The Inevitable Conversion

Defense of Marriage

2007-02-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

Gay marriage advocates in the State of Washington have decided to take a different tact to redefine marriage in our society. You can go to their web site and read all about what they are up to. To sum it up, they are trying to get on the ballot an initiative that will nullify any marriage that does not produce any children within three years.

Why are they doing this? They say their reasoning is to put into law what the Washington State Supreme Court ruled last year in upholding the legislatures law to bar same sex marriages. The ruling stated that it was a legitimate state interest to limit marriage to those couples that are able to have and raise children together. So with the liberal all-or-nothing thinking, those that do not produce children should not be granted the privilege of a marriage.

Of course they know this will never pass on the ballot, but that is not their point. As they state on their web site, they want to see conservatives "...choke on their own rhetoric" trying to defend why they believe marriage is only for those who can have children. And the initiative would not stop there. It would also nullify marriages that have only adopted children, because gays can adopt, so that should not be the basis for a marriage either.

A few points that I would like to make about this that I am not seeing be made in the MSM begin with:

I was listening on a talk radio show to a person who was advocating this initiative, and it was clear to me that what has got this guy the most upset was the fact that the courts upheld the law, rather than rejected it. Liberals count on the courts to accomplish what they can not accomplish in the legislature, so when the court ruled against their side, they really got their panties in a bunch over it.

I also see this a a natural projection of liberal politics where 'stunt politics' is the norm, and actually working to accomplish something is not an option. I even believe that they see their cause as so 'righteous' that they consider it beneath them to have to convince people to see things their way.

What troubles me the most is when I heard on that show that they would consider it a victory just to get it on the ballot. A look at their web site shows that the name of the initiative is 'Defense of Marriage'. I can see it now. They are going to have their advocates on the street going up to people to sign a petition that has 'Defense of Marriage' at the top, and say to them that this about 'limiting marriage to those that can have children,' which would not be a lie, but I'll just bet that they won't point out the nullifying of marriages part of it. Through their deception they just might get this on the ballot.

Of course, only in the liberal mind can accomplishing something with a deception be considered a victory. These people are twisted, and getting more so.

The facts remain that my and most peoples objection to gay marriage is based on the principle that the government should not be in the business of validating lies. It is a lie to believe that it is not in the best interest of the child to be raised by a man and a woman. Men and women are not the same, and they bring different attributes into a relationship. Children need both in their lives to develop properly. Whether or not any particular couple can or cannot have a child means nothing to those who want to keep marriage defined as it is.

Listening to this guy explain why it is so important to have government sanctioned marriage for gays finally brought home to me where this is actually coming from. The union of a man to a man, or a woman to a woman, will never be the same as the union of a man to a woman. Only when the two parts are different do you accomplish something greater than the sum of the parts. I think homosexuals inherently know this, so they seek government validation in the hopes that it will make them feel better about their decision. But a twist on an old saying would be "If your relationship isn't good enough without the validation of something outside of it, it will never be good enough with that validation."

And while it is one thing to seek validation for what you believe, it is another to seek to destroy those you disagree with. The liberals who support this effort may see this as a stunt that will never succeed, but what makes them really pathetic is that they would be quite happy if they do. For them, it's just as important to destroy what they cannot have, as it is to achieve it.

Insulting vs Supporting The Troops

2007-02-06T10:50:00.000-08:00

Last week a particularly vile columnist at the Washington Post, William Arkin, posted a blog that basically accused our troops in Iraq as being mercenaries, and instead of them complaining about the war protesters, they should be grateful that they are not being spit on. If you can stomach it, I recommend that you read the entire post.

Needless to say the Washington Post had to shutdown any replies to his post when the number reached 900. But the best one was from Kevin P. Bradley, and I am reprinting it in its entirety

Mr. Arkin,

I read with, great surprise, your article on the troops speaking out. I thought of a rather long missive to post, but I think concise facts might be more appropriate.

