Archive for October, 2009
California, an Omen for the Nation
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Congress, National Character, Statism on October 8, 2009
Congressmen Tom McClintock representing California’s 4th District traces his state’s demise from pinnacle to nadir, golden state to bankrupt state in an article published in July of this year. A couple of generations ago California had the best climate, best roads, best free education and best business environment in the nation. “California, Here I Come…” was happily sung by many a soul, modern day forty-niners, as in migration was the norm; now more people are leaving than coming.
The only thing that has changed between then and now, public policy. The political left gradually became dominant. Jerry Brown, Gary Trudeau’s “Governor Moonbeam,” began instilling a leftist agenda that has only grown since. McClintock ascribes this mainly to three factors: environmental Ludditism, the abandonment of constitutional checks and balances, and the rise of rule by public employee unions. He calls the article, California’s Morality Play in Three Acts.
The frightening point McClintock effectively makes is that he sees the California demise being replayed in Washington for the Nation as a whole. Obama is the Nation’s “Governor Moonbeam!” He has the backing of a veto proof left in Congress. We have cap and trade coming, union control, and unconfirmed tzars, all trending to European socialism. Sadly, he says it is too late for California. But he sees the California story as a strong warning for the rest of the Nation. If only people would look, would listen, would understand.
I commend the well reasoned article which is linked above.
Tom Motherway
Gingrich on “Our Heritage”
Posted by Tom in Law, Morality & Religion in the Public Square on October 7, 2009
Obama like Big Brother attempts to separate us from our roots, our traditions, our beliefs. That’s the gist of Robert Costa’s post on the NRO interview with Newt Gingrich who is touting his newly hosted documentary, Rediscovering God in America II: Our Heritage. As we know Newt is an historian of the first order and also an intelligent observer of contemporary America. Our Ryan Costella recently traveled with Gingrich on his trip to China and I’m sure he will support both observations.
In any case the interview is well worth the read in full but here is a taste:
Though it may be about the past, Gingrich says the documentary’s themes are tied directly to the present. He says he worries that the “core definition of America” — that citizens are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” — is “under assault, both in the academic and news-media communities, as well as in the courts.”
Gingrich says he has major concerns about American culture, and “the degree to which it is becoming an anti-religious culture.”
“Ironically, in some ways, it is becoming a culture in which it is more acceptable for schools to teach about Islam than to teach about Christianity,” says Gingrich. “If you think about that, it verges on the bizarre.”
“We are the only society I know of that asserts that power comes directly from God to you, that you are sovereign, and that you loan power to the government,” says Gingrich. “A point that Reagan always used to make was that the Constitution begins with ‘we the people,’ and not ‘we the bureaucrats,’ or ‘we the lawyers,’ or ‘we the judges,’ or ‘we the politicians,’ but ‘we the people.’ If you eliminate that, and you make generalizations about where power comes from, then of course we can trust the judges, and of course we can trust the politicians.”
If power in America continues to move away from the people, Gingrich says that the country risks “actually eliminating the uniqueness that has made America an exceptional nation. You begin drift into a world where nothing is stable.”
“The modern Left is essentially proto-totalitarian,” says Gingrich. President Obama, he says, is “an authentic representative of the intelligentsia. I think he likes Reveille for Radicals for a reason; he likes William Ayers for a reason. He didn’t notice 20 years of sermons for a reason.”
But is Obama that different from liberals like George McGovern? “Oh, yeah,” says Gingrich. “My sense is with McGovern, unequivocally, that he was a man from a different world. McGovern was a man who had grown up in pre–World War II America. And he grew up in South Dakota. Obama really grew up in the world of the modern American intelligentsia — he is a person of the Left. The minute you accept that, you understand almost everything.”
Obama, Gingrich adds, “is a radical in the sense that the victory of those values would mean the end of American civilization as we know it.” President Reagan, in contrast, “was a radical within the American tradition. He was almost like the Jacksonian uprising against the establishment. Reagan represented a fundamental break with the dominant system of government for the last 60 years. He didn’t quite pull it off. He managed to defeat the Soviet Empire and managed to renew the energy of entrepreneurial America, but he did not in fact change the underlying crisis.”
And Americans didn’t vote for Obama’s brand of radicalism. In 2008, Americans, says Gingrich, “were voting for the end of Bush. They were voting to have no taxes raised on anybody making under $250,000, and they were voting for a tax cut for 95 percent of the American people. Go back and read what Obama campaigned on. This is a con job on the scale of Madoff.”
The Obama ego, self confidence, and solipsism fit neatly into Newt’s observations as does the pitiful state of our liberal, leftist ruling class. Man is the measure of all! What a shame for this once great nation.
Tom Motherway
Unedited Email Challenge–Let’s Edit Away!
I received the following email today which is obviously polemic and distorted. Emails like this one, and unedited blogs also like this one, are the reason that the liberal leftists disdain freedom of speech and support the New York Times and the Washington Posts, both of which are losing readership. Well as a challenge to readers, I solicit succinct edits of the following email. (It’s fair to use the internet and, inter alia, the NYT and WP!)
The following email purported to list Obama’s first month’s accomplishments in office. See if you agree.
1. Offended the Queen of England.
2. Bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia.3. Praised the Marxist Daniel Ortega.
4. Kissed Socialist Hugo Chavez on the cheek.
5. Endorsed the Socialist Evo Morales of Bolivia.
6. Sided with Hugo Chavez and Communist Fidel Castro against Honduras.
7. Announced we would meet with Iranians with no pre-conditions while they’re building their nuclear weapons.
8. Gave away billions to AIG also without pre-conditions.
9. Expanded the bailouts.
10. Insulted everyone who has ever loved a Special Olympian.
11. Doubled our national debt.
12. Announced the termination of our new missile defense system the day after North Korea launched an ICBM.
13. Released information on U.S. Intelligence gathering despite urgings of his own CIA director and the prior four CIA directors.
