In recent days, I have speculated that the election results might be directly related to the last few generations of publicly educated Americans. I was publicly educated. But in those days, public education was mostly administered by local authorities and all of it at the state level or usually below. Today, much of the content and funding is mandated or bequeathed from “higher” (yes, it’s a bit of an oxymoron) domains, at the state level or above. Before the election we saw discussion with people who intended to vote for Obama who could not explain much of anything that he specifically proposed to do. He would bring “change” and “hope.” I think it very likely that many will “hope” they can find another job and “change” will define much disposable income. I heard other interviews where Obama supporters lauded elements that were attributed to Obama that were actually descriptive of McCain’s campaign.
Since the election, we’ve seen the results of a 12 question survey commissioned by John Ziegler and administered by the Zogby polling apparatus . That poll showed that a tiny minority (around 2%) of Obama voters obtained perfect or near-perfect scores on this test which “gauged their knowledge of statements and scandals associated with the presidential tickets during the campaign.” For the most part, they knew little about the Obama-Biden events and proposals, but most could identify the statements circulated about McCain and Palin, irrespective of their factuality.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has a web site entitled, “Our Fading American Heritage.”
They have put together a quiz of basic American civics. This is not extraordinarily difficult stuff. I have not intensely studied American History (In studying the history of Western thought, I actually got a clearer sense of World History. I’m guessing I fared relatively well because A) I’ve been inclined to pay attention to such things as much or more than amusing myself with television or computer games, and B) such basics were more essential to a basic education in my school days in the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s which now are fading into a relatively distant and increasingly irrelevant past.
But anyway, I was uncertain on one question about FDR’s response to a Supreme Court ruling of the unconstitutionality of some of his “New Deal” proposals. I couldn’t rule out all four multiple choice answers. But, most of the questions were much easier. Anyway, non-American civics or history student that I am, I scored a high “A.”
However, the average score of over 2500 people who were administered the quiz nationwide, was 49%: that’s failing and emphatically so. 71+% failed with a score below 59%. Less than 1% scored and “A.” Less than 31/2% scored an “A” or “B.” Less than 11% scored “C” or above. Over 89% scored a “D” or “F.” Many are musing on how the valuing of certain values can be recovered. Information like this makes that a considerably more vexing question.
Here is the quiz itself .
Here are major findings by demographic breakdown
Here is the report card from the site.
Pass the Bromo-Seltzer…
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Absolution at a Terrible Price?
These days I’m sitting around imagining how we night avert a cruel descent of our culture into both a moral and social cesspool, and quickly considering whether such reflection might not be utterly futile. For many years, George Will has written of a “coarsening” of the culture. Today, we might justly wonder if such language would amount to a enormous understatement.
Characteristic of the elation of many people at the election of Barack Obama was the recurring camera shot of an aging Jesse Jackson in tears. Now, Jesse Jackson has been derided as a “race pimp” and a “shakedown artist,” certainly not without cause. But, irrespective of his deepest motivations, Jackson was not alone among elder blacks who were overcome at the events in the light of their long experience with racial tension in America. Many years ago, I asked a conservative black friend how frequently he actually experience racial discrimination in our society. He responded that the last time he was reproached as a “nigger” was that very day in a parking lot. I think such things come from a tint minority in America, today. But, such a minority can and surely will shout abuse out car windows. Anyway, a black man of Jesse Jackson’s age and many like him doubtless genuinely feel the reprieve from a lifetime in which they saw and experienced the disfavor that was once widely accorded blacks in America. So have their children who have heard the stories and though maybe have experienced something different, have never seen it realized in such high hanging fruit as the US presidency. Similarly, American youth prized the opportunity to overthrow the most high-profile closed door of the history they have heard and read of. The plain fact is that the election could not have been won without a strong backing from white Americans generally who wanted to realize the ultimate absolution for prejudice they may have practiced or carried the blame for in public forums. I’m just a middle-aged, middle-class white guy, but I think I get it, and I understand and appreciate it.
Understand, I loathe the fixation on “race” that has pervaded social discussion for the entirety of my now 51-year-old lifetime. Strictly speaking, that distinction is a delusion. There is only one human race. Color does not imply another kind in humans any more than in animals. For the little that it’s worth, the black and white couples that I have known have produced children that were not only whole and healthy but extraordinarily beautiful.
Many will claim that “progressive” (now there’s a linguistic misappropriation) social and political action has induced racial conciliation. Now, many events indicate that propagaing an ethos via popular culture does move the disposition of the masses. There’s the aforementioned enthusiam for “green” technology as well as the enthrall with Barack Obama for whom the organs of popular culture purred. Mike Huckabee spoke of the popularly induced sentiment against smoking and for seat belts and motorcycle helmets.
But, I don’t need textbooks and magazines and television networks to inform me that racism is wrong. Traditional vehicles of decency and wisdom have done that for many millenia. Ironically, the much derided traditions of Judaism and Christianity were quite explicit about that from their foundations, irrespective of how individual adherents may have defied the instruction. I am a Christian. Christianity even today flourishes all around the world and I have watched the decency and fraternity of Christians from every culture and ethnicity. The first catalogued Christian outreach and conversion, noted in the book of Acts, was of an Ethiopian man. The earliest books of the heritage of Judaism (which Christians obviously recognize) instructed repeatedly to treat “the alien” with grace and decency. In that regard, we of those traditional faiths can say to the secular moralists, “Welcome to basic human civility.” By the way, I have long since voted for a black presidential candidate: a conservative one, of course.
If it genuinely works for them, a feeling of absolution is a fine thing, and I’m glad people may feel bertter. But in this case, such feeling was paid for at a potentially terrible high price. Unless conservatives can do something extraordinary, it is reasonable to assume that that price will be WAY TOO HIGH. Notwishstanding his ringing rhetoric (almost a requiste to leading a people to a dramatic move…or mice into a river, or lemmings off a cliff), in the content of his relatively unguarded words, Barack Obama is an exceptionally liberal man. A liberal friend, after asscertaining that I wasn’t only a cold, selfish, leg-biting, hair-pulling conservative, wondered whether I just had an evidently socially-induced need to be identified as a “conservative.” I care little about labels and am not known for a fear of disagreeing with anyone, my Christian and conservative fellows included. And this particular liberal is an exceptionally gracious individual, whom I like as well as some of my conservative friends and more than many of them. He’s also a very literate (a professional writer, in fact) person to whom one needn’t mind one’s diction.
But, call it what you like, to me conservatism is not about disposition or anyone’s dogma. It is about some very fundamental beliefs about objective obligations and human nature and its inclinations in interaction. It isn’t about what I like. It’s about what I believe are the facts of reality and what works. My conservatism isn’t about self-interest or identity. It’s about conviction rooted deeply in my perspective that could seemingly only be overthrown by an infection of chemical insanity.
Chief among those obligations and primary in America’s founding documents, is the right to life. And, as I always clarify, this is not just for the protection of those whose right might be violated. It’s about the civil integrity of the society that reveres that right. God takes care of the victims of abortion. In the big picture, these victims whose deaths like our own is inevitable in any case, are only spared te turmoil of passing through this earthly vale of tears. On the other hand, the society which practices, countenances and assimilates the practice of abortion…of the selfish putting of perceived personal amusement and convenience over the dignity of human life, including ONE’S OWN OFFSPRING! …is in a very bad way: civilly sick and declining. Only those of us who have read the musings of some morally impaired but logically consistent academics who have proposed a grace period to decide whether to keep a born baby alive can imagine a historic posture on abortion more extreme than is Barack Obama’s. Obama has expressed his eagerness to sign a federal Freedom of Choice Act. He has opposed a partial-birth abortion ban of the sort passed nationally and in every state where it was posed. As an Illinois state senator, Obama even opposed, multiple times mind you, a bill to require life sustaining medical attention for infants born alive after a failed abortion. In that solidly Democratic body, he was the only senator to do so and spoke out in his opposition. I’m not even fully in accord with all boilerplate Republican approaches to it. But on this morally and civicly crusial matter, a politician could really not get more extreme. But, that is far from all.
It is a great irony to me that many voters idenitified Obama as more able to deal with America’s economic difficulties. After the election, a large majority expressed confidence that Obama can help our economic situation. That makes no sense and is only one indication that our communications and education establishment have tremendously narrowed the American public’s thinking and historical awareness. That ignorance is particularly accute among our youngest and most media-dominated voters. The week before the election, Peggy Noonan said on “This Week” of these 18, 19, 20-year-olds that, “Not only have they never met a payroll, some of them have never been on a payrol. They live a lovely abstraction from reality.” Lovely or not, anyone who doesn’t understand that taxing and spending does not boost the economy, particulrly in economically difficult times, lives an abstraction from reality. Actually, I’m sure that Obama and most Democrars do understand this. But, they don’t care. Not only will these prescriptions not help, they are usually disingenuous. I think they don’t care because they want to keep power, and you keep power by keeping people down and throwing them crumbs. Obama will not improve the economy with the ideas he voiced in the campaign. John Kennedy was a Democrat who stimulated the economy. And, he did it with policies exactly the opposite of what Obama has proposed.