• Prior to the 2000 election, the unwritten rule was that former Presidents would not speak out publicly about current foreign policy. The reason being that to do so might send mixed signals to other countries, and undermine our foreign policy.

• In the 1970's, troops returning from Vietnam were spit on, called baby killers, labeled as murderers and rapists. Our Military was demoralized, underfunded and ill-trained.

• In the 1980's, The Military was built up, morale was very high, and the Soviet Union collapsed without the nuclear holocaust those on the left claimed was imminent.

• General Giap, Commander of the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, was interviewed by a Newsweek reporter. He told the reporter that after TET (1968), the Viet Cong were no longer usable, and the North Vietnamese Army would take years to rebuild, and would not be able to mount another offensive. The TET offensive of 1968 was an absolute failure for the North. They lost over 70,000 soldiers and Viet Cong. He stated that it was the protests in the United States that gave him hope. He stated he didn't have to win, just hold on longer than the American people. The South Vietnamese Government collapsed after the United States Congress cut off all funding. The United States Military won every single battle, but the media and the politicians lost the war.

• January 1995. Then President Clinton was moving to deploy United States Forces to the Balkins. The United Nations forces had failed to stop the ethnic cleansing there, and the world watched. Much was made of the Republican controlled Congress that was holding funding until the President explained why he was committing U.S. troops for reasons that departed from prior policy. They wanted to know the objectives and the exit strategy. President Clinton stated "They will be home by Christmas". That was 1995. I served in Bosnia in 2001 and 2002. The last large number of troops was pulled out last year. 11 Christmas' had passed, no media uproar, no headlines of quagmire.

• The policy prior to 2000, as a result of what happened with Vietnam, was that we should strongly debate the use of force up until we have boots on the ground. Once soldiers were in harms way, all should unite and give one message "We support our troops efforts to succeed, and we will stand behind them.

In a nutshell, citizens, politicians and the media, who are actively pushing for a withdrawal in Iraq, are giving hope to our enemies. I have heard far more outrage from those on the left regarding naked prisoners standing in front of Female soldiers than I have heard about videotaped beheadings of Americans. If you think Abu Grahb was worse than Nicholas Berg, you are really in need of help.

I have served for 20 years in uniform. I hold a B.A. and held a strong GPA. I have buried more friends over the years than I care to remember. Good men who's lives were much more valuable than some of those whom they died protecting. The arrogance that people like yourself display is amazing. Sit behind your desk, write your columns. Thank God the people who risk there

Their lives for the idea and freedoms that are our Nation, are not willing to risk our future. You are lucky you don't have to deal with what would be the results of your policy preferences. You can sit and type and there is always going to be someone who will stand up to defend you, maybe. You sir, are a coward and a disgrace.

If you have any doubts of the nobility of our troops in Iraq I suggested that you hear directly from them what they believe. An excellent source is a new DVD called outside the wire. From their web site is the following description.

This is the Iraq War you won't see on the evening news.

Former Marine and television news producer JD Johannes traveled to Iraq with his old Marine Corps unit to produce syndicated TV news reports for local stations.

From those reports comes a view of the war that only the grunts who operate outside the wire experience.

From a dust-up with Al Qaida outside Abu Ghriab, to a night raid on the home of an insurgent leader, you will see what the Marines saw and hear the story in their own words of why they joined, volunteered for the deployment, why they fight and what it is like to go outside the wire and into combat.

I have my DVD on order, and so should you!

More Ineffective Liberal Point Making

2007-01-28T07:48:00.000-08:00

Last week, the Democratic-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voted 12-9 on a non-binding resolution that the troop buildup in Iraq is "not in the national interest" of the United States. But what the 11 Democrats and 1 Republican that voted for this did believe is in our national interest is to rebuke the President. So, what does this vote accomplish? Absolutely nothing, at least as far as accomplishing anything positive that is. It does however remind us that not all Republicans are conservative.

