Terms for presidential terms

Let's concede for the moment that President George W. Bush's presidency was a disaster. After all, he left us with a $1 trillion deficit, 6.7 percent unemployment rate and an expanded federal government (creation of the Department of Homeland Security was the biggie).

Now we have a president who has virtually doubled the national deficit, unemployment has increased to 9.8 percent and he's looking to add 53 new bureaucracies with his health-care plan (which has an $829 billion price tag).

What word should we choose to describe President Barack Obama's presidency after only nine months?

-- Frank C. Overfelt, letter to Deseret News, 10/10/09

Congressman Mike Rogers on Health Care reform

This has gone way beyond fixing an obvious problem. It is about unprecedented intrusion into our lives and governmental coercion. The damage and pain inflicted by this and other initiatives of this government will continue with our children and their children. Keep praying for common sense to prevail among our elected representatives!

When asked to sacrifice

It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. -- Ayn Rand

Pour more fool on the fire!

All the problems with the American health care system come from government intervention, so naturally the Democrats' idea for fixing it is more government intervention. This is like trying to sober up by having another drink. -- Ann Coulter

Hockey Mayor - Hockey Mom -- same diff

88 years old and mayor for 11 consecutive elections! This gal inspires! Is anyone writing her biography?

Daniel Hannan MEP - Bold, plain talk

[This is a politician I can respect. Find more like this. -- KJK]

Communism Deadens

The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or in literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. -- Milton Friedman

[Currently living most of the time in the former East German city of Dresden, I see solid confirmation every day of the fact that communism destroyed rather than enhanced the greatness of this place. -- kjk]

And much of it is pork

Politics are not the high class, marvelous thing that lots of you picture. Our whole government workings are crammed with 'baloney. -- Will Rogers

The Frugal Machiavellian

Never waste a good crisis ... Don't waste it when it can have a very positive impact on climate change and energy security. -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Obama of Sherwood Forest

If I say to 10 co-workers, 'We all need to chip in together to get this done,' and then say, 'So, Todd, open your wallet and give five bucks to everyone else in the room,' it would sound ridiculous. But when Obama says the same thing to 300 million Americans it's called 'leadership.' -- Jonah Goldberg

Don't Forget the Big Stick

But foreign policy is not about winning popularity contests. And woe to thepresident who imagines he needn't inspire fear among the wicked even as he embraces the adulation of the good. -- Bret Stephens, wsj.com, 2/10/09

Inebriation of Power

Barely two months into his Presidency, Obama is wreaking havoc, crippling the nation, oblivious to consequences and monumentally arrogant, believing the timbre of his voice and the manipulation of the media will win public confidence until the socialist utopia he believes in comes to fruition. Who knows how bad it will be in a year, let alone four? -- Lance Fairchok

Obama, Rush, and bipartisanship

Evidently Obama the Whiner can’t work his socialistic voodoo if Rush Limbaugh keeps free thinking and running his mouth off. D***it, Rush, you’re ruining Obama’s ability to cast his spell! . . .

Socialists like Obama . . . cannot work in an environment in which leaders and citizens do not do-si-do when he says so. Geez, the press corps can’t even toss him a question during a meet and greet without Barack getting testy. Therefore, Limbaugh, and all dissenters like him, must bow and kiss the ring or suffer vilification and marginalization for not being “bipartisan and tolerant.”

I would rather bikini wax a sensitive and livid grizzly sow than be a “tolerant bipartisan” toward the bloated government, pro-death, anti-free market, crap on traditional values, socialism squared, nanny state policies Obama has floated in the last few days. -- Doug Giles, Townhall.com, 2/3/09

Toward a well-known economic model

Note that President Obama doesn't even pay lip service to making his interventionist plans ["stimulus" bill] short-lived. . . . This is an effort to restructure our economy radically toward the type of command and control model that has accompanied tyrannical regimes throughout history. -- David Limbaugh, Townhall.com, 2/3/09

Random well-put thoughts

What we have on display is both the gargantuan ignorance of the celebrity illiterati as well as their boundless vanity. -- William B. Smith, responding to "Hollywood Celebrates Che Guevara"

Try it on Congress for two years before turning it on the public. -- Bill Druckemiller (on Obama's health care proposal)
[I LIKE it!]

If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher; as a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide. -- Abraham Lincoln, 1837

If you believe the left is tolerant, open-minded and democratic, you're in for a rude awakening. -- David Limbaugh

Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views. -- William F. Buckley Jr.

Ignoring the cowboy, we ride into the sunset

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. -- Ronald Reagan

Harvest time approaches

From the fifth grade through the fourth year of college, our young people are being indoctrinated with a Marxist philosophy, and I am fearful of the harvest. -- Ezra Taft Benson, 1967

Gorbachev tore down but a wall only

Those who hope that we shall move away from the socialist path will be greatly disappointed. Every part of our program of perestroika is fully based on the principle of more socialism. -- Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and theWorld?1988 Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931) Secretary General Communist Party

None dare call it conspiracy

Today the path to total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly, we have a Constitutional government. We have something within our government ... representing another form of government which believes our Constitution is outmoded and is sure that it is the winning side... All the strange developments in foreign policy agreements may be traced to this group who are going to make us over to suit their pleasure. -- Speech on the Senate floor, February 23, 1954 William E. Jenner (1908-1985) U.S. Senator, Indiana (R)

Painless descent into Socialism

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism, but under the name of'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program until one day America will be a Socialist nation without knowing it happened. -- Campaign speech, 1948 Norman M. Thomas (1884-1968) U.S. Socialist Party Leader

A too-familiar 5-step program to slavery

From Weishaupt through Babeuf, Marx, and Lenin, the revolutionists pushed the five abolitions, namely of monarchy and all other ordered government, of national patriotism, of property and inheritance, of all religion, and of marriage and the family. -- World Revolution, the Plot Against Civilization, 1921 Nesta H. Webster (1876-1960) Historian and Author

Methodical subjugation

Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery. -- The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1, p.130

Simply Marxism 101

For the last seven years we have had the highest corporate profit ever in American history. ... But it hasn't been shared, and that's theproblem, because we have been guided by a Republican administration who believes in the simplistic notion that people who have wealth are entitled to keep it. They have an antipathy toward the means of redistributing wealth. And they may be able to sustain that for a while, but it doesn't work in the long run. --Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA)

Obama vs Economics 101

[B]y 'redistributing wealth,' as Obama wants the government to do, he's actually reducing overall wealth in the economy by taking away capital from those who can invest it efficiently in direct job creation. And the real irony is that if Obama ... succeeds in raising taxes on the top 5 percent, he's likely to collect less tax, not more, if history is a guide. -- Linda Chavez

Bush tried but was defied

[T]he Bush administration warned in the budget it issued in April 2001 that Fannie and Freddie were too large and overleveraged. Their failure "could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting federally insured entities andeconomic activity" well beyond housing.

