Laughing At the Left

It's approaching time for a sort of "Year End Review." A lot has changed in America in the past year. One year ago, the left believed that they were given a mandate by the people to change us from the capitalistic free market constitutional republic that we all knew and loved, into a fascist marxist nationalist-socialist state. Early on, of course, that change began actually taking place. About mid-way through the year, the American people began waking up and realizing that OBAMA means One Big A** Mistake, America.

The changes they are pushing for are a part of their core belief system, a belief system that they think most Americans agree with. And that, in itself, is laughable.

If the consequences for this great nation of ours weren't so serious and the policies preferred by the left weren't so dangerous, one would really laugh, almost uncontrollably, at the beliefs and (il)logic of American liberals. Based on things they have actually said or done, here are some of the things they really, truly seem to believe.

They believe we can spend our way out of debt. They believe taking money from one part of the economy to give to another part somehow makes the economy bigger. They believe people who have never run a business can run a business better than people who have spent their whole lives running businesses. They believe that what appears to be a 20-year spike in global temperatures (a spike itself that hundreds of scientists dispute) can mean doom for a planet whose temperatures have swung much more widely for 6 billion years -- but that an eight- or ten-year flattening or even drop in temperatures can be ignored because it doesn't comport with the "models" based largely on the previous 20 years. They believe that punishing "developed" nations for carbon consumption is a good idea even if it means that developingcountries without the same environmental controls will take over the production/manufacturing forced away from the developed countries. So, somehow, in the name of saving the environment from carbon emissions, they would create even more carbon emissions (and other, real pollution) elsewhere -- and call it progress.

They believe that teenage girls who aren't allowed to get even minor cosmetic surgery without a parent's permission should nevertheless be able to procure an abortion without a parent's permission. They believe that would-be parents should have the "choice" to kill their babies, but not the choice of where to send their children to school. They believe that when it comes to advising about abortions, nobody should interfere with the doctor (abortionist)-patient relationship -- but when it comes to caring for the elderly, anonymous bureaucrats should dictate to doctors what sorts of treatment are cost-effective enough to be "approved."

They believe it is unconstitutional for a legislature to mention Jesus but perfectly okay to mention Allah. They think it is offensive for mass-market movies to exhibit Christian sensibilities, but that it is perfectly okay for primetime TV shows on the public airwaves to have eighth graders decide which is the sexiest from among of contestants on MILF (Mothers I'd Like to ****) Island. They believe it disqualifies an appellate judicial nominee to joke one time about praying "please God, no more Souters" on the Supreme Court, but that it doesn't disqualify a Supreme Court nominee to repeat in multiple prepared speeches that "inherent physiological or cultural differences… may and will make a difference in our judging." They believe it is disqualifying for a judicial nominee to have quoted Thomas Aquinas about a Catholic duty to be good and active citizens while speaking to a Catholic high school. They believe explicit words in the Constitution protecting contracts, and gun ownership rights, and property rights against government seizure, are to be ignored; but that wholly invented "rights" that cannot be found in any words of the Constitution, but that merely "extend" from "emanations" from "penumbras" of other judicially created "rights," are somehow sacrosanct and essential parts of the Constitution.

They believe that when a white skinhead threatens a black man, it is a sign of a vast racist conspiracy; but that when paramilitary-garbedNew Black Panthers with a weapon, spouting racial epithets, stand right in front of a polling place, it is no violation of civil rights at all -- even after a judge has already moved to issue a default judgment against the Panthers. They believe that blacks are suffering racial discrimination when black voters themselves choose to hold non-partisan elections. They believe white firefighters can be denied promotions specifically because they are white, and that Asian students can be denied admission to college because they aren't black, but that black students who want to attend racially integrated private schools should be sent back to de facto segregated public schools in the name of "fairness."

The Left thinks it is good diplomacy to insult our allies while kowtowing to our enemies and bowing to problematic rivals. They tried everything in their power to stop Ronald Reagan's Cold War policies and yet now claim to have been part of a decades-long, bipartisan consensus on Cold War efforts. They think Afghanistan is a "war of necessity" until they are in charge of it, after which it becomes a war that must be stopped, one that was inherited from bad Republicans. They oppose missile defense because they say it will never work, and then when it works they oppose it anyway. They think that American imperialists are worse than foreign Communists. They think American servicemen should be prosecuted for (allegedly) punching a jihadist-terrorist in the stomach while capturing him -- and in a military court, without civilian due process rights -- but that foreign terrorist suspects are too good for military justice and instead deserve Miranda rights and other domestic American civil rights.