The tale is that Republicans favor the very wealthy. In fact, I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard “tax cut(s) for the rich,” referring to an across-the-board tax cut. If there is a 5% tax cut, who gets the bigger dollar cut, one who makes $30,000 or one who make $1,000,000. The first pays $1500 less. The second pays $50,000 less. That’s called tax cuts for the rich. But, Republicans rarely talk about the fact that the one who gets the $50,000 tax cut either spends it and makes work for vendors and their employees, invests it and makes work for people, or saves it and provides liquidity for lenders. Those things provide jobs for the former level of worker. When you tax the higher earner, you deprive the lower earner of work. That’s how an economy works. If government takes the money, the work is not provided and government passes a part (after it has taken a part) to those without the work.
That leaves out the fact that expanding government usually sides with large businesses, subsidizing them and maintaining their market advantage. This is what is known in command economies as “industrial policy.” That is economic policy for the entrenched wealthy and entrenched government. The victims are the rest of the peons who might otherwise aspire to achieve a level of prosperity, but in this systemwill not even have o, tax, ccasion to think about it. Recently, government has massively invested in formerly private large industries. I quickly predicted that automobile companies would follow. And so they are now lining up and in office Obama intends to oblige. Everyone wonders how Obama might implement these things, given the current economic conditions. But they can be the excuse for these actions, especially in light of the recent unprecedented federal intrusion into markets under a Republican administration and the decade of outrageous spending that it played a major part in.
One can hope that judicious people might soon gain office and to some great extemt extract government from the domain of commerce. But, I can’t imagine how we might repeal the damage that an Obama-appointed judiciary may well inflict on society for the remainder of my lifetime.
Characteristic of the elation of many people at the election of Barack Obama was the recurring camera shot of an aging Jesse Jackson in tears. Now, Jesse Jackson has been derided as a “race pimp” and a “shakedown artist,” certainly not without cause. But, irrespective of his deepest motivations, Jackson was not alone among elder blacks who were overcome at the events in the light of their long experience with racial tension in America. Many years ago, I asked a conservative black friend how frequently he actually experience racial discrimination in our society. He responded that the last time he was reproached as a “nigger” was that very day in a parking lot. I think such things come from a tint minority in America, today. But, such a minority can and surely will shout abuse out car windows. Anyway, a black man of Jesse Jackson’s age and many like him doubtless genuinely feel the reprieve from a lifetime in which they saw and experienced the disfavor that was once widely accorded blacks in America. So have their children who have heard the stories and though maybe have experienced something different, have never seen it realized in such high hanging fruit as the US presidency. Similarly, American youth prized the opportunity to overthrow the most high-profile closed door of the history they have heard and read of. The plain fact is that the election could not have been won without a strong backing from white Americans generally who wanted to realize the ultimate absolution for prejudice they may have practiced or carried the blame for in public forums. I’m just a middle-aged, middle-class white guy, but I think I get it, and I understand and appreciate it.
Understand, I loathe the fixation on “race” that has pervaded social discussion for the entirety of my now 51-year-old lifetime. Strictly speaking, that distinction is a delusion. There is only one human race. Color does not imply another kind in humans any more than in animals. For the little that it’s worth, the black and white couples that I have known have produced children that were not only whole and healthy but extraordinarily beautiful.
Many will claim that “progressive” (now there’s a linguistic misappropriation) social and political action has induced racial conciliation. Now, many events indicate that propagaing an ethos via popular culture does move the disposition of the masses. There’s the aforementioned enthusiam for “green” technology as well as the enthrall with Barack Obama for whom the organs of popular culture purred. Mike Huckabee spoke of the popularly induced sentiment against smoking and for seat belts and motorcycle helmets.
But, I don’t need textbooks and magazines and television networks to inform me that racism is wrong. Traditional vehicles of decency and wisdom have done that for many millenia. Ironically, the much derided traditions of Judaism and Christianity were quite explicit about that from their foundations, irrespective of how individual adherents may have defied the instruction. I am a Christian. Christianity even today flourishes all around the world and I have watched the decency and fraternity of Christians from every culture and ethnicity. The first catalogued Christian outreach and conversion, noted in the book of Acts, was of an Ethiopian man. The earliest books of the heritage of Judaism (which Christians obviously recognize) instructed repeatedly to treat “the alien” with grace and decency. In that regard, we of those traditional faiths can say to the secular moralists, “Welcome to basic human civility.” By the way, I have long since voted for a black presidential candidate: a conservative one, of course.
If it genuinely works for them, a feeling of absolution is a fine thing, and I’m glad people may feel bertter. But in this case, such feeling was paid for at a potentially terrible high price. Unless conservatives can do something extraordinary, it is reasonable to assume that that price will be WAY TOO HIGH. Notwishstanding his ringing rhetoric (almost a requiste to leading a people to a dramatic move…or mice into a river, or lemmings off a cliff), in the content of his relatively unguarded words, Barack Obama is an exceptionally liberal man. A liberal friend, after asscertaining that I wasn’t only a cold, selfish, leg-biting, hair-pulling conservative, wondered whether I just had an evidently socially-induced need to be identified as a “conservative.” I care little about labels and am not known for a fear of disagreeing with anyone, my Christian and conservative fellows included. And this particular liberal is an exceptionally gracious individual, whom I like as well as some of my conservative friends and more than many of them. He’s also a very literate (a professional writer, in fact) person to whom one needn’t mind one’s diction.
But, call it what you like, to me conservatism is not about disposition or anyone’s dogma. It is about some very fundamental beliefs about objective obligations and human nature and its inclinations in interaction. It isn’t about what I like. It’s about what I believe are the facts of reality and what works. My conservatism isn’t about self-interest or identity. It’s about conviction rooted deeply in my perspective that could seemingly only be overthrown by an infection of chemical insanity.
Chief among those obligations and primary in America’s founding documents, is the right to life. And, as I always clarify, this is not just for the protection of those whose right might be violated. It’s about the civil integrity of the society that reveres that right. God takes care of the victims of abortion. In the big picture, these victims whose deaths like our own is inevitable in any case, are only spared te turmoil of passing through this earthly vale of tears. On the other hand, the society which practices, countenances and assimilates the practice of abortion…of the selfish putting of perceived personal amusement and convenience over the dignity of human life, including ONE’S OWN OFFSPRING! …is in a very bad way: civilly sick and declining. Only those of us who have read the musings of some morally impaired but logically consistent academics who have proposed a grace period to decide whether to keep a born baby alive can imagine a historic posture on abortion more extreme than is Barack Obama’s. Obama has expressed his eagerness to sign a federal Freedom of Choice Act. He has opposed a partial-birth abortion ban of the sort passed nationally and in every state where it was posed. As an Illinois state senator, Obama even opposed, multiple times mind you, a bill to require life sustaining medical attention for infants born alive after a failed abortion. In that solidly Democratic body, he was the only senator to do so and spoke out in his opposition. I’m not even fully in accord with all boilerplate Republican approaches to it. But on this morally and civicly crusial matter, a politician could really not get more extreme. But, that is far from all.
It is a great irony to me that many voters idenitified Obama as more able to deal with America’s economic difficulties. After the election, a large majority expressed confidence that Obama can help our economic situation. That makes no sense and is only one indication that our communications and education establishment have tremendously narrowed the American public’s thinking and historical awareness. That ignorance is particularly accute among our youngest and most media-dominated voters. The week before the election, Peggy Noonan said on “This Week” of these 18, 19, 20-year-olds that, “Not only have they never met a payroll, some of them have never been on a payrol. They live a lovely abstraction from reality.” Lovely or not, anyone who doesn’t understand that taxing and spending does not boost the economy, particulrly in economically difficult times, lives an abstraction from reality. Actually, I’m sure that Obama and most Democrars do understand this. But, they don’t care. Not only will these prescriptions not help, they are usually disingenuous. I think they don’t care because they want to keep power, and you keep power by keeping people down and throwing them crumbs. Obama will not improve the economy with the ideas he voiced in the campaign. John Kennedy was a Democrat who stimulated the economy. And, he did it with policies exactly the opposite of what Obama has proposed.
The tale is that Republicans favor the very wealthy. In fact, I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard “tax cut(s) for the rich,” referring to an across-the-board tax cut. If there is a 5% tax cut, who gets the bigger dollar cut, one who makes $30,000 or one who make $1,000,000. The first pays $1500 less. The second pays $50,000 less. That’s called tax cuts for the rich. But, Republicans rarely talk about the fact that the one who gets the $50,000 tax cut either spends it and makes work for vendors and their employees, invests it and makes work for people, or saves it and provides liquidity for lenders. Those things provide jobs for the former level of worker. When you tax the higher earner, you deprive the lower earner of work. That’s how an economy works. If government takes the money, the work is not provided and government passes a part (after it has taken a part) to those without the work.
That leaves out the fact that expanding government usually sides with large businesses, subsidizing them and maintaining their market advantage. This is what is known in command economies as “industrial policy.” That is economic policy for the entrenched wealthy and entrenched government. The victims are the rest of the peons who might otherwise aspire to achieve a level of prosperity, but in this systemwill not even have o, tax, ccasion to think about it. Recently, government has massively invested in formerly private large industries. I quickly predicted that automobile companies would follow. And so they are now lining up and in office Obama intends to oblige. Everyone wonders how Obama might implement these things, given the current economic conditions. But they can be the excuse for these actions, especially in light of the recent unprecedented federal intrusion into markets under a Republican administration and the decade of outrageous spending that it played a major part in.