Mr. Bush wanted to limit systemic risk by raising the GSEs' [i.e."government-sponsored enterprises" like Fannie and Freddie] capital requirements, compelling preapproval of new activities, and limiting the size of their portfolios. ... Mr. Bush wanted the GSEs to be treated just like their private-sector competitors.

But the GSEs fought back [ with a massive $170,000,000 lobbying campaign!]. They didn't want to see the Bush reforms enacted, because that would level the playing field for their competitors. Congress finally did pass the Bush reforms, but in 2008, after Fannie and Freddie collapsed. ...

The housing meltdown is largely a story of greed and irresponsibility made possible by government privilege. If Democrats had granted the Bush administration the regulatory powers it sought, the housing crisis wouldn't be nearly as severe and the economy as a whole would be better off. -- Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal, 1/7/09

Ezra Taft Benson and Conspiracy Facts

After serving eight years in the Eisenhauer administration, Ezra Taft Benson knew first-hand what was going on and heard from Kruschev himself what the man's intentions really were. Read the full text of this speech, given at Brigham Young University in 1966) here: http://www.latterdayconservative.com/ezra-taft-benson/our-immediate-responsibility.html

On duck hunting and assault weapons

[ The woman testifying in this brief video clip gives you a mighty succinct education on what the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms is really about. Her last statement is gutsy but she has it dead right. -- Kirt ]

Do you stick to the script or do you ad lib?

[T]here are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution -- try to discern as best we can what the framers intended or make it up. No matter how ingenious, imaginative or artfully put, unless interpretive methodologies are tied to the original intent of the framers, they have no more basis in the Constitution than the latest football scores. To be sure, even the most conscientious effort to adhere to the original intent of the framers of our Constitution is flawed, as all methodologies and human institutions are; but at least originalism has the advantage of being legitimate and, I might add, impartial. -- Clarence Thomas, How to Read the Constitution, 10/20/08

More Important than Cell Phones

As I have traveled across the country, I have been astounded just how many of our fellow citizens feel strongly about their constitutional rights but have no idea what they are, or for that matter, what the Constitution says. I am not suggesting that they become Constitutional scholars -- whatever that means. I am suggesting, however, that if one feels strongly about his or her rights, it does make sense to know generally what the Constitution says about them. It is at least as easy to understand as a cell phone contract -- and vastly more important. -- Clarence Thomas, How To Read the Constitution, 10/20/08

Who 'You' Is

[Barack Obama said to Joe the Plumber] 'I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.' In that sentence about you spreading the wealth around, there's [a] typing error: that 'you' should read 'I, Barack.' 'You' will have no say in it." -- Mark Steyn

Equality versus Everything Else

The left subscribes to the French Revolution, whose guiding principles were 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' The right subscribes to the American formula, 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.' The French/European notion of equality is not mentioned. The right rejects the French Revolution and does not hold Western Europe as a model. The left does. That alone makes right and left irreconcilable. The left envisions an egalitarian society. The right does not. The left values equality above other values because it yearns for an America in which all people have similar amounts of material possessions... The right values equality in opportunity and strongly believes that all people are created equal, but the right values liberty, a man-woman based family and other values above equality. -- Dennis Prager

Gays, Obama, and the Courts

The aim of the gay rights lobby is to destroy all remnants of biblical values and societal norms. Gay rights advocates will take their agenda to federal courts as soon as sufficient numbers of liberal judges are there to give them what they want. Watch them vote in overwhelming numbers for Barack Obama. He is their future. This election is, among other things, about the future of the majority and whether we want this country to be shaped by the courts, or by 'we the people'. -- Cal Thomas

Sarah, Plain and Tall

Sarah Palin is the one real outsider among the four candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency on the Republican and Democratic tickets. Her whole career has been spent outside the Washington Beltway. More than that, her whole life has been outside the realm familiar to the intelligentsia of the media. She didn't go to the big-name colleges and imbibe the heady atmosphere that leaves so many feeling that they are special folks. She doesn't talk the way they talk or think the way they think. ... Whatever the shortcomings of John McCain and Sarah Palin, they are people whose values are the values of this nation, whose loyalty and dedication to this country's fundamental institutions are beyond question because they have not spent decades working with people who hate America." -- Thomas Sowell

Get the Story Straight

This housing crisis ... was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans. ... One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

... [I]t was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled Do Facts Matter? "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

... This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion. -- Orson Scott Card, ornery.org, 10/5/08

NOT a free market failure!

The enormous risk that Sen. McCain warned of in 2005 has now become a financial crisis of staggering proportions. That crisis can trace its roots to Bill Clinton's signature on legislation making it easier for minority constituents with bad credit to obtain mortgages. In 1995, he had his Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, rewrite the lending rules for the Community Reinvestment Act, opening the flood gates of mortgage lending to unqualified borrowers. This legislation, in effect, applied affirmative action to the lending industry, which is to say that the current crisis is NOT a "free market failure" but the result of socially engineered financial policy by the central government. -- Mark Alexander, PatriotPost.us, 9/26/08

Patriot McCain

I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me... and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God. I'm going to fight for my cause every day as your president. I'm going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I'm an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach. Fight with me. Fight for what's right for our country. Fight for the ideals and character of a free people. Fight for our children's future. Fight for justice and opportunity for all. Stand up to defend our country from its enemies. Stand up for each other, for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America. Stand up and fight. We're Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history. Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America. -- John McCain, concluding his 2008 nomination acceptance speech

And the darkness comprehended it not

[Sarah Palin is]... the object of the cultural disdain of a left that loves the working class in theory, but is mystified or offended by its lifestyle and conservative values in reality. -- Rich Lowry

Faults and Potentials

Poverty is the default human condition... The interesting question isn't 'Why is there poverty?' It's 'Why is there wealth?' Or: 'Why is there prosperity here but not there?' At the end of the day, the first answer is capitalism, rightly understood. That is to say: free markets, private property, the spirit of entrepreneurialism and the conviction that the fruits of your labors are your own... -- Jonah Goldberg

Facts vs Politics

Obama is being hailed as the newest and freshest face on the American political scene. But he is advocating some of the oldest fallacies, just as if it was the 1960s again, or as if he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing since then... But politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe. -- Thomas Sowell

What Krushchev Knew

We can't expect the American people to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism. -- Nikita Khrushchev on Roosevelt's "New Deal" paradigm

Election Day Fowl

A taxpayer voting for Barack Obama is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

Miracle Ma(r)x

As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone. -- Charles Krauthammer

An Illegitimate Function of Government

The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing. Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, ‘What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.’ But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector." —Ronald Reagan

