As If…

Image Leo Pusateri42 Comments

Dear Speaker Boehner:

There is nothing I’d like better than to keep the United States House of Representatives in *conservative* hands.

Regarding that issue, we wholeheartedly agree.

In that spirit, could you kindly resign your tenure as Speaker of the House?

Under your leadership, Obamacare is still the law of the land. Those responsible for allowing four Americans to be murdered in Benghazi are yet to be held accountable. The Constitutional abuses of the IRS scandal, the “Fast & Furious” federal gun-running scandal, and NSA scandals continue to go un-investigated, and Obama continues to be held unaccountable. Under your ‘leadership,’ the Republicans in the House of Representatives have done nothing to hold the Obama administration accountable for their overreach and malfeasance and assaults on our Constitutional liberties. You supposedly practiced brinkmanship when Obama forced a government shutdown, but then acted like you owned it, and ran with your tail between your legs. It’s been “go along to get along” ever since.

And now you want to cave and give special treatment to those scofflaws who ignore our immigration laws.

Your team put up a nice graphic on Facebook today in response to President Obama’s “I have a pen” comment, to which you replied, “We have the Constitution.”

However, as much as you hold up the Constitution and parade it around like a golden calf, you have displayed no real intention of upholding it. As your actions and inaction have clearly demonstrated, to you, the Constitution is nothing more than window-dressing in a photo-op.

Speaker Boehner, you have on many occasions taken a solemn oath and promise to uphold the Constitution.

After taking those solemn oaths, on multiple occasions, you have demonstrated that your promises are as empty as must be your conscience.

If you really believe that the Constitution must be kept in conservative hands, I call upon you to resign your office as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Whether or not your constituency in the 8th District of Ohio continues to re-elect you to as their representative in Congress is their business.

The office you hold as Speaker, however, is *our* business. You have lost the trust and confidence of those of us in the Republican Party.

You have lost the trust of the nation.

Time for you to resign, Mr. Speaker.

Sincerely,

Leo Pusateri.Boehner

An Expert Offers an Opinion on Expert Opinion

Mark Noonan1 Comment

And, as you might guess, he’s in favor of the experts:

…I fear we are witnessing the “death of expertise”: a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers – in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all. By this, I do not mean the death of actual expertise, the knowledge of specific things that sets some people apart from others in various areas. There will always be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other specialists in various fields. Rather, what I fear has died is any acknowledgement of expertise as anything that should alter our thoughts or change the way we live…

The author, Tom Nichols, presents himself as, “…an expert. Not on everything, but in a particular area of human knowledge, specifically social science and public policy.”  The first question that leaps to my mind is, “how do you attain ‘achievement’ in public policy?”.  I know that when I go to a doctor that I’m going to get some doctoring done – a blood pressure test, a cut stitched up, or some brain surgeried upon.  How do I know I’ve got some “public policy” when I go to an expert in public policy?  Now, don’t get me wrong, Mr. Nichols is clearly an intelligent and well-informed man and his article well repays reading – but the one thing certain about Mr. Nichols is that he’s no democrat.  He’s an elitist – someone who has gathered a certain amount of knowledge attached to a credential and thus thinks his views should carry more weight than people without the certain knowledge and, especially, the credential.  Here’s the worst thing I read:

...There was once a time when presidents would win elections and then scour universities and think-tanks for a brain trust; that’s how Henry Kissinger, Samuel Huntington, Zbigniew Brzezinski and others ended up in government service while moving between places like Harvard and Columbia…

While Mr. Nichols is clearly well-informed, I doubt that he’s really thought the matter through.  The lauding of Kissinger, alone, reveals that.  What are Kissinger’s greatest achievements?  Detente with the USSR, opening relations with the People’s Republic of China and negotiating the end of America’s involvement in Vietnam.  Somewhere on a trip between Harvard and Columbia, I guess, Kissinger decided that the USSR was eternal and had to be kowtowed to, that Mao’s China could be a partner for us and that scuttling the Republic of Vietnam were in our best interests.  Fortunately, shortly after Kissinger stopped being our national expert, we managed to get that bone-headed, non-expert Ronald Reagan who at least managed to dismantle the USSR, even if he couldn’t undo our defeat in Vietnam, nor turn our policy towards China in a rational manner (which would be to have nothing to do with that beastly, anti-human government).