One can hope that judicious people might soon gain office and to some great extemt extract government from the domain of commerce. But, I can’t imagine how we might repeal the damage that an Obama-appointed judiciary may well inflict on society for the remainder of my lifetime.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The History of Social Progress and Fading American Ideals
I've made progress but am still working on my thoughts about the terrible price in this particular case of the understandable elation of electing our first black president. But today, I was forwarded a link to an article at Front Page: Obama's Road To Damascus , which is about first signals of imprudent foreign policy.
But in my anxiety about what may well be afoot, I replied about the precarious state of America's exceptional and advantageous place in the world.
-----------------
First of all, the link didn’t work (Page not found). But I was able to look the article up. I’ve listened to a lot of conservatives who are girding to confront what Obama and a liberal Congress may present and who feel that conservatism will review itself and make a come back, which I’m certain it will…a comeback of sorts.
But I am very concerned about the future of America. It is rather a big trick to collapse a social system in quick fashion and yes, other countries have taken steps back in a conservative direction in the face of the dysfunction that liberal policies have brought about. Yes, it’s almost beyond doubt that liberal expanding and intruding government will see token pullbacks in the face of the problems that will be the consequence of liberal policies. But in nations where its best moments might have been described as, “Two steps forward and one step back,” in the larger picture, it has always been that way in a inexorable progress to the left.
I am deeply troubled about might be distilled to a couple of points:
1. Perhaps the most notable pullback in Western history brought the election of Margaret Thatcher in Britain which had like much of Europe followed a route of socialism. Thatcher served as British Prime Minister of Britain from 1970 to 1990. Like the American President Ronald Reagan, she was able to implement some measures to encourage economic activity and bring some relief of the stagnation brought by liberal policies.
But, I recently heard discussion of how she had hoped to repeal the implementation which the socialist trend had implemented. But, that was not about to happen. Similarly in the US, Reagan was unable to staunch the growth of spending and government expansion. Tax reduction brought a doubling of revenues to the federal treasury, due to invigorated economic activity. But on budgetary terms, that was to no avail as spending tripled in the same period of time. Social Security and Medicare have divorced children from responsibility to their own parents. Parents care for their children from birth to near or beyond twenty years of age. But when parents age, there is no responsibility to reciprocate. On the whole, the government social system has not only morally maimed children, but has also relegated the elderly to a pittance in terms of living standard. But the famous “third rail of politics that is the FICA system is not only intractable, it is not even open for discussion. Bush (again) brought up Social Security, but it was summarily blown out of the water, and Bush slinked back to his corner.
Once a people has become dependent on a system, it would appear that only a revolution can change it, which incidentally has never happened.
2. All discussion of the benefit or detriment of the process of government socialization leave out what is clearly to me an essential point. The socializing nations have been to some considerable extent parasitic on a freer American society. Even beyond the fact that American power has repeatedly in the past come to defend other nations to weak to defend themselves. America has also been the seedbed of much of the technological advancement and education the fruit of which all nations have benefited from. But such advancement will be decidedly impaired once the chains of government are applied to American society. Sure, as has happened in Europe, government will necessarily in multivariate ways subsidize the largest established corporations in America. But, the seed of innovation is usually in startup commercial efforts, who are suppressed or obstructed by regulation or the subsidy of big business. So, if America is a last holdout for private liberty and the economic vitality that affords an overwhelming military, what does that mean not just for America, but for the world?
The respect for the sanctity of human life which is at the precipice of not just neglect but being utterly forgotten, Is at the foundation of the civil social character which enables both the defense of alien peoples and the conduct of civil society.
But in my anxiety about what may well be afoot, I replied about the precarious state of America's exceptional and advantageous place in the world.
-----------------
First of all, the link didn’t work (Page not found). But I was able to look the article up. I’ve listened to a lot of conservatives who are girding to confront what Obama and a liberal Congress may present and who feel that conservatism will review itself and make a come back, which I’m certain it will…a comeback of sorts.
But I am very concerned about the future of America. It is rather a big trick to collapse a social system in quick fashion and yes, other countries have taken steps back in a conservative direction in the face of the dysfunction that liberal policies have brought about. Yes, it’s almost beyond doubt that liberal expanding and intruding government will see token pullbacks in the face of the problems that will be the consequence of liberal policies. But in nations where its best moments might have been described as, “Two steps forward and one step back,” in the larger picture, it has always been that way in a inexorable progress to the left.
I am deeply troubled about might be distilled to a couple of points:
1. Perhaps the most notable pullback in Western history brought the election of Margaret Thatcher in Britain which had like much of Europe followed a route of socialism. Thatcher served as British Prime Minister of Britain from 1970 to 1990. Like the American President Ronald Reagan, she was able to implement some measures to encourage economic activity and bring some relief of the stagnation brought by liberal policies.
But, I recently heard discussion of how she had hoped to repeal the implementation which the socialist trend had implemented. But, that was not about to happen. Similarly in the US, Reagan was unable to staunch the growth of spending and government expansion. Tax reduction brought a doubling of revenues to the federal treasury, due to invigorated economic activity. But on budgetary terms, that was to no avail as spending tripled in the same period of time. Social Security and Medicare have divorced children from responsibility to their own parents. Parents care for their children from birth to near or beyond twenty years of age. But when parents age, there is no responsibility to reciprocate. On the whole, the government social system has not only morally maimed children, but has also relegated the elderly to a pittance in terms of living standard. But the famous “third rail of politics that is the FICA system is not only intractable, it is not even open for discussion. Bush (again) brought up Social Security, but it was summarily blown out of the water, and Bush slinked back to his corner.
Once a people has become dependent on a system, it would appear that only a revolution can change it, which incidentally has never happened.
2. All discussion of the benefit or detriment of the process of government socialization leave out what is clearly to me an essential point. The socializing nations have been to some considerable extent parasitic on a freer American society. Even beyond the fact that American power has repeatedly in the past come to defend other nations to weak to defend themselves. America has also been the seedbed of much of the technological advancement and education the fruit of which all nations have benefited from. But such advancement will be decidedly impaired once the chains of government are applied to American society. Sure, as has happened in Europe, government will necessarily in multivariate ways subsidize the largest established corporations in America. But, the seed of innovation is usually in startup commercial efforts, who are suppressed or obstructed by regulation or the subsidy of big business. So, if America is a last holdout for private liberty and the economic vitality that affords an overwhelming military, what does that mean not just for America, but for the world?
The respect for the sanctity of human life which is at the precipice of not just neglect but being utterly forgotten, Is at the foundation of the civil social character which enables both the defense of alien peoples and the conduct of civil society.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Keyes on color/re Obama
A friend passed me the response of Alan Keyes, to whom he had made an inquiry about the response of black Americans to Barack Obama’s election. I supported Keyes twice as a Republican. I remember in Keyes’ campaign in 1996 a few reports had broken out about Keyes’ handling of campaign personnel. Now in terms of trustworthy testimony and documentation, such reports were no more reliable than the detestable smears seen recently about Sarah Palin, now identified as falsehoods. Those Palin reports were accounted to “anonymous” sources within the McCain campaign, though it has been speculated that another potential 2012 Republican candidate might have motivation to drop such slander in the Palin pool. I can tell you that Mike Huckabee would not stoop to such a thing.
Anyway, at the time I said that you can be perceived as inflexible when you almost always think you are the smartest person in the conversation. In Keyes’ case, people might respond negatively because he almost always actually is the smartest person in the conversation. I sorely regret that Keyes was repeatedly spurned by a feckless Republican Party even while he maintained his fidelity to the party (actually its founding ideals) after I had abandoned the party in exasperation, finally in his 2004 campaign for the US Senate from Illinois against Barak Obama, where the Illinois Republican Party establishment that had invited Keyes abandoned him for the tall grass after media labeled him extreme. This year, The Republican Party nominated a demonstrable Republican apostate in John McCain, who has opposed the majority of the party any number of times, often holding out his “independence” as a virtue. Ironically this year it was Keyes who finally resigned the party while I returned after an 8-year absence. I supported McCain not because of his consistency (I have often called him “philosophically incoherent”), but because he has been historically strong where government has been weak all of my lifetime, even in The Republican Party after it gained complete control 8 years ago: on outrageous spending and government expansion.
I foresaw this failure when Bush was first nominated. I live in Texas, where he was governor. When Bush was elected in 2000 I said “Leviathan gets a night manager.” It surely did. Bush and a Republican Congress grew government at the steepest rate since Lyndon Johnson and The Great Society in the 60’s. Did this make him liked better by Democrats? Of course not: to them he’s evil. Some even called him an ideological extremist; a laughable proposition. Notwithstanding McCain’s infidelities, I also saw him as a decent and noble man. He was also pro-life. I questioned the stoutness and clarity of Bush’s weakly confessed pro-life confession: “I prefer life.” That suspicion was affirmed when, with a Republican Congress, two judges were put on the court that defended a partial-birth abortion ban as not violating a legitimate Roe v. Wade.