They support jail sentences for mere paperwork violations of environmental laws, even of foreign environmental laws or regulations, but they think even violent criminals should be let free if police make unintentional mistakes in paperwork or procedure.

They also think it is dangerous to the point of being an existential threat for ordinary citizens to challenge office-holders at town hall meetings, but perfectly okay for those same powerful office-holders to call their critics "un-American." They believe in the secret ballot for Mexicans, but not for American workers who are considering unionization. They say, against all evidence, that far more ballots are kept from being cast due to utterly unspecified "intimidation" than are cast fraudulently in the names of people who actually go nowhere near the polls, of dead people, and even of pet dogs …and of dead pet fish!!!

And, finally for now (this could go on for page after page), get this:They actually think most Americans agree with them. Now that isn't just laugh-inducing; it's worthy of a roll-on-the-floor, guffaw-til-you're-blue-in-the-face, uncontrollable laughing fit.

Christmas Is Americana

The Christmas season is upon us.

Christmas trees and lights are everywhere. Department stores are running their "holiday shopping" ads. Atheists are up in arms and calling the ACLU. Don't you just love the season?

I was thinking about the secularization and commercialization of Christmas today. It's getting to the point that nobody seems to like Christmas, at all. At least that's what they say. The atheists complain about the religious aspects of the season, while man Christians decry the secularization of the season.

I wonder why we can't just enjoy Christmas.

Seriously. Can't we just enjoy the season for what it is? Even the commercials and the Christmas lights, and Santa Claus and reindeer. I love it all.

Yes, Christmas Day is a day that my family recognizes the birth of Christ. We read the Christmas story. We go to Christmas Eve communion at our Church. We honor the Gift given to us from heaven.

But I also like the TV Christmas specials. I like the Christmas lights. I like almost all of the "secular" aspects of the season. It's not anti-Christian. It's a part of American culture.

Yes, most of the traditions are borrowed from other cultures. Santa Claus and the gift giving and so on didn't start here in America. But much of the "trappings" of the season are unique to our culture. We've borrowed a little of this and added a little of that and created our own Christmas culture. Some aspects of that culture point to the Christ. Others are simply a part of the "fun". And I like it all.

So, why don't others enjoy it? Frankly, you could go through the entire season, watching the Holiday shopping advertisements, and the Christmas specials and look at the trees and the lights and the tinsel and never be confronted with or reminded of the Christian religion. If that's your choice.

But atheists and leftists and other secular humanists can't let it go at that. They aren't REALLY offended by Christmas trees and Christmas lights. They aren't even offended by the manger scenes and the Bethlehem stars they see at Christmas. They are offended that Christians are enjoying themselves. They can't stand it that people of faith have a time of year in which they publicly celebrate. And they REALLY can't stand it that many non-religious people celebrate with them. And they can't stand America, Americana and American traditions.

That's why they come out from under the rocks every year in December.

The Bigotry of Low Expectations

NPR finally made mention of the recent ACORN scandal. (Charlie Gibson still hasn't heard of it, though.) Credit Frank James at NPR for covering the story in a manner that puts most of the left-wing establishment media to shame. James makes the following accurate observation:

"Instead of wasting funds on lawsuits, ACORN might want to consider doing more intensive training of its workers and testing them with its own undercover testers."

Unfortunately, he concludes his story by indulging in what George Bush (or one of his speech writers) so eloquently referred to as "the soft bigotry of low expectation."

"It's also important to keep in mind that ACORN's workers are coming from the same low-income neighborhoods the organization serves, with all that entails - poor schools, high crime and the sorts of social problems that have been documented for decades.

So the flaws conservatives are pointing out about ACORN are not so much about problems associated with that organization per se, but more about the problems of being poor and minority in urban America."

It's true that the neglect of inner city school children is morally wrong and possibly criminal. But it is arguably the systemic root of much of what ails America. The liberal government policies dating back three generations have served to warehouse the poor while creating financial incentives to underachieve. Welfare policies encourage the poorest to forgo savings, to ignore career and college ambitions and have multiple children outside of marriage.

Even so, it is sick and condescending to assume that the poor lack any moral compass. Do you have to be middle class to know that importing children for the purpose of child prostitution, cheating on taxes, lying to the government and abusing people, particularly children is wrong?

Such lack of expectations born of liberal guilt is tragic but telling.

This isn't The Wire. These aren't street level drug dealers at the mercy of a politically confused drug war. These are employees of a government funded organization who blithely conspire to rape little girls and to violate tax laws. And I do thank you for pointing out who trained them. Yes, ACORN did. But why fail to mention that this organization has yet to apologize, or to thank the film crew for bringing this horror to their attention so they can fix the problem?

