Can America be Conservative?

Mark Noonan55 Comments

You wouldn’t think so, if you listen to the MSM all the live long day. As far as that goes, the MSM Narrative is that one or two aged Christians are all that stands between us and the Progressive Utopia of $15 an hour minimum wages and daily flights bringing in foreigners who will be able to vote from age 16 on. On the other hand, 84% of the American people back a ban on late-term abortions – including 69% of those who identify themselves as “pro-choice”. In other words, this increasingly Progressive America has some how or another managed to latch on to a key aspect of Conservatism – respect for the inalienable right to life enshrined in both our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. I fully expect a ban on late term abortions to happen before I die – and I expect that one day abortion will only be permitted when it really is crucial to save the life of the mother. The tide in America is set on pro-life. How did that happen?

Patience and charity played a huge roll. We can’t just change a person’s mind overnight. It takes a while – and you also can’t change a person’s mind if you’re being uncharitable to them…that is, condemning them, scorning them or otherwise indicating a distaste for them. While from time to time a rather zealous firebrand would come to the fore in the pro-life movement, it was pretty obvious that such people were (a) kinda shoved forward by an MSM which wanted people to think that pro-life people were like that and (b) they weren’t really representative of the pro-life movement.  It was hard to characterize the pro-life movement as bad when it was almost always people quietly praying and offering counsel and assistance to women in need. It was also rather crucial that being pro-life was, is and always will be to be in favor of not just something good, but something so obviously good that even the most inattentive can see the merit of your case.

Another case of us winning is on the gun control debate. When I was a kid, it was the “thing” as much as being pro-choice was. Of course everyone wanted strict regulation of guns. But by being patient and being charitable and being in favor of something that is obviously good – the right of people to defend themselves – the right to bear arms movement has triumphed. Oh, to be sure, our Progressives are still keen to take away the guns – but they are just as keen to provide federally funded abortion on demand, too…but they won’t get it and they dare not speak their desire openly, because they know the debate is over and they lost. Only in the very deepest blue areas of the country can Progressives proclaim their desire to have taxpayers pay for abortion and to confiscate all weapons. On the national stage, they have to be in favor of “choice” in abortion and “common sense regulation” of weapons.

So, as we can see, conservatism can win – we can conserve things; the right to life and the right to keep and bear arms. We can also conserve things like property rights, the family and the free exercise of religion, as well – but only if we go about it with patience and charity and carefully selecting our issues so that we are defending what is obviously good. Leaving aside family and the free exercise of religion, let’s use property rights as a means of illustrating how we’re doing it wrong.

At bottom property rights are the fundamentally conservative thing in economic policy. The right of a person to own what he or she makes or inherits is what we’re supposed to be about. But what we do is essentially winding up defending money – we do it by defending capitalism, as a thing, and the net result is that in the public mind, we’re defending those who have bags of money. And the really irritating thing about that is that while we’re in the public mind defending the wealth of robber barons we’re actually defending the wealth of Progressive billionaires who use their money to undermine the things we actually must defend – property rights, the family and the free exercise of religion.

We can’t win the fight to save property as long as in the public mind we’re defending billionaires and multi-national corporations. In point of fact, someone who has billions of dollars and a corporation as large as, say, General Electric is a negation of property. General Electric is a behemoth making a few people very rich. A billionaire doesn’t have property like, say, a farmer or small retailer has property. A billionaire has investments and interests and wants to defend them – and will use his wealth to ensure special dealing for his investments and interests (and large corporations do the same). A farmer just wants his farm to work. A retailer just wants his store to be profitable. Do you see the difference?

To win the fight to save property rights, we have to champion those who actually have property – not those who have buckets of money. In fact, we have to stand athwart those with buckets of money…because a key thing for us to conserve, if we are indeed conservatives, is the bedrock, “small r” republican concept that any great concentration of power is a danger to the Republic. Large amounts of money under control of one person or a few people are dangerous concentrations of power…just as much as any large government bureaucracy. We have to be seen as curbing the power of billionaires and large corporations – and our battle ground would be best defending small business operators and other small property owners against the regulations of government, often done at the command of large corporations and billionaires who are trying to use government power to protect themselves.