After his long experience of Republican abuse, Keyes employed his rhetorical skill to become increasingly shrill, even losing the nomination of The Constitution Party to Chuck Baldwin who is no mental match for Keyes. That’s not a knock against Baldwin as much as an acknowledgment of Keyes’ unique facility. Keyes finally accepted the nomination of the newly organized America’s Independent Party. I haven’t looked, but he surely finished 6th or worse with a vote in the tens or low 1000 thousands. One of my favorite talk show hosts, Michael Medved throws Keyes in with the rest of the third-party clowns, mocking his fervent style of speech. It’s very sad. Keyes fervency is genuine. So is the perplexity with which the general public meets it. In retrospect, I think even his high-flying rhetoric shot over the heads of the great majority of the public. But if The Republican Party had seized on the opportunity of a brilliant and articulate black man, Keyes probably would have maintained his feet and the first black president might have been a Republican 8 or 12 years ago., in which case, this past week’s potential disaster for the unborn, the economy and defense of America and its values might have been averted. Keyes wouldn’t have needed 96% of the black vote. 15 or 200% would probably have been adequate and just as decisive. Would Jesse Jackson have cried, then?
Keyes’ response is below.
Barak Obama is black like me only in the sense that we both have dark skin- I.e., a purely physical characteristic. To expect me to identify with him on that basis would require that I validate the concept of race ( i.e., grouping people based on physical characteristics). I have written and said over the years that I reject this concept, and that the only way to overcome racism is to reject the concept of race.
Because human beings are not stones, but persons, our communities are not the result of merely physical characteristics. The very idea of race in this sense is a modern lie tied to the dogma of evolution. I believe that human communities reflect the moral nature of our humanity. They are formed therefore by adherence to common moral principles, as that adherence is developed and reflected in the course of shared historical experience. Understood in this proper sense, Obama and I are not part of the same ethnic group. My heritage includes the experience of slavery, the moral sensibility to injustice and to the importance of respecting the premises of human dignity and freedom. Obama looks back to a heritage that probably includes forbears who were part of the Afro-Islamic groups of Africans who were active in the slave trade. By itself that might be of only superficial importance, but his views on the fundamental moral issues of the day (like the taking of innocent human life) mean that he rejects the premise of God-given moral equality for all men that I hold to be the true soul of the black American identity. The notion that I should take special pride in the election of such a man simply because of his skin color implies that I put the false and humanly contrived category of race above the category of common moral principle that is the true basis for human community. I do not and never will.
The tragic irony is that people whose feelings and reactions are shaped by racial solidarity implicitly validate the concepts that were the basis for racist views and discrimination. They implicitly reject the hope that Martin Luther King expressed that someday people would be judged for the content of their character not the color of their skins. As they do so, they destroy the moral substance that is the true and righteous legacy of the black American heritage in order to revel in the triumph of the very racism that was used to justify the enslavement of my ancestors. This is a desperately sad self-contradiction. I will be no part of it.
This quiet validation of the premise of racism is far from being a good thing . It betrays the suffering and nobility of all those black Americans who fought for justice not only for themselves, but for all, by appealing to the truth of the ideals stated in the Declaration of Independence. This betrayal tips the scales of history back in the direction of regimes based on inequality, elitism and oppressive abuses of power.
I have by the way made these points many times, starting with the Senate race in Illinois.
Godspeed,
Alan
Anyway, at the time I said that you can be perceived as inflexible when you almost always think you are the smartest person in the conversation. In Keyes’ case, people might respond negatively because he almost always actually is the smartest person in the conversation. I sorely regret that Keyes was repeatedly spurned by a feckless Republican Party even while he maintained his fidelity to the party (actually its founding ideals) after I had abandoned the party in exasperation, finally in his 2004 campaign for the US Senate from Illinois against Barak Obama, where the Illinois Republican Party establishment that had invited Keyes abandoned him for the tall grass after media labeled him extreme. This year, The Republican Party nominated a demonstrable Republican apostate in John McCain, who has opposed the majority of the party any number of times, often holding out his “independence” as a virtue. Ironically this year it was Keyes who finally resigned the party while I returned after an 8-year absence. I supported McCain not because of his consistency (I have often called him “philosophically incoherent”), but because he has been historically strong where government has been weak all of my lifetime, even in The Republican Party after it gained complete control 8 years ago: on outrageous spending and government expansion.
I foresaw this failure when Bush was first nominated. I live in Texas, where he was governor. When Bush was elected in 2000 I said “Leviathan gets a night manager.” It surely did. Bush and a Republican Congress grew government at the steepest rate since Lyndon Johnson and The Great Society in the 60’s. Did this make him liked better by Democrats? Of course not: to them he’s evil. Some even called him an ideological extremist; a laughable proposition. Notwithstanding McCain’s infidelities, I also saw him as a decent and noble man. He was also pro-life. I questioned the stoutness and clarity of Bush’s weakly confessed pro-life confession: “I prefer life.” That suspicion was affirmed when, with a Republican Congress, two judges were put on the court that defended a partial-birth abortion ban as not violating a legitimate Roe v. Wade.
After his long experience of Republican abuse, Keyes employed his rhetorical skill to become increasingly shrill, even losing the nomination of The Constitution Party to Chuck Baldwin who is no mental match for Keyes. That’s not a knock against Baldwin as much as an acknowledgment of Keyes’ unique facility. Keyes finally accepted the nomination of the newly organized America’s Independent Party. I haven’t looked, but he surely finished 6th or worse with a vote in the tens or low 1000 thousands. One of my favorite talk show hosts, Michael Medved throws Keyes in with the rest of the third-party clowns, mocking his fervent style of speech. It’s very sad. Keyes fervency is genuine. So is the perplexity with which the general public meets it. In retrospect, I think even his high-flying rhetoric shot over the heads of the great majority of the public. But if The Republican Party had seized on the opportunity of a brilliant and articulate black man, Keyes probably would have maintained his feet and the first black president might have been a Republican 8 or 12 years ago., in which case, this past week’s potential disaster for the unborn, the economy and defense of America and its values might have been averted. Keyes wouldn’t have needed 96% of the black vote. 15 or 200% would probably have been adequate and just as decisive. Would Jesse Jackson have cried, then?
Keyes’ response is below.
Barak Obama is black like me only in the sense that we both have dark skin- I.e., a purely physical characteristic. To expect me to identify with him on that basis would require that I validate the concept of race ( i.e., grouping people based on physical characteristics). I have written and said over the years that I reject this concept, and that the only way to overcome racism is to reject the concept of race.
Because human beings are not stones, but persons, our communities are not the result of merely physical characteristics. The very idea of race in this sense is a modern lie tied to the dogma of evolution. I believe that human communities reflect the moral nature of our humanity. They are formed therefore by adherence to common moral principles, as that adherence is developed and reflected in the course of shared historical experience. Understood in this proper sense, Obama and I are not part of the same ethnic group. My heritage includes the experience of slavery, the moral sensibility to injustice and to the importance of respecting the premises of human dignity and freedom. Obama looks back to a heritage that probably includes forbears who were part of the Afro-Islamic groups of Africans who were active in the slave trade. By itself that might be of only superficial importance, but his views on the fundamental moral issues of the day (like the taking of innocent human life) mean that he rejects the premise of God-given moral equality for all men that I hold to be the true soul of the black American identity. The notion that I should take special pride in the election of such a man simply because of his skin color implies that I put the false and humanly contrived category of race above the category of common moral principle that is the true basis for human community. I do not and never will.
The tragic irony is that people whose feelings and reactions are shaped by racial solidarity implicitly validate the concepts that were the basis for racist views and discrimination. They implicitly reject the hope that Martin Luther King expressed that someday people would be judged for the content of their character not the color of their skins. As they do so, they destroy the moral substance that is the true and righteous legacy of the black American heritage in order to revel in the triumph of the very racism that was used to justify the enslavement of my ancestors. This is a desperately sad self-contradiction. I will be no part of it.
This quiet validation of the premise of racism is far from being a good thing . It betrays the suffering and nobility of all those black Americans who fought for justice not only for themselves, but for all, by appealing to the truth of the ideals stated in the Declaration of Independence. This betrayal tips the scales of history back in the direction of regimes based on inequality, elitism and oppressive abuses of power.
I have by the way made these points many times, starting with the Senate race in Illinois.
Godspeed,
Alan
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Gullible Nation Should Get Serious
I listened to my favorite thoughtful and gracious conservative talk show hosts, today. I fear they were more than a bit more sanguine than I feel. Bill Riggs also has put a resigned and constructive-going-forward semi-smile on it.
The depth of my discomfort is not specifically with the threat of Barack Obama personally, especially when surely Republicans will mount a filibuster against most extreme liberal measures, such as card-check, The Fairness Doctrine, and even huge tax increases.
But what is most sobering is that a majority of Americans were incapable of what ought to be the most common-sense understandings: that Barack Obama manipulated his audiences as necessary, changing his punch lines when moving from circumstance to circumstance and audience to audience. Perhaps there is an audience for the contemporary equivalent of the old medicine-show (booze-spiked) tonic peddlers. I’m not saying that Republicans and conservatives (not always coincident) should not approach Barack Obama with genuine positiveness about what we truly believe will help America.
But it’s true in fact for example, that large companies are marketing "green" products to "help the environment" and forestall global warming. Hey, I agreed with Huckabee's steering of the issue to the simple call to be stewards of the environment. Surely we know from our own history and the local legacies of reckless Soviet industry, that we can scar and tarnish the land with careless human commerce. However as to anthropogenic global warming, I see only frantic and cynical posturing on the part of a few to mobilize the many: a lynch mob on steroids.