The Do Nothing Solution

[I]ncreasing numbers of economists and historians have concluded that it was government intervention which prolonged the Great Depression beyond that of other depressions where the government did nothing. The stock market crash of 1987 was at least as big as the stock market crash in 1929. But, instead of being followed by a Great Depression, the 1987 crash was followed by 20 years of economic growth, with low inflation and low unemployment. The Reagan administration did nothing in 1987, despite outrage in the media at the government’s failure to live up to its responsibility, as seen in liberal quarters. But nothing was apparently what needed to be done, so that markets could adjust. The last thing politicians can do in an election year is nothing. So we can look for all sorts of ‘solutions’ by politicians of both parties. Like most political solutions, these are likely to make matters worse. —Thomas Sowell

Obama, the Politician

One of the most naive notions is that politicians are trying to solve the country’s problems, just because they say so—or say so loudly or inspiringly. Politicians’ top priority is to solve their own problem, which is how to get elected and then re-elected. Barack Obama is a politician through and through, even though pretending that he is not is his special strategy to get elected. —Thomas Sowell

[ This is precisely the conclusion I came to as I finished Obama's book yesterday. He is a superb rhetorician and consummate politician. If that is want you want, he is a great choice to have on your side, but he is clearly far, far away on the other end of the ideological spectrum from my position. His strengths, if elected, will only compound the weakness of his credentials to America's great detriment. Scary. -- Kirt ]

The Roads Both Taken

When he comes to a fork in the road, Barack Obama continues to take it." —Wesley Pruden

Presidents and the Constitution

A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1810

[ George W. Bush, like Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln before him, were not without justification in their unconstitutional exercise of presidential powers in order to honor their higher oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States". Acting decisively to keep the country safe from another 9/11 attack for the remainder of his two terms in office will place him in high esteem, despite his methods and failings, in the eyes of future historians. -- Kirt]

The sacred cow of global warming

All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming . . . miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.

-- Freeman Dyson, The New York Review of Books, Vol 55, No. 10, 6/3/08

Uncommon Sense

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Yet we continue to elect the same people year after year, thinking things will change or get better. Do yourself and your kids a favor. Read the Declaration of Independence and compare the grievances our forefathers had against the king of Great Britain to the grievances you have now. How do they match up? What does it say our duty is?

The only way I can see to change the way things are is to boot out every politician that has been in office more than two terms and elect people with some common sense.

-- Troy Wright, DeseretNews.com, 5/23/08

[ With very few exceptions, career politicians make me shudder. Rarely do we see a true statesman worth keeping. Competent leaders and problem solvers from the private sector ought to be carried, kicking and screaming, into office and let off for good behavior at the end of their term. -- Kirt ]

Part of the problem

This may be cruel, but do you want to really confuse a Republican politician and leave them speechless? Ask them to identify ONE program or governmental effort that is outdated, detrimental to society or useless and that can be eliminated. I've done this and believe me.....they don't know what to say. But it speaks volumes. -- Liberty Tom, Rochester, NY, 5/22/08

Relearning the folly of appeasement

A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." This is a lesson that today's Democratic Party leaders need to relearn. -- Joseph Lieberman, wsj.com, 5/21/08

Declaring the wrong enemy - Act I

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful. . . .

Kennedy promised . . . that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor -- a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault.

-- Joseph Lieberman, wsj.com, 5/21/08

Declaring the wrong enemy - Act II

[In] the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate -- Vice President Gore -- championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America's moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent -- and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party's platform endorsed a national missile defense.

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a "humble foreign policy" and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.

Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. . . . When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy -- not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush -- activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

-- Joseph Lieberman, wsj.com, 5/21/08

Conservatism Defined

Conservatism is alive and well in America; don't let anyone tell you differently. And by conservatism, I don't mean the warmed-over "raise your hand if you believe . . ." kind of conservatism we see blooming every election cycle. No, I'm speaking of the conservatism grounded in principles based upon enduring truths: an understanding of the importance of human nature in the affairs of individuals and nations. Respect for the lessons of history, the importance of faith and tradition. The understanding that while man is prone to err, he is capable of great things when not subjugated by a too-powerful government. -- Fred Thompson, wsj.com, 5/20/08

Democracies don't let people die

Tectonic plates in motion don't distinguish between democracies and autocracies, but the record shows that getting hit by an earthquake or cyclone in an authoritarian government is a high-risk proposition for the survivors. [Consider these examples...

• Communist China's Tangshan earthquake of 1976: 255,000 dead.
• Managua under Somoza 1972: at least 5,000 dead.
• Mexico City's 1985 earthquake under the PRI government: 9,500 dead.
• Soviet Armenia 1988: 25,000 dead.
• Iran, 2003: 31,000 dead.]

Common to all is that their governments never held real elections. In such places, after nature kills people, delay and incompetence kill the rest. Set aside idealism and the flowery rhetoric that must accompany a statement like the 2002 Bush Doctrine. The bottom line is accountability. In democracies, even poor or imperfect ones, public pressure, even outrage, pushes elected officials to act. In nondemocracies, the politicians don't give a damn because they don't have to.

There are no angels in politics. Absent accountability, though, a nation's people are at permanent risk. Democracy's greatest value may well be the average politician's cynical compulsion to survive the next election.

-- Daniel Henninger, online.wsj.com, 5/15/08

Border Economics

There have been suggestions that the border be sealed. But Mexico is the United States' third-largest customer, and the United States is Mexico's largest customer. This was the case well before NAFTA, and has nothing to do with treaties and everything to do with economics and geography. Cutting that trade would have catastrophic effects on both sides of the border, and would guarantee the failure of the Mexican state. It isn't going to happen. So long as vast quantities of goods flow across the border, the border cannot be sealed. -- George Friedman, Stratfor Geopolitical Weekly, 5/13/08

Selling Eden

A politician with good rhetorical skills can create a new Garden of Eden in people's minds, though only in their minds. However, that is sufficient, if that vision or illusion can be kept alive until election day, and its failure to materialize afterwards can be explained away by the obstruction of villains. . . . So long as the voters buy it, the politicians will keep selling it. -- Thomas Sowell, townhall.com, 5/14/08

The Course Not Taken

History is an elective few liberals choose to take these days... The lack of historical knowledge among journalists is merely appalling. But in a presidential candidate it's dangerous. As Sir Winston Churchill said: 'Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it'. -- Jack Kelly

Old Professions

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. -- Ronald Reagan

Things I'd Say If I Was That Smart

There are seven reasons for anyone to support the eventual [Republican] nominee no matter who it is: The war and six Supreme Court justices over the age of 68. -- Hugh Hewitt

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened. -- Norman Thomas

Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security. -- William F. Buckley, Jr.

The way to get people's votes is to say that all their problems are caused by other people, and that you will stop those other people from giving them trouble. But if you really want to help, then you can tell them the truth and risk losing their votes... -- Thomas Sowell

Liberalism is so impressed with its own brilliance that results apparently don't matter. -- Brent Bozell

Liberals are always at their best chuckling at the ways of those they regard as hicks. That's because liberals place far more importance on sophistication than on character, decency and values. -- Burt Prelutsky

I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies. -- William F. Buckley Jr.