What I’m talking about is well illustrated by a proposal from Senators Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) to regulate soap – specifically, a requirement for soap makers to register with the FDA any time they change their ingredients. This will not adversely affect  large soap manufacturers – they only rarely change their ingredients and the economies of scale allow them to easily absorb the cost of new regulations. But small soap makers who can’t buy ten tons of their ingredients at a time and, at any rate, might just decide to, say, put a little more of Ingredient A into their soap can’t afford the freight. The big soap manufacturers are entirely behind this proposal – from Procter and Gamble to Revlon and everything in between…because they know full well it will drive a lot of small competitors out of the market, thus increasing their profit margins. We should be taking up the banner of the small operators against the big players…people will see, easily, that we are on the side of the good guys. And we’ll make our point that property rights are something worthy. A battle over this – and similar battles that come up – will allow us to cast ourselves as the defender of the little guy…and will show up Progressives like Feinstein and Collins for what they are: tools of the rich.

Other things that are obviously good can be defended, as well. The family, for instance. Don’t get wrapped up too much in some of the debates currently raging. They are trivial. But in Nevada the governor recently signed a law which empowers families to control the education of their children (it has to do with Education Savings Accounts which allow parents to easily save money to pay for private education). That is obviously good – in defending such a thing as that, we’re defending the ability of strong, responsible parents to be deeply involved in their children’s education, rather than having faceless and corruptible bureaucrats decreeing from on high what sort of education the kids will get. The difference here is not in attacking the public school system, which only allows Progressives to absurdly (but effectively) paint us as anti-education – we’re not attacking anything; we’re just empowering people to do for themselves, if they want. And in doing this we’re also defending family, as a thing. We’re not saying what is a family, at all – we’re just saying that families have rights and privileges that are worthy of defense. And that is a winning way to approach it – because no matter how crazy it gets out there, most families will remain what they have always been…mom and pop and the kids.  And in defending that, we’ll set the cultural stage for a revival of all the things which go along with strong, independent families. And into the bargain with our defense of strong, independent families is a death blow to Big Government: the more power we secure for families, the less power there necessarily will be for government to exercise. Think what happens to government mandates in education once, say, even 25% of the kids are being educated as their parents wish in institutions the government has no control over?

I guess if I had to nutshell it, the revival of a conservative America depends upon us finding the good things we want to defend, and then going out there an defending them without acrimony. People do wish to be fair  and if we’re defending what is fair, we’re going to win.

 

 

 

Saturday Open Thread

Mark Noonan176 Comments

Today is June 6th – which means that 71 years ago, we invaded Normandy. Take a moment to remember those brave troops. As an aside, though, upon looking at it in the hindest of hind sight, I think we should have invaded at the Pas de Calais. Sure, the Germans had more there, but not that much more and if we had got ashore there – and we would have, given our absolute command of the air and sea – then Germany might have been defeated by October of 1944. Oh well – just keep it in mind if Putin decides to conquer Western Europe and we have to go back, again.

The New York Times is breathlessly reporting that Marco Rubio has four traffic tickets since 1997 – and Mrs. Rubio 13. They are swearing up and down that they dug this up by themselves – but there is strong evidence that it was spoon fed to them by one of Hillary’s political smear groups. This is an entirely irrelevant fact which is not worthy of being reported. It would only be an issue if, say, the Rubios’ tried to use their influence to squash the tickets. That didn’t happen, and so there’s nothing here for people to care about…but the MSM reported it, and we can only assume they did so because they were ordered to by Team Hillary. Think about it – you’re wasting a lot of time and effort reporting something like this – why do it? It’ll be like this all through the 2016 cycle. Hopefully we’ll win – if for no other reason than it’ll finally get the nauseating Team Clinton political machine out of our lives.