On that subject I say, "Don't listen to me. Don't listen to any organization or individual, conservative or liberal or ostensibly otherwise. Go directly to the historical and scientific data. Not anyone's presentation of it: the historical facts, the numbers, and the graphs. I have. There was for a relatively long time a very slow global warming trend, as there have been warming and cooling trends through history, mostly evidently owing to solar activity. In fact, for the past few years, average temperatures have actually fallen. But the idea that carbon dioxide (a not only common but ubiquitous and essential element) in the atmosphere poses an imminent threat to life itself simply is not in the data. Human caused global warming is a secularist sin account and a proposed consequent of global calamity is a secular apocalypse.
But back to the point: Is this vulnerability to the simplest manipulation the result of or even related to an increasingly federally-dominated education system (in which G.W. Bush played a greatly facilitating role, by the way)? Are we becoming a nation of dupes? Our primary preoccupation not with the sober essentials of life but with amusements such as television, music, I-pods, and video games (not bad things; just not primary) hasn’t helped. You may not want to listen to a curmudgeon like me. But if you can spare a few minutes, aside from reflecting on what we curmudgeons are talking about with regard to essential principles like life, liberty and property, you should also consider that Europe is awash and near drowning in an Islamic influx and growing domination. Do a little study of Geert Wilders’ description of this European problem and the Islamic aggression that is only fainter in US due to relative distance, which may only offer us a little more time. You can fin Geert Wilders and his short movie, “Fitna,” on the web. He is a lead character in a coming December meeting to discuss opposition to “Islamicization.” It will convene in Israel, which Wilders describes as not the unique target but only the leading edge Of Islamic aggression against Western Democratic Judeo-Christian values. On the other hand, you could just turn the music up louder.
The depth of my discomfort is not specifically with the threat of Barack Obama personally, especially when surely Republicans will mount a filibuster against most extreme liberal measures, such as card-check, The Fairness Doctrine, and even huge tax increases.
But what is most sobering is that a majority of Americans were incapable of what ought to be the most common-sense understandings: that Barack Obama manipulated his audiences as necessary, changing his punch lines when moving from circumstance to circumstance and audience to audience. Perhaps there is an audience for the contemporary equivalent of the old medicine-show (booze-spiked) tonic peddlers. I’m not saying that Republicans and conservatives (not always coincident) should not approach Barack Obama with genuine positiveness about what we truly believe will help America.
But it’s true in fact for example, that large companies are marketing "green" products to "help the environment" and forestall global warming. Hey, I agreed with Huckabee's steering of the issue to the simple call to be stewards of the environment. Surely we know from our own history and the local legacies of reckless Soviet industry, that we can scar and tarnish the land with careless human commerce. However as to anthropogenic global warming, I see only frantic and cynical posturing on the part of a few to mobilize the many: a lynch mob on steroids.
On that subject I say, "Don't listen to me. Don't listen to any organization or individual, conservative or liberal or ostensibly otherwise. Go directly to the historical and scientific data. Not anyone's presentation of it: the historical facts, the numbers, and the graphs. I have. There was for a relatively long time a very slow global warming trend, as there have been warming and cooling trends through history, mostly evidently owing to solar activity. In fact, for the past few years, average temperatures have actually fallen. But the idea that carbon dioxide (a not only common but ubiquitous and essential element) in the atmosphere poses an imminent threat to life itself simply is not in the data. Human caused global warming is a secularist sin account and a proposed consequent of global calamity is a secular apocalypse.
But back to the point: Is this vulnerability to the simplest manipulation the result of or even related to an increasingly federally-dominated education system (in which G.W. Bush played a greatly facilitating role, by the way)? Are we becoming a nation of dupes? Our primary preoccupation not with the sober essentials of life but with amusements such as television, music, I-pods, and video games (not bad things; just not primary) hasn’t helped. You may not want to listen to a curmudgeon like me. But if you can spare a few minutes, aside from reflecting on what we curmudgeons are talking about with regard to essential principles like life, liberty and property, you should also consider that Europe is awash and near drowning in an Islamic influx and growing domination. Do a little study of Geert Wilders’ description of this European problem and the Islamic aggression that is only fainter in US due to relative distance, which may only offer us a little more time. You can fin Geert Wilders and his short movie, “Fitna,” on the web. He is a lead character in a coming December meeting to discuss opposition to “Islamicization.” It will convene in Israel, which Wilders describes as not the unique target but only the leading edge Of Islamic aggression against Western Democratic Judeo-Christian values. On the other hand, you could just turn the music up louder.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
John McCain, George Bush and Huge Reasons To Fear a President Barack Obama And A Democrat Congress
John McCain, George Bush and Huge Reasons To Fear a President Barack Obama And A Democrat Congress
Posted by Larry Perrault at 3:52 PM 1 comments
Labels: abortion, cap. Obama, defense, economy, education, Foreign, freedom, judge, judiciary, marriage, McCain, Pelosi, Reid, Security, social, speech
John McCain, George Bush and Huge Reasons to Fear a President Barack Obama and a Democrat Congress
I’m trying to make this catalog of casualties as succinct as possible. But perhaps more important is the comparison of Bush and McCain. Barack Obama has chained McCain to Bush. But, that’s a political lie of a man who has been a detestable posturer and manipulator. Perhaps the only way that McCain has resembled Bush is in his failure to crystallize the striking difference in the American mind. Peggy Noonan commented on the Obama hope of getting a huge turnout of new young voters: “These 18, 19 and 20 year old voters not only have not met a payroll, many have never been on a payroll. They live a lovely abstraction from reality.”
Hey, let’s be honest: in 2000, the only one of 14 Republican candidates whom I favored less than Bush was McCain. But now, I think the biggest difference may be the assertiveness that earned McCain the “maverick” label. I thought he was ambiguous about conservative principle and noisy about it. Bush on the other hand was ambiguous and quiet about it. Bush was cooperative with advice, but ineffective in making a case. Exhibit A) Bush proposed a plan to save Social Security and Medicare, which everyone knows (and now imminently) is in for crisis. Democrats predictably howled a scare about the venerable third-rail of politics. Bush couldn’t sell the problem, hung his head and went back into his hole. Bush weakly expressed his “preference” for life relative to the abortion issue. He couldn’t sell it (big surprise), hung his head and went back into his hole. A few years ago, Bush was apprised of potential problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and home mortgages. He presented a solution. Democrats denied the problem. Bush couldn’t sell it, hung his head and went back into his hole. These are just notable examples, but the consequence of the mortgage problem that became a crisis is the biggest reason the environment is so difficult for McCain and other Republicans today.
McCain has not been able to crystallize to the country what is the biggest and most consequential difference between him and Bush. Obama and Biden have hammered that there is little difference between them; even explicitly challenging that McCain could name one difference on economic policy. I think McCain should say that he respects Bush’s intentions for the country and his resolve in the Middle East (though he sometimes differed on tactics) but, the biggest difference IS on economic policy and it isn’t a small but a colossal one. Bush’s ineffectiveness in confronting the decades-old drift of government saw him and a Republican Congress to expand government at a rate not seen since Lyndon Johnson and a Democrat Congress, over forty years ago. Simply put, under McCain that wouldn’t have happened, nor probably the recent economic crisis. If he hasn’t sold that primarily, he has taken his eye off of the campaign ball.
But though hey were untethered by principle clarity, I also respect Bush’s intentions (I told you so’s aside), I never voted for Bush in either 2000 or 2004, and the aforementioned weaknesses were no surprise to me, a citizen of Texas where he was governor. But, philosophical difference notwithstanding, I’m voting (already have, actually) for McCain and with gusto and tearful prayer. His lifelong battle against unnecessary spending is a big reason. His character is another. I don’t have time to try to prioritize them, but they are all important. Here are ten reasons that Obama and a Democrat Congress would be a disaster:
1) A large reason is the recent massive insertion of the federal government into private commerce, administered by the Secretary of the Treasury? Bush’s Secretary of Treasury is bad enough. But O’bama’s Secretary of Treasury?” My blood runs cold. Even bigger, the federal government has just bought interest in the nation’s largest banks, not only insuring their accounts but insuring their businesses against failure, thus inviting reckless business practices. But even letting the federal nose in the door of the banking system is like leaving your children with a pedophile baby-sitter. Congress people with the ultimate source of
money under their noses? Democrats? Forget about it. They won’t even need to raise taxes for the money. After all, we are part OWNERS! As George Will said last week, “The assumption of all of this government injection into these industries is that it will be temporary and apolitical. Apolitical? Of course not!
There will be an irresistible urge to engage in industrial policy: for the government to pick winners….”
2) Economic Growth and Dynamism – Those who work for the largest corporations that can curry favor with the government will survive. But over 80% of Americans work for small and medium-sized businesses. Increased taxation and spending will mean unemployment (jobs lost or never materialized), inflation, and rising interest rates. Obama campaigns for poor and middle-class Americans. But ironically, those are exactly the ones who will be denied with the stagnation of smaller businesses and decreased potential for new ones. The very wealthy will be fine. They will be government’s pals. We have subsidized mega-businesses for a long time. The government has bailed out America’s largest insurance company and is a shareholder in its largest banks. On the horizon?: Under Democrats, I expect partial government ownership of auto makers and airlines, for starters. What will they do for smaller businesses? Zip. Many will be fried like ants under the government magnifying glass.