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection -- it is plunder. -- Benjamin Disraeli

A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. -- Calvin Coolidge

The current tax code is a daily mugging. -- Ronald Reagan

I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money. -- Arthur Godfrey

Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago. -- Will Rogers

We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. -- Davy Crockett

Blunt-speaking and heroism does not a president make

The fact that McCain makes short, blunt statements does not make him a straight-talker. . . .

When confronted with any of his misdeeds, Senator McCain tends to fall back on his record as a war hero in Vietnam.

Let's talk sense. Benedict Arnold was a war hero but that did not exempt him from condemnation for his later betrayal.

Being a war hero is not a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card. And becoming President of the United States is not a matter of rewarding an individual for past services.

The Presidency is a heavy responsibility for the future of the nation, including generations yet unborn. Character and integrity are major qualifications.

-- Thomas Sowell, townhall.com, 2/1/08

Plotting to cripple the American economy

We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse-gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren. -- Bill Clinton

[In other words, Bill, global warming REALLY IS an anti-American, anti-capitalist ploy, right? -- Kirt]

The Republican candidate liberals want out of the race

Are you familiar with our 'no exchange/no return' policy on presidential candidates? Voting for McCain because he was a POW a quarter-century ago or Huckabee because he was a Baptist preacher is like buying a new car because you like the color. The candidate Republicans should be clamoring for is the one liberals are feverishly denouncing. That is Mitt Romney by a landslide. -- Ann Coulter

Romney for real

Romney's very public migration rightward over the last few years is a different kind of act, one intended not to hide his real views but to liberate them. In 1994, Romney struck me as an extraordinarily bright, talented, and decent man -- and a political neophyte who fell for the canard that the only way a conservative could win in Massachusetts was by passing for a liberal. [Now,] Romney is where he should have been all along. -- Jeff Jacoby

Straight Talk is not the same as Straight Walk

I seek the nomination of our Party because I am as confident today as I was when I first entered public life as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution that the principles of the Republican Party – our confidence in the good sense and resourcefulness of free people – are always in America’s best interests. In war and peace, in good times and challenging ones, we have always known that the first responsibility of government is to keep this country safe from its enemies, and the American people free of a heavy-handed government that spends too much of their money, and tries to do for them what they are better able to do for themselves. We want government to do its job, not your job; to do it better and to do it with less of your money; to defend our nation’s security wisely and effectively, because the cost of our defense is so dear to us; to respect our values because they are the true source of our strength; to enforce the rule of law that is the first defense of freedom; to keep the promises it makes to us and not make promises it will not keep. We believe government should do only those things we cannot do individually, and then get out of the way so that the most industrious, ingenious, and enterprising people in the world can do what they have always done: build an even greater country than the one they inherited.

-- John McCain, 1/18/08

[So, given all the "straight talk", how much do past misdeeds -- Keating savings and loan scandal, McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill, McCain-Feingold 1st Amendment sell-out, and judicial nomination side deals -- count towards walking the walk? -- Kirt]

A Good Government

I will venture to assert that no combination of designing men under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular which is in its principles a wise and good one, and vigorous in its operations. -- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 1788)

[I think it is only in "its operations" that our government has earned our dismay. -- Kirt ]

The Jihadist War in Review

After the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the United States realized it lacked the military wherewithal to simultaneously deal with the four powers that made al Qaeda possible: Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and Pakistan. The first phase of the Bush solution was to procure an anchor against Afghanistan by forcing Pakistan into an alliance. The second was to invade the state that bordered the other three-- Iraq -- in order to intimidate the remaining trio into cooperating against al Qaeda. The final stage was to press both wars until al Qaeda -- the core organization that launched the 9/11 attack and sought the creation of a pan-Islamic caliphate, not the myriad local extremists who later adopted its name -- broke.

As 2008 dawns, it has become apparent that though this strategy engendered many unforeseen costs, it has proven successful at grinding al Qaeda into nonfunctionality. Put simply, the jihadist war is all but over; the United States not only is winning but also has an alliance with the entire constellation of Sunni powers that made al Qaeda possible in the first place. The United States will attempt to use this alliance to pressure the remnants of al Qaeda and its allies, as well as those in the region who are not in the alliance.

This leaves Iran, the region's only non-Sunni power, in the uncomfortable position of needing to seek an arrangement with the United States.

-- George Friedman, stratfor.com, 1/8/08

Government needs a short leash

Freedom was given to humanity by God. But, governments, if they can help it, never give freedom. They just hand out slavery with slogans. -- Taylor Caldwell

Essential Virtue

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks -- no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them."

-- James Madison (speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 20 June 1788)

Of Multicultural Patriots

A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. And the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.

-- Woodrow Wilson

Canadian free speech at risk

Canadians who do not like their hate-speech policy, it turns out, are not free to call censors unflattering things.

Let me rephrase. Canadians are not free to call censors "enemies of free speech." Even if, by the clear meaning of the English language (as well as by American standards) that's what hate-speech censors are, just because they're censors: Enemies of free speech.

. . . [A Canadian] judge ruled that a government official working from duly enacted government policy cannot be an enemy of free speech. That's just unthinkable!

Yes, in Canada you may not speak the truth about free speech to its official enemies. In Canada, the reason why we [Americans] must defend even the most vile speech and writing becomes clear: because suppression of it eventually leads to the inability to criticize government.

You know you've lost your freedom when you cannot call a censor a censor.

-- Paul Jacob, townhall.com, 12/9/07

Military Minds

I've attended several conferences sponsored by the military. They bring in a bunch of civilian experts (and one sci-fi author who is an expert in nothing, but he wrote Ender's Game) and seat them at a table and each of them gives a presentation. Then they question each other in sharp-witted conversation,proving and testing each other's ideas.

During all of this, the walls of the room are lined with soldiers. Officers young and old, who listen.

Just listen.

Not that they don't have opinions. On the contrary -- when I've met these same officers in other contexts, I have been deeply impressed by the level of intellectual rigor among our military.

I daresay that if you're looking for the sharpest thinking in America, you'll find more of it in the military than in the university -- because the military know that a lot of lives depend on their getting right answers, whereas is many academic departments absolutely nothing is at stake and they can teach and write any amount of nonsense without any effect in the real world.

But in those conferences, the soldiers sit silently against the wall, saying nothing; not even their faces show what they're thinking.

-- Orson Scott Card, meridianmagazine.com, 11/27/07

Who started the crusade, anyway?

Somehow, my worthy, lifelong profession, the mass media -- following the lead of the cultural establishment -- have made up their collective mind that the evangelicals, the religious-righters, the preachers, the shouters, call them what you will, launched in the '60s some cockeyed crusade to put the Holy Bible in the center of our affairs. Putting it there might not be such a bad thing, but assuredly, that's not what the preachers, etc., undertook.

The preachers didn't start this business; the secularists did. Out of the celestial blue came the news from the U.S. Supreme Court, in the '60s, that the public schools enjoyed no right to allow prayer of any kind or the reading of the Bible.