Murderous sniper on the loose in Colorado? We don’t know, yet – but it is possible.

Crime is rising in New York City – its almost as if having a soft-on-crime Progressive as Mayor isn’t such a good idea.

Black Chicago pastor not entirely happy with the Democrat Party. Hopefully this entirely correct sentiment will continue to grow in the African-American community.

Democrats don’t like the idea of over the counter sales of birth control. The bottom line is that if women are empowered to make their own choices without a government program, then there is zero need for government. Being in favor of choice is all well and good, but if it doesn’t mean a large, expensive government bureaucracy, then maybe its better we do without it, huh?

The Greeks are still financially screwed – and I have little sympathy for them. From what I can tell, the Greeks don’t want to pay their bills, which is something I agree with. If stupid bankers want to loan people more money than they can possibly repay, then the bankers are just going to have to take it in the shorts. But the Greeks don’t want to repay while still getting buckets of new money to keep their Welfare State going – in other words, they don’t want to go the route of poverty plus hard work to get themselves out of the jam they got themselves into. Pick one thing or the other, Greeks: either pay back what you borrowed or default and be poor for a while as you work yourself back to wealth.

State says they are preparing to investigate the Hillary e mail scam – and I believe them. And I believe their preparations will be complete no later than December, 2016.

ISIS fighter goes on social media to brag about how great their command center is. 22 hours later, the US Air Force blows the place to smithereens. Which is a good thing – but I doubt the wisdom in the Air Force telling us they used social media to find the target…now not only will ISIS have learned a lesson in security, but they might sucker us into blowing up a school or hospital via social media.

A Liberal Professor is Afraid of His Liberal Students

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Very interesting:

I’m a professor at a midsize state school. I have been teaching college classes for nine years now. I have won (minor) teaching awards, studied pedagogy extensively, and almost always score highly on my student evaluations. I am not a world-class teacher by any means, but I am conscientious; I attempt to put teaching ahead of research, and I take a healthy emotional stake in the well-being and growth of my students.

Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes scare me — particularly the liberal ones…

So, what is happening? This:

I have intentionally adjusted my teaching materials as the political winds have shifted. (I also make sure all my remotely offensive or challenging opinions, such as this article, are expressed either anonymously or pseudonymously). Most of my colleagues who still have jobs have done the same. We’ve seen bad things happen to too many good teachers — adjuncts getting axed because their evaluations dipped below a 3.0, grad students being removed from classes after a single student complaint, and so on.

I once saw an adjunct not get his contract renewed after students complained that he exposed them to “offensive” texts written by Edward Said and Mark Twain. His response, that the texts were meant to be a little upsetting, only fueled the students’ ire and sealed his fate. That was enough to get me to comb through my syllabi and cut out anything I could see upsetting a coddled undergrad, texts ranging from Upton Sinclair to Maureen Tkacik — and I wasn’t the only one who made adjustments, either…

That is all very disturbing, but nothing that we on the right haven’t been aware of for quite some time. I don’t know how old the author is – and he’s using a pseudonym – but given that he says he started teaching in 2006, I’m guessing he’s in his 30’s, and thus went to college early in the 21st century and that means he was born maybe around 1980 or so. I point out the age thing because this means the professor wasn’t around when political correctness first started to rear its ugly head in the 1980’s. He was just a kid and, at all events, the Powers That Be in higher education were just getting rolling on it with speech codes and other things. But the warning was issued by those on the right – if we start trying to classify speech as “good” or “bad”, then it would be those who complain the most who will rule the roost. If a subjective judgement by an individual is all it takes to get a thing condemned, then those who are most sensitive – or who claim to be most sensitive – will have veto power over what everyone else says. Needless to say, it was also easily understood that it would be hard left fanatics who would take most advantage of this because we on the right are not at all interested in stopping someone from talking while our people on the left have always been in favor of blocking speech which disputes leftwing ideology.

