The big tent of education reform keeps getting bigger. The relationship between liberals and education reactionaries is under obvious strain. As Churchill once said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
I've said for years we need to legalize drugs. This does a number of good things. Start with national security. It takes the profits out of the drug trade and out of the hands of terrorist and gangsters. By legalizing drugs and regulating drugs the crime related to the drug trade would be eliminated because the prices will come down. By releasing people in jail for non violet drug related crimes you let 1 million people out of prison. This stops the need to build more prisons and makes room for serious criminals. The courts will be freed up from all the drug cases and treatment centers can be set up. The enforcement dollars used by the DEA and local law enforcement can be used to track dangerous criminals and terrorist. The risk of overdose will be reduced because the drugs will be pure and doses would be known. It creates a new tax base. There will be a certain amount of derelicts in society no matter what we do. This is a shame but if drugs were legalized these people can be identified and helped.
This article makes a point but it misses the real point.
Rule-Breakers, Inside and Out
The Hill
March 3, 2008
America’s jails and prisons are bursting at the seams and new ones are being built at an amazing pace to house violent, non-violent, white collar and miscellaneous miscreants being shuttled through our courts at an ever-increasing rate. Governors in state after state are wondering just how to pay for the prisons they’re being forced to build and those who run our prisons and jails are hard-pressed to find qualified correctional officers to guard the growing army of inmates under their control.
Just last week, figures released by the government revealed that more than one in a hundred adults in this country are serving time in jail or prison. That’s the highest percentage of citizens of any nation in the world and it’s growing.
People are incarcerated for breaking society’s rules or laws both to punish them and to protect the public from them, and to let others know that those who break the law will pay for doing so. When they leave the courtroom for prison, victims and prosecutors often breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that at the very least they won’t be preying on the innocent while they’re locked up. Everyone hopes that by the end of their incarceration, miscreants “will have learned their lesson” and return to society determined not to repeat their mistakes.
The evidence suggests otherwise. While incarcerating dangerous and career criminals reduces crime just by keeping them off the street, prisons don’t do a very good job of rehabilitation. This should be of greater and greater concern these days because in the next few years literally hundreds of thousands of prisoners will be released and the fear is that a very high percentage of them will end up terrorizing someone before being rearrested and sent back.
Our prisons house more than a few men and women who cannot be saved, but many can. In failing them, our prisons are failing the society building these human warehouses.
A few weeks ago, I joined a number of others testifying before the House Judiciary Committee supporting changes in a law known as the Prison Litigation Reform Act or PLRA. The PLRA was passed in 1996 to deal with a flood of frivolous lawsuits filed by prisoners complaining about just about everything. The new law made it far more difficult to file such suits by requiring, a) that prisoners exhaust all administrative remedies available to them before going to court and b) denying prisoners access to the courts under any circumstances unless they could demonstrate actual physical injury as a result of the alleged mistreatment.
The law worked in the sense that it cut down on prisoner’s lawsuits, but it had the unintended consequence of virtually insulating prison officials from external oversight and denied prisoners access to the courts for all but the most grievous mistreatment. Even prisoners raped by rogue guards have been denied access to the courts because they couldn’t demonstrate real physical injury resulting from the rape.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) held the hearing to see how the law is working and what might be done to eliminate the unintended consequences without once again opening the courts to thousands of frivolous or even malicious lawsuits.
The witnesses testifying urged a number of reforms. The most important were eliminating the physical injury requirement, which allows guards and prison officials to ignore a prisoner’s rights and their own rules because they know they can do anything they want short of inflicting observable physical injury; softening the requirement that a prisoner “exhaust” an administrative review procedure that is often run not to remedy abuses but to keep prisoners “in their place.”
Any other governmental agency that promulgates rules governing its own behavior must follow those rules, but it is well documented that prison officials can and often do ignore their own regulations because prisoners have no recourse and no one on the outside can do anything with the knowledge either. Prisoners who ask that the rules be followed are simply told the written or official rules don’t matter.
Most prisoners may not be rocket scientists, but they learn a lesson from all this. They realize that while they are in prison for breaking society’s rules, those with real power can and do act exactly as they please in flagrant violation of the very rules they are paid to enforce and observe.
That’s a lesson we shouldn’t be teaching.
Source: TownHall.com
Unacceptable
"Made in China."
Or so reads the tag on the navy blue "Pentagon United States — Dept. of
Defense" cap purchased for this columnist on the main concourse of the
Pentagon at the Fort America concession.
Bring back Murrow
Turned off by TV news? You're not alone.
We've just finished reading a scathing critique of network news by
Jeffrey M. McCall, professor of communication at Indiana's DePauw
University and author of "Viewer Discretion Advised: Taking Control of
Mass Media Influences."
It was this time last year, the professor notes, that Federal
Communications Commission Commissioner Michael Copps criticized the
television news industry for giving the public "too much baloney passed
off as news."
"Sadly, the evidence since that speech indicates that Copps'
critique remains quite valid," Mr. McCall writes. "From superficial
coverage of elections to hyped-up coverage of celebrity scandals, the
broadcast news industry continues to give the citizenry a news agenda
that degrades the conversation of democracy."
And how have the news networks reacted?
"NBC is countering the decline in journalistic effort with an
increase in razzle-dazzle," he finds. "Evening anchor Brian Williams
was a guest host last fall on 'Saturday Night Live.' NBC executives
were delighted with the stunt, one of them saying, 'It showed a side of
his personality that some viewers may have warmed to.' "
(Perhaps we will warm up to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton now that she appeared on the same comedy show over the weekend).
"The most recent NBC novelty is the new voice that introduces Williams'
'Nightly News.' It is none other than Hollywood actor Michael Douglas,
recruited by Williams himself to open the show," Mr. McCall adds in his
Op-Ed column, which first appeared in the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune.
It's so pitiful, he points out, that on a certain "day last
June when oil prices dropped $2 a barrel, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs stepped down, the space shuttle launched, and former national
security adviser Sandy Berger surrendered his law license for stealing
government documents, the story that dominated cable news was Paris
Hilton's release from jail."
Still, he says, there's hope:
"Former NBC journalist Maria Shriver recently told NBC she
wouldn't return to the network from her current hiatus. She cited the
media excesses in covering the death of Anna Nicole Smith last year as
the major factor, saying 'It was then that I knew the TV news business
had changed.' "
Reagan reruns
Feeling left out for missing the Reagan Revolution? Not to worry, the Gipper is back.
Ronald Reagan's voice "will soon be heard across the land again," says
Duke Blackwood, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential
Library and Foundation. He says a series of 30 nonpolitical segments of
Mr. Reagan's many radio commentaries, in which he clarifies his vision
for America, will begin airing around the country on April 28.
"Ronald Reagan Speaks for Himself" is aimed at the several
generations of Americans who never heard him speak on issues such as
the economy, immigration, abortion, terrorism and taxes.
Consider this
Percentage of Democrats who rate their mental health as "excellent": 38
Percentage of Republicans who do: 58
— Harper's Index, March 2008
Tough being Israel
King Abdullah II of Jordan, who has arrived in the United States for
meetings with President Bush, made this eye-opening observation during
a speech to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs at Princeton University:
"Fifty-seven countries are not at peace with Israel today.
Fifty-seven countries out of 193 countries in the world. Fifty-seven
countries with a total population greater than Europe and the United
States combined.
"Fifty-seven countries, representing one-third of the members of the United Nations."
By John McCaslin
Monday, March 3, 2008
A
policeman patrols Tiananmen Square in Beijing March 2, 2008, in front
of the Great Hall of the People, the venue of the National People's
Congress or parliament. Some 3,000 delegates to the annual meeting of
China's parliament, the National People's Congress, will meet in
Beijing's Great Hall of the People on March 5 for about two weeks.
REUTERS/Jason Lee (CHINA)
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Source: Town Hall .com
Judges Getting the Message About Illegal Immigrants Four children including two brothers
were killed, and 12 others were hospitalized with injuries, in
Minnesota last week when a van reportedly ignored a stop sign and
barreled into a school bus. The driver of the van, who did not speak
English or have a valid drivers license, was charged with homicide.
Authorities described the driver as an illegal immigrant using a
phony name. She had pled guilty in 2006 for driving without a license.
For years, courts and lawyers have intimidated towns from
protecting themselves against the invasion of illegal immigrants. In
2006, Escondido, Calif., backed away from its housing ordinance to
curtail leases to illegal immigrants and even agreed to pay $90,000 in
legal fees to plaintiffs challenging the law.
Last summer, a federal court slapped down an attempt by
Hazleton, Pa., to penalize employers and landlords who hire and lease
to illegal immigrants. Hazleton had been hit by an influx of illegal
immigrants and victimized by some of their shocking crimes.
But in August, Newark, N.J., no stranger to violence, was
shaken by the brutal murder of several college-bound teenagers who were
harmlessly enjoying music at a playground. The victims were black, and
the perpetrator was an illegal immigrant from Peru who had been
previously charged with raping a 5-year-old girl but had been released
despite his obvious illegal presence in this country.
Another imported crime is driving the wrong way on highways,
with headlights turned off, in order to escape detection while
smuggling drugs or people. Several deadly crashes resulting from this
practice have been reported.
The American people's outrage at violations of the law by
illegal immigrants was heard loud and clear by the U.S. Senate when it
defeated the amnesty bill last year. Now, even judges may be getting
the message. In December, a federal judge in Oklahoma upheld an Oklahoma
law requiring state contractors to determine and verify the immigration
status of new hires. U.S. District Judge James H. Payne threw out a
legal challenge to the law.
In January, U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber emphatically
ruled against illegal immigrants who had sued to overturn a similar
ordinance enacted by Valley Park, Mo., a town near St. Louis. The court
upheld the ordinance, which was directed at employers who were hiring
illegal immigrants.
The third strike against illegal immigrants came in February
when U.S. District Judge Neil V. Wake rejected each and every argument
challenging a new Arizona law that imposes penalties on businesses that
knowingly hire illegal immigrants. He dismissed the claim that federal
law somehow ties the hands of state and local governments seeking to
protect their own citizens.
These three decisions in three different parts of the country
included both Republican- and Democratic-appointed judges. In the term
loved by the mainstream media, there is now bipartisan judicial support
for state and local legislation against illegal immigrants.
University of Missouri at Kansas City Law professor Kris Kobach
says these decisions give "a green light to other communities" seeking
to pass similar ordinances.
Hazleton, Pa., Mayor Lou Barletta vigorously supported his
city's ordinance cracking down on illegal immigrants. Despite being
vilified by liberal Pennsylvania newspapers, he won nearly 95 percent
of the vote in his Republican primary for re-election last year.
But that wasn't all. In the same election, Barletta also won
the Democratic nomination on a write-in vote, defeating the leading
candidate in the Democratic primary by a stunning 2-to-1 margin.
In the Arizona case, the court noted the research of George
Borjas, an economist at the Harvard University Kennedy School of
Government, who concluded that hiring illegal immigrants depresses
wages for legal workers because illegals accept lower pay without
benefits. Those hardest hit are uneducated legal workers, who in
Arizona alone lost $1.4 billion in 2006 in the form of lower wages.
The nine months between now and the November election give
states, cities and towns ample time to do what Congress has failed to
do: protect U.S. citizens against the lawless entry of illegal
immigrants. That means penalizing employers who hire illegal immigrants
and landlords who lease to them.
It is long overdue for public officials to rid the United
States of imported crimes and to stand up for legal workers, especially
the poorly educated ones who need an entry-level job to start building
their lives. Now that a green light has been provided by the courts,
states and cities should proceed full steam ahead to protect their
citizens from illegal immigrants.
By Phyllis Schlafly
Monday, March 3, 2008
A Pakistani immigrant, right, who didn't want to give his name, talks
to the media on Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2008, in Barcelona, Spain, about how
the police broke into his apartment on Jan. 19, arresting Rafqat Ali,
background right. Rafqat Ali, who was one of two men arrested by
Spanish police on Jan. 19 as terrorist's suspects and later released,
but Ali has accused police of beating him and holding him in a darkened
cell for hours. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
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Source : TownHall.com
Beware Democrats' Centralized Energy Control Scheme Are you one of those people thinking there may
be a positive “strategery” in enduring four years of President Barack
Obama? It will be such a disaster that it will inevitably lead to a
Carter-to-Reagan renaissance, right? Think again. We don’t have the
luxury. If you aren’t listening to what Obama and the Democrats are
saying about “Anthropogenic Global Warming” it may be time for you to wake up. My blood ran cold while reading the recently released “Climate Change Legislation Design White Paper”
prepared by the Democratically controlled U.S. House Committee on
Energy and Commerce. Ostensibly a discussion of the appropriate role of
each level of government in addressing climate change, the paper leaves
no doubt that the Democrats are committed to “a mandatory, economy-wide
climate change program” that mandates “the efficient use of government
and societal resources.” We’re not just talking curly fluorescent light bulbs here folks. This troubling paper finds that, “State, Tribal, and local programs could significantly improve the efficiency of societal
resources used to achieve the necessary greenhouse gas reductions.” In
other words, all of us advocates for protection of “societal resources”
(group-think for “private property”) should get our best grip because
more government “help” is on the way. One regulatory idea that excites the Democratic staff is that,
“Transportation emissions are highly correlated with vehicle miles
traveled (VMT), a parameter that state and local governments are
particularly well-positioned to affect.” Suggesting that mandatory
reduction of per-capita VMT would be an excellent experiment for local
government. Holy Cow! Thankfully, Rep. Joe Barton, R-TX,
the ranking member of the Committee, gets it. He has been a voice of
reason, even taking Speaker Pelosi to task for spending taxpayer
dollars to buy so-called carbon credits from the Chicago Climate
Exchange supposedly to offset carbon use at the Capitol. Even the Washington Post
eventually revealed the dubious nature of such programs. Barton
continues to point out the folly of crafting solutions before we know
the cause of climate change. If you think these ideas are only the exuberance of a handful of
liberal Democratic staffers, think again. Respected think tanks have
weighed in on this issue. The Council on Foreign Relations Independent
Task Force of Energy and U.S. Foreign Policy, chaired by John Deutch
and James R. Schlesinger, reports
that energy independence is unachievable without more government
intervention. As a result, the Task Force concludes that we must
embrace a “substantial federal excise tax on gasoline” to encourage
less driving, stricter CAFE standards, and cap gasoline consumption
adopting a system of tradable vouchers which would “redistribute income
among consumers.” That sounds like rationing, or worse. The report also notes that mandated shifts to mass transit could
reduce oil dependence. In my minds eye, I am seeing the first video out
of North Korea with masses of North Koreans walking in sub-freezing temperatures on sidewalks along roadways with no automobiles! At any rate, the report only acknowledges in passing that current
higher energy prices are “…unleashing remarkable forces for innovation
in this country. Entrepreneurs are seeking new ideas for products and
services, such as batteries, fuel cells and biofuels. Private equity
capital is seeking opportunities to invest in new energy
technologies….” Good God, is it “remarkable” to these folks that the
free market that has made America the greatest economy on earth is
actually capable of dealing with this issue if simply allowed to work? The Brookings Institution has joined in with “The Geopolitics of Energy: From Security to Survival”
heralding that we must “radically change” how we use and conserve
energy, stating that, “Avoiding destruction of the planet through the
emission of greenhouse gases is one of the most complex challenges … we
have ever created for ourselves. Our very survival is at stake.” Even though some conservatives may groan, McCain’s support for a reasonable “cap and trade” solution to limiting CO2 emissions is based on a free market approach. As McCain puts it, “The debate is between the carbon tax and cap and trade.” Obama’s support of a scheme that requires all industrial CO2
emitters to purchase a permit to do so, in essence a carbon tax,
signals his support for a more all-encompassing foray into centralized
energy control. The key issue is energy control. Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, a well respected anthropogenic global warming skeptic, wisely observes that,
say what you may about global warming consensus, “The power to tax and
ration energy is the power to control the world—to have life and death
control over every human being on the planet. No government should ever
have this power.” So, to those (Bill Cunningham and Ann Coulter included) who think a
little “dance with the devil” is not all bad, the prospect of very bad
climate change “solutions” over the next four years should bring them
back to reality.
By Johnnie B. Byrd
Monday, March 3, 2008
An
enormous iceberg (R) breaks off the Knox Coast in the Australian
Antarctic Territory, January 11, 2008. Australia's CSIRO's atmospheric
research unit has found the world is warming faster than predicted by
the United Nations' top climate change body, with harmful emissions
exceeding worst-case estimates. Picture taken January 11, 2008.
REUTERS/Torsten Blackwood/Pool (ANTARCTICA)
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If you have liberty you will have all the growth you want. America is about protecting our rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness (property). It's an individualist concept that makes Americans greatness. The idea that you can pursue your own life and values. The concept that life is important, that happiness is important.
If you want to make a moral argument, if you want to have a moral discussion, you have to give reasons. We need to have discussions based on reason and fact. Everyone needs to put on the table what their standards are. State why this is your standard and defend it. And if you can't, we're not having an intelligent discussion.
I'll tell you my standard. Human life and the needs of human
beings,
not just for survival but for flourishing and happiness. Humans are
basically producers, creators and not depending on other people
fundamentally. My goal is
for human life on Earth. Life is a process of self generating and self
sustaining action. Human being need values in order to keep living.
Life is seeking your purpose. Most importantly life is an individual
process a personal process. Morally this means we are all morally
equal. We are all beings with our own lives and our lives are our
own. We all have an equal need to gain values, we are all equally entitled to do what our lives require. But we must take responsibility
for our lives we must all make choices. To be human is to be
physical. To have needs like food, shelter, clothing and medicine. It
is also to be spiritual. With needs of conscienceness, like the need
for inspiration, meaning and knowledge. Life is to have social needs
that derive from the values we can get from others. Needs like
friendship, information and trade.
Bush believes in big government, in collectivism. He has funded religious organizations, taken over education and moved away from individualism. Bush doesn't talk about the proper role of government in society. He has taken liberty out of the discussion and replaced it with growth. The neo-conservatives and the left have the same philosophy. The neo-conservatives are nothing but big government advocates.
Business is based on the pursuit of self interest and personal happiness. The mind is a source of well being and the mind must be free in order to invent new products and services. When you have government intervention it discourages innovation, risk taking and obstruct the process of wealth creation.
Business and politics create the intellectual roots of statism.
There is risk in an increasingly mixed economy. The risk that politics
can corrupt and threaten business. Free individuals create wealth,
wealth, makes possible the creation of a middle class. The middle
class means people don't have to work from sun up to sun down. Some
will become entrepreneurs and that creates an even larger middle class
for the next generation. Entrepreneurs don't work hard for the money.
They work hard because they love what they are doing.
There is a need for recognition of individual human self interest.
The United States was founded on the idea that you had the right to
pursue life liberty and the pursuit of happiness (property). However,
there has grown the idea that if you do succeed shouldn't you be
helping others. Or even worse that the idea of individualism means do
what ever you want, reckless behavior, indulgence and not being
ethical. This translates to human beings as nothing but impulsive and
self indulgence.
What Americans do is use there minds to figure out how to use nature and resources to transform our environment for our own good. We need to look out for our own self interest, without using force against others, doing what we love in life guided by reason. Think of what the world would be like if everyone called on the best within them. This would be a world in which we could all be enriched, entertained and inspired by each other.
America is all about human liberty. The founders established for the first time in the history of the world a society whose government was founded on recognition of the inherent natural inalienable right of the individual. They established a constitution founded on the consent of the governed containing various constitutional checks on the power of government to prevent it from being abused. The founders understood, paradoxically, it was government which was created to protect or to secure individual rights which poses the greatest danger to them. The reason is the unique nature of political power. The government alone among all institutions in society may legitimately use force to achieve its ends. A good society would have few laws. Laws that were clear and respected by the people. Accordingly they sought to create a new science of politics that not only checked the power of government through the constitution but minimize the role of government to a few essential and legitimate functions.
The problem with the founders was they didn't know where to draw the line between the individual liberty and coercive power of law in the realm of economics. They didn't yet have a coherent theory of individual rights.
The political revolution was not accompanied by a revolution in moral philosophy. In the 1800's it was considered immoral to pursue one own self interest. Even if he did so in such a way as to not interfere with the equal freedom of others to do the same. To be moral one needs to sacrifice his own self interest to the needs of others.
At the same time civic virtue as consisting of the subordination of self interest to the public interest or common good, persisted in American political thought and American law.
These visions are hardly compatible with American capitalism, a free robust society of energetic enterprising individuals mutually profiting from each others pursuit of their own rational self interest, in fact they foster a hostile attitude towards commerce and commercial activity.
This mixed ideology in American political thought made possible the mixed economy of the 20th Century.
We need to reaffirm the commitment to individual rights and ground that commitment in a coherent theory of individual rights. The Constitutional protections of life, liberty and property have been insufficient to guard individuals from the tyranny of the so called " common Good" or "the public interest".
We need an ideal to struggle for like the morality of capitalism. The only moral system is capitalism because it protects mans mind, his only means of survival.
It's time to gather together people of like minds. Who believe in a core of truths to face the major problems that confront us. We are at an intersection of time with opportunity when we can make epoch change.
America is a unique and special nation. America was the first Republic with a Constitution that acknowledges that its citizens have rights. To be an American gives you a duty to preserve these rights for the next generation. I believe America stands for freedom that is why people have come here for two hundred years.
Each party has a coalition, each coalition has an agenda, and regardless of an individuals personal views, if a person is going to be a member in good standing of one party or another, he is by and large going to support that parties coalition and that parties agenda. Since having a majority in a state legislator or the federal legislator gives you control of the committees and subcommittees it's vital that your party be the majority party. With room for some descent among members of the party while still recognizing that the parties agenda will be supported and reinforced.
For the benefit of those that prefer the Republican agenda I urge you to vote the straight party ticket so that we can have a majority in the legislative bodies. Also vote for republicans in state wide offices like Governor since that Republican will be appointing like minded people to various cabinet post and commissions. This person will be more responsive to his coalition once in office. So vote straight party line in November.
There are some issues which must be addressed and I believe that the new media, the blogs, the Internet and talk radio can bring forth solutions to these critical problems.
When you hear the word progressive today it means liberal, although the left has varied away from the word liberal because it has received bad press. When you get right down to it progressive means progress on the road to socialism. Populism is often refereed to as the unfiltered opinions and passions of the masses and they should take precedence over the formal and informal republican institutions. You see so many politicians play to this anger and resentment, which is easily directed at superficial solutions in the name of let's help the people at the expense of the rich and powerful. In 2000 when Al Gore ran for President he had a populist theme to his campaign. He said " I'm for the people, they're for the powerful" They being the Republicans. It is this anthem of class war fare that has been used by populist and socialist since the French revolution.
Lou Dobbs has his definition of populism "support of the rights and the power of the people." He describes his brand of protectionism as economic nationalism. He resonates with peoples unfocused anger at simplistic bad guys with simplistic solutions. The political calculus of populism is very simple demonize the top 10% of the population as to rich and to powerful, those would be families that make over $100,000 per year, and pander to the votes of the other 90%. Attack over paid CEO's, because there are fewer of those than workers. Workers who are usually blue collar or union members. As if other people that work very hard and put in more hours each week, like a lot of people in management positions, are not workers. They are not owners they are employees. Workers has a more romantic ring to collectives, leftist and socialist. Rally against oil companies and HMO's, it's a sure fired political winner since everyone would like to pay less for gas and health care.
In order to sell this you have to convince the gullible and resentful that power is only exercised by the other side, which spends its money for only evil purposes. When Dems take money from the Hollywood left that is good money. Just like contributions from Bill Gates competitors lobbing for a justice department judgment against Microsoft. We saw that during the Clinton administration. When labor unions spend tens of millions of dollars in soft money to run TV ads attacking Republicans, that's good money. When George Soros spends millions to get Dems elected, as if he is not a fat cat and elitist, that is good money. That's money being spent in the public interest.
When Republicans and their supporters defend themselves that becomes a special interest. If corporate interest are so powerful why are corporate taxes the highest in the world in this country at 35%? Why have these all powerful corporations allowed price controls and so many regulations over the years? If the rich rule why do they pay an inordinate amount of income tax? While the bottom 50% pay almost nothing. Why are there death taxes? The rich can not rule. Money doesn't vote, people do. The rich are divided some are Dems and some are Republicans. It is only because there are enough non rich voters that want to become rich that socialism hasn't taken over.
The power of the poor and middle class can be measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars spent each year on public assistance and entitlement programs.
Businesses represent the producers interest in society, that is where all of our wealth comes from. Government does not create wealth, it only consumes and reallocate wealth. It would be preposterous if business didn't have a place at the public policy table since they represent the producer interest in society. Of course business interest have lobbies. So does the AARP, the teachers unions, the AFL CIO, trial lawyers, environmentalist, the ACLU, government employees union, mothers against drunk driving, NAACP, NOW, and gays just to mention a few. James Madison called this "the off setting multiplicity of factions" and they will always be with us. To hear the left you would think that business lobbies are the only lobbies that exist. That is preposterous. Very often businesses lobby for things that conservatives oppose. Like Agra business lobbing for price supports or more E-85 and ethanol.
Power takes many forms, influence is power. Leftist put down private interest in a market economy, while they relish power their side welds in controlling the major sources of public influence in our society. One of the major sources of public influence the left preside over and its agenda prevails in is public education, in higher education and in the culture of the liberal dominated major media. The culture of the dominate liberal mass media is just that liberal. While there is some conservatives, they are mostly on the opinion side. They identify that what they do is give opinions. The lefts domination is mostly on the so called news side. When you talk about ABC, NBC, ABC, NPR, or the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune this is the liberal mass media that writes editorials thinly disguised as news stories.. The left also dominate philanthropic foundations underwriting all kinds of collectivist causes. This is power
It's been a while since I posted thanks for hanging in there. McCain is the man and he is no conservative, but he could hold the Presidency for us.
I think it is time to really define conservatism and compare it to liberalism.
I want to start with excerpt's from conversations with Jonah Goldberg Los Angeles Times columnist, longtime contributing editor to the National Review, who has written Liberal Fascism: The Secret History Of The American Left From Mussolini To The Politics Of Meaning. JG: It certainly…I think it’s entirely fair for the arguments of the
book after, say, the first two chapters and the introduction, where
there, I try to place Nazism and fascism, in their classical
expressions in Europe, as left wing phenomenon. And then when I move to
America, I think you’ve pretty much gotten it right. HH:
“American liberalism is a totalitarian, political religion, but not
necessarily an Orwellian one. It is nice, not brutal. Nannying, not
bullying, but it is definitely totalitarian, or holistic, if you
prefer, and that liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is
beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to
what you say. Sex is political. Food is political. Sports,
entertainment, your inner motives and your outer appearances all have
political salience for liberal fascists.” Now Jonah, you probably have
taken a lot of bricks already, but that line, as well as the line about
the white men being the Jews of liberal fascism, are probably the two
that got you the most heat. Am I correct about that? JG: I would guess. I mean, it’s sort of, it’s kind of like picking
out which pieces of flak that caused the most damage when they hit me.
The conversation is with Hugh Hewitt.
HH:
Now obviously, this is a book of intellectual history, but it’s also a
romp through American and European history. And let’s begin with
fascism itself. It’s a particular style and structure of government,
and it’s got a history in the United States. And despite those sloppy
references to Bush-Hitler and the fascists of the right, et cetera, I
think the key to your argument is that the fascist tendencies have
overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, been on the left in America,
and that they were within the 20th Century Democratic Party,
and that those tendencies are alive and well today. Is that a fair
statement of sort of the arching theme of Liberal Fascism, Jonah
Goldberg?
HH: Well, let’s dive in so that people get a sense of this. This is way…we’re going to spend two hours on Liberal Fascism, America, and you’re still going to have to go and get the book and read deeply in it. But it’s also wonderfully written and funny and witty, and full of a lot of substantive arguments that you haven’t seen before, and a lot of history you need to know. Starting with, I think, one of the revelations I’m going to make sure that my law students know going forward, and this audience knows, is that fascism does not necessarily include anti-Semitism. It has, but Spain and Italy, before Hitler, were fascist, and they were not anti-Semitic, and I think this clears up a lot of misunderstanding of what you mean when you talk about fascism, Jonah Goldberg.
JG: That’s right. I mean, fascism comes of age much like nationalism, and the two were intertwined. And nationalism brings out the characteristics of a given people at a given time. And so when I say there’s an American fascism around the time of World War I, it’s bringing out American qualities. It’s not going to look like German fascism or Italian fascism, because America is different than these places. And similarly, that’s one of the reasons why I go through Italy, and I point out that the Italians simply weren’t an anti-Semitic people, and Jews were in fact overrepresented in the Italian Fascist Party from its founding until 1938, when basically, the Nazis forced the Italians to kick their Jews out. And the story of Italian heroism, even after 1938, in trying to save Jewish lives, has been totally airbrushed from the popular understanding of the history of fascism and of World War II. Not a single Jew of any nationality was sent from Italy, or from anywhere under Italian control, to the concentration camps until 1943, when the Germans, in effect, invade Italy and take it over. And that’s when the bad stuff happens to Jews in Italy, and Italian-occupied areas. And in fascist Spain, nothing bad happened to the Jews. The safest direction to walk in Europe when the Germans start coming after the Jews is south, not north.
G: Well, there are a bunch of different arguments. I mean, basically, the fundamental argument is I argue that in Western civilization, there was what I call a fascist moment. And you know, if people don’t like the word fascist, we can put it aside for a second and call it a collectivist moment. But there was this moment where the idea of laissez-faire capitalism seemed to have died. The idea of liberal democracy and individualism seemed to have been discredited. George Bernard Shaw, Mussolini, all these guys, they referred to, they kept using the phrase ‘a putrifying corpse’, that the classical liberalism of the 19th Century was over, done with, and what was needed was a new era of statism. And this was the motivating passion of intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic. And deeply aiding this idea was the birth of philosophical pragmatism coming from William James. William James basically tries to marry…
HH: You’ve got to explain to people who William James is.
JG: Sure. William James is technically the founder of American pragmatism, hugely important American philosopher. And pragmatism, basically, all it tried to do was say that all the old rules, all the old dogmas of classical liberalism, of Newtonian physics, all that, they could all be thrown by the wayside, and that truth was now relative, and that we could define truth by what James called cash value. And we now lived in a universe with the lid off, is what James liked to say. And what James and Nietzsche in Europe, and others, what they basically did was they were overturning the settled authority of philosophy, and basically saying that men could will any reality they wanted. And in many ways, what fascism is, is a marriage of James’ will to believe with Nietzsche’s will to power. And it’s not a coincidence that Mussolini often cited William James as one of the three most important philosophers in his life.
HH: Jonah, at the risk of doing something that will have program directors across the United States screaming at me, I want to talk about Rousseau. This may in fact be the first time…
JG: (laughing)
HH: …ever on talk radio that Rousseau has been brought up. But I don’t know how you get to fascism unless you cover Rousseau to the French Revolution, and then on to the branches in Europe and America. And basically, it’s Rousseau’s radicalism which unleashed the whirlwind on the West.
JG: Right, I mean, and there are two ways to talk about this. There’s the intellectual history, which I think is what you’re getting at, where basically it goes French Revolution…the French Revolution, I argue, is the first fascist revolution. It merges nationalism with populism. It tries to replace God with the state. You have these intellectual revolutionaries who use terror and violence to remake society and start over at year zero. They create a secular religion out of politics, where they change the traditional Christian holidays to state holidays. And all of this gets replayed in Nazi Germany, and fascist Italy, and in the Soviet Union. But I think there’s an important point to be made, which is that this, it’s not necessarily that the fascists of Nazi Germany were inspired by Rousseau, it’s that the same thing was happening again, that they were following the same sort of Rousseauian path. And Rousseau, as a philosopher, he basically gives word to a desire that beats in every human heart, to create a tribe out of society, to create, to impose this notion of the general will, where anybody who deviates from what the collective thinks he should do is a heretic or a traitor, to sanctify politics. And that’s what inspired the French revolutionaries. That’s what they took from Rousseau. And in many ways, that’s what people like Mussolini and Hitler took from the French Revolution, is this same sort of burning desire to create a religion of the state. And we see the same thing that happened in the French Revolution replay itself in Germany, and to a lesser extent, replay itself in fascist Italy.
HH: And you know, it’s the same temptation over and over again, and it’s one abroad in the land right now, which is why I want to pause on this, which is Rousseau believed that man was good, you know, that the state came along, or that society came along and screwed things up, but that actually, that men were innately good. And that’s simply not a conservative view, Jonah Goldberg. It’s anti-conservative. It’s also anti-theology in most senses.
JG: Right. I mean, I think the fundamental difference, the difference that defines the difference between American, Anglo-American conservatives and European welfare states, leftists or liberals, is Locke versus Rousseau. Every philosophical argument boils down to John Locke versus Jacques Rousseau.
HH: Yup.
JG: Rousseau says the government is there, that our rights come from the government, that come from the collective. Locke says our rights come from God, and that we only create a government to protect our interests. The Rousseauian says you can make a religion out of society and politics, and the Lockean says no, religion is a separate sphere from politics. And that is the defining distinction between the two, and I think that distinction also runs through the human heart, that we all have a Rousseauian temptation in us. And it’s the job of conservatives to remind people that the Lockean in us needs to win.
HH:
You also write on Page 55, “What Hitler got from Italian fascism was
the importance of an idea that would arouse the masses.” And you go on
to just chart, he was a man of the left again and again and again, and
he was also an anti-capitalist at crucial moments. JG: That’s right. I mean, at some point, it seems entirely fair to
take 50% of the name that makes up Nazi seriously. The national
socialists were socialists. They believed in socialism. The speech that
converts, that woos Adolf Hitler to the German Workers’ Socialist Party
was titled “By What Means Shall Capitalism Be Eliminated?” Hitler talks
about it in Mein Kampf. He explains the Nazi Party flag, which we’ve
all seen in the movies as this giant red flag with a white disc in the
middle…
HH: Next hour, we’re going to focus more on American history and the current situation of the Democratic Party and the left wing of the United States. But we’re getting there this hour. And we started with one of the reasons so much anger at Jonah is the fact that he’s replacing Hitler where Hitler needs to be on the ideological spectrum, not as a right wing dictator, but as a left wing dictator. Quoting now, “For decades, the left has cherry picked the facts to form a caricature of what the Third Reich was about. The very large and substantial leftist and socialist aspects of Nazism were shrunk to the status of trivia, the obsession of cranks and Hitler apologists. The Nazis,” Jonah writes, “rose to power, exploiting anti-capitalist rhetoric they indisputably believed. And for these reasons, Hitler deserves to be placed firmly on the left, because first and foremost, he was a revolutionary. Broadly speaking, the left is the party of change, the right is the party of the status quo. On this score, Hitler was in so sense, way, shape or form, a man of the right.” Now Jonah, this particular assertion on your part, how much of the opposition to your book has come out of this assertion?
JG: You know, a lot. I mean, there’s this real reluctance from people…the left loves having Hitler as a cudgel to use against the right. And so, you know, a lot of the response has been Goldberg can’t be true, because everyone knows that we get to use Hitler. And we get to use Hitler against our enemies, and it’s outrageous to sort of upset that apple cart. But I want to add one quick point about that, is that it’s not just…I mean, I think the socialism part alone should settle the argument in a lot of ways, but it’s important to point out it’s not just socialism. American conservatism, as you know, or Anglo-American conservatism, rests on essentially two points. On the one hand is the free market, limited government, anti-socialism belief in entrepreneurialism and all the rest. And the second part of it is an affinity for tradition, for traditional religion, orthodox religion, Christianity and the rest. And Hitler despised all of those things. He despised not only sort of the Manchester liberalism of free markets, but he also hated orthodox Christianity. He hated, he thought Christianity was a foreign import, that it ruined Germany, which had a more pure, pagan, Earth-bound faith. He hated…the one thing he liked the social Democrats for was that they got rid of the monarchy. He hated the aristocracy. He hated the established institutions at universities. He hated the experts, all of that. In every way, he was a radical that we would say, just as a Martian vis
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