Conservative Values

Poll Reveals Americans Understand Big Goverment Scam

Mark Noonan38 Comments

From Rasmussen:

…A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 71% of American Adults say the bigger problem with welfare programs in the United States is that too many people get welfare who should not be getting it. Just 18% say the bigger issue is that too many people who should receive welfare do not get it, while another 11% are not sure.

Republicans (91%) and adults not affiliated with either political party (70%) believe much more strongly than Democrats (51%) that the bigger problem with welfare is that too many ineligible people are on it.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of all Americans think immigrants who follow the law and enter the United States legally should have to wait three years or more before collecting welfare benefits, including 31% who believe they should wait more than five years. Seventeen percent (17%) think three years is enough, while 11% prefer a five-year waiting period…

What is the scam?  Get as many people as possible hooked on Big Government hand outs, then claim that any proposed cut is a cruel, inhuman cut-off of someone who otherwise will die.  Use these in alternating efforts to continually grow government so that you can get ever richer and more powerful.  For the longest time, this worked…but this poll indicates that more and more people are understanding that massive numbers of people are on the dole who really shouldn’t be.

While I have no way to test my theory – it would take a large staff and a pretty big budget to do it – I firmly assert that at least half of the people receiving government benefits should be kicked off and forced to get back to work.  As I’ve said elsewhere, I’ve got a pretty high standard for disability…no one will ever be able to erase from my memory my late colleague who was a wheelchair-bound victim of a horrific genetic disease who couldn’t even use all the fingers of her hands and yet managed to hold down a 40 hour a week job until just a few months before her death.

If she could work, then most people on disability can work.  Period.  End of story.  No, shut up you lazy SOBs with your whines about “stress”…get back to work and get off my wallet.  I’ve got stress, too – a great deal of which stems from having to get up and go to work in the morning while millions of people are on their backside watching daytime television and waiting for their EBT card to be re-filled.  In my view, you’re only excused from working if you can’t work…can’t get out of bed, can’t stand up for more than a few minutes, can’t sit down for more than a few minutes, are blind…missing your legs or arms…something like that (and this is Biblical – In fact, when we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat – 2 Thessalonians 3:10 – so don’t any of you liberals try to throw Christian charity at me…I know the command to charity; but charity isn’t the act of supporting layabouts who can otherwise support themselves).

A great deal of the reform of America will be re-imposing the requirement of hard work.  Hard, dirty work, at that.  A nation which will not engage in hard work is a nation which will die – it is really just as simple as that.  Each person is required to labor to the limit of the talents God has provided him or her – those who can do much, must do so; those who can do little, must still do at least that…and those who really can do nothing, must be provided with every last thing they need from those of us who can.  But there are no free rides – if you are living off the wealth of others then it must only be because there is no other way for you to live.  A complete review of all those on government aid should be done – excluding only those on social security retirement and military pensions (you get SS because you earned it by working…you get your military pension because you earned it by risking your life over many years for your nation) – everyone on government aid should be forced to justify their dependency.  Tell us why you can’t work – show us your complete incapacity for any work whatsoever.  If that is indeed the case, then you can count on us to provide all you need…but if you can work, at all, then you’d better get to work.

Enough is enough – there really is no free lunch and it is time we called a halt to this liberal nonsense.

Poll: 28% Conservative, 12% Liberal

Mark Noonan35 Comments

From Rasmussen:

…The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 28% of Likely Voters say they are both fiscal and social conservatives.  Just 12% say they are liberal in both areas, while 60% are some other combination…

That is about right – and it is why I hold the United States to be a center/right nation.  We can do ok with a center/left President like Clinton, but we can’t at all tolerate someone who is completely leftist, like Obama.  The mistake Obama and his Democrats  made in 2009 was to presume that America have shifted left when what really happened was just a rejection of a particular political party let by a particular President.  A rejection of Bush and the 2008 GOP by no means signaled a shift to the left in America.

But Obama and Co ran with it – and so we got disastrous policies and now an increasingly angered electorate which seems to be building itself up towards a gigantic rejection of all things liberal in 2012.

The really amazing thing is that Obama could have got 80% of what he wanted – and, perhaps, have shifted America a little further to the left than it had ever been before.  All he had to do was call in to his councils people like McCain and Snowe and he would have gotten a lot of things to please his base while also offering some things to his opposition.  But his attitude was “I won, so screw you” to the GOP and conservatism.