Experts brought us the United States Federal Reserve.  Experts decided that we should enter full-blown, provide-them-everything-we-can-even-if-we-stinted-our-own-forces alliance with the USSR against Germany, without a reciprocal requirement of the USSR to immediately enter in to the war against Japan.  Experts shoved us in to the Korean War and then settled for a stalemate with enemies who disposed less than a 10th of the power of the United States. Experts got us in to Vietnam (and experts lost us Vietnam). Experts brought us Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, affirmative action, the EPA and $17 trillion in debt.  Had the experts consulted the average American on any of these things, none of them would have come out as they did.  Think about it – ok, American people, I want you to decide: 33,000 dead over three years for a stalemate in Korea, or 10,000 dead in a year for complete victory?  You pick.  The experts picked the former.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.  That was from Chesterton, explaining that in the very important things in life – whether to marry, to bear children, to fight a war – it is of no use going to an expert.  The expert won’t know the right answer because he lacks sufficient knowledge to decide.  No matter how much time he spends in Harvard and Columbia, no matter how many credentials he acquires, he simply will not know enough.  The most brilliant economist ever produced in a university won’t know the answer to even the simple question of how much spaghetti should be produced next month.  And yet he’ll propose to tell us how to organize our whole economy.

This does not mean the average bumpkin will get it right, either, of course.  But if the average bumpkin is making his own decisions, then he’s likely only to affect – for good or ill – himself and those around him.  The expert proposes to decide for society and thus it is all of society which pays the price if the expert gets it wrong, as he almost invariably does for lack of sufficient knowledge.  But, also, I think the bumpkins will more often get it right than wrong.  A bumpkin, for instance, instinctively knows that if you’re going to fight a war, you fight it all the way with everything you’ve got.  It is true that a bumpkin might be demagogued in to a war – but he won’t be demagogued in to a war where he’s forbidden to use all of his power to fight it…or that he’s got to be more careful about offending opinions than the lives of his comrades.

I do understand the distaste Mr. Nichols has for the opinions of the ignorant and the way they can be shouted so loud because of the internet.  They irritate me, as well.  Nothing quite gets on the nerves so much as to listen to people who clearly know nothing making absurd statements about an issue.  But some of the most absurd statements these days come from people with the credentials from the prestige universities.  I understand the desire that the terms of the debate be set by just a few and that we all argue only within those parameters.  This is called adhering to the party line.  But patient people, people with a bit of love for the people; leaders who are any good, at all, learn how to humor people and get their views across even in the face of the most mind-boggling idiocy.  No great king, President or Prime Minister of the past worked with a collection of geniuses.  He worked with people, which means a certain percentage were fools and some of them quite destructive fools, at that.  There is an appeal in exiling the fools but we face two insuperable obstacles: we can’t define “fool” with sufficient precision and without the fools the truly great cannot achieve their highest potential.  Paradox of human life – it is only by the frictions of dealing with a wide variety of people, some of whom seem to go out of their way to deliberately hamper action, that we can find the leaders who will be able to thread their way through crisis to victory.

Is there, then, no place for an expert?  Depends.  When I’m heading in for brain surgery then I very much want an expert.  Same thing when I want the leaking faucet fixed.  But in the grand scheme of things and in the largest issues of life, then the experts must just join the argument and do their best with everyone else.  If an expert feels he isn’t getting his way, then it might not be so much a flaw among the morons, but a flaw in the expert’s argument.

In the end, I trust to democracy – the rule of the people.  This is not an arrogant assumption that I know better than the man with more education, but that I know what’s best for me – and even if I’m wrong, it is still vastly better for me to decide for myself than to supinely accept some allegedly expert opinion in contravention of my own sense of the matter.  Experts, after all, vigorously assured me that we had to bail out the banks in 2008-2009 in order to save the economy – my common sense rebelled against it back then and my common sense has been proven correct in the event.  The banks were bailed out, but the economy didn’t get better.  I felt instinctively that if someone made a bone-headed investment decision and faced bankruptcy, then he’d better just deal with his bankruptcy and work for the best.  I’ll bet that if the question were put that way in 2008, the vast majority of the non-experts would have agreed that the failures must endure the results of their actions.  Experts disagreed and they won the argument.  How is that working out for us?