-- Bill Murchison, townhall.com, 12/11/07

Vice President McCain

[There are] five iron-clad and important Running Mate Rules.

1. FAMILIAR AND REASSURING. Most successful running mates of recent years were well-known, highly respected senior statesmen -- not newcomers or rookies.
2. OLDER. . . . there's something vastly reassuring about an older Vice Presidential nominee whose only interest is service and support, rather than plotting his own future races for the top job.
3. INSIDER. . . . We all want a Vice President who knows Washington well enough to step into the job at a moment's notice.
4. FORMER CANDIDATE. . . . The big advantage in choosing a Vice Presidential nominee who's run before for President is that the candidate has already been vetted -- whatever skeletons he (or she) may have kept stashed in the closet has already been discussed and digested by the press.
5. With mainstream media fixated on various "firsts" in the Presidential race(first woman, black, Hispanic, Mormon, and Italian American double-divorcee as serious candidates) there's a natural tendency to look at other "breakthrough"possibilities in a running mate. Any smart nominee will resist this temptation: whenever it's been tried in the past, it's always failed.

With these commons sense, unassailable rules in mind, one potential choice for the Vice Presidential nomination should emerge as an apparent Veep frontrunner-- and his name is John McCain.

-- Michael Medved, townhall.com, 12/12/07

Bigotry Revealed

When Mike Huckabee asked a New York Times' reporter, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers," he crossed a line he cannot uncross. . . .

Huckabee's obvious attempt to salt the mine and get the reporter to carry anti-Mormon rhetoric into the paper without Huckabee's fingerprints on it backfired, and the transparent attempt to use the MSM to further the anti-Mormon message was repulsive. . . .

He went to CNN immediately thereafter and asked for forgiveness.

Will that put Huckabee's anti-Mormon genie back in its bottle. I don't think so. "That which is said while drunk has been thought out beforehand," goes the old saying. In the modern media world, candidates for the presidency don't say careless things to the New York Times. It was a premeditated aside, an attempt to get a virus into circulation. It didn't work, but it did tell us a lot about Mike Huckabee.

-- Hugh Hewitt, townhall.com, 12/13/07

Culture War battlefields are in classrooms

Common sense, traditional values Americans are outraged that schools are allowing Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA) into schools. They want to know who is behind these clubs and their true motivations.

The plain truth is that both the GSA and Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educators Network (GLSEN), the organization that registers GSAs, are part of a vast, interconnected network of Cultural Marxist front groups known collectively as the New Left. For over forty years, the New Left---a collection of Marxists, Stalinists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and anarchists have been waging a Gramscian style “quiet revolution” for the overthrow of Christianity and America’s Constitution, Rule of Law, sovereignty, and way of life.

While propagandists in the media have deftly kept the attention of most folks riveted on what they’ve been told to believe are the ‘real threats’ to America, such as gas prices, genuine Christianity, and mad cow disease, Marxist-trained psychopoliticians, propagandists, and change agents have descended upon the schools and are subjecting children and older youth to thought control and social re-engineering methodologies.

A position paper unwittingly published by the ACLU of Texas reveals why, “This generation of children will be the next generation of adult citizens who will make decisions on the directions this country will take. They will be molded by whatever education they receive.” (The ACLU vs. America, Alan Sears and Craig Osten, p 71) . . .

In the overthrowing of America, Cultural Marxists are utilizing a criminal methodology which originated in the USSR and whose ultimate goal can be characterized by its operative doctrine—nihilism. “Nihilism: originally in Russia, a social doctrine that defied all authority; revolutionism bent on the overthrow of all existing institutions.” (Funk and Wagnall’s Dictionary, 1948)

Two key strategies included within the doctrine of nihilism were added after WWI by two Marxist theoreticians, Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukacs. These strategies had to do with how to destroy the Christian West, which both men concluded was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist new world order.

Gramsci posited that because Christianity had been dominant in the West for over 1600 years, it was therefore completely fused with Western civilization. The West, advised Gramsci, would have to be dechristianized and simultaneously atheitized by means of a “long march through the culture” so as to slowly infiltrate and then radically transform every cultural institution from the family, to the church, seminaries, schools, universities, judiciary, media, entertainment, politics, and political parties.

Extreme (obscene) sex education was the strategy added by Lukacs. He reasoned that if Christian sexual ethics such as chastity (abstinence), fidelity, and monogamy could be undermined among children, then both the hated traditional family and Christianity would be dealt crippling blows. Towards this end, Lukacs launched radical sex education programs in the schools. Children, under the control of Bolshevik commissars, were force-fed atheism and instructed in all aspects of promiscuity while simultaneously encouraged to deride and reject their parents, pastors, and Christian moral ethics. All of this was accompanied by a reign of terror perpetrated against parents, priests, and other dissenters. Lukacs’ strategic method would later be brought to American schools by among others, the NEA, ACLU, GLSEN, and GSA. . . .

How ironic that though the West won the Cold War, it is losing the ‘Culture War’ to the Church of Criminal Orthodoxy. While we were not paying attention it stealthily crept into America and began injecting its ‘moral insanity’ producing venom into America’s cultural institutions. Working under cover as multiculturalism, diversity, tolerance, sexual orientation, safe schools/safe sex, reproductive choice, porn as free speech, etc., the evil empire has entrenched itself right here in America. . . .

If we wish to remain free, we must turn back to and rededicate ourselves to the source of our freedom and personal liberties: God the Creator and the principles of Christianity. Parents must protect their children and keep them out of the grasping hands of the Church of Criminal Orthodoxy. And as a people united by the principles of freedom and personal liberty, we must commit ourselves to the long and arduous fight to recapture every square inch of our culture, laws, and government and cleanse them of the corruptions caused by the Church of Criminal Orthodoxy.

-- Linda Kimball, opinioneditorials.com, 10/11/06

The secret (and weakness) of America

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret and genius of her power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. -- Alexis de Tocqueville, quoted in "In the Words of Ronald Reagan", by Michael Reagan

[If this has a familiar ring to some of you, it may be because it restates what King Mosiah in the Book of Mormon said two millenia ago. (See Mosiah 29: 26-27) -- KJK ]

The weakness (and dark secret) of America

As America moves into the 21st century, we have yet to admit a shameful, dark secret. Evolutionism -- the creation myth, that empowered Nazism and Communism,is being taught to America's youth in our government-controlled schools. The animalization of Americans is well advanced and coupled to a corresponding slow collapse of human worth. Already we hear of human life spoken of in dehumanizing categories such as 'vegetable,' "non-persons," and 'uterine content.'

Ominously, Evolutionary Humanism has also outstripped Judeo-Christian precepts in our universities, judiciary, federal bureaucracy, corporations, medicine,law, psychology, sociology, entertainment, news media and halls of Congress. As Biocentrism it fuels the nonhuman animal rights project, the gay rights movement, radical feminism, and the increasingly powerful and influential green environmentalist program, which demands that America submit to the draconian mandates of the Kyoto Treaty.