Whether or not your belief that the troop buildup will be effective has nothing to do with whether or not you are conservative. It's the method you go to express this view that proves this. As I stated in my Conservative Conversion Primer (see side bar), Liberals care far more about making a point than being effective. All of their policies to combat poverty, racism, and other such issues are great at demonstrating how much they dislike these issues, yet they actually only serve to exacerbate them.

Most of the Republicans on the commitee expressed their reservations over the Presidents plan, but they would not vote for this because it does nothing to help our situation in Iraq. They would rather appear to support the President's plan than do something that was only about making a point, and not about being effective.

And that is what is particularly galling to me about this resolution. With most of the stupid policies of the Liberals, they at least think they will accomplish something. But not this one. They are all fired up to demostrate their contempt for the president, but to actually do something that is effective is not even contemplated.

In all fairness, I must express my doubts about whether the troop surge will be effective in Iraq, but I don't blame the President for those doubts. Any route to victory in Iraq will have to include convincing our enemies that their methods of terror will not weaken our resolve to see an Iraq that is a buffer to terrorism, and not a breeding ground for it. Yet as long as the majority party of this country continues to care more about making a point, rather than being effective, I only see our enemies more embolden to stay their course.

The Un-Fairness Doctrine

2007-01-22T19:55:00.000-08:00

It's not surprising that since the liberals are back in power that they would be trying to bring back the fairness doctrine. There is nothing - and I mean absolutely nothing - that can epitomize the hypocrisy and deception of the liberal agenda than their desire to bring back this form of Big Brother government control.

For those not in the know, the fairness doctrine dates back to the 1930s when radio was in its infancy. There wasn't any regulatory authority back then, so some stations were not playing nice. They were doing things like bumping up their power to drown out competing stations and other such childish things. Some politicians back then thought it was in everyone's best interest for some one to step in and take charge of the air waves, so hence, the FCC was born.

This political over-play was only the beginning of the problem. There was no need to use a heavy handed commission to solve what were quite trivial problems, but politicians who feel they need to do good with laws believed otherwise. Once this self-important commission was established, they started acting like every other commission that has come since, and started looking for other reasons to justify their existence. This of course resulted in them training their regulatory wrath on the content of the stations that they felt was theirs to control. They didn't like hearing what amounted to them as only one side of political issues, so the fairness doctrine was created. In a nutshell, the fairness doctrine requires any radio station that presents one side of a political position to also give equal time on the air for the other side of that position.

Like everything else advocated by liberals, this sounds like it would be about promoting free speech, but the reality was exactly the opposite. There was no commercially viable way to allow time for opposing points that no one wanted to listen to, so radio stations just didn't allow political speech altogether. This is particularly vexing when you consider most political issues have way more than one side. No station can afford to give evEryone who believes they have a point that has not been expressed equal amounts of time.

Things had gotten so bad that by 1986 the AM band on the radio was considered dead. Many radios at the time came out onLy able to monitor the FM band. What changed, and brought AM back from life support, was that our country finally got a president who understood the real meaning of free speech, and that was Ronald Reagan. He directed the FCC to repeal the fairness doctrine, and from that moment on, things began to change.

Make no mistake about it. Without the repeal of the fairness doctrine, no one would know the name of Rush Limbaugh, and this fact, above all else, just burns liberals to no end. All they can think of is that there once was a law that prevented him from saying what others wanted to hear, so by any means necessary, these liberals are now going to see that law brought back.

This doctrine, like nothing else liberals advocate, illuminates their state of mind. Starting with the fact that everything they support can only exist in a fantasy world that is divorced from reality. In the real world, where you must look at all forms of media, liberals dominate them like a monopoly. If you look at television, movies and newspapers, liberals call almost all of the shots.

Only on AM radio does conservative opinions dominate. Do you see liberals wanting to apply the fairness doctrine to what they control? Of course not. The only place they want 'fairness' is the small niche they can't crack. And it's not like they haven't tried to make a presence on AM radio. Deep-pocket liberals like George Soros have pumped millions of dollars into Air America, which is the liberal radio network, only to see it fail.