Here we are in 2014 and our nation is a wasteland, brought to this state of affairs by experts bamboozling us in to accepting a load of nonsense about how things work.  To be sure, we average dimwits played our despicable role in this – too many of us, too many times, were eager to accept an expert opinion if it was couched in terms of “no pain, lots of gain”.  But the con artist is not let off because his mark is a sucker.  As we move forward and try to find the ways and means of fixing the problems and restoring America, I think our best course of action is to just go with plain, old common sense – the sense of the average person, even if he’s at a TEA Party demonstration with a misspelled sign.  He might not be educated, might not know all the nuances of the issue, but if his basic thrust is “leave me alone to take care of me and mine”, then I think he’s on to something…and his desire should take precedence over even the very best written policy paper from a credentialed expert.

Obame’s Failures Continue

tiredoflibbs17 Comments

Update: US Has Dropped Out of 10 Most Economically Free Countries

The Obama administration continues to shackle entire sectors of the economy with regulation, including health care, finance and energy. The intervention impedes both personal freedom and national prosperity.

No surprise here… 10s of 1000 of new regulations each year, an out of control EPA, a huge federal government, endless printing of money, high unemployment, increasing energy and healthcare costs, etc. etc.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303848104579308811265028066?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303848104579308811265028066.html

UPDATE: ANOTHER FAILURE – OBAMATEUR LOSES OVER $10 BILLION IN AUTO BAILOUT!
The unions received their full retirements while creditors (non-liberal ones anyway) got screwed….. as well as the taxpayers.  The problem is the need for bailouts will continue in the future.

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-general-motors-bailout-treasury-stock-20131209,0,4629861.story#axzz2qaJSZfhS

Al Qaeda Stronger than Before

This pResident’s War on Terror, …. uh… ahem…. excuse me…. War on Man-Caused Disasters is an utter failure.  From announcing when he was pulling out of Iraq, against anyone’s sane judgement, to tying the hands of our soldiers when it comes to engagements in Afghanistan, (where there are higher incidents of death than during the Bush years) – and it’s not simply because of the “surge”, this pResident has made action in Afghanistan more political than that of Vietnam.  He has handed Libya, Egypt (thankfully the Egyptian military has stopped – no thanks to obame), Syria (fortunately obame did not get his way in removing the present government) and now Iraq to the terrorists.  His record shows that he is not interested in fighting terrorism.  He may perform for the camera but his actions say otherwise.

Update: A Nuclear Iran!

The obame administration did not learn any lessons from what Chamberlain experienced with Hitler.  Meanwhile, Debbie Wasserface Shultz get caught in lies, while trying to please her (Debbie’s) highness’ desire  when questioned by constituents about Iran, sanctions and its continued ability to work on a bomb.

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-iran-nuclear-side-deal-20140113,0,4116168.story#axzz2qPlHPeIj
http://freebeacon.com/debbies-double-talk/

Labor Participation at levels not seen since the last pRegressive pResident

But listening to the leftist talking heads we are in a recovery.  They love to site the DOW as an indicator. But any sane person knows that is due to artificial pumping of cash from the Fed.  Labor participation keeps dropping regardless of the trillions spent by this pResident.  The mindless drones will continue to utter the dumbed down talking points – “It’s Bush’s fault”, “It is the result of the tsunami, kiosks and ATMs”, “Unemployment is at 7%”, “Baby Boomers are retiring” etc. etc.

The unemployment rate uses labor participation in its calculus.  When job growth is stagnant and people are no longer participating in the labor force, they are no longer counted and the unemployment rate will drop.  The mindless drones and low information voters (they are one in the same) will continue to site the DOW and “low” unemployment, even though both numbers are based on lies.

Note: these are legitimate criticisms and by no way indicate that I hate the president because of his race.

Update: It did not take long for the mindless drones and low information voters to blame the “Baby Boomers are retiring” dumbed down talking point for the decline of the Labor Participation Rate.

The age group which has dropped out of the labor participation rate more-so than any other group is NOT the Baby Boomers.  Age group 30-59, which makes up 50% of the working population, account for labor participation rate plunge since 2007.  The same age group account for 75% of the decline in the past year! So, this pResident is directly to blame for the poor job hunting conditions that we presently experience.  Nice try, but dumbed down talking points are not valid in the sane world.