America, the "moral force that defeated communism" is on the verge of completely rejecting God, the natural order, and moral absolutes and instead,embracing the godless religion of evolution, amorality, and the unnatural.

-- Linda Kimball, opinioneditorials.com, 6/20/07

Civil war and the family

In the "The Siege of Western Civilization," Herb Meyers, former CIA analyst in the Reagan administration and one of the first scholars to predict the implosion of the Soviet Union, explains that there are three major threats to the survival of Western Christian-Judeo Civilization. The first of these is the war with radical Islam. The second is the incredible plunging birthrates throughout the West and Japan. We have stopped breeding, said Meyers, and this may well lead not only to destruction of the world economy, but to the extinction of entire populations. Nothing like this has ever happened before in the history of the world, declared Herb. Western Europe and Japan, said Meyers,are catastrophes simply waiting to happen. The third threat is what Meyers termed the 'second civil war' being waged within America by a coalition of God-hating progressive secular humanists (socialists), and Cultural Marxists(multiculturalists). As Meyers cautioned, these revolutionaries mean to overthrow and destroy the America of our Founders and its traditional Christian-Judeo based culture. . . .

As revealed by [William] Hinds, the traditional family is the foundation of personal property, which is why Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, George Lukacs and comrades sought its destruction. Likewise, it's why today's Cultural Marxists are viciously attacking it and promoting sexually fluid alternatives such as polygamy and same-sex marriages. Additionally, since all goods are to be shared equally -- even sex -- and promiscuity is, therefore, a prominent feature of secularized communal societies, Christian sexual ethics such as abstinence, fidelity, and monogamy are as antithetical as are the ideas of personal property and individual rights and freedoms.

-- Linda Kimball, opinioneditorials.com, 9/1/06

Why governments don't shrink

... The "big trends" in world history are going our way. The American way of life and doing business is spreading at an amazing rate around the world and throughout our country, as entrepreneurs create new companies and new value every day. The people, in general, "get it."

It is the politicians who don't. In fact, to a great degree the very temperament that makes somebody likely to run for office makes them an unlikely candidate for shrinking government. It is often, even usually, that it is a desire for power that motivates candidates. It is the need to limit government power that lies at the root of the conservative insight.

-- David Strom, townhall.com, 10/24/07

Understanding Atheism

Those who become agnostic or atheist often say that it was due to an intellectual journey or an intellectually honest re-appraisal of childhood faith. But, as my mentor David L. McMillen used to say, "People rarely understand their own motivations." -- Mike Adams, townhall.com, 10/29/07

Romney Concepts 101

I believe the free market works and government doesn't -- that when government takes over a function which can be effectively managed in the free market, we make a huge mistake. -- Mitt Romney, quoted by Brian M. Carney, opinionjournal.com, 11/12/07

As usual, it boils down to greed

Vouchers are adamantly opposed by the teacher unions, which spent millions persuading Utah voters last week to repeal a voucher law passed by the legislature. No one can say for sure how much vouchers would improve education. But they are "forces of competition," as Greenspan puts it, which we're almost entirely prevented from harnessing because of the power of teacher unions -- the power, more specifically, that they wield in the Democratic Party. ...

The teacher unions are an incredibly important source of money and volunteers for the Democratic Party -- about one in 10 delegates at recent Democratic national conventions have been teacher union members or their spouses. When they snap their fingers, the Democrats jump. Vouchers threaten to dry up dues money, and that is that. -- Michael Barone, Townhall.com, 11/12/07

The greatest scam in history

I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create in allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the 'research' to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims.Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus... I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party.However, Global Warming, ie Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you 'believe in.' It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise.And I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won't believe a me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it... There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril... In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped. The sky is not falling. -- John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel

Hillary's forked tongue

Here, boiled down, is what [Hillary Clinton] said [in the recent Democratic debate].

Giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses makes sense because it makes sense, but she may not be for it, but undocumented workers should come out of the shadows, and it makes sense. Maybe she will increase the payroll tax on Social Security beyond its current $97,500 limit, to $200,000. Maybe not. Everybody knows what the possibilities are. She may or may not back a 4% federal surcharge on singles making $150,000 a year and couples making $200,000. She suggested she backed it, said she didn't back it, she then called it a good start, or rather "I support and admire" the person proposing such a tax for his "willingness to take this on."

She has been accused of doubletalk and she has denied it. And she is right. It was triple talk, quadruple talk, Olympic level nonresponsiveness. And it was, even for her, rather heavy and smug. Her husband would have had the sense to look embarrassed as he bobbed and weaved. It was part of his charm. But he was light on his feet. She turns every dance into the polka. And it is that amazing thing, a grim polka.

-- Peggy Noonan, OpinionJournal.com, 11/2/07

Religion *IS* being taught in public schools

Opponents of school vouchers say tax money shouldn't go to support religious schools. Obviously they don't realize just how much religion is being taught in the public schools today: atheism, homosexuality, situational ethics, mental mediocrity, sexual promiscuity. These principles are the foundation of humanism, twice declared by the Supreme Court to be a religion. Why should families with conservative religious beliefs have to pay twice for their children's education? -- Ellen Hindman, The Deseret Morning News, 11/1/07

Atheism's Gift to Humanity

If we look at the history of Western civilization, we find that Christianity has illuminated the greatest achievements of the culture. Read the new atheist books and make a list of the institutions and values that Hitchens and Dawkins and the others cherish the most. They value the idea of the individual, and the right to dissent, and science as an autonomous enterprise, and representative democracy, and human rights, and equal rights for women and racial minorities,and the movement to end slavery, and compassion as a social virtue. But when you examine history you find that all of these values came into the world because of Christianity. If Christianity did not exist, these values would not exist in the form they do now. So there is indeed something great about Christianity, and the honest atheist should be willing to admit this.


By contrast, does it make any sense to say, as Hitchens does in his book's subtitle, that "religion poisons everything"? Religion didn't poison Dante or Milton or Donne or Michelangelo or Raphael or Titian or Bach! Religion didn't poison those unnamed architectural geniuses who built the great Gothic cathedrals. Religion didn't poison the American founders who were for the most part not Deist but Christian. Religion didn't poison the anti-slavery campaigns of William Lloyd Garrison or William Wilberforce, or the civil rights activism of the Reverend Martin Luther King. The real question to ask is, what does atheism offer humanity? In Tonga, as in America, the answer appears to be: Nothing.

-- Dinesh D'Souza, townhall.com, 11/1/07

Republican Hindsight

You know what? Standing on principle is a good idea. Too bad we didn't do it when we were in the majority. -- Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), GOP Debate, 10/09/07

How do you define "hate speech"?

Hate speech is verbal communication that induces anger due to the listener's inability to offer an intelligent response.