Ok, if that’s the way you want it…

More Guns, Less Crime

Mark Noonan12 Comments

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Virginia’s bars and restaurants did not turn into shooting galleries as some had feared during the first year of a new state law that allows patrons with permits to carry concealed guns into alcohol-serving businesses, a Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis found.

The number of major crimes involving firearms at bars and restaurants statewide declined 5.2 percent from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011, compared with the fiscal year before the law went into effect, according to crime data compiled by Virginia State Police at the newspaper’s request.

And overall, the crimes that occurred during the law’s first year were relatively minor, and few of the incidents appeared to involve gun owners with concealed-carry permits, the analysis found…

An armed population is a free and safe population – also, a more well-mannered population.  This is just natural.  If we’re armed, we can’t just be oppressed at will.  If we’re armed, criminals think twice about committing crimes.  If we’re armed, everyone minds their manners because they’d rather not accidentally insult someone who is carrying a gun.  Neatly stated by John Wayne in The Shootist:

I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I expect the same from them.

In the end there are only two types of people who don’t want an armed population – people who just don’t understand freedom and tyrants.

When Britain Had Courage

Mark Noonan60 Comments

We got this:

Now we get a supine population being roughed up by welfare bums.

You know something, I’ve never actually owned a gun.  Always figured that enough of my fellow citizens had them to ensure a general defense against riot.  But now I’m going to buy one.  To all the barbarians out there – you go ahead and start a riot in my town, we’ll have words.

Civilization stands on the edge of destruction – the once-great nation of Britain, which used to boast that it never had and never shall lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, is dying.  This is the left wants for us, too…a disarmed, cowardly and government-dependent serfdom, while barbarians prowl unchecked.  Not for me – my America shall live, even if it requires the shedding of barbarian and patriot blood.

Sen. Toomey to the Debt Committee

Mark Noonan14 Comments

From NRO’s The Corner:

Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), who found out this morning that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) had selected him to serve on the congressional “super-committee,” said he “very strongly hopes” the panel can reach an agreement to avoid triggering the fallback measure that includes deep cuts to defense spending. In order for that to happen, Toomey told reporters on a conference call Wednesday, both parties will have to compromise. “If this committee is going to be successful, it absolutely has to have bipartisan support,” he said. “That’s how it was set up. This has to be done in a cooperative fashion.”

The freshman senator and former Club for Growth president said his “guiding principles” on the committee will be “the twin goals of reducing the deficit and continuing to promote economic growth.” To that end, he hopes to reform the tax code in order to broaden the base while lowering rates and growing the economy. “That will also generate more revenue,” he said. “A stronger economy always does.”…

Toomey is an excellent choice and, also, a pledge to the TEA Party and conservatism in general that they have a voice in this committee.  Do read the whole linked article as Toomey lays out an excellent vision of what this committee can and should accomplish.  If good will and public spirit can accomplish anything, then Toomey will do it.

On the other hand, the purpose of the committee – as far as Democrats are concerned – is to cut defense and ratify tax hikes (especially on those “millionaires and billionaires” who make $200,000.00 a year).  Failing that, the Democrats’ hope that a smash up of the committee can be blamed on the Republicans and be used as part of the overall “smear and fear” campaign they are planning for 2012 (very telling is Reid’s selection of Sen. Murray for the committee – she is chair of the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee…in other words, the Democrat Senator with the most vested interest in playing pure politics on the committee).  In short, while Toomey wants to do what is right, Democrats want to claw on to power…it’ll make for an interesting battle.

At the end of it, either Toomey’s spirit of patriotic compromise will prevail, or the whole thing will blow up…but if the Republicans on the committee hang tough on core principals (genuine spending reduction and tax reform which doesn’t punish the middle class nor destroy wealth creation), then the blow up will be right in the Democrats’ face.  Fundamentally, the American people are on the side of reasonable compromise to reduce spending and grow the economy…that is what they want, and that is what the GOP must stand for.  If Democrats sabotage it then the people will see right through that…and only if the GOP caves in and goes along will we be blamed for any failure.