Unfortunately for a good liberal like this professor, there isn’t much he can do about it. Later in his article – which is very much worth reading – he traps himself firmly by agreeing that the social status of a person does play a role in the worth of that person’s statements. This flies in the face of two basic, Judeo-Christian concepts:

1. The social status of a person is irrelevant in determining the moral worth of the person – or of what the person says.

2. Human beings are capable of exercising reason to determine what is true.

A beggar can get it right, a king can get it wrong – of course, they can both get it wrong or both get it right. As persons they are capable of finding the truth and, as well, capable of getting lost in the weeds and never figuring out the truth. If the king and the beggar tell us two different things, then it is up to the rest of us to try and figure out if either or both of them are right or wrong…and that takes free inquiry…to give the beggar, say, 50% more credibility on the theory that a beggar must be a morally better person than the king (or vice versa) is to sabotage our inquiry from the start. We just have to take what they say and apply our reason and any ascertainable facts to their statements and come to our best judgement about it.

Liberals, these days, reject this – even our frightened professor; and even though he sees right in front of him – risking his entire career – the results of rejecting the basic concept of inherent moral human equality, regardless of station, and the necessity of applying facts and reason to all disputes. The professors only defense is to subscribe to these concepts…because then when confronted with a student complaining about a “trigger” in his lecture, he could reasonably say, “I’m sorry that what I said made you uncomfortable – let us discuss it further and see which one of us was correct – me in making the statement, or you in feeling uncomfortable hearing it”. After all, not all feelings of discomfort are reasonable – and, in fact, some of them are downright irrational and based upon ignorance or unfair prejudice. But the professor can’t get there – first of all, because the system in place would probably ensure him being fired for trying, but most importantly because the professor, himself, agrees with the underlying basis of someone being able to assert moral superiority to shut down debate.

This is the tail end of 100 years of Progressive thought, now completely in control of our institutions of higher education. You can’t pursue truth – you can only repeat endlessly whatever is fashionable for the moment. If you step out of line, you’ll be hammered down into silence…and as we see in the article, the professor has been hammered down. He now teaches his class only what is fashionable. And if the fashion changes next week, he’ll go with that – the students will be denied the knowledge of anything which may offend any particular student at any time.

I’ll end with one last note – the professor in his article does permit himself one, small bit of venting…when he essentially says that the school administrators are always coming down on the side of the customers – the students. He’s a bit contemptuous of the fact that the college is a business selling products and you know what goes on in a business which sells products: the customer is always right. He’s right to be contemptuous of that – and of Administrators who, even if not full-on Progressive nitwits, refuse to back up the professors and keep the kids in their place (which is, allegedly, that of pupil – meaning, they are there to learn things; not tell the teachers what to teach). There is a great deal of truth in this because higher education has become a bit of a racket. The quality of the students isn’t at issue – it all appears to be about just getting as many of them in there as possible because bags of money are made off of each student duff sitting in a chair. And you don’t want to upset your customers! They might move on to the college down the street…better to just knuckle under. After all, if a professor has to tremble in fear and the kids aren’t really getting an education, that doesn’t matter nearly as much as whether or not the tuition checks are coming in.

I think we can pretty much write-off the existing higher education system – and I think that as conservatives, we need to start making a new one. Initially parallel to the current, but eventually to replace it. A system where there is genuine academic freedom; where education is kept to a low cost; but where admission to the college is governed entirely by ability and continued attendance is based upon educational achievement and proper deportment. Most kids won’t go for it, of course – but the best who aren’t currently going to elite schools will…especially kids from more modest economic backgrounds. And we’ll be turning about genuinely educated kids, who will blow out of the water the products of the current system (and, I think, even outdo those coming from the elite universities in the long run).

UPDATE: Ace gets a bit vigorous about this:

…there is no way to not get one’s ego invested in an idea one pushes. But the code of intellectual inquiry was that people who did so were committing an error, and could (and should) be derided for doing so. The actual capital-T Truth must always exist as an ideal outside of oneself — not just out of humility (can the Truth actually live inside a flawed human being?) but in order to make sure that the Truth could be argued about, without people–

Crying like little babies any time someone’s conception of the Truth disagreed with theirs.