What is most indicative of their push for the fairness doctrine is their hypocrisy about "power to the people." They are always talking about it, but never act in a manner that says they believe it. Anyone who wants the fairness doctrine back has no faith in the people. They do not believe that the people can decide for themselves where they want to get their information from, so these I-know-better-than-you elitist liberals want to decide what is in everyone's best interest.

Back in 1987, when the fairness doctrine was repealed, it was possible for a fair minded liberal to believe that the doctrine was about insuring everyone has a chance to be heard, but not anymore. With all we have learned since then, anyone who advocates the fairness doctrine wants to silence dissent, and there is nothing 'fair' about that.

Post Script

Just as I was cleaning up this post I heard Robert Redford comment on some panel how 'dissenting voices' of the administration are being silenced, and something must be done about this.

Say What!?!

Just as I started to wonder what planet he's been hiding on, it struck me that this is probably part of the liberal agenda to get the public behind the fairness doctrine. If so, then things don't look good for real freedom of speech in this country.

They Really Do Want Us To Lose

2007-01-14T21:14:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I saw a video clip of Bill O'Reilly asking David Letterman, then Rosie O'Donnell, whether or not they wanted us to win the war in Iraq. In both cases they hemmed and hawed, and provided very evasive replies. They never actually stated they wanted us to lose, but I don't know what other meaning you can come to, based on how they replied. At the time I was rather incredulous. I asked myself, 'Don't these people understand the ramifications of us losing there?' I just couldn't believe they didn't want us to win the war.

That was until last week when I saw Senator Edward Kennedy bloviating on President Bush's call for more troops in Iraq. He was calling for congress to refuse any funding for this surge to take place. He then went on to fondly recall how he and his contemporaries in 1975 refused then Presidents Ford's call for us to support South Vietnam after the North broke it's treaty and invaded.

President Ford was not asking for troops. He was just asking for congress to honor our promise to the South by supplying ammunition and medical supplies. Congresses refusal to honor its commitment to support our allies was probably the most shameful act of foreign policy ever by our country, yet Senator Kennedy was recalling this with great pride, and demanding of his fellows in Washington to repeat what they did back then.

Let me see if I get this right. The Senator believes that over 3 million south-east Asians murdered was a good thing; that hundreds of thousands of people pushed off from their shores with no destination in mind, because they were too terrified to remain, was something to be proud of?

That's when it struck me that of course David and Rosie don't understand the ramifications of what will happen if we lose in Iraq. These ignorant liberals didn't understand the ramifications of what actually has happened in the past, so it's only natural to not expect them to grasp what will happen in the future.

But the big question here is 'why'. Why do they want us to lose in Iraq? It's one thing to not see the bad that will happen if we lost in Iraq, but it's another thing to actually want us to lose. There was an idea bouncing around in my head since I saw the Bill O'Reilly clip, but it didn't gel until I saw Senator Kennedy display the utter ignorance of what he is calling for.

The way I see it, these liberals do not want to see war accomplish anything. As far as they are concerned, only diplomacy solves problems. It's not so much that they have articulated in their heads that they want us to lose, it's just that losing is inevitable to them. And quite frankly, the sooner we lose, the sooner we can start doing what they believe will work, and that's diplomacy.

I also believe that they see any victory for our military would be a blow to ultimate peace in the world. They believe that if we are victorious in this case, then we'll be more inclined to use war instead diplomacy in other cases, and this they cannot stand for. I'm sure they don't actually want our soldiers to die, but if a few thousand soldiers have to die so that ultimate peace on earth can be obtained, then they are OK with that. After all, only those that send our troops over there could ever be responsible for their deaths. Right?

Once you understand this about liberals, then it's a lot easier to understand all of the things they have done to give our enemies the impression that we will cut and run from Iraq. They never saw how their actions led to some of the worst human misery known to man in Vietnam, they currently don't see how their actions are giving moral support to our enemies, and they will never see how leaving Iraq will make us far more susceptible to terrorist attacks here at home. That's why the liberals really want us to lose.