3) Freedom of Speech - The Fairness Doctrine, Political Speech and Union Card Check - Democrats in Congress are itching to regulate talk-radio. It’s the only forum they want to regulate and the only one that liberals don’t dominate. If you think that’s a coincidence, you might as well believe in the tooth fairy. Making talk radio stations equalize their time with liberal broadcasting that listeners won’t support, will just drive stations to change formats, killing talk radio. For
Liberals that would be victory. I would expect liberals to sanction what they would see as “politically incorrect speech, in the worst case even in churches and other religious forums. They are also waiting to remove the secret ballot from union votes, so workers are coerced to vote with union leaders.
4) Education – Greater Intrusion into the conduct and content of schools and Guaranteed Universal (Liberal) College Education. In the big picture, outside mathematics and the hard sciences, college education would be as blinkered as public grade schools, which may be a huge reason why Obama can mesmerize crowds with his extreme, dishonest and irresponsible rhetoric. And soon enough, college education would be similarly inadequate generally. A college graduate will be less literate than a high-school graduate 100 years ago.
5) Naive and Unprincipled Foreign Policy – Joe Biden said Obama would be tested. He will also be exploited by foreign agents. In the best case, that means little or no advancement in the world for the American values of liberty, equality, and human rights. In the worst case, it means physical danger for Americans and others.
6) Health Care – Barack Obama has been pretty vocal about universal health care for at least two years, as Democrats generally have been for many years. If Obama wins, they will have near total control, restrained only by the potential of Republicans to maintain a Senate filibuster. If they can’t, it’s coming. The reflexive response of a lot of people would be that universal health care would be a good thing. But, there are 2 VERY BIG problems. A) It poses another massive cost for an already overburdened country. And however that cost is paid; it will only continue to rise. As P.J. O’Rourke long ago said, “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it becomes “free.” But EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT, is the fact that if America follows other industrial nations in socializing medicine, the engine of medical progress will be doused. Today, other countries get the advantage of medical advances birthed in America.
When the incentive of private medical pharmaceutical and technological is removed, medical advances will be substantially slowed. There will be new drug and technological advances that never materialize. Personally with MS, that bodes poorly for new treatments. But, I’m only one guy with one problem.
Obviously, millions would suffer more than they otherwise might. The resources for research and development would be dramatically narrowed to beneficiaries of the National Institute for Health government bureaucracy that will itself absorb substantial resources.
7) Judges, Judges, Judges – In an interview recently published, Obama expressed his dissatisfaction with judicial failure to advance values beyond their constitutional duties. A court system populated with Obama nominees will impose all manner of contrived restrictions on all areas of society. The right to life will be dead for the balance of my lifetime and maybe permanently eviscerated. As I always say, that poses a fading of basic civility and consideration of others in all of American society.
8) ENDA/Gay Marriage – I don’t favor a Constitutional Amendment, but an Obama stacked judiciary will try to leverage the performance and recognition of homosexual marriage onto the entire country via the “full faith and credit” clause of The Constitution and that would be wrong. States should make and live with their own laws. And, homosexual marriage has failed on every ballot it has been tested, even in the most liberal states. In a few states, courts have defied the people’s will. An Obama-appointed Court would do that to the whole country.
9) Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid- A Democratic Congress – These people and their Congressional cohorts would legislatively ride roughshod over American society. If you think Barack Obama would stand in their way, you are deluded. John McCain would.
10) Abolih the Electoral College? - This is a wish that is occasionally voiced by liberals and posed in schools as a matter of voter equality. It would require a Constitutional amendment, so I don’t know if it could be pushed pat enough states to vote away their power. But it, as most other things, is being
Posted by Larry Perrault at 3:52 PM 1 comments
Labels: abortion, cap. Obama, defense, economy, education, Foreign, freedom, judge, judiciary, marriage, McCain, Pelosi, Reid, Security, social, speech
John McCain, George Bush and Huge Reasons to Fear a President Barack Obama and a Democrat Congress
I’m trying to make this catalog of casualties as succinct as possible. But perhaps more important is the comparison of Bush and McCain. Barack Obama has chained McCain to Bush. But, that’s a political lie of a man who has been a detestable posturer and manipulator. Perhaps the only way that McCain has resembled Bush is in his failure to crystallize the striking difference in the American mind. Peggy Noonan commented on the Obama hope of getting a huge turnout of new young voters: “These 18, 19 and 20 year old voters not only have not met a payroll, many have never been on a payroll. They live a lovely abstraction from reality.”
Hey, let’s be honest: in 2000, the only one of 14 Republican candidates whom I favored less than Bush was McCain. But now, I think the biggest difference may be the assertiveness that earned McCain the “maverick” label. I thought he was ambiguous about conservative principle and noisy about it. Bush on the other hand was ambiguous and quiet about it. Bush was cooperative with advice, but ineffective in making a case. Exhibit A) Bush proposed a plan to save Social Security and Medicare, which everyone knows (and now imminently) is in for crisis. Democrats predictably howled a scare about the venerable third-rail of politics. Bush couldn’t sell the problem, hung his head and went back into his hole. Bush weakly expressed his “preference” for life relative to the abortion issue. He couldn’t sell it (big surprise), hung his head and went back into his hole. A few years ago, Bush was apprised of potential problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and home mortgages. He presented a solution. Democrats denied the problem. Bush couldn’t sell it, hung his head and went back into his hole. These are just notable examples, but the consequence of the mortgage problem that became a crisis is the biggest reason the environment is so difficult for McCain and other Republicans today.
McCain has not been able to crystallize to the country what is the biggest and most consequential difference between him and Bush. Obama and Biden have hammered that there is little difference between them; even explicitly challenging that McCain could name one difference on economic policy. I think McCain should say that he respects Bush’s intentions for the country and his resolve in the Middle East (though he sometimes differed on tactics) but, the biggest difference IS on economic policy and it isn’t a small but a colossal one. Bush’s ineffectiveness in confronting the decades-old drift of government saw him and a Republican Congress to expand government at a rate not seen since Lyndon Johnson and a Democrat Congress, over forty years ago. Simply put, under McCain that wouldn’t have happened, nor probably the recent economic crisis. If he hasn’t sold that primarily, he has taken his eye off of the campaign ball.
But though hey were untethered by principle clarity, I also respect Bush’s intentions (I told you so’s aside), I never voted for Bush in either 2000 or 2004, and the aforementioned weaknesses were no surprise to me, a citizen of Texas where he was governor. But, philosophical difference notwithstanding, I’m voting (already have, actually) for McCain and with gusto and tearful prayer. His lifelong battle against unnecessary spending is a big reason. His character is another. I don’t have time to try to prioritize them, but they are all important. Here are ten reasons that Obama and a Democrat Congress would be a disaster:
1) A large reason is the recent massive insertion of the federal government into private commerce, administered by the Secretary of the Treasury? Bush’s Secretary of Treasury is bad enough. But O’bama’s Secretary of Treasury?” My blood runs cold. Even bigger, the federal government has just bought interest in the nation’s largest banks, not only insuring their accounts but insuring their businesses against failure, thus inviting reckless business practices. But even letting the federal nose in the door of the banking system is like leaving your children with a pedophile baby-sitter. Congress people with the ultimate source of
money under their noses? Democrats? Forget about it. They won’t even need to raise taxes for the money. After all, we are part OWNERS! As George Will said last week, “The assumption of all of this government injection into these industries is that it will be temporary and apolitical. Apolitical? Of course not!
There will be an irresistible urge to engage in industrial policy: for the government to pick winners….”
2) Economic Growth and Dynamism – Those who work for the largest corporations that can curry favor with the government will survive. But over 80% of Americans work for small and medium-sized businesses. Increased taxation and spending will mean unemployment (jobs lost or never materialized), inflation, and rising interest rates. Obama campaigns for poor and middle-class Americans. But ironically, those are exactly the ones who will be denied with the stagnation of smaller businesses and decreased potential for new ones. The very wealthy will be fine. They will be government’s pals. We have subsidized mega-businesses for a long time. The government has bailed out America’s largest insurance company and is a shareholder in its largest banks. On the horizon?: Under Democrats, I expect partial government ownership of auto makers and airlines, for starters. What will they do for smaller businesses? Zip. Many will be fried like ants under the government magnifying glass.
3) Freedom of Speech - The Fairness Doctrine, Political Speech and Union Card Check - Democrats in Congress are itching to regulate talk-radio. It’s the only forum they want to regulate and the only one that liberals don’t dominate. If you think that’s a coincidence, you might as well believe in the tooth fairy. Making talk radio stations equalize their time with liberal broadcasting that listeners won’t support, will just drive stations to change formats, killing talk radio. For
Liberals that would be victory. I would expect liberals to sanction what they would see as “politically incorrect speech, in the worst case even in churches and other religious forums. They are also waiting to remove the secret ballot from union votes, so workers are coerced to vote with union leaders.
4) Education – Greater Intrusion into the conduct and content of schools and Guaranteed Universal (Liberal) College Education. In the big picture, outside mathematics and the hard sciences, college education would be as blinkered as public grade schools, which may be a huge reason why Obama can mesmerize crowds with his extreme, dishonest and irresponsible rhetoric. And soon enough, college education would be similarly inadequate generally. A college graduate will be less literate than a high-school graduate 100 years ago.