We are at a crossroads for our nation – between now and November of 2012 we will decide if we remain a great, free and prosperous nation, or if we are to sink in to decline and eventual destruction.  Each step we take must be informed by a genuinely patriotic desire to do what is best for America…in this, there is a time to fight it out in the trenches, and a time to seek reasonable compromise.  The opening of the debt committee is the time for reasonable compromise.  The Democrats will, I am certain, reject this course…but let them do it, first…then we’ll have the approval of the American people to get down and dirty with them.

The Tea Parties, the Future of Liberty and Liberal Intentional Slander

tiredoflibbs90 Comments

After Barak Obama (the obAMATEUR to realists) became president in January 2009, he signed the infamous “stimulus package”, worth $787 billion, of liberal dream spending with virtually no Republican support (and rightfully so).  As it was rammed through with little reading or debate, we were told that it was “necessary”, “to keep unemployment under 8%”.  Practically overnight as one of its highest priorities, the federal government became the “Home Depot” by weatherizing government buildings and housing projects (excuse me “housing developments”).  Streets and highways with little or no need of repair would be broken up and repaved.  The DOT and other government agencies would spend millions on signs advertising the supposed benefits of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  I saw one of those signs first hand in Washington DC.  It stated that the park on Roosevelt Island would be receiving a generous “grant” to facilitate the involvement of local youth in the removal of “non-indigenous plants”.  To put it simply, local kids would be weeding the island.  This was going to save the economy and the country??

Then there were several “projects” and “studies” also financed by the ARRA.  One project, numbered 1R01AA01658001, titled “Malt Liquor and Marijuana: Factors in their Concurrent or Separate Use”.  This grant of $400,000 to a professor at New York State at Buffalo has the following official abstract: “We appreciate the opportunity to refocus this application to achieve a single important aim related to our understanding of young adults’ use of malt liquor, other alcoholic beverages, and Marijuana, all of which confer high risks for experiencing negative consequences including addiction.”  Wow, $400,000 to study something we already knew???  Other such “grants” followed, to ACORN, to the study of porn, to the study of fish migrations and mating habits of certain animals, etc. etc.

The cost of the stimulus was later revised to $862 billion (an underestimate of 10%).  If a private business made such a blunder in outgoing funds it would most likely go out of business.  But I digress…..  As a result of this boondoggle of liberal spending, the TEA Party was born.  It was by accident really that this organization was founded.  Thanks to Rick Santelli on CNBC and his rant against the stimulus package and a particular proposal to for it to also subsidize what he called the “losers mortgages”.  He proposed a ceremonial dumping of  of derivative securities into Lake Michigan.  A few hours later a website popped up with a call for a “Chicago Tea Party” and Santelli’s video rant. The video became viral across the nation.  Average Americans were furious about the massive new spending and the revelations about previous spending on those “studies” and “grants”.  This alone was not the sustaining factor in keeping the TEA Party movement alive but the fact that: Under President Obama, federal spending has been growing at an unprecedented pace.  We are adding $4.8 billion to the national debt everyday.  The long-term viability of Medicare and Social Security isn’t merely uncertain – as so many analysts would have us believe.  In fact their failure is is a sure thing without structural changes.  By adding massive new entitlements with the health care bill we are simply going to go broke faster.

The TEA party gained so much momentum so fast, it was a threat to the liberal establishment.  Immediately pundits, the obAMATEUR friendly media, the Democrats went into full gear with their baseless and usual smear tactics and attacks.

Susan Roesgen of CNN (once an anchor in New Orleans) was going after TEA Party enthusiasts at a Chicago rally, suggesting they were stupid and irrational (no objective reporting there).

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post: “The danger of political violence in this country comes overwheminly from one direction – the right, not the left.  The vitriolic, anti-government hate speech that is spewed on talk radio every day – and, quite regurlarly, at TEA Party rallies – is calibrated not to inform but to incite.”

MSNBC’s Ed Shutlz (I KNOW NOTHING!!!): “I believe that the TEA Partiers are misguided.  I think they are racist, for the most part.  I think that they are clinging to their guns and their religion.  And I think in many respects, they are what’s wrong with America.”

Actress Janeane Garofalo: “This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.  There are nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging readnecks.”