This entire mode shifts the grounds from Intellect — where there are rules and codes and dispassionate standards — to the Emotion, to the Self.

There’s a reason the left wants to do that. Frankly, most of these people are rather dim, second-raters at best, and are accutely insecure about their place in the academic world, — as they should be.

Global Warming is Destroying the Sahara Desert!

Mark Noonan6 Comments

Interesting – via Hot Air:

A few thousand years ago, a mighty river flowed through the Sahara across what is today Sudan. The Wadi Howar—now just a dried-out riverbed for most of the year—sustained not just fish, crocodiles, and hippopotamuses, but also agriculture and human settlement. As late as 1,000 B.C., a powerful fortress stood on its shores. But then the Sahara dried out, turning from a green savannah into an inhospitable desert. The culprit: climate change. According to desert geologist Stefan Kröpelin, who has studied geological data for the eastern Sahara going back 6,000 years, the desert spread as temperatures dropped. Global cooling meant that the air had less capacity to hold moisture from the oceans, leading to fewer rains and more arid climes.

Now, that same process is happening in reverse. As temperatures rise, the Sahara and other dry areas are greening on the edges. “I’ve been studying the Sahara for 30 years and can definitely say that it’s getting greener,” says Kröpelin, who specializes in desert archaeology and climate history at the University of Cologne. Where there used to be nothing but desert, he says, there is now not just grass but shrubs and acacia trees–and he has the photos from 30 years of extensive field study to prove it.

Grasp what is happening here, Warmists – 3,000 years ago the world was so warm, much warmer than it is now, that parts of the Sahara we know as burnt-over desert were lush savannah. How can that be? Could it be – is it possible? – that perhaps the climate has changed a lot over the ages? That we go up and down and up and down in global mean temperature for so many variable reasons that no one can really figure out why one age is relatively warm and another relatively cool? Could it be, also, that plant and animal species adapt to these changing conditions?

I know: bizarre and freakish theory. Just can’t be true, though – because if it is true, then there’s really no way to blame it on straight, white, Christian males…

Out and About on a Sunday

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Terribly sorry to hear of the death of Vice President Biden’s son, Beau. I can only imagine the pain. One Catholic to another, I ask Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, to pray for the repose of the soul of Beau Biden, and for the comfort of his family and friends.

Yes, I realize they are all also-rans – but we’ve now got O’Malley and Sanders in the race against Hillary, and we can shortly expect Lincoln Chaffee to join the lists. Keep in mind that Biden still might get in, as may former Senator Webb and Senator Warren. Obama was also supposed to be an also-ran in 2008, you know? Hillary may be the giant who only needs a slight shove to fall down. What is rather funny is that all three Democrats in the race are talking up how bad things are as if a certain Democrat hadn’t been in charge since 2009. Winning a third term in the White House is a tricky thing. It has only happened once since World War Two when the elder Bush rode Reagan’s coat tails into office…anyone want to tell me that a Democrat can ride Obama’s record into office?

The decline in GDP of 0.7% in Q1 2015 is interesting – and I’d likely have more to say on it if I had any real interest in government statistics. Given how relentlessly dishonest our government is, I just don’t trust that is the true number. I’m highly doubtful that it was better than the announced figure because if it was, they’d have gone with that – one is left to assume that the reality is much worse.