If we can't expect coverage from the left wing establishment media, could we at least expect their outrage?

Important Lessons From Ted Kennedy: A Tribute

Roger Kimball writing for Pajama's Media writes:

I am deeply grateful for the contribution that Ted Kennedy, who died last night, made to my education. Until Kennedy delivered his intemperate tirade against Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court in the summer of 1987, I hadn’t known that a United States Senator could brazenly lie to his colleagues and the American people and get away with it. I’m not talking about little fibs, or broken promises, or private dissimulations: all that I took as standard operating procedure in a fallen world. No, Ted Kennedy raised — that is to say, he dramatically lowered — the standard by standing up on the floor of the Senate and emitting one lie after the next against one of the finest legal minds America has ever produced. “Robert Bork’s America,” he said

is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit down at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of democracy.

A breathtaking congeries of falsehoods that, were they not protected by the prerogatives of senatorial privilege, would have taken a conspicuous place in the annals of malicious slander and character assassination.

In The Tempting of America, Judge Bork recounts his incredulity at this tissue of malign fabrication. “It had simply never occurred to me that anybody could misrepresent my career and views as Kennedy did.” At the time, he notes, many people thought that Kennedy had blundered by emitting so flagrant, and flagrantly untrue, an attack. They were wrong. His “calculated personal assault, . . . more violent than any against a judicial nominee in our country’s history,” did the job (with a little help from Joe Biden and Arlen Specter).

Not only was Kennedy instrumental in preventing a great jurist from taking his place on the Supreme Court, he also contributed immeasurably to the cheapening of American political discourse. The fact that “bork” has entered the language as a transitive verb is, I’ve always thought, a final unfairness. Really, the verb should involve the name “Kennedy.” Less staccato, I admit, but in that scenario, the malfeasance was practiced not by Robert Bork but Edward Kennedy and his cronies.

Indeed, Kennedy was a veritable fount of enlightenment. A waddling argument for the wisdom of term limits, he showed the world how, provided you came from a rich and unscrupulous family, you can get caught cheating on a Spanish test at Harvard and still manage to graduate a few years later.

But of course, Ted Kennedy’s most important lesson for the world involved Mary Jo Kopechne, the secretary he let drown in 1969 when he drove his car off a bridge at Chappaquiddick Island late at night after a party.

Kennedy said he endeavored to rescue the girl. Maybe.

But what we know he did was contact several aides to work out a story. He waited until after the police discovered the car and Kopechne’s body the next morning before informing the police about the incident. He received a two-month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident after causing an injury. Wikipedia calmly notes that “Questions remained about Kennedy’s time line of events that night, about his actions after the accident, and the quality of the investigation and whether official deference was given to a powerful politician and family.” Do you think, just possibly, that unusual deference was shown to Ted Kennedy?

The Kennedy family has issued a eulogistic statement about the death of the Senior Senator from Massachusetts. Right and proper, I suppose, but I couldn’t help recoiling from its lists: “Edward M. Kennedy — the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we loved so deeply — died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port.”

“Edward M. Kennedy,” I heard echoing behind those words, “Liar, cheat, drunk, philanderer, and — let’s not forget — inadvertent murderer.”

The tsunami of sentimental pap about Kennedy is already churning, gushing, rushing to inundate the public with a nauseating and untruthful fairy tale about the “Lion of the Senate.” The Lyin’ in the Senate is more like it. Kennedy was 77 when he was taken off last night, Mary Jo Kopechne had just turned 29 when Kennedy’s car veered off the bridge in Chappaquiddick and he wriggled free and swam to shore, leaving the young woman trapped in the car to drown.

America Is Becoming More Conservative And More Polarized

According to a recent Gallup poll released last Friday, more Americans identify themselves as conservative than liberal in each of the fifty states.

The poll found that the states with the highest percentage of self-identified conservatives tended to be in the South. States such as Alabama and Mississippi were found to be 49% and 48% conservative respectfully, while only 15% of those polled in those states identified themselves as liberals. The state with the lowest percentage of liberals was Louisiana, with only 14%.

Many of the most liberal states were found to be on the East and West coasts. 29% of those polled in Massachusetts said they were liberal and 28% in Vermont, with Oregon (27%) and Washington (26%) coming in third and fourth.

Massachusetts and Vermont had the narrowest margins in favor of conservatism, with conservatives outnumbering liberals by 1%.

Though conservatives outnumbered liberals in all fifty states, in Washington D.C. the poll found that liberals outnumbered conservatives 37% to 23%.

However, the fact that conservatives outnumbered liberals across the country appears to support recent evidence that America is becoming increasingly conservative.