5) Naive and Unprincipled Foreign Policy – Joe Biden said Obama would be tested. He will also be exploited by foreign agents. In the best case, that means little or no advancement in the world for the American values of liberty, equality, and human rights. In the worst case, it means physical danger for Americans and others.
6) Health Care – Barack Obama has been pretty vocal about universal health care for at least two years, as Democrats generally have been for many years. If Obama wins, they will have near total control, restrained only by the potential of Republicans to maintain a Senate filibuster. If they can’t, it’s coming. The reflexive response of a lot of people would be that universal health care would be a good thing. But, there are 2 VERY BIG problems. A) It poses another massive cost for an already overburdened country. And however that cost is paid; it will only continue to rise. As P.J. O’Rourke long ago said, “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it becomes “free.” But EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT, is the fact that if America follows other industrial nations in socializing medicine, the engine of medical progress will be doused. Today, other countries get the advantage of medical advances birthed in America.
When the incentive of private medical pharmaceutical and technological is removed, medical advances will be substantially slowed. There will be new drug and technological advances that never materialize. Personally with MS, that bodes poorly for new treatments. But, I’m only one guy with one problem.
Obviously, millions would suffer more than they otherwise might. The resources for research and development would be dramatically narrowed to beneficiaries of the National Institute for Health government bureaucracy that will itself absorb substantial resources.
7) Judges, Judges, Judges – In an interview recently published, Obama expressed his dissatisfaction with judicial failure to advance values beyond their constitutional duties. A court system populated with Obama nominees will impose all manner of contrived restrictions on all areas of society. The right to life will be dead for the balance of my lifetime and maybe permanently eviscerated. As I always say, that poses a fading of basic civility and consideration of others in all of American society.
8) ENDA/Gay Marriage – I don’t favor a Constitutional Amendment, but an Obama stacked judiciary will try to leverage the performance and recognition of homosexual marriage onto the entire country via the “full faith and credit” clause of The Constitution and that would be wrong. States should make and live with their own laws. And, homosexual marriage has failed on every ballot it has been tested, even in the most liberal states. In a few states, courts have defied the people’s will. An Obama-appointed Court would do that to the whole country.
9) Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid- A Democratic Congress – These people and their Congressional cohorts would legislatively ride roughshod over American society. If you think Barack Obama would stand in their way, you are deluded. John McCain would.
10) Abolih the Electoral College? - This is a wish that is occasionally voiced by liberals and posed in schools as a matter of voter equality. It would require a Constitutional amendment, so I don’t know if it could be pushed pat enough states to vote away their power. But it, as most other things, is being
John McCain, George Bush and Huge Reasons to Fear a President Barack Obama and a Democrat Congress
I’m trying to make this catalog of casualties as succinct as possible. But perhaps more important is the comparison of Bush and McCain. Barack Obama has chained McCain to Bush. But, that’s a political lie of a man who has been a detestable posturer and manipulator. Perhaps the only way that McCain has resembled Bush is in his failure to crystallize the striking difference in the American mind. Peggy Noonan commented on the Obama hope of getting a huge turnout of new young voters: “These 18, 19 and 20 year old voters not only have not met a payroll, many have never been on a payroll. They live a lovely abstraction from reality.”
Hey, let’s be honest: in 2000, the only one of 14 Republican candidates whom I favored less than Bush was McCain. But now, I think the biggest difference may be the assertiveness that earned McCain the “maverick” label. I thought he was ambiguous about conservative principle and noisy about it. Bush on the other hand was ambiguous and quiet about it. Bush was cooperative with advice, but ineffective in making a case. Exhibit A) Bush proposed a plan to save Social Security and Medicare, which everyone knows (and now imminently) is in for crisis. Democrats predictably howled a scare about the venerable third-rail of politics. Bush couldn’t sell the problem, hung his head and went back into his hole. Bush weakly expressed his “preference” for life relative to the abortion issue. He couldn’t sell it (big surprise), hung his head and went back into his hole. A few years ago, Bush was apprised of potential problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and home mortgages. He presented a solution. Democrats denied the problem. Bush couldn’t sell it, hung his head and went back into his hole. These are just notable examples, but the consequence of the mortgage problem that became a crisis is the biggest reason the environment is so difficult for McCain and other Republicans today.
McCain has not been able to crystallize to the country what is the biggest and most consequential difference between him and Bush. Obama and Biden have hammered that there is little difference between them; even explicitly challenging that McCain could name one difference on economic policy. I think McCain should say that he respects Bush’s intentions for the country and his resolve in the Middle East (though he sometimes differed on tactics) but, the biggest difference IS on economic policy and it isn’t a small but a colossal one. Bush’s ineffectiveness in confronting the decades-old drift of government saw him and a Republican Congress to expand government at a rate not seen since Lyndon Johnson and a Democrat Congress, over forty years ago. Simply put, under McCain that wouldn’t have happened, nor probably the recent economic crisis. If he hasn’t sold that primarily, he has taken his eye off of the campaign ball.
But though hey were untethered by principle clarity, I also respect Bush’s intentions (I told you so’s aside), I never voted for Bush in either 2000 or 2004, and the aforementioned weaknesses were no surprise to me, a citizen of Texas where he was governor. But, philosophical difference notwithstanding, I’m voting (already have, actually) for McCain and with gusto and tearful prayer. His lifelong battle against unnecessary spending is a big reason. His character is another. I don’t have time to try to prioritize them, but they are all important. Here are ten reasons that Obama and a Democrat Congress would be a disaster:
1) A large reason is the recent massive insertion of the federal government into private commerce, administered by the Secretary of the Treasury? Bush’s Secretary of Treasury is bad enough. But O’bama’s Secretary of Treasury?” My blood runs cold. Even bigger, the federal government has just bought interest in the nation’s largest banks, not only insuring their accounts but insuring their businesses against failure, thus inviting reckless business practices. But even letting the federal nose in the door of the banking system is like leaving your children with a pedophile baby-sitter. Congress people with the ultimate source of
money under their noses? Democrats? Forget about it. They won’t even need to raise taxes for the money. After all, we are part OWNERS! As George Will said last week, “The assumption of all of this government injection into these industries is that it will be temporary and apolitical. Apolitical? Of course not!
There will be an irresistible urge to engage in industrial policy: for the government to pick winners….”
2) Economic Growth and Dynamism – Those who work for the largest corporations that can curry favor with the government will survive. But over 80% of Americans work for small and medium-sized businesses. Increased taxation and spending will mean unemployment (jobs lost or never materialized), inflation, and rising interest rates. Obama campaigns for poor and middle-class Americans. But ironically, those are exactly the ones who will be denied with the stagnation of smaller businesses and decreased potential for new ones. The very wealthy will be fine. They will be government’s pals. We have subsidized mega-businesses for a long time. The government has bailed out America’s largest insurance company and is a shareholder in its largest banks. On the horizon?: Under Democrats, I expect partial government ownership of auto makers and airlines, for starters. What will they do for smaller businesses? Zip. Many will be fried like ants under the government magnifying glass.
3) Freedom of Speech - The Fairness Doctrine, Political Speech and Union Card Check - Democrats in Congress are itching to regulate talk-radio. It’s the only forum they want to regulate and the only one that liberals don’t dominate. If you think that’s a coincidence, you might as well believe in the tooth fairy. Making talk radio stations equalize their time with liberal broadcasting that listeners won’t support, will just drive stations to change formats, killing talk radio. For
Liberals that would be victory. I would expect liberals to sanction what they would see as “politically incorrect speech, in the worst case even in churches and other religious forums. They are also waiting to remove the secret ballot from union votes, so workers are coerced to vote with union leaders.
4) Education – Greater Intrusion into the conduct and content of schools and Guaranteed Universal (Liberal) College Education. In the big picture, outside mathematics and the hard sciences, college education would be as blinkered as public grade schools, which may be a huge reason why Obama can mesmerize crowds with his extreme, dishonest and irresponsible rhetoric. And soon enough, college education would be similarly inadequate generally. A college graduate will be less literate than a high-school graduate 100 years ago.
5) Naive and Unprincipled Foreign Policy – Joe Biden said Obama would be tested. He will also be exploited by foreign agents. In the best case, that means little or no advancement in the world for the American values of liberty, equality, and human rights. In the worst case, it means physical danger for Americans and others.
6) Health Care – Barack Obama has been pretty vocal about universal health care for at least two years, as Democrats generally have been for many years. If Obama wins, they will have near total control, restrained only by the potential of Republicans to maintain a Senate filibuster. If they can’t, it’s coming. The reflexive response of a lot of people would be that universal health care would be a good thing. But, there are 2 VERY BIG problems. A) It poses another massive cost for an already overburdened country. And however that cost is paid; it will only continue to rise. As P.J. O’Rourke long ago said, “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it becomes “free.” But EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT, is the fact that if America follows other industrial nations in socializing medicine, the engine of medical progress will be doused. Today, other countries get the advantage of medical advances birthed in America.
When the incentive of private medical pharmaceutical and technological is removed, medical advances will be substantially slowed. There will be new drug and technological advances that never materialize. Personally with MS, that bodes poorly for new treatments. But, I’m only one guy with one problem.