Latest mindblowingly dumb Democrat idea – make gun owners get liability insurance in order to curb gun violence. Like a person contemplating a crime will make sure his insurance is in order before he acts…

Some people are talking up a rise in crime rates of late – there does seem to be some evidence of it but before I join the bandwagon on this, I want to see how things go for a while. It could just be a statistical blip…or it could well be, as some claim, that the police are deciding that if enforcing the law means you might be hauled into court like those cops in Baltimore, then maybe its better to turn a blind eye…

A lot of liberals went nuts over the armed demonstration in front of an Islamic center in Arizona. I didn’t. Now, those who pay attention know that I’m not in favor of drawing insulting pictures of anyone’s religion, even of Islam. So, have I changed? Nope. People have a perfect right to demonstrate peacefully and to keep and bear arms in the United States – even if they are demonstrating peacefully while keeping and bearing the arms. Demonstrating, as such, does not insult anyone. And as I recall some of the rather anti-Catholic demonstrations by liberals out in front of Catholic churches, I take liberal outrage here with about ten pounds of salt.

The guy who drew the Stalinist “Hope” poster for Obama is disappointed in Obama – and in the American people. From what I’ve read, we’re just not commie enough, and neither is Obama. I guess he’s right – even about Obama. After all, we’re nearly six and a half years in and Obama hasn’t called out the Kulaks by name.

Walker has the early lead in Iowa. Right now, its Anybody But Bush. Or Christie. Or Graham. Or Trump, if he gets in (the Donald does seem to be getting ready to jump in).

Bob Schieffer doesn’t know where we get our news from these days. Here’s a clue for ya, Bob: we don’t get it from the MSM because the MSM doesn’t report it . If you did, we wouldn’t have President Obama and Hillary would be facing indictment.

And, now, St Joan of Arc:

JOAN of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy, or by accepting them all like Nietzsche. She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. Yet Joan, when I came to think of her, had in her all that was true either in Tolstoy or Nietzsche, all that was even tolerable in either of them. I thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy, the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back. Joan of Arc had all that and with this great addition, that she endured poverty as well as admiring it; whereas Tolstoy is only a typical aristocrat trying to find out its secret. And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche, and his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time. I thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his hunger for the rush of great horses, his cry to arms. Well, Joan of Arc had all that, and again with this difference, that she did not praise fighting, but fought. We KNOW that she was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was afraid of a cow. Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other. Yet she was a perfectly practical person who did something, while they are wild speculators who do nothing.

~G.K. Chesterton: “Orthodoxy,” III.—The Suicide of Thought.</i>

 

Just a Few Things

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Bernie Sanders is out there plugging for a top marginal rate of 90% – typical socialist nonsense, to be sure, but it just occurred to me: the rate doesn’t matter as much as everyone being treated the same for tax purposes. The problem isn’t in what rate we have, but who is getting special treatment. If it were really true that above a certain income amount everyone pays 90% of that to Uncle Sam, it would probably be bad…but what is worse is when some people at, say, $250,000 a year get hit with it and others making the same amount don’t. Same thing with corporations. The thing is our tax code is riddled with exceptions for various groups – over the years all manner of special favors have been written into it and so while the official rate is X, only some people pay that…others who managed to get the ear of a Congresscritter pay less. Set a rate and stick to it – no one gets a break from it, for anything. That, I think, would create the political will to ensure that all tax rates are set rationally…and, by the way, taxing 90% of someone’s income is irrational….the super rich you are theoretically going after with such a rate don’t pay that tax because they don’t make much taxable income. The extreme example is the Clinton slush fund – a “charity” which is mostly concerned with keeping Bill and Hillary and their hangers-on living a plush life. Make the top marginal rate 100% and you still won’t touch their slush fund…nor the various other slush funds built up by the super-rich to hold on to their money. 25% is probably a reasonable highest marginal rate, if we don’t got for a flat tax.