Because this inability to offer an intelligent response is due to one of two reasons, there are really two different types of hate speech: 1)Speech that is too dumb to merit an intelligent response, and 2) Speech for which the listener is too dumb to offer an intelligent response. . . .

The similarity between the two principal forms of hate speech is obvious: They both induce anger in the listener, regardless of whether the speaker expressed his view with any feeling of hatred or animosity. . . .

Islamic advocacy of violence is not classified as "hate speech" because it induces fear, not anger.
-- Mike Adams, townhall.com, 10/22/07

Atheist Indoctrination Practices

Philosopher Richard Rorty argued that secular professors in the universities ought "to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own." Rorty noted that students are fortunate to find themselves under the control "of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents." Indeed, parents who send their children to college should recognize that as professors "we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable."

This is how many secular teachers treat the traditional beliefs of students. The strategy is not to argue with religious views or to prove them wrong. Rather, it is to subject them to such scorn that they are pushed outside the bounds of acceptable debate. This strategy is effective because young people who go to good colleges are extremely eager to learn what it means to be an educated Harvard man or Stanford woman. Consequently their teachers can very easily steer them to think a certain way merely by making that point of view seem fashionable and enlightened. Similarly, teachers can pressure students to abandon what their parents taught them simply by labeling those positions as simplistic and unsophisticated.

-- Dinesh D'Souza, townhall.com, 10/22/07

Election Issues for Evangelicals

Here is what I believe is at stake in this election:

• Someone is almost certain to appoint two, three, or four justices to the Supreme Court. Do we want that person to be Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney?
• Someone will cast vision and lead Congress on matters of national security, including securing our borders against illegal immigration. Should that be Hillary, Rudy or Mitt?
• Someone will deal with the definition of marriage in America -- and will either defend and model a faithful marriage and strong family, or not. Who should that person be?
• Someone will either defend unborn life -- or defend those who place THEIR rights and desires above those who can't defend themselves. Would we prefer that Clinton, Giuliani or Romney be in that position?
• Someone will need to deal with radical Islamic Jihadists and the threat they pose to our nation. As evangelicals, do we want to entrust Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney with that critical assignment?
• Finally, someone will either welcome evangelicals and people of faith into the White House and their administration; or shut them out of deliberations and consideration for various appointments. Would Hillary, Rudy or Mitt be most accepting of evangelicals and people of faith?

. . . I concluded that I am more concerned that a candidate shares my values than he shares my theology.

-- Evangelist Mark DeMoss, quoted by Hugh Hewitt, townhall.com, 10/11/07

ECONOMICS 101 STUFF

I don't buy the concept that any reduction in taxes is lost revenue to the government. . . . Generally speaking, lower taxes and lower tax rates grow the economy. It's been proven in the '20s, it was proven during the Kennedy administration, proven during the Reagan administration, and again during this administration.
-- Fred Thompson, GOP Debate, 10/10/07

Do-gooders, Money, and Power

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.' But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector. Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always 'against,' never 'for' anything. -- Ronald Reagan

The Gauling Guile of Liberal Politics

"You're outmanned, you're outgunned, you're out equipped. What else have you got?" Worf lamented. Commander Riker's reply: "Guile." ( Star Trek - TNG: "Peak Performance")

The same would be the response of many if not most of our honored politicians. But some (and not a few) take the guileful art to new heights. Enter the Smart People. Orson Scott Card, in his essay, Phony Soldiers and Patriotism, shares an incisive and clear view of those who consider themselves the ultimate benefactors of the Stupid People, justifying all manner of deception that they may save the nation and the world (and their power). Card is my favorite Democrat. Please read this one! -- Kirt

The forgotten reasons for intervention in Iraq

While factions of our society debate the pros and cons of US military intervention in Iraq the facts presented for the initiation of efforts there have always stood clearly defined. They were laid out in no uncertain terms, and in order of priority, by President Bush before the United Nations General Assembly on September 12, 2002:

• Violation of UN Security Council Resolution 688: Human rights violations and the torture, rape and murder of political opponents and ordinary citizens, including the genocide of the Iraqi Kurds.
• Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions 686 and 687: The refusal to release prisoners of war captured during the Gulf War.
• Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions 687 and 1373: The refusal to disassociate with terrorist organizations and the facilitation of terrorist entities within and traveling across Iraq borders.
• Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 678, 686, 687, 688, 707, 715, 986 and 1284: Refusal to cease development programs for weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and refusal to allow UN inspectors uninhibited access to any and all weapons development programs.

In summary: genocide, refusal to return prisoners of war, enabling of terrorists and their organizations, refusal to cease WMD development programs and refusal to allow verification of said cessation.

You will notice the obvious absence of the anti-war Progressive-Left’s favorite myth, that the US invaded Iraq because the “neo-cons” said they had stockpiles of WMD. That’s because the WMD argument was manufactured by anti-Bush politicos and spin doctors, disseminated by an agenda-driven media and promoted by the anti-war Progressive-Left. It was always about the issue of WMD development and verifying the successful destruction of not only the existing WMD – WMD that the UN documented and verified Hussein had – but the long-range missiles he had to deploy them. It was always about the programs and the “grave and gathering threat” those programs posed.

That being said, the only reason that should have ever been required by the UN, the American people and/or the free world for deposing Saddam Hussein’s regime was the first reason – human rights violations and mass murder to the point of genocide.

-- Frank Salvato, OpinionEditorials.com, 9/07/07

China is on the move, or haven't you noticed?

China's "smile diplomacy" and its deployment of the "tools of culture" are clearly elements in a purposeful, government-directed campaign to reassure, charm and gain influence. . . .

The hope that China will soon change [to become more Western and democratic], and the assurance that, in the meantime, there is a great deal of money to be made, have helped many in this country into a state of comfortable complacency. . . .

If China stays on its current path, if it continues to grow richer and stronger while remaining autocratic, it will likely become bolder, more assertive, and possibly more aggressive than it is today. If the United States wishes to preserve its present military, diplomatic, and technological advantages, it will have to compete much more vigorously and deliberately than it has been doing in recent years. We are going to have to run faster just to stay in place. But we are unlikely to do so if we cannot even acknowledge to ourselves that we are in a race.

-- Aaron L. Friedberg, CommentaryMagazine.com, October 2007

My Fellow Republicans

If we're going to change Washington, Republicans have to put our own house in order. We can't be like Democrats -- a party of big spending. We can't pretend our borders are secure from illegal immigration. We can't have ethical standards that are a punch-line for Jay Leno. When Republicans act like Democrats, America loses. It's time for Republicans to start acting like Republicans. -- Mitt Romney, open letter to the Republican party

Investing in Iranian Democracy

American lawmakers and Iranian-Americans who would eliminate financial support for Iran's democrats need to understand the following: Supporting Iranian civil society and the nonviolent struggle toward democracy and human rights is likely the most cost-effective means to prevent a future conflict with Iran or an armed struggle within its borders. Democracy is difficult to achieve. But with its remarkably young, educated population, and a long-stifled yearning for the fruits of modernity and liberalism, Iran has many of the key ingredients for success. -- Akbar Atri, OpinionJournal.com, 10/15/07

Of Lemmings, Appeasers, Piranhas, and Activists

Like lemmings marching toward a nearby cliff, many business leaders are blindly embracing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the doctrine du jour of activist nannies who are seeking to usurp political authority by setting themselves up as private regulators -- all for the purpose of dictating how the rest of us live our lives. . . .