14. Accepted without comment that five of his cabinet members cheated on their taxes and two other nominees withdrew after they couldn’t take the heat.
15. Appointed a Homeland Security Chief who identified military veterans and abortion opponents as “dangers to the nation.”
16. Ordered that the word “terrorism” no longer be used and instead refers to such acts as “man made disasters.”
17. Circled the globe to publicly apologize for America’s world leadership.
18. Told the Mexican president that the violence in their country was because of us.
19. Politicized the census by moving it into the White House from the Department of Commerce.
20. Appointed as Attorney General the man who orchestrated the forced removal and expulsion to Cuba of a 9-year-old whose mother died trying to bring him to freedom in the United States.
21. Salutes as heroes three Navy SEALS who took down three terrorists who threatened one American life and the next day announces members of the Bush administration may stand trial for “torturing” three 9/11 terrorists by pouring water up their noses.
22. Low altitude photo shoot of Air Force One over New York City that frightened thousands of New Yorkers.
23. Sent his National Defense Advisor to Europe to assure them that the US will no longer treat Israel in a special manner and that Israel might be on their own with the Muslims.
24. Praised Jimmy Carter’s trip to Gaza where he sided with terrorist Hamas against Israel.25. Nationalized General Motors and Chrysler while turning shareholder control over to the unions and freezing out retired investors who owned their bonds. Committed unlimited taxpayer billions in the process.
26. Passed a huge energy tax in the House that will make American industry even less competitive while costing homeowners thousands per year.
27. Announced nationalized health care “reform” that will strip seniors of their Medicare, cut pay of physicians, increase taxes yet another $1 trillion, and put everyone on rationed care with government bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who doesn’t,
As you see, some are legitimate, some not, some overstated, others understated. This blog will not compete with Saturday Night Live which took a recent shot at Obama accomplishments, but the points are obvious!
Tom Motherway
Roman Polanski–Child Rape, a Crime, Maybe Even Immoral?
Posted by Tom in Law, Morality & Religion in the Public Square, National Character on October 4, 2009
How much influence does morally bankrupt Hollywood exert on American or world society? Terry Teachout’s lead article in the weekend WSJ, Hollywood vs. Justice, attempts to distinguish between the attitudes of Hollywood and the unsheltered rest of us. There is some hope that we, in the main, retain our moral foundations. But I worry, when I read:
…Harvey Weinstein. On Thursday he gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times that will live long in the annals of arrogance. Not only does Mr. Weinstein believe that Mr. Polanski should be set free at once, but he claims that “Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion. We were the people who did the fundraising telethon for the victims of 9/11. We were there for the victims of Katrina and any world catastrophe.” Thats the voice of a man who spends his days listening to toadies—and who knows nothing of the deeply felt beliefs of the ordinary people who pay their hard-earned money to see his pictures. I wonder how many of them will henceforth be inclined to steer by the compass of anyone who thinks that rape is a “so-called crime.”
Mr. Weinstein is, of course, a moral idiot. But why did so many of Mr. Polanskis artistic peers rush to defend him? Is it really because “Chinatown” is so good? Perhaps, though I suspect its at least as likely that certain of the people who signed the “Free Polanski” petition are also thinking of the skeletons in their own well-filled closets. Rich and famous people, after all, are accustomed to having their own way, no matter what it is or whom it hurts. …
The unseemly rapidity with which Mr. Polanskis friends lined up to support him is also a demonstration of the extent to which Hollywood is isolated from the rest of the world. Its a company town, a place where the powerful can go for months at a time without hearing anyone disagree with them about anything…. Anyone who lives in a tightly sealed echo chamber of self-congratulation, surrounded by yes-men who are dedicated to doing what he wants, is bound to lose touch with reality sooner or later. Can there be any doubt that this is what has happened to the signers of the Polanski petition? Like Mr. Weinstein, they sincerely believe that whatever they think, say, do or want is right. In fact, Im sure that most of them will be staggered to learn assuming that their flunkies have the nerve to tell them that when it comes to preying on teenage girls, most people think otherwise.
These people are the media, they support the ruling elite, like Obama, and they are morally bankrupt! How many of their films do our children watch? What subtle moral messages do those films convey? How well do the MSM critics review the films?
Are the Harvey Weinsteins of the world and the rest of the Hollywood ilk the people we want influencing our next generations?
I will not spend one dime supporting the trash that these folks are selling.
Tom Motherway
Limits of Reinvention by Denis Boyles–the strong are hated, the weak are more hated!
Posted by Tom in Foreign Policy, National Character on October 1, 2009
Dennis Boyles from Paris pens a blistering post in NRO today. Quite perceptive for the shame and irresponsibility of America under Obama-direction. Partially quoted below, the full article is worth the read.
A less-than-forceful America has serious implications for Europe. If Obama is willing to throw the Poles to Putin, what does that mean for the rest of Europe? Just the idea of defending themselves is enough to bankrupt most European states. A strong America may have been unpopular. That’s the price a nation pays for its superpower status, and even when the Left was at its most successful in demonizing the U.S., they could never quite diminish the hopeful respect for American ideals that always lurked nearby.
But Obama may have found a way to reinvent America as something in his own image, even if more loathsome: a weak nation shrinking from the responsibilities of strength. A weak America is a prize that Yank-bashers have been dreaming about for 50 years, because that’s an America that, perhaps rightly, will be truly and forever despised.
— Denis Boyles teaches at The Brouzils Seminars in France. His most recent book is Superior, Nebraska.
via The Limits of Reinvention by Denis Boyles on National Review Online.