The “Iraqis” don’t want to fight for Ramadi. There’s a simple reason for that – there are no Iraqis. You see, Iraq was an administrative convenience for the British Empire…some territory they grabbed in the carve-up of the Ottoman Empire after World War One. Keep in mind that the Brits in 1918 never envisioned the end of the British Empire: those people back then fully expected British rule in Iraq to be continuing to this day. Joe Biden took a lot of flack prior to the Iraq War for suggesting a partition of the nation…in my view, it was one of the few sensible things the man ever said. I went along with Bush’s desire for a unified, democratic Iraq because that became the plan and I hoped it would work out. It actually might have, had we not abandoned Iraq under Obama. Be that as it may, the true state of Iraq is now in sharp relief: the people living in the nation of are different nationalities with not too much concern one nationality to another. At this point, trying to keep Iraq together is probably a lost cause…the Shia and the Sunni don’t like each other, the Kurds appear to want no real part of it and there are plenty of other minority peoples who would probably agree to pretty much any other arrangement than current. Whether or not some sort of Iraqi Confederation can be put together is an unknown – but the concept that a unitary Iraqi State governed from Baghdad is in the cards absent massive U.S. military intervention is almost certainly a non-starter.

Why we can’t argue with liberals – this article says that persons of color must have a “safe space” where they can discuss there issues. Such a place must have no white people in it, because that would change the dynamic once those white people are present – which is an assumption that all white people are racists and that all non-white people are fearful of white people. This, of course, would be a racist view to hold – but liberals have their “out” on that in their claim that only people with power can be racist…which is, of course, to make another racist statement that all white people have power and no non-white people have any. There’s no way for us to win this argument – so, let’s just de-fund the left, get rid of them, and go on with a rational society.

Memorial Day Open Thread

Mark Noonan2 Comments

Sorry for not having this up earlier – and for not having anything interesting to write about this important day. My internet connection got some gremlins last night and I was unable to really get anything done.

At all events, do take some time today to remember our fallen – those who really did give the last, full measure of devotion to our nation. We owe our existence as a people to them and we can never repay the men and women who gave all for us.

Out and About on a Friday

Mark Noonan7 Comments

So, we had an earthquake in Nevada. We then had rain. The end of the world was expected momentarily, but all we got was a traffic jam on the US 95.

Senate GOP revives Pelosi’s “we have to pass it to find out what’s in it” policy re: legislation. We’ve given Obama the go-ahead on trade authority…as if anything Obama negotiates could possibly be to the advantage of the United States. That is bad enough – but no one will even tell us what’s in the trade deal. And the GOP leadership wonders why it has a popularity problem…

The economic data just hasn’t been all that great lately. Our government’s solution? Change the data.

Your new car has a computer and a complex program to run the car – manufacturers are arguing that while you own the car, you only own a license to the computer program which runs your car. My view? Not so fast. Suck it up, manufacturers. You want to put all these clever gizmos in the car to get us to by it, fine – but what I pay for I own, completely.

Yeah, Hillary is just as corrupt as we all thought.

Apparently, fighting climate change is the first step to defeating ISIS.

Roger Simon is rather upset about the state of the world. I agree with him on that. But I disagree on the PATRIOT Act thing – I don’t care if we can’t show anyone in particular harmed by it: I don’t trust any government but particularly this government to have that much information on that.

Memorial Day is Monday. It ain’t about the barbecue:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.- John McCrae, 1915

The Iraq War Was not a Mistake

Mark Noonan17 Comments

As I noted before, the MSM is asking the GOP Presidential candidates the question, and the GOP candidates are all blowing it – the most recent entrant in the “Get It Wrong With a Gotcha” is Marco Rubio. I realize that the Iraq War is now the most unpopular thing which ever happened, ever, but that still doesn’t make it a mistake. At least in Rubio’s case, the question was honestly posed by Chris Wallace – it was more of, “granted that Bush believed it was the right thing to do then, do you believe it was the right thing to do now?”. The answer to that is an unequivocal “yes”.