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/record-low-labor-participation-rate-not-due-retirement-or-school-5431

Sarah Palin Vindicated – There are Death Panels in Obamacare

tiredoflibbs89 Comments

Tell us something we did not already know!

The Affordable Care Act contains provisions for “death panels,” which decide which critically-ill patients receive care and which won’t, according to Mark Halperin, senior political analyst for Time magazine.

“It’s built into the plan. It’s not like a guess or like a judgment. That’s going to be part of how costs are controlled,” Halperin told “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/11/25/mark_halperin_obamacare_contains_death_panels.html#ooid=8zZ25waDoa-OQmTBjFMWJwiJssrg_QuXhttp:// 

MALZBERG, HOST: A lot of people said you weren’t going to be able to keep your health care, but also they focused on the death panels, which will be coming, call them what you will, rationing, is part of it…

HALPERIN: No, I agree, and that’s going to be a huge issue, and that’s something else on which the president was not fully forthcoming and straightforward.

MALZBERG: So, you believe there will be rationing, a.k.a. death panels?

HALPERIN: It’s built into the plan. It’s not like a guess or like a judgment. That’s going to be part of how costs are controlled.

Halperin went on to say that he believes the country “can’t afford to spend so much on end-of-life care,” but those judgments need to be made by individuals and insurance companies rather than the federal government.

Did he have a moment of clarity?  ”…rather than the federal government”?

Remember when Sarah Palin was trashed and mercilessly attacked by the left (typical) for revealing the fact of Death Panels?  This is more evidence by the obame administration that obamacare was sold on a pack of lies.  I am still waiting for my annual premiums to be lowered by $2500….

…. I won’t hold my breath.  Wait until the end of the year when corporate health insurance policies will be subject to the minimum federally mandated standards…. The cancellations seen at the end of last year won’t compare to those that will be cancelled this year.

“If you like your insurance you can keep your insurance.” “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.”  obame (obay me) knew the lessons learned from Hillarycare.  If people could not keep their insurance and doctors they would reject his plan like they did Hillary’s.  The need to lie was necessary to get it passed…just like the one that said “this is a penalty and not a tax”.

…. but the low information voters on the left (and they still troll this blog) will still be as ignorant as ever (voluntarily) and defend obAMATEUR while still maintaining he did not lie.

UPDATE: Obamacare continues to be the massive failure that we know it is and the pRegressive low information voters continue to deny.

The mindless drones continue to defend obamacare and regurgitate the talking point of millions have signed up.  However, signing up on a dysfunctional web-site and actually getting insurance are two different things.  Many are finding out that after signing up insurance companies through the website (when it doesn’t crash) have no records with the targeted insurance company of such an enrollment.

Now before you pRegressive drones screech about the link, notice that the article is from the Associated Press.  But we all know, you will latch onto that common pathetic tactic rather than address the real point of the post.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/01/09/Some-find-health-insurers-have-no-record-of-them

Secession is the Answer Update

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Spreading like wildfire around the country:

There’s nothing like a guy with a few million bucks to lend instant credibility to a previously penny-ante movement to split up the state of California.

Venture capitalist Tim Draper of Silicon Valley has filed paperwork for a November ballot measure that would divide California into six states, calling the Golden State as presently constituted “too big and bloated.”

I think that six is a bit high, but the point still holds – California is too big and bloated.
I think this idea will start to get legs – people are tired of out of touch, remote government.

Lessons from Lost Wars in Afganistan and Iraq

Mark Noonan5 Comments

With the capture of Fallujah by al-Qaeda-linked Islamists and the clear deterioration of Afghanistan, it is time we both admit these wars have been lost, and draw some conclusions about them.

1.  Get out of the UN.  It was set up to keep the peace; peace was broken less than two years after it was set up when India and Pakistan went to war.  An organization to keep global peace which can’t stop a major war from happening is useless.  All the UN does these days is add an extra layer of bureaucracy on to the world and hamper quick, decisive action.  Kowtowing to the pretense that the UN can keep the peace just puts American policy in a bind.  Before we can do anything with UN approval, we have to get our enemies in China and Russia to agree to it – and if you think the hard heads running those countries will ever operate altruistically then you are certifiable.  When it suits them, they’ll foster wars, civil wars, insurrections, death, slaughter and disease – and prevent us from getting UN approval to stop it.  Worthless organization.  Corrupt and expensive, as well.  Better to do away with it.

2.  We must never hazard our armed forces in battle again except as a result of a declared state of war against a specific nation or group of nations.  The fatal flaw in our post-9/11 operations – and for this Bush bears a great deal of responsibility – was the fact that we didn’t declare wars.  We made terrorist groups and trivial individuals like bin Laden the primary enemy, rather than grappling with the real problem: all terrorist and Islamist activity is the result of State-sponsorship.  The men who flew the planes in to the World Trade Center were not free agents – various nations had a hand in setting the stage.  Even if they knew nothing of the pending attack, nations like Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Saudi Arabia had provided money, weapons, training, safe havens and other services to the Islamist group(s) which planned and carried out the attacks.  By making “terrorism” the thing to fight against and bin Laden the enemy, we essentially let the real enemy off the hook.

We know who the bad actors are in this – we know which nations routinely sponsor terrorism and Islamism.  If we are attacked by Islamist terrorism, then we should go to war with the nations which cause the problem.  Declared war – no “we’re not at war but we’re bombing the heck out of things” sort of quasi-war we’ve engaged in since Korea.  There are diplomatic and economic reasons why we don’t declare war – I’m fully aware of that.  Being at war poses a host of problem.  But it also clarifies things.  Let’s the enemy know our intentions are serious and they’d better get surrendering or at least making funeral arrangements.

3.  Force the enemy to surrender – and the more humiliating the surrender, the better.  Humble their pride, beat them to the ground.  Hammer them with more power than they can well imagine, hold nothing back.

4.  Be quick about it.  Getting out of the UN will help in this – it was because we felt we had to diddle around with the UN that we didn’t go in to Iraq until 2003 rather than mid-2002.  Don’t sit around trying to rebuild things after one nation or area of an enemy nation is conquered – other than maintaining the infrastructure we need for further military operations, the local population is on its own.  And if the local population can’t be trusted, then kick them out of where we are.  Don’t leave our troops at the mercy of people who want to plant road side bombs – once one goes off, everyone within 10 miles of that road is moved more than 10 miles away from it.

5.  Once the enemy has surrendered, be sure we take things to compensate us for having to go through the trouble.  Let the world know that not only will challenging the United States lead to massive death and destruction, but reparations payments and/or cession of territory to the United States.  No more, “go ahead and fight us and we’ll not only be gentle in fighting back, but we’ll rebuild you once we’re done”.

6.  And, thus, no nation-building.  We go in, fight, force them to surrender, take what we want, and then we leave.

All of this might seem harsh, but I believe it is less harsh than ten-year-long, inconclusive military-economic-political operations which are hamstrung by politics.  Had we declared war on the morrow of 9/11 upon Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya, the whole thing probably would have been over by 2004 with a complete American victory, our enemies surrendering to us, humiliated and paying us reparations until 2024.  Probably fewer dead, overall – and us at peace for the last 10 years.

The Collapse of the Middle East

Mark Noonan24 Comments

Yes, I know it has been going on for some time, but I don’t think most people are fully aware of just how bad it is – Spengler writes about Turkey’s problems:

…Turkey is a mediocre economy at best with a poorly educated workforce, no high-tech capacity, and shrinking markets in depressed Europe and the unstable Arab world. Its future might well be as an economic tributary of China, as the “New Silk Road” extends high-speed rail lines to the Bosporus…

…The whole notion was flawed from top to bottom. Turkey was not in line to become an economic power of any kind: it lacked the people and skills to do anything better than medium-tech manufacturing. Its Islamists never were democrats. Worst of all, its demographics are as bad as Europe’s. Ethnic Turks have a fertility rate close to 1.5 children per family, while the Kurdish minority is having 4 children per family. Within a generation half of Turkey’s young men will come from families where Kurdish is the first language…

Spengler also notes that corruption is a big problem and, of course, that Turkey is honey-combed with bad debt, now coming due with little chance the Turks can pay.   Iran has the same sort of problem – declining birth rate, low-skilled labor force, corrupt, bad debt…its why they were so eager to cut a deal with Kerry in return for easing the sanctions: Iran’s economy teeters on the edge of complete collapse and the deal frees up money for the mullahs (and, of course, the Iranians were doubly delighted to do it as, having taken the measure of Obama, they knew that they could get the sanctions eased and still just go on sponsoring terrorism and making nukes).  So, add Turkey to Iran to Syria to Egypt to Libya to Sudan as failed States…and look warily at the corrupt monarchies of the Arabian peninsula which keep themselves alive only so long as the oil keeps flowing and they can bribe people to silence.  Meanwhile, Islamism continues to spread and even in Afghanistan – with American troops still there – the Afghan government works out how to implement laws allowing for the stoning to death of adulterers.

So, what of it?  What can we do about it?  Not much.  Suffice it to say that at some point, this mess will draw us back in militarily, but for now there is not much we can do.  First and foremost, because Barack Obama is President of the United States.  The level of ignorance of facts and unwillingness to face the truth about the Middle East entirely cripples any efforts made by the Obama Administration – and if we did get sucked in to active military operations, it is certain that the lack of courage and military knowledge of the Obama Administration would ensure an American defeat.  All we can do is watch in fascinated horror while this goes on.

In the longer term, when we hopefully have better leadership, when we are forced to again fight in that area, it is to be hoped that we will do so with a clear eye to the harsh realities.  For whatever reason, Islamic peoples are simply incapable, as such, of building and maintaining a civilization.  They can take over from others (as they did when they first conquered such areas as Turkey, Syria and Egypt), but they cannot maintain or build on their own.  There is something in Muslim theology which prevents rationality – which prevents a Muslim government from really exercising democracy, from really allowing people to be independent, from really allowing minorities to have rights.  When we have to go back in, our policies must be governed in this light.

To be sure, I don’t want us to have to govern large, Muslim populations – whatever else may be said about them, Muslims dislike intensely any foreign domination.  So, no attempt at nation building.  But when the next war in the Middle East comes to our door, we must ensure that at the end of it, we are firmly protected against the violent acts of Islamist extremists and that the minority peoples of the area are afforded independence from Muslim rule – or even from a Muslim minority within their territories.  This will require a significant reworking of the map of the Middle East.  As I’ve pointed out in the past, new nations will have to be created where non-Muslim minorities can live in peace and independence – in places like Lebanon, parts of Syria, parts of Iraq, parts of Egypt, land must be carved out so that non-Muslims can be safe, with the additional benefit of locking the Muslim nations, themselves, in to positions from which they cannot by offensive action influence the course of world events.

We all of us – right and left – have been living in a bit of a dream world as regards policy towards the Middle East.  It is time we woke up to reality and acted accordingly.

Merry Christmas!

Mark Noonan7 Comments

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus
that the whole world should be enrolled.
This was the first enrollment,
when Quirinius was governor of Syria.
So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town.
And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth
to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem,
because he was of the house and family of David,
to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.
While they were there,
the time came for her to have her child,
and she gave birth to her firstborn son.
She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger,
because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields
and keeping the night watch over their flock.
The angel of the Lord appeared to them
and the glory of the Lord shone around them,
and they were struck with great fear.
The angel said to them,
“Do not be afraid;
for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy
that will be for all the people.
For today in the city of David
a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.
And this will be a sign for you:
you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes
and lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel,
praising God and saying:
“Glory to God in the highest
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” – Luke 2:1-14

Mark Steyn, NRO, Liberal Fascism and the Conservative Coward

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Taking note of the Duck Dynasty fracas, Mark Steyn wrote what we expected – a witty and devastating critique of a culture being bound hand and foot by liberal fascist control freaks.  To illustrate his point, Mr. Steyn noted a couple of old jokes from ancient times (ie, the 1970’s):

…Here are two jokes one can no longer tell on American television. But you can still find them in the archives, out on the edge of town, in Sub-Basement Level 12 of the ever-expanding Smithsonian Mausoleum of the Unsayable. First, Bob Hope, touring the world in the year or so after the passage of the 1975 Consenting Adult Sex Bill:

“I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory.”

For Hope, this was an oddly profound gag, discerning even at the dawn of the Age of Tolerance that there was something inherently coercive about the enterprise. Soon it would be insufficient merely to be “tolerant” — warily accepting, blithely indifferent, mildly amused, tepidly supportive, according to taste. The forces of “tolerance” would become intolerant of anything less than full-blown celebratory approval.

Second joke from the archives: Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra kept this one in the act for a quarter-century. On stage, Dino used to have a bit of business where he’d refill his tumbler and ask Frank, “How do you make a fruit cordial?” And Sinatra would respond, “I dunno. How do you make a fruit cordial?” And Dean would say, “Be nice to him.”…

This caused the editor of NRO – Jason Steorts – to first make a tut-tutting criticism of Mr. Steyn for not understanding that being a meany is bad and then, when massive criticism was directed at Mr. Steorts, he just doubled down:

The point is basic courtesy, Mark. It’s that you could mount your opposing argument without insulting people. Sure, you have the right to insult people, but I can’t sympathize much with someone who exercises that right just to prove it exists, which seems to have been part of your rhetorical strategy. What I would like to de-normalize is boorishness, whatever its content…

And this, in turn, prompted a small comment from me:

No, Mr. Steyn cannot mount an argument against the left without insulting them. To disagree with them is, in their view, to be insulting. We’re not dealing with rational people, here. We’re dealing with people who are, in the largest sense of the word, insane. For crying out loud, they really think that its ok to kill a baby! When you’re dealing with that sort of irrationality, trying to keep it polite is the least of your concerns. Our job, as sane people, is to drive these people entirely out of power. We won’t do that if we try to pretend that lunacy has a proper place in the debate.

I don’t know Mr. Steort from Adam – until just yesterday, hadn’t the foggiest clue who NRO’s editor was, or that they even had one.  But the fact that someone like Mr. Steort is editing the on-line descendent of the magazine William F. Buckley founded to “stand athwart history yelling, ‘stop!” speaks volumes about how low we’ve fallen.  Per the comment at Red State, that has now been changed to, “Standing Athwart History, Yelling Okay Go Right Ahead (We Don’t Want to Offend Anyone)”.  Red State also noted that Mr. Steort is in favor of gay marriage, but that isn’t as important as the discovery, by me, that in reading Mr. Steort’s article in favor of gay marriage, I also discovered that he’s in favor of insanity, as well.  To quote:

…Romantic attraction is a unique type of desire in which a person is wanted in his or her unity and totality, and sexual activity is the unique expression and bodily dimension of such desire. The desire is thus unique in both its “inner” (“subjective,” “mental”) and its “outer” (“objective,” “bodily”) dimensions, and its fulfillment is intrinsically good…

If this is conservatism, then we’re in trouble.  Its basically a statement that “if it feels good, do it”…and its good.  As G. K. Chesterton noted, the purpose of Progressives is to go on making mistakes, and the purpose of Conservatives is to go on preventing the mistakes from being corrected.  A Progressive comes up with a completely stupid and insane idea and immediately puts it in to effect – when it all falls apart and destroys everything in its path, here comes the Conservative to say, “we can’t change it; it is part of the sacred inheritance of the past!”.  Mr. Steort exemplifies this.  I really can’t say this is a matter of stupidity, however; Mr. Steort is clearly not a dumb man.  But he just as clearly doesn’t want to offend against the liberal world view.  That would be bad.  It would get liberals mad and they’d say nasty things about you.  And, so, I’ll put it down as cowardice.  Much easier to write pretend-conservative pieces where you essentially concede the liberal argument while making small asides which claim you still respect and honor that old time religion.

As I noted in my small comment, liberals are essentially insane.  Not in the clinical sense where we could diagnose and treat them, but in the fact that what they propose flies in the face of facts and logic.  That what they propose, if really and fully implemented, would utterly destroy human life on earth.  People who think that babies can be killed, that tax increases cause prosperity, that crony-capitalism is a good idea, that government employees are altruistic, that a small elite can better decide things than people on their own; that a hack, Chicago politician is a new messiah – these are not rational views to hold.  Added to their irrationality and completing it is a mercilessness which knows no bounds.  You can rely on it that no matter how nice and polite we are, the left will still seek to destroy anyone who dares to dissent.  This is not a call for us to start being mean and merciless – but for pity’s sake, don’t just sit there and be a punching bag.  Hit back.  And keep on hitting because until we completely remove the left from all ability to effect policy in this nation, we will not be able to reform and save it.