Comedian Bill Maher: “the teabaggers, they’re not a movement, they’re a cult.”

Democratic strategist Stece McMahon: “The reason people walk into schools and open fire is because of rhetoric like this and because of attitudes like this.  The reason people walk onto military bases and open fire is because of rhetoric like this and attitudes like this.  Really, what they’re doing is not that much different that what Osama bin Laden is doing in recruiting people and encouraging them to hate America.”

Chris Mathews claimed that the TEA Partiers are all “monochromatic” and “all white”.  A quick look and amateur and profession videos at rallies quickly proved this talking point wrong.

However, a Washington Post/ABC poll found that 14% of voters say the TEA Party is “most in synch” with their values; 20% say TEA Partiers are “most in tune with economic problems Americans are now facing”.

A most interesting poll came from TargetPoint Consulting which interviewed 500 attendees at the April 15, 2010 Tax Rally in DC Here are some of the results:

The TEA Partiers are united on the issues of debt, the growth of government, and health care reform

They are socially conservative on the one hand and libertarian on the other, split roughly down the middle.

They are older, more educated, and more conservative that average voters and they are “distinctly not Democrat”.

This brings us to the present day.  The President’s approval ratings are low and getting lower and Congressional Democrats are the lowest and getting worse.  Members of his party are running away from him (as seen in the November elections with declines of his speaking at their rallies).  Now with the debate on the debt limit, Americans are seeing that the Republicans have presented plans while the Democrats and the President have presented NONE.  The only thing liberal Democrats and their drones can do is continue to attack the GOP and the TEA party candidates who won in November who are doing what their constituents want – lower spending and reduce the size of the budget with has grown over 25% in just two years.  There is no way you can convince anyone that there a no room for cuts.  The liberal drones continue with their attacks of racism.  Andrew Brietbart has offered anyone who can prove racism at a TEA party rally with a cash reward.  With all the amateur and professional videos out there NOT A SINGLE ONE has captured anything close to the looney left’s claims (of course, the left now claims criticizing the Presidents failed policies is racism).

The Democrats are out of new ideas.  They continue to tout the same old ones that have failed time and again – more spending and more taxes.  When the President says we must live within our means he is not talking of cutting spending to match revenues, but raising taxes in hopes of raising revenues to match spending.  His mishandling of this debt limit and lack of leadership is showing among his Twitter followers (losing 30,000) and elsewhere, his support continues to dwindle.

When President Obama spoke before the United Nations General Assembly in September 2009, he declared that a world order that elevates one country or group of countries over others is bound to fail.  So he’s changing the order.  If his domestic policy priority is the redistribution of wealth, his foreign policy seems to be the redistribution of power.  The TEA Party has members of every race and creed is continuing to gain momentum and returning the conversation to limited government in scope and power.

The Post-Hope and Change World

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Victor Davis Hanson notes the darkening scene:

…But it is in the Pacific where we may well see the most dramatic changes of American withdrawal. Insidiously, the Chinese are translating their formidable financial power into a new muscular military profile. North Korea is as crazy as ever. The proverbially terrorized shop-keeper in the region thus does not know where to turn—to the mostly absent cop on the beat dreaming of his union pension, or the young thugs who demand protection money or else.

The result is that Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines have one eye on China, and one on Washington—and therefore are increasingly terrified. One of three things will happen: our shaky allies will demand a higher U.S. profile in the region, and new assurances of safety under the U.S. nuclear umbrella (all quite unlikely); or they will go nuclear and, unlike North Korea, their missiles will work like Camrys and Kias; or they will make face-saving accommodations with the Chinese that will result in a new version of the old Co-Prosperity Sphere (China 2011 reminds me a lot of Japan 1935).

Right now, I could not imagine that anyone in Taiwan would believe the Obama administration would say or do anything should Chinese ships tomorrow show up a mile off the Taiwanese coast—but could envision the most eloquent speech why Taiwan must inevitably rejoin communist China. Indeed, Obama would call on both sides for restraint, while chewing out the Taiwanese for provoking the Chinese, while working out a “balanced” deal that ceded Taiwanese waters to China—until the next incident.