Nothing New About Nancy

2007-01-06T16:33:00.000-08:00

As the Democrat take over of the house of representatives approached, I was expecting Nancy Peloci to make a big deal out of her being the Speaker of the House, but her grandiose pronouncements of her 'breaking the marble ceiling' and 'going from the kitchen to congress' was just too much.

Oh puhlease....The only time this privileged, country club lady ever stepped foot in a kitchen was to tell the staff what to do. She grew up as the daughter of the mayor of Baltimore, and was chauffeured to her private school. She then went on to marry an even wealthier investment broker, and has known nothing of the life her comments were meant to represent. She is the epitome of the liberal elite that have been in positions of power for decades. The rise to power of someone like Condaleeza Rice is far more inspiring than this spoiled-brat-cum-society-princess.

Yes, this was a bit more over the top than I expected, but what was really vomit-inducing were the comments of a supposed journalist Charlie Gibson. When everything was winding down, and Nancy had come down from the podium, she was holding her grandson. Charlie then gushed how this was the sign of times, and how women are so good at multitasking by 'taking care of the children while taking care of the country.'

Oh double puhlease.... That grand child was nothing more than a prop for a photo op. She wasn't going to be taking care of it. Her own children were raised by nannies while she was the chair of the state house of representatives.

There is nothing new about what Nancy has accomplished, and there is nothing new about the democrats providing the phony pictures so that the MSM can spread the liberal lies.

Would You Work For Walmart?

2006-12-30T08:54:00.000-08:00

I was planning to take a break from posting to my Blog for the remainder of the year so that I could enjoy the holidays, but an e-mail from a liberal friend of mine has prompted me to post this one as a reply. He was not convinced by my argument in my last post that Walmart was good for the poor, and even challenged me as a hypocrite by asking if I would be willing to work for Walmart.

So, would I work for Walmart? Of course not. I also wouldn't be ditch digger, a street sweeper, a garbage collector and a whole lot of other jobs that come to mind. For that matter, I think it is safe to say that most of the jobs available in this nation I would not do. At the same time, I am quite grateful for those that do work them. Life would be hell without these essential jobs being performed. The real question my friend should have asked is would I work for Walmart rather than going on welfare? This answer is an unqualified, yes.

Not all jobs should be appropriate for everyone. Some people only want to work part time. Others, such as a someone who is fully covered by their spouse, does not need full medical benefits. Making all jobs appropriate for everyone cuts down on the number of jobs that can be made available. This is a concept that really escapes liberals. As I stated in my Conservative Conversion Primer about liberals ideas concerning solutions to any person's problems, they believe that:

...any solution that does not help everyone is not a valid solution.

It's this kind of thinking that leads them to believe a minimum wage law would be a good thing. That it kills entry level jobs doesn't even phase their thinking. As far as they are concerned, all jobs should be able to support a family or the company offering the job is just "exploiting" the worker.

In reality, working bottom rung jobs like Walmart is great for those just starting in the job market. Learning what it takes to be a good worker does not come naturally. The kind of jobs Walmart offers do not require much of an investment on their part, so they are willing to take risks on those that other companies would not. This gives more workers an opportunity to develop the skills needed to be valuable workers, either at Walmart (and yes, there are good jobs at Walmart), or some place else.

Where my friend thought I was really off base in that post, was my solution to Walmart employees using government medical programs that are intended for the poor. My solution was to get rid of the welfare programs. But his response to this confirmed what I have always thought about liberals, and their so called generosity. To paraphrase his complaint the way I see it, he said that government provided medical programs are for those that sit around on their ass all day watching TV, and not for those that are at least working, and making some contribution to our society (I know he would not agree with this paraphrase, but it is the truth).