In addition to the CSR lemmings, there are two other types of business leaders who preach the gospel of corporate socialism. They include those who believe CSR represents a public relations opportunity that companies can exploit for the sake of getting the activists off their backs. They are modern-day Neville Chamberlains; appeasement artists who believe that the Holy Grail of successful business management is good PR. . . .

The third group of business executives who support the CSR movement do so because they can afford to, and they believe their competition either cannot pay the price of admission to the CSR cult, or are unwilling to genuflect to the activists when they show up for tribute. . . . But their real motive is to exploit CSR to achieve an artificial advantage over the competition. They are not lemmings or appeasers. They are good old-fashioned piranhas. . . .

The net-net of this spectacularly undemocratic process called CSR is that the activists are being aided and abetted by some business executives in their efforts to dictate business policies and expenditures based on their vision of what is sustainable, equitable and fair for the rest of us. . . .

Fortunately, there are still some corporate warriors who understand that businesses do not have social responsibilities; only people do.

-- Nick Nichols, townhall.com, 10/4/2007

Liberal Reactions 101

Liberal hysteria about conservative speech always follows the same pattern; I call it "The Five Stages of Conservative Enlightenment." There are public denunciations, demands for apologies, letter-writing campaigns, attacks on the sources of your income, and calls for censorship. There will be lots of wailing, but no facts refuting the point behind your hysteria-inducing statement. Liberals prefer denouncing people with idioms -- over the top, gone too far, crossed the line,beyond the pale -- not substance. Whose line? Whose pale? It almost makes you think they don't want to talk about the substance. -- Ann Coulter, townhall.com, 9/30/07

Radical Islam is worth worrying about

[Daniel Pipes said] "Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War. What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the Gulag?" A thoughtful answer to that question is sobering. The Islamists have:

• A potential Access to weapons of mass destruction that could devastate Western life.
• A religious appeal that provides deeper resonance and greater staying power than the artificial ideologies of fascism or communism.
• An impressively conceptualized, funded and organized institutional machinery that successfully builds credibility, goodwill and electoral success.
• An ideology capable of appealing to Muslims of every size and shape, from Lumpenproletariat to privileged, form illiterates to Ph.D.s, from the well-adjusted to psychopaths, from Yemenis to Canadians."

Add to the above "a huge number of committed cadres. If Islamists constitute 10 percent to 15 percent of the Muslim population worldwide,they number some 125 million to 200 million persons, or a far greater total than all the fascists and communists, combined, who ever lived."

-- William F. Buckley, quoting Norman Podhoretz, townhall.com, 9/6/07

How to define victory

Iraq is only one campaign in the war against the nations that sponsor terrorism.Victory isn't an Iraq that can defend and govern itself. Victory is defined as the end of state sponsorship of Islamic terrorism, which means forcing Iran,Syria, and Saudi Arabia and others out of that business. Nothing more is needed, and nothing less will defeat an existential threat to America. -- Diana West, townhall.com, 9/7/07

Better teach your grandkids to shoot

We fight and defeat these people [i.e. Islamic terrorists] here and now [in Iraq], or my grand-daughter will be fighting them in Des Moines forty years on.. . . You know, as I do, that there are people who want to kill every American in Iraq. And if they succeed in doing that, they will come here and try to kill every American in America. -- Rich Galen, townhall.com, 9/12/07

Keeping Up Appearances

The conclusion I came away with after a couple of rounds [of diplomatic talks]was that the Iranians were only interested in the appearance of discussion, of being seen at the table with the U.S. instead of actually doing serious business. -- Ambassador Ryan Crocker, congressional testimony, September 2007.

If Uncle Sam Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy

The paradox is this: There has been no follow-on attack against he United States [since 9/11]. The United States did dislodge Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, and while the war goes badly, the casualties are a small fraction of those lost in Vietnam. Most important, bin Laden's dream is gone. No Muslim state has been overthrown and replaced with a regime that bin Laden would find worthy. He has been marginalized by both the United States and by his rival Shiite radicals, who have picked up the mantle that he dropped. His own jihadist movement is no longer under his effective control. . . .

The effect on the United States is much more profound. The war, both in Iraq and against al Qaeda, has worn the United States down over time. The psychology of fear has been replaced by a psychology of cynicism. The psychology of confidence in war has been replaced by a psychology of helplessness. Exhaustion pervades all.

That is the single most important outcome of the war. What happens to bin Laden is, in the end, about as important as what happened to [Che] Guevara.Legends will be made of it -- not history. But when the world's leading power falls into the psychological abyss brought about by time and war, the entire world is changed by it. Every country rethinks its position and its actions.Everything changes.

. . . The United States has psychologically begun tearing itself apart over both the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq. Whatever your view of that, it is a fact -- a serious geopolitical fact.

-- George Friedman, Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 9/11/07

The Games Russkies Play

The Russians are chess players and geopoliticians. In chess and geopolitics, the games is routine and then, suddenly, there is an opening. You seize the opening because you might never get another one. The United States is inherently more powerful than Russia, save at this particular moment. Because of a series of choices the United States has made, it is weaker in the places that matter to Russia. Russia will not be in this position in two or three years. It needs to act now.

Therefore, Putin will go to Iran on Oct. 16 and will work to complete Iran's civilian nuclear project. What agreements he might reach with Iran could give the United States nightmares. If the United States takes out Iran's nuclear weapons, the Russians will sympathize and arm the Iranians even more intensely.If the Americans launch an extended air campaign, the Russians will happily increase the supply of weapons even more.

. . . At a certain point, sooner rather than later, the Iranians must examine whether they want to play the role of the Russian cape to the American bull.

-- George Friedman, Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 9/17/07

Figure It Out; It's Not That Hard

Which makes more sense: trusting the judgment of military commanders closest to"conditions on the ground" in Iraq and with no political ax to grind, or that of partisan armchair generals on the left aisle of the Senate with little to no expertise and no constitutional authority to act as mini-commanders in chief? -- David Limbaugh, townhall.com, 9/14/07

Of Hammers and Nails

Liberals like to say of the Bush administration's allegedly militaristic foreign policy that if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Likewise, if the only tool you have is dialogue, everyone looks like a reasonable interlocutor. -- Rich Lowry, townhall.com, 9/24/07

How to end a war

Just because you want to leave doesn't mean the bully is finished with you. You can pull the US military out of Iraq, but that doesn't end the war. Victory and defeat end wars. -- Senor Dangriga, 9/14/07, senordangriga.blogspot.com