In short, we will be back soon to about 1937. The old rules are disappearing. All that we await for is some audacious trouble-maker to make perfectly clear that there are no such rules…

There will be a World War Three, you know?  It will probably be launched by China, but it could also be triggered by some darn fool thing done by Russia, Iran or Egypt.  The bottom line is that we are returning to international anarchy as Obama’s weakness and our massive debt convince more and more of the global players that we are off the board.  The global school master is out on break…and now the delinquents have their chance.

There is a cold, hard fact of life that our liberals – like Obama – simply do not grasp:  human nature does not change.  Not ever.  The wars and cruelties of the past and present are not an unintentional result: they are the result of what people desire.  When anyone out there in the world desires something they do not merit people will suffer – in greater or lesser degree, but they will suffer.  Naturally, the more powerful the evil-doer, the more suffering caused.  No matter what situation you create, no matter how hard you try to be just and merciful, the nature of mankind ensures that some people will simply reject the path of righteousness…some people simply from base motives will act badly, and thus there will be horrible things happening.

This rather bleak fact of life should turn all those of good will towards those practical policies which will avoid or ameliorate the effects of evil.  Not get rid of it – we can’t do that – but reduce the frequency of evil, and the damage done by it.  An attitude of careful saving against a rainy day, of insisting upon everyone pulling their own weight, of providing and maintaining a very strong military force…this is what is needed to navigate a world in which some are out to do wrong.  At bottom it is a recognition of duty and an understanding that you simply will not get everything you want…because you have onerous duties to perform, there simply won’t be enough time or resources for every pleasure and whim which seizes your mind, even if some of them are of quite admirable intent.

Because we undercut the last President and then elected a complete fool as his successor, the United States is rapidly weakening – not so much in actual power, but in the perception of American power.  This will touch off a scramble among the ill-disposed to grab as much as they can while the getting is good.  Those who are wicked are preparing – building up armed forces, undermining targeted States and powers, preparing the global stage for their nefarious designs.  This will eventually lead to war on a grand scale – a war which we will fight, and we will win (truly, the power of the United States is functionally limitless and far more than any other power can marshal).  But I don’t think after this next big war that we’ll go back as we did after the two previous World Wars and the Cold War.  No, I think that those who will sustain the United States and carry us through to victory will insist upon some significant changes.

I don’t see a future America pouring out its treasure to rebuild enemy States.  I don’t see America tying itself to corrupt international bodies.  I don’t see, in domestic affairs, a “well, hey, we did all the fighting – but don’t you who stayed home worry about it, we don’t mind all the suffering we went through” attitude.  I see in that portion of America (probably still a majority, but controlling no matter what by simple willingness to put duty first) demanding that we end this charade…this fool’s bargain where we pretend that those who don’t work are worthy of endless support; where those who don’t serve in the military are as patriotic as those who do; where those who whine loudest get the most.  A new bargain will be struck, where those who do the work and shed the blood are given precedence over those who don’t.

False ideas can get a lot of traction and go very far, but because they are false they are doomed to fail.  For a century now we have been living in an Age of Lies…an age of con artists.  That age is coming to a close – a new age dawns.

A Fight to the Debt

Mark Noonan38 Comments

I’ve just got to put a “wow” in here – never thought it would come out quite like this.

Here we are at the (fake) 11th hour and the whole thing is turning on just how much conservatism/libertarianism the TEA Party can squeeze in to the Boehner plan before he presents it to the House.  Oh, that is not what the MSM narrative is?  Also not what RINOs are saying?  You mean it isn’t what well paid, insider pundits (right and left) are saying?  Of course its not – because all of these simply don’t understand the nature of a  revolutionary political epoch.   That is what this is, good people…and remember that it is a truism of revolutionary movements that they usually appear a second away from defeat right before their overwhelming triumph.

Some version of the Boehner plan will pass the House – later today or tomorrow.  This is because something has to pass…and if Reid and his Democrats then carry out their threat and vote it down, then it puts the ball squarely in their corner.  If Reid kills it a couple days before the Democrats’ manufactured deadline, then it will be up to them to come up with an alternative which can pass the House.  (UPDATE:  I caught of bit of Reid on the Senate floor…”come on, Republicans, come in to my office and tell what parts of my bill you’ll sign on to, then I’ll bring it to a vote”…he is very much afraid of having a vote on a revised Boehner plan) And the House GOP is right now indicating just how conservative/libertarian the final result had better be, or it won’t be the final result.