Invading Iraq was the right thing to do in 2003. This doesn’t mean it was the only possible course of action open to us. But something had to be done about Saddam’s regime and we had the power to do it. Sure, you can go back and say we should have started arming rebels and sending Special Forces in to work the overthrow of the Saddam regime. Probably would have worked – but who would we have been arming? The people who now make up ISIS? Good chance we would have. One thing I think we’ve all learned is that arming Muslim rebels very often means arming the next set of problems. We could also have left Saddam alone – and now we’d be worrying about an Iraqi nuke along with an Iranian nuke – along with untold number of other problems a Saddam regime would have stirred up over the past 12 years. Among the possible options, President Bush choose invasion – and he was right to do so. And our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines fought with splendid devotion and courage and secured a victory for the United States, and the world. The victory was thrown away by our current President, but that doesn’t make Bush’s decision wrong, nor the sacrifices of our military in vain.

Winston Churchill in his book about World War One – The World Crisis – asserted that it is unfair to criticize someone for actions taken in the past unless the same substantial criticism was made to the decision-maker prior to the decision being made. Unless you’ve got someone from 2003 saying that the liberation of Iraq would result in a 5 year counter-insurgency operation – and showing how you know it would happen and what forces would be involved – then you’ve got no criticism to make about the decision to go into Iraq. You may use the Iraq war as a reason for, say, not going into Syria in 2015, but you can’t use knowledge gained in 2004 to condemn a decision made in 2003.

In human affairs, there is no “correct” answer in that a decision can be made which will 100% work out correctly all the time. Everything is a judgement – a balance of risks against rewards. A wise man hesitates before making a decision – but once the decision is made, moves with celerity to carry it out. And once made, all one can do is the best he or she can. Criticize and condemn the Iraq war all you wish – but to call it a mistake in the sense of “Bush should have known better in 2003” is to presume to impossible knowledge.

Memo to Conservatives: Don’t Trust the MSM on Pope Francis Quotes

Mark Noonan15 Comments

A couple days ago, a lot of conservatives got really ticked off at Pope Francis over an alleged quote calling PA leader Abbas an “angel of peace”. Looks like it wasn’t quite like that – via Stephen Kruiser over at PJ Media:

As is tradition with heads of State or of government, Francis presented presented a gift to the Palestinian leader, commenting: “May the angel of peace destroy the evil spirit of war. I thought of you: may you be an angel of peace.”

As Kruiser points out, exhorting someone to be an angel of peace is not exactly the same as calling them an angel of peace. Kruiser further notes the puzzling fact that many on the right – who wouldn’t trust the MSM on anything – blithely swallow whatever the MSM is putting out about the Pope…as if the MSM actually likes the Pope and would actually do him a favor!

Keep in mind regarding Vatican dealings with the PA that there is a small and highly oppressed Christian minority in the West Bank and no one in the world – other than the Vatican – cares about them. In order to secure any sort of peace and justice for this minority, the Vatican has to work with the PA…and this means walking a very, very fine line. You can complain about it all you want, but until someone with power steps forth to protect the Christians of the West Bank, that is the way it will be.

Anyone thinking that Pope Francis is the “commie Pope” just doesn’t understand Pope Francis or the Catholic Church. Kruiser further points out to anyone thinking that Pope Francis is a liberal should note that a very early act of Francis was to defrock and excommunicate a priest who was in favor of gay marriage and female ordination. For those of you who aren’t Catholic, I’ll make something very clear – the Pope cannot unilaterally change doctrine. Pope Francis will not proclaim same-sex marriage, nor modification of the pro-life message, nor female ordination. It just won’t happen. Ever.

For those hung up on Francis’ condemnations of consumerism and capitalism: lump it. The Church has always condemned capitalism and consumerism. It didn’t like it when the Liberals of the Manchester School were using it to grind up the workers of Britain any more than it likes it today. It never will like it – because profit, as a thing, must never be the prime motivation of economic activity. All actions, to be moral, must have as their motive the betterment of humanity. If you can make a profit while doing that, knock yourself out…but if profits start to come before the needs of men and women, then you’re doing it wrong. How we decide to balance the needs of humanity with the needs of profit in work is a prudential judgement – the Church makes no commands about how you do it, other than you must not lie, cheat, steal, poison the environment or screw over your workers while doing it.

End of rant – and may everyone have a blessed Sunday!