Obviously, millions would suffer more than they otherwise might. The resources for research and development would be dramatically narrowed to beneficiaries of the National Institute for Health government bureaucracy that will itself absorb substantial resources. Judges, Judges, Judges – In an interview recently published, Obama expressed his dissatisfaction with judicial failure to advance values beyond their constitutional duties. A court system populated with Obama nominees will impose all manner of contrived restrictions on all areas of society. The right to life will be dead for the balance of my lifetime and maybe permanently eviscerated. As I always say, that poses a fading of basic civility and consideration of others in all of American society.
7) ENDA/Gay Marriage – I don’t favor a Constitutional Amendment, but an Obama stacked judiciary will try to leverage the performance and recognition of homosexual marriage onto the entire country via the “full faith and credit” clause of The Constitution and that would be wrong. States should make and live with their own laws. And, homosexual marriage has failed on every ballot it has been tested, even in the most liberal states. In a few states, courts have defied the people’s will. An Obama-appointed Court would do that to the whole country.
8) Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid- A Democratic Congress – These people and their Congressional cohorts would legislatively ride roughshod over American society. If you think Barack Obama would stand in their way, you are deluded. John McCain would.
9) Abolih the Electoral College? - This is a wish that is occasionally voiced by liberals and posed in schools as a matter of voter equality. It would require a Constitutional amendment, so I don’t know if it could be pushed pat enough states to vote away their power. But it, as most other things, is being
I’m trying to make this catalog of casualties as succinct as possible. But perhaps more important is the comparison of Bush and McCain. Barack Obama has chained McCain to Bush. But, that’s a political lie of a man who has been a detestable posturer and manipulator. Perhaps the only way that McCain has resembled Bush is in his failure to crystallize the striking difference in the American mind. Peggy Noonan commented on the Obama hope of getting a huge turnout of new young voters: “These 18, 19 and 20 year old voters not only have not met a payroll, many have never been on a payroll. They live a lovely abstraction from reality.”
Hey, let’s be honest: in 2000, the only one of 14 Republican candidates whom I favored less than Bush was McCain. But now, I think the biggest difference may be the assertiveness that earned McCain the “maverick” label. I thought he was ambiguous about conservative principle and noisy about it. Bush on the other hand was ambiguous and quiet about it. Bush was cooperative with advice, but ineffective in making a case. Exhibit A) Bush proposed a plan to save Social Security and Medicare, which everyone knows (and now imminently) is in for crisis. Democrats predictably howled a scare about the venerable third-rail of politics. Bush couldn’t sell the problem, hung his head and went back into his hole. Bush weakly expressed his “preference” for life relative to the abortion issue. He couldn’t sell it (big surprise), hung his head and went back into his hole. A few years ago, Bush was apprised of potential problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and home mortgages. He presented a solution. Democrats denied the problem. Bush couldn’t sell it, hung his head and went back into his hole. These are just notable examples, but the consequence of the mortgage problem that became a crisis is the biggest reason the environment is so difficult for McCain and other Republicans today.
McCain has not been able to crystallize to the country what is the biggest and most consequential difference between him and Bush. Obama and Biden have hammered that there is little difference between them; even explicitly challenging that McCain could name one difference on economic policy. I think McCain should say that he respects Bush’s intentions for the country and his resolve in the Middle East (though he sometimes differed on tactics) but, the biggest difference IS on economic policy and it isn’t a small but a colossal one. Bush’s ineffectiveness in confronting the decades-old drift of government saw him and a Republican Congress to expand government at a rate not seen since Lyndon Johnson and a Democrat Congress, over forty years ago. Simply put, under McCain that wouldn’t have happened, nor probably the recent economic crisis. If he hasn’t sold that primarily, he has taken his eye off of the campaign ball.
But though hey were untethered by principle clarity, I also respect Bush’s intentions (I told you so’s aside), I never voted for Bush in either 2000 or 2004, and the aforementioned weaknesses were no surprise to me, a citizen of Texas where he was governor. But, philosophical difference notwithstanding, I’m voting (already have, actually) for McCain and with gusto and tearful prayer. His lifelong battle against unnecessary spending is a big reason. His character is another. I don’t have time to try to prioritize them, but they are all important. Here are ten reasons that Obama and a Democrat Congress would be a disaster:
1) A large reason is the recent massive insertion of the federal government into private commerce, administered by the Secretary of the Treasury? Bush’s Secretary of Treasury is bad enough. But O’bama’s Secretary of Treasury?” My blood runs cold. Even bigger, the federal government has just bought interest in the nation’s largest banks, not only insuring their accounts but insuring their businesses against failure, thus inviting reckless business practices. But even letting the federal nose in the door of the banking system is like leaving your children with a pedophile baby-sitter. Congress people with the ultimate source of
money under their noses? Democrats? Forget about it. They won’t even need to raise taxes for the money. After all, we are part OWNERS! As George Will said last week, “The assumption of all of this government injection into these industries is that it will be temporary and apolitical. Apolitical? Of course not!
There will be an irresistible urge to engage in industrial policy: for the government to pick winners….”
2) Economic Growth and Dynamism – Those who work for the largest corporations that can curry favor with the government will survive. But over 80% of Americans work for small and medium-sized businesses. Increased taxation and spending will mean unemployment (jobs lost or never materialized), inflation, and rising interest rates. Obama campaigns for poor and middle-class Americans. But ironically, those are exactly the ones who will be denied with the stagnation of smaller businesses and decreased potential for new ones. The very wealthy will be fine. They will be government’s pals. We have subsidized mega-businesses for a long time. The government has bailed out America’s largest insurance company and is a shareholder in its largest banks. On the horizon?: Under Democrats, I expect partial government ownership of auto makers and airlines, for starters. What will they do for smaller businesses? Zip. Many will be fried like ants under the government magnifying glass.
3) Freedom of Speech - The Fairness Doctrine, Political Speech and Union Card Check - Democrats in Congress are itching to regulate talk-radio. It’s the only forum they want to regulate and the only one that liberals don’t dominate. If you think that’s a coincidence, you might as well believe in the tooth fairy. Making talk radio stations equalize their time with liberal broadcasting that listeners won’t support, will just drive stations to change formats, killing talk radio. For
Liberals that would be victory. I would expect liberals to sanction what they would see as “politically incorrect speech, in the worst case even in churches and other religious forums. They are also waiting to remove the secret ballot from union votes, so workers are coerced to vote with union leaders.
4) Education – Greater Intrusion into the conduct and content of schools and Guaranteed Universal (Liberal) College Education. In the big picture, outside mathematics and the hard sciences, college education would be as blinkered as public grade schools, which may be a huge reason why Obama can mesmerize crowds with his extreme, dishonest and irresponsible rhetoric. And soon enough, college education would be similarly inadequate generally. A college graduate will be less literate than a high-school graduate 100 years ago.
5) Naive and Unprincipled Foreign Policy – Joe Biden said Obama would be tested. He will also be exploited by foreign agents. In the best case, that means little or no advancement in the world for the American values of liberty, equality, and human rights. In the worst case, it means physical danger for Americans and others.
6) Health Care – Barack Obama has been pretty vocal about universal health care for at least two years, as Democrats generally have been for many years. If Obama wins, they will have near total control, restrained only by the potential of Republicans to maintain a Senate filibuster. If they can’t, it’s coming. The reflexive response of a lot of people would be that universal health care would be a good thing. But, there are 2 VERY BIG problems. A) It poses another massive cost for an already overburdened country. And however that cost is paid; it will only continue to rise. As P.J. O’Rourke long ago said, “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it becomes “free.” But EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT, is the fact that if America follows other industrial nations in socializing medicine, the engine of medical progress will be doused. Today, other countries get the advantage of medical advances birthed in America.
When the incentive of private medical pharmaceutical and technological is removed, medical advances will be substantially slowed. There will be new drug and technological advances that never materialize. Personally with MS, that bodes poorly for new treatments. But, I’m only one guy with one problem.
Obviously, millions would suffer more than they otherwise might. The resources for research and development would be dramatically narrowed to beneficiaries of the National Institute for Health government bureaucracy that will itself absorb substantial resources. Judges, Judges, Judges – In an interview recently published, Obama expressed his dissatisfaction with judicial failure to advance values beyond their constitutional duties. A court system populated with Obama nominees will impose all manner of contrived restrictions on all areas of society. The right to life will be dead for the balance of my lifetime and maybe permanently eviscerated. As I always say, that poses a fading of basic civility and consideration of others in all of American society.
7) ENDA/Gay Marriage – I don’t favor a Constitutional Amendment, but an Obama stacked judiciary will try to leverage the performance and recognition of homosexual marriage onto the entire country via the “full faith and credit” clause of The Constitution and that would be wrong. States should make and live with their own laws. And, homosexual marriage has failed on every ballot it has been tested, even in the most liberal states. In a few states, courts have defied the people’s will. An Obama-appointed Court would do that to the whole country.
8) Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid- A Democratic Congress – These people and their Congressional cohorts would legislatively ride roughshod over American society. If you think Barack Obama would stand in their way, you are deluded. John McCain would.
9) Abolih the Electoral College? - This is a wish that is occasionally voiced by liberals and posed in schools as a matter of voter equality. It would require a Constitutional amendment, so I don’t know if it could be pushed pat enough states to vote away their power. But it, as most other things, is being
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)