Some say they are worried – worried that this horrific, inhuman and un-American standing on constitutional principals will weaken the GOP in 2012 and hand victory to Obama.  As far as absurd political prognostication goes, I’ve never heard anything worse.  For goodness sake, has anyone been paying attention to Obama’s “Strongly Disapprove” number?

43% “strongly disapprove” of how he’s doing his job.  This is not a man who is carefully threading his way through political crisis and making his opponents look bad.  The TEA Party cannot hand Obama the White House in 2012…every time the TEA Party acts up, Obama’s favorability craters.  The only thing which can save Obama now – other than a miraculous turn-around in the economy – is a GOP cave-in on spending.  If that happens, the TEA Party goes home or votes Third Party. As long as the GOP doesn’t cave, the TEA Party remains with it.  If the Boehner plan is not good enough for the TEA Party, it means Boehner had better make it so – it most emphatically does not mean make it least acceptable.

As I said yesterday, I think we should just pass the Boehner bill – it is good enough for me.  Clearly, though, a strong part of the GOP is not pleased with it.  So, make ’em pleased.  Remember what they are ultimately after – cuts significant enough to stave off national bankruptcy.  It isn’t TEA Party firmness which is threatening us with default, but Democrat profligacy and RINO wobbliness…it isn’t less spending which will push us over the edge, but more spending.  The TEA Party is 100% right, even if a little unrealistic about what can be accomplished while Obama is in the White House and Reid runs the Senate.

So, let’s have this fight – keep going; shout it out, TEA Partiers.  Don’t let the SOBs grind you down.  Get more conservatism/libertarianism in that bill…whatever amount it takes to get Boehner to 217 votes.  And then just watch our liberals fall apart as they are starkly forced to either pass the TEA Party-supported bill, or fail to avert the “default” they say is coming next Tuesday.

UPDATE:  Iowahawk has some Twittable thoughts on what will happen if we don’t raise the debt ceiling:

Beltway policy experts begin living by own wits; after 45 minutes there are no survivors…

…Breadlines teeming with jobless Outreach Coordinators, Diversity Liaisons, and Sustainability Facilitators…

…Without college loan program, America loses an entire generation of Marxist Dance Theorists…

The Coming (Ongoing) Constitutional Debate

tiredoflibbs35 Comments

When it comes to the Constitution, there are two main camps – the Constitutionalists and the “Living” Constitutionalists.   The Constitutionalists believe that the Constitution of 1787 can work at all times.  The Framers’ Constitution has guided this nation for most of the first two centuries and has rendered the freest, most prosperous, and most creative nation in the history of the world.

Then there are the liberals, who believe that the Constitution (and it interpretation) must “evolve” with the times and therein lies the problems we face today.  Proponents of the “21st century constitution” or “living constitution” aim to transform our nation’s supreme law beyond recognition – and with a minimum of public attention and debate.  Indeed, if there is an overarching theme to what they wish to achieve, it is the diminishment of the democratic and representative process of American government.  It is the replacement of a system of REPUBLICAN government, in which the Constitution is largely focused upon the architecture of government in order to minimize the likelihood of abuse of power, with a system of judicial government, in which substantive policy outcomes are increasingly determined by federal judges.  Rather than merely defining broad rules of the game for the legislative and executive branches of government, the new constitution would compel specific outcomes.

Forms of the Founders’ Constitution would remain – a bicameral legislation, periodic elections, state governments – but the important decisions would increasingly be undertaken by the courts, specifically the federal courts.  It will be the California referendum process writ national, a process by which the decisions of millions of voters on matters such as racial quotas, social services funding and immigration policy have been routinely overturned by single judges acting in the name of the Constitution – not the Framers’ Constitution, but a “constitution for our times”, a “living constitution”.

One of the liberals’ favorite argument for a “living constitution” is the “the founding fathers could not have predicted …. (insert favorite liberal cause or ideology here).  That is where they ignore the obvious.  The Framers put into place a means for the nation to amend the Constitution – to change it “with the times”.  This process has worked for over 200 years.  But this would put too much power into the hands of the people and not that of the politicians and their special interests (as we have seen in the last 40 years).  This process has been undermined time and again to the point where many “rights” have been granted through creative interpretation.