Personally I think that what most liberals have a problem with Walmart employees using these government medical benefits is that the recipients are not grateful or feel beholden to liberals for it. Walmart employees have consistently rejected any attempts to unionize, and are more likely to be conservative, as oppose to their fellow poor who prefer to sit on their ass and perform the role of victim in our society. The idea that someone can collect government welfare of any kind, yet the liberals not gain some political power from it, is just too much for them to bear.

Again, I'm sure my friend would say I am mischaracterizing his complaint. He will forever believe that it is Walmart that is benefiting from their workers using these programs, not the workers themselves. The problem with this view is that the workers don't see it that way. Considering the thousands that line up for jobs that are only available for hundreds when Walmart opens a new store, I would say liberals have no clue about what people really want or need. Sure, most of those applying would like full medical benefits, but they know their lives stand a better chance at improving by working there, than trusting what the liberals have to offer.

Anti-Walmart is Anti-Poor

2006-12-14T13:27:00.000-08:00

The left-leaning, union-beholded city council of San Diego has passed an oridinance to ban Walmart Super Centers from within the city limits. Why would they do this you might ask? Most liberals will offer explanations ranging from how Walmart treats its employees to how it puts other smaller retail stores out of business. I personally believe the issue liberals have with Walmart is no different than the issue that they have with successful conservative blacks. It basically boils down to the fact that they cannot deal with the idea that people they claim to represent are doing well without them being credited for it.

For a long time now I have seen how black conservatives are treated by liberals. They are seen as traitors, and called names like Oreo or house monkey. Yet the only proven method for blacks to succeed (or anyone else for that matter), is to adopt the conservative princples of hard work, and to not allow yourself to believe you are a victim. Liberals of course can't stand this. They desperately, and passionately need blacks to believe they are victims in need of liberal elite protection and hand outs. Blacks who believe they are victims are half of the liberal's power base, and they will slander any black who dares to believe differently in order to keep them in line.

The other half of the liberal power base is the poor, and it is equally important that they also believe that the liberal elites are their only salvation. That means that if a private company comes along that is clearly popular with the poor, then it is important that it is slandered lest the poor start believing there are more effective means at succeding in life than what government welfare programs have to offer.

I've read many studies both pro and con on the effect of Walmart in the communities that they operate, but rather than debating the validity of these studies, how about we employ some common sense on sound economic pronciples in order to determine whether Walmart is good or bad.

The first negative given is that it puts small businesses out of busines. All I can say to that is 'so what?' Of course they do, and they should. I'm sure the buggy whip manufactures were all distressed about losing their market share when the automobile came out. The nature of any healthy and vibrant economy is that it is always changing. Businesses that don't adapt with the market are going to fail.

As a large retail business, they specialize in the common things that everyone needs. Their business parctices, coupled with 'economies of scale' allow them to provide their goods at a much lower cost to the consumer than the usual stores in the area. When people pay less for what the percieve to need, they are raising their standard of living. This puts more money in their pockets that they then can spend on other things.

This in-turn provides an opportunity for other businesses. As a large business, Walmart can't provide everything people want. Walmart needs to focus on the lowest common denominator, which provides niches for entrepreneurs to suceed. Since the customers of Walmart have more money, they can use it on these other businesses.

As an example of the opportunities, a little while ago I wanted a kite to fly. I went to Walmart, but I didn't like their selection. Yes they were inexpensive, but I didn't see anything that I would enjoy flying. This prompted me to go to a specific kite store. The first store I went to had a great selection to choose from, but yet I didn't buy anything from them. It's not that they were too expensive. Since I save money shopping at Walmart, I could have afforded what they sold. The reason I didn't buy anything from them is that they had an anti-Walmart sign inside their store, and I will not patronize any store that does not realize the benefits that Walmart brings to a community.

As for the claims that Walmart treats its people bad, what non-sense. Everytime one of their store opens, thousands line up for a chance to work there. Why would people flock to a company that is so bad to work for? The most obvious sign that Walmart treats their employees fairly is that unions have never been able to organize at one of their stores, which is the real reason liberals hate Walmart.

