Teaching freedom

Another of my favorite writers who writes way better than I do.

Bill Whittle defends the Second Amendment.  Actually, he defends an armed population as not just a right but a responsibility of free people.  Oh, and he defends the concept of free people.  In fact he pretty much defends the whole gamut of conservative positions, including pointing out that freedom is messy.

The one point he misses (it was a little outside the scope) was that while tolerance of some level of messiness is necessary for a society to remain free, it would be possible to reduce that messiness by teaching responsibility in a more organized way.  Like shooting classes in public schools.  (Oh, just imagine the angst that would cause in the communist teacher’s labor mafia.)  Likewise, the zero tolerance of teenage drinking should be reconsidered.  The best way to teach kids to drink responsibly is to have them start at home.  Instead, the prohibitionists and overzealous prosecutors put people in jail for letting the kids have a sip of wine at dinner, which in all likelihood does more harm to the child and wrecks the family for precisely what?   Heck, I had to send my daughter to France (no drinking age there) so she could imbibe (not actually the only reason.  It was a school sponsored trip.).  Surprise!  No harm done!

This leads to the conclusion that the libertarians are more correct than I used to think they were.  I went to college in Illinois when the drinking age there was 19.  We had a pub on campus.  A real pub, that served beer.  I would challenge anyone to prove that we drank more than at many schools today that supposedly prohibit it.  The First Daughter says alcohol flows pretty freely where she goes to school.

So what is the best way to teach being free?  Being raised in a permissive libertarian society where responsibility is taught in an organized manner?  Or by prohibiting everything and promoting rebellion and chaos?

What he said…

Richard Fernandez at PajamasMedia is the kind of blogger I would like to be but never have the time.  Take this post on the Catholic Church’s opening to disaffected Anglicans.

Not mentioned was that the seeds of the Anglican Church’s demise may very well have been laid at the time of its very creation as a political ploy by a power crazed king to pretend to be a Church comparable to Roman Catholic church.  Despite all of the political intrigue and governance over large tracks of Europe for most of a millenia, the Roman Catholic Church was created as a purveyor of Faith and since the beginning of the 20th Century and the loss of the Papal lands has largely returned to that role.

It would be interesting to see a major reunification of Christianity after centuries of the Reformation.  A Re-Reformation.  Will the Catholic Church continue to offer sanctuary to the smaller christian sects, drawing them back to the Mother Church the way the townspeople would race into the castle when enemies threatened?  Would it open its arms to the Jews who’s ancestry begat Christianity?  To use Fernandez’s Tolkien analogy, will an alliance of Judeo-Christian traditions face off against the Statists and Muslims at the foot of Mount Doom to preserve the classical liberal traditions of the Western World?

I am not religious, but I strongly support religious expressions, especially Christianity.  I suspect that is the only way that the inalienable liberties, the founding principles of the Republic, who’s only defense is that they are God given, will survive.  Neither the Muslims or the Statists/humanists believe in them.  There will be no defense of them there.

Boycotting the MSM

Nothing will bring the Main Stream Media to its senses like zero viewers, assuming that anything will.

The counterargument that “We should watch to see what the Democrats are saying.” has a fatal flaw.  The influence of the MSM comes from its viewership.  It doesn’t matter how many MSM critics watch and criticize.  The only statistic that shows up is how many people watched and in the media world, that is power*.  I kept pointing this out to the wife who would be watching the evening news when I got home.  Fortunately, she finally got frustrated enough with them to turn them off.

Likewise, watching the Democratic mouthpieces in the press in order to “broaden one’s perspective” is the same as voting for a candidate one completely disagrees with with the intent of “influencing them”.  It’s like a conservative voting for a socialist will make the socialist more moderate.  It doesn’t happen that way.  The rationale behind a vote does not matter.  Only the vote does.  A vote for a candidate with a socialist record simply reinforces the socialist behavior.

Oh, yeah.  Feel free to let the MSM’s advertisers know how you feel.  All things being equal, always go with the company that doesn’t have big adds on the Leftist press channels.  And then let the other company know why you didn’t buy their product.  The Socialist Thug in Chief tried to lead a boycott against Glenn Beck.  Glenn Beck has viewers.  He’ll have advertisers.  A constant erosion of support for financing anti-American media outlets will gnaw away at the MSM’s foundations.  And really, private companies advertising on leftist MSM channels basically amounts to them financing their own executioner.  These people are at best socialists and at worst outright communists.  These advertisers are giving money to people who happily support nationalization of whole industries (except of course, their own).

One of the more activist conservative sites (you know, like a site that actually DOES something) should start a list of Leftist sponsoring companies.  Who are the advertisers financing the Leftist Mouthpieces?  If there is already one, could somebody point me to it.

* Based on this definition, this site couldn’t produce enough power to ruffle the cilia on an amoeba. <sigh>

Character IS an issue

There is a long term contrast between the Democrats and the Republicans.  Republicans often run people strong on ‘character’.  The Democrats always respond with, “Talk about issues!”   Well folks, we are getting a four year lesson teaching that character IS an issue.

Any bets that the next time the Democrats go, “Talk about issues!” the response is going to be more along the lines of, “Oh, no.  We’re not falling for that one again.”

Oh, my!

Claire McCaskill voted against cloture in the Senate on the Obamacare Bill (aka, Trojan the healthcare industry takeover horse).   The opponents didn’t even need a fillibuster.  Reid didn’t even get a simple majority.

I’ll claim whatever credit I can for convincing the Good Senator to avoid the Dark Side of the Force.

I sent her another note.

Sen. McCaskill;

Credit where credit is due.

Thank you for voting against cloture on the Obamacare bill.

There are real reforms that can be applied to healthcare.  None of the bills currently in Congress address any of them.  This train wreck needed to stop.

very respectfully;

a Tea Partier

BTW: I could have signed it Mickey Mouse because you have to enter all of your personal information before it will go through.

Divide and rule is the rulz

(Eyes still haven’t cleared up yet.  But I at least have an excuse for my atrocious spelling.  I CAN’T SEE!)

Lumberjack and Are We Lumberjacks points out that the Democrats are playing identify politics with states.  The “Healthcare Reform Bill” aka Trojan the Health Industry Takeover Horse, would apply differential taxation to different states.

I may be falling for their plan.  It’s diabolical and it’s working.  Even though I pointed this out long ago, I’m succumbing to their diabolical plan.

I’m running out of outrage.

The Democratic Party, the Party of Slavery, the Party of Socialism, the Party that brought us Civil War in the 19th Centuray and Jim Crow in the 20th, the Party of division, segregation, persecution and discrimination is now going to segregate the country not by race, or ethnicity, or orientation, or gender, or any of the other ways they’ve traditionally parsed out the country into mutual hate groups.  They’re going to apply different tax rates in different states.  Lower rates for politically privileged states?  Meaning higher taxes for…what…predominantly Republican states?  Ok.  Whatever.

Maybe the Democrats have a death wish.  Maybe they were driven so insane with power in January that they feel some compulsion to throw themselves into the sea like lemmings.  Because for a Party of Whores, I don’t think you could pay them to commit the outrages they are committing against the country.  How blind do they have to be to not see the reaction all of this is going to cause?  Of course their only competition is the milquetoast pantywaist Democrat Lite Party.  Hmmmm.  I think I see where they get the feeling of invincibility.

Yeah, but…

(I just got back from the optometrist where I got my pupils dilated.  I’m trying to type this through the fog.)

From Moe Lane, Rasmussen polling shows Republicans making big gains in the “Who do you trust on…” questions.  But trusting more, is not the same as actually trusting.  Their just looking better than the Obama Democrat Socialist Party.  And what I trust right now is that if the current crop of Republicans take over Congress in 2010, they may be out by 2012 because all they can claim is that they are not as socialist as the Democrats.   They have yet to stand up for anything except, “We’re not as bad as them.”

The Republicans are desparate…should be desperate…for a leader to stand up with a new Contract With America.  It won’t be Huckabee.  He’s a big government, big spender populist.  He would get pummeled with his record in Arkansas if he were to try it.  Romney has the same problem.  Neither of them can point to a record of fiscal conservatism or anti-all empowered government.  The Tea Partiers would turn on them quickly.

Gee, who could bear that standard?

Bill Hennessy at St. Louis Tea Party Coalition sees the same problem.

A Ray of Hope

I was cogitating the other day about the sorry state of the country.  Most weighty was the King Kong sitting in the room – the $60+Trillion unfunded liability for Social Security and Medicare.  By any reasonable measure or accounting standard, the United States is already bankrupt.  Through decades of unremitting effort, the Democrats appear to have succeeded in achieving the goal of leftists everywhere – the destruction of the United States as a major power.

How easy it is to fall into the funk the Democrats want us in.  Because that is the goal of socialism.  To strip the population of any sense of self-worth so the sheeple will slink around satisfied with the crumbs of a life the Democrats deem appropriate to the plebeian classes.  Destroy their work ethic so the people will be willing to sit around awaiting they dole of government cheese.  There is no hope of a better life.  Birth if you can survive the abortion mills, life at a government job jockeying for political power because there is no wealth to be made, pensioned off to a government apartment until you become a burden on society and then set adrift on an ice flow.  No improvement.  No change.  Excitement is considered usavory…you might get hurt and become a burden on society.  Days passed trying to endure crushing hopelessness with drugs, alcohol and sex, the opiates of the people in broken societies.  Ever wonder why ‘liberals’ are so into freedom of anything that has to do with sex?  It’s to get people so preoccupied with it that they don’t know that their souls are being stolen.  Everything becomes a gray sameness so that everybody can be ‘equal’.  A living death.  Socialist countries have very high suicide rates for a reason.  It is the only escape from a life stripped of humanity.

So anyway.  There I was cogitating the future and it came to me.  The Democrats appear to have put the United States on a death spiral.  The massive unfunded liability will have to be payed with higher taxes.  Higher taxes means depression of the productivity.  Nobody’s going to work hard to have all their money stolen.  Depressed productivity reduces GDP which means there is less to tax.  So taxes go up.  And around it goes until everything stops because the Democrats are too stupid or venal to get off the merry-go-round.  Their only metric is how much power they have.

There is a simple logical exercise to deal with problems when a solution doesn’t provide the desired result.  Try something else.  Simplest is to just do the opposite.  Then other flavors of different can be tried.  But the opposite is sufficient in this case.  What is the opposite of the societal death the Obama Democrats are sending us to?  Growth.

This approach is danced around by conservatives all the time.  Lower taxes, smaller government, less regulation, drill baby drill, yada-yada,…(nodding off…can’t keep eyes open…)  It is answering the need to the REAL energy crisis in the United States.  The shortage of enterprise.

Everything that the conservatives said above is a part of it.  But it needs to be packaged.  Not as in “We support free enterprise, but…”  What needs to be resurrected is the real old fashioned American Spirit.  Growth.  Not “We’re going to support growth sufficient to maintain our standard of living.”  None of this socialist, “sustainability” crap.  I’m talking Hong Kong levels of growth.  I’m talking about racing the Chinese to the top ‘cuz their catching up.  It needs a catchy slogan:

Growth

Grow

Grow US.

A sign that can be put in a yard or bumber that says, “Get out of the way, the locomotive is pick’n up steam.”

The United States can deal with that $60 Trillion unfunded liability the old fashion way.  We can earn it.

Tea Party Patriots (updated)

Looks like the National Tea Party site.  Still investigating.

Q: When will people start running for office as Tea Partiers?

(update) A: Apparently now.

Since third parties tend to fair so badly, when will people start running as Tea Party Republicans or Tea Party Democrats?  A Tea Party Republican would be a conservative differentiated from the religious conservative wing or the Democrat Lite ‘moderate’ wing.  A Tea Party Democrat would just be lonely.

It’s not paranoia…

…if somebody is actually out to get you.  And it isn’t foolishness if you intentionally do something monumentally stupid with malice and forethought.

John at Powerline engages in a little Hopey-Changey in regards to Obama’s surrender of the missile shield to Russia that wasn’t even pointed at Russia.  He is hoping that Obama wasn’t a fool for giving up such a bargaining chip and actually got some unpublicized deal for it even though the Russians, who are playing him for a fool have come out more belligerent than ever.  But Obama didn’t shut down the missile shield to appease the Russians.  He didn’t shut down the missile shield as a bargaining ploy.  He shut it down to satisfy the demands of liberal dogma that had opposed it on some sense of principle since its inception.

It is the Left’s desire to destroy the power of the United States.  Always has been.  And Obama is all about Leftist dogma.  Stopping the missile shield, a) gives up a defensive position without a fight thereby weakening the US military posture, b) alienates allies in order to isolate the US from its usual circle of friendly nations, and c) emboldens Obama’s circle of dictator acquaintances.  In Obama’s mind, giving up the shield without quid pro quo is a feature, not a bug.