The Framers, through long experience of witnessing abuse of power, knew what they were doing when they wrote the Constitution, it amending process and its Bill of Rights, which specifically addressed situations and solutions to conditions that are not covered in the Constitution.  Too bad, MODERN liberals and their activists do not understand (or choose not to) these basic principles.  It is time that they did.

Fighting Discrimination? No, Fighting Common Sense

Mark Noonan4 Comments

A bit of an interesting story from CNA:

Catholic University of America is going ahead with its plan for single-sex residence halls despite a complaint filed on July 14 by Professor John Banzhaf, known for his lawsuits over fast food and women’s bathrooms.

In a July 19 statement provided to CNA, the university said it “is moving ahead with its plans to house the incoming class of freshman in single-sex residence halls when they arrive on campus next month.”

The university said it received a copy of Banzhaf’s complaint and will study it, but it remains “confident that the law does not require that men and women be housed together in residence halls.”…

The story goes on to describe Banzhaf as someone who fights against “discrimination”.  Here in modern America, we are conditioned to think of that as fighting against something bad – discrimination is bad, you see?  Trouble is, discrimination isn’t bad – and, in fact, each and every one of you is firmly in favor of discrimination.  You do it every time you make a choice.

You discriminate between peas and carrots.  Between Ford and Toyota.  Between paper and plastic.  Outside of those commonplaces, you also discriminate in choosing where to live.  Where to work.  Whom to associate with.  You are discriminating all the live long day.  So, why have we become conditioned to thinking that discrimination is bad?  Quite simple – some people wanted to perpetrate a series of injustices but they couldn’t sell it on those terms…so, they magically transformed their desire to do a bad, unjust thing in to a noble fight against “discrimination”.  Such as fighting against the common sense discrimination which would have us separate the sleeping quarters of young men and women.  Endless repetition did the rest – 40 years of fighting “discrimination” and having it endlessly hammered in to us that discrimination is wrong and we’re at the position where the application of common sense (in this case, separating young boys and girls) is startling, and the cause of a lawsuit.

A whole slew of things which are hideously wrong in our society – ranging from mixed-sex dorms to racial set-asides in college admissions as well as scores of other injustices – are built around the created need to fight discrimination.  If we were just after justice, we’d have long ago settled most of our problems and moved on. But there isn’t any money to be made in settling a problem – you can’t get famous that way; you can’t call in to existence vast bureaucracies; you can’t get on television talk shows and write best-selling books; you can’t have whole academic departments set up with cushy jobs and high pay if you are seeking justice.  It was unjust of us to once upon a time to deny opportunity to some people based upon their sex or skin color or religious affiliation…the solution to that problem was to stop doing that.  Presto, we’ve stopped doing that – no one in their right mind would dream of denying someone an opportunity based upon anything other than cold, hard qualifications.  But where is the advantage in such a thing to someone like Banzhaf?  Or an organization like NOW?  Or a whole bureaucracy like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission?

I’m telling you, good people, we’ve gotten ourselves tied up in knots here – we have been forced to abdicate our common sense and turn ourselves over to people who are scamming us like no tomorrow.  Think, for crying out loud – we have to discriminate.  If we don’t discriminate, then we’re simply not thinking.  You point out to me someone who is actually being denied something on grounds other than qualification and I’ll be right there at the barricades fighting along side you…but don’t anyone ever tell me that I have to fight against discrimination.  To me, that is asking me to fight against thinking – we have to judge circumstances and desired goals and figure out the best means of dealing with the former and achieving the latter.  We can’t do that if we allow cranks on the make to forbid thought because the first application of thinking would destroy their cash cow.

There are truths we must adhere to – right here and now, that college boys and girls should not sleep under the same roof.  Grasp that – hang on to that; make that the basis of your thoughts and actions, and a great deal of mental cobwebs will be swept away.  Discriminate between boys and girls – because boys and girls are different and have different needs and desires and it is up to adults to carefully guide them until they are fully ready to take their place as adults in society.  Once we’ve done that, we can then go on – and on and on.  We’ll start thinking, again…and at the merest touch of common sense, a gigantic amount of irrational nonsense will vanish from our society like a puff of smoke.