According to a set of Gallup polls done from January to May of 2009, 40% of people polled nationwide identified themselves as conservative, compared with only 21% as liberal.

"This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004," writes Lydia Saad concerning the nationwide poll.

In a June poll, Gallup found that 39% of Americans say their political views have become more conservative since 2004, as compared to only 19% who say they have become more liberal.

This trend towards conservatism is also supported by the recent and unprecedented Gallup polls concerning abortion.

As LSN reported, in a May poll, 51% of Americans said they were pro-life, the first time since the question starting being asked in 1995 that a majority of Americans identified themselves as pro-life.

However, in a mid-July poll the numbers equalized somewhat, with 47% of Americans calling themselves pro-life while 46% of Americans called themselves pro-choice. Theses numbers are still up, though, from 2004, when only 44% of Americans identified themselves as pro-life.

Further, an overwhelming majority of Americans think there should be some restrictions on abortion. 18% think that abortion should be illegal in all cases, while another 57% think abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances. Only 21% believed abortion should be legal under any circumstances.

Overall, the country seems to be becoming more polarized. On a nationwide basis, Gallup found that only 35% consider themselves moderate, as compared with 40% conservative and 21% liberal, the first time since 2004 there have been more conservatives than moderates.

The number of moderates has declined since the mid-90's, when 40% of Americans identified themselves as moderate.

Swastikas at Town Hall Meetings

Last week, Nancy Pelosi claimed that right wing zealots were showing up at town hall meetings with swastikas to disrupt the dialog at the meetings.

Aside from the obvious hypocrisy of her claiming to actually want dialog (which is what many Americans are trying to do), I'm interested in the swastikas comment. Has anyone seen any actual swastikas being displayed by right wingers trying to disrupt any of these meetings? Is that really going on?

I have yet to see a single image or video clip of someone at a Town Hall meeting during these past couple of months in which the health care bill is being discussed that shows anyone displaying swastikas.

Anyone? Anyone?

Liberals and the Culture of Violence

Liberalism hacks off the branch on which society sits, then blames conservatism for its fall. On smug shows like Hardball, liberals gasp self-righteously about the assassination of abortionist George Tiller and the shooting at the Holocaust Museum.

How -- they ask while glancing furiously at the "right" -- did killing become thinkable in America?

Mother Teresa answered their question over a decade ago at a D.C. prayer breakfast that they snored through: "Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use any violence to get what it wants.…If we accept that the mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?"

The fashionable left presides over a culture of death, using man-made legal parchments to mop up its encircling pools of blood. But the blood never comes out; the stain remains and grows more obvious with time.

What threatens America's future the most is not the transparently rancid extremism of the insane, but the "mainstream" extremism of the rich and powerful. To a Chris Matthews, left-wing extremism is somehow rendered "respectable" by law and recent custom. But reality is impervious to such phony distinctions.

As Abraham Lincoln said of legal slavery and the inexorable patterns of history that ripple from injustice, "every drop of blood drawn with the [slaveholder's] lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword." Do we really think that every drop of blood drawn with the abortionist's scalpel is exempt from the invisible laws of justice? The longer we permit this scourge to continue the more horrible America's fate will be.

That hidden James Von Brunns exist in the hinterlands of America is scary. But what's more chilling is the commonplace legal evil done "in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices," as C.S. Lewis once put it. Extremists exist not just on the margins of society but in the center of it: the Park Avenue feminist on her third abortion, the charming and "brave" abortionist feted at cocktail parties, the celebrity who pens an anguished memoir about drugging to death an enfeebled and annoying parent.

Around the time James Von Brunn was preparing to shoot up the Holocaust Museum, Barack Obama's extremist mentor was shooting off his mouth about "them Jews." The liberal elite are shocked by the former, yet tolerant of the latter. Jeremiah Wright still sits at their posh dinner parties in Chicago, as do for that matter Muslim activists, whose statements about Israel and the Jews differ from Von Brunn's, if at all, in degree not kind.

Killing the weak and undesirable is the "final solution," said Hitler, but as Chris Matthews and company walk through the Holocaust Museum in shock at such notions they neglect the extent to which their own moral philosophy mirrors his. The culture of death which they excuse and extend is essentially Hitlerite: the "final solution" to an inconvenient pregnancy is abortion; the "final solution" to soaring health care costs is euthanasia; the "final solution" to disease is experimenting on embryos; the "final solution" to disability is prenatal screening, etc., etc.

"Every child a wanted child" is a slogan Hitler himself could have devised. Instead, pro-abortion liberals did, and they have been killing "unwanted" children ever since. They are in no position to lecture "the right" on America's violence.