Instead of complaining about what Walmart is doing, why don't liberals provide job opportunities for these people? Oh right, liberals don't know how to run a business that is not secured from compitition, like government contracts.

As for the complaint about them not providing health insurance to many of their workers, which results in higher costs to the taxpayers, this one really burns me. Liberals provide welfare programs and are then are shocked - shocked! - that someone takes advantage of it. My solution to this problem is to kill the welfare program, rather than going after the private companies that are benefiting from it.

Is Walmart a paragon of virtue? No, but it shouldn't be. It benefits our nation best by doing whatever it takes, within the law, to provide its customers with what they want at the lowest possible price. Any company that does that will always benefit hard working people. And this is what bothers the liberals the most. Walmart will always benefit the poor better than any welfare state program ever will.

The Only Mature Participants

2006-11-22T22:33:00.000-08:00

So I'm reading in the paper today that Andréz Manuel López Obrador has decided to swear himself in as Mexico's 'legitimate president.' Of course he did not win the election, but things like this have never stopped leftists before from doing whatever their ego and insanity will allow. After all, they believe, in a truly fair world, they would win any election. So if they don't win, then the election was obviously not legitimate.

This behaviour is no different than what the Democrats engaged in back in 2000 and 2004. All their talk about President Bush stealing the elections was more a symptom of a mental disorder than a reflection of reality. As I stated in a previous post, liberals care far more about who is in power than conservatives do, which makes them far more emotionally attached to the outcome. This leads them to act more like babies than people who should be awarded positions of responsibility.

Even in the just past election, the Democrats had all of their constituents riled up and ready for mass protests in order to de-legitimize any Republican victory, yet they looked quite dumbfounded when they were the ones who won.

As far as conservatives getting all hot and bothered about the outcome, forget about it. We know that the real power is in the hands of the people. Sure it would have been better for the nation if we had won, but it is nice to confirm that we are the only mature participants in our national elections.

The Laffer Curve

2006-11-14T13:04:00.000-08:00

Recently I was listening to a talk radio show that was discussing the reasons why the Republicans lost control of the Congress. What caught my attention the most was when the host was trying to explain to a caller who voted Democrat, why tax revenue was up even though the Republicans lowered taxes. In fact, the caller didn't believe it was true. He said that the government reporting that revenue was up, was an obvious example that the government was lying to the people. He also said that to believe revenue was up while taxes are down was like expecting him to believe that he could see better at night. Needless to say, the host was not effective in convincing him.

I personally have no trouble understanding why this is true. This principle even has a name called the Laffer curve. Arthur Laffer demonstrated that there was optimum point of taxation were revenues collected by the government were at its maximum for a given economy. Anyone who believes that our economy can grow and contract, for what ever reason, has no problem understanding this. It's liberals, who see our economy as being fixed, where for the rich to get more money the poor must lose, that have a hard time understanding this.

I went on the Internet to see if I could find a good explanation of the Laffer curve, and I could not believe the erroneous explanations I found on it. Most were typical of the one I found at Wikipedia:

The idea is clearest at both extremes of income taxation—zero percent and one-hundred percent—where the government collects no revenue. At one extreme, a 0% tax rate means the government's revenue is, of course, zero. At the other extreme, where there is a 100% tax rate, the government collects zero revenue because (in a "rational" economic model) taxpayers change their behavior in response to the tax rate: either they have no incentive to work or they avoid paying taxes, so the government collects 100% of nothing. Somewhere between 0% and 100%, therefore, lies a tax rate percentage that will maximize revenue.

This explanation was clearly written by a liberal. With 100% taxation you do not collect 0% revenue because of the citizens refusing to pay their taxes. An excellent example of this is what happens in Brazil. The Heritage Foundation does an annual study to determine the percent that all countries of the world tax its citizens, with the worst being Brazil at 130%.

...This may look like a typo, but it is not. If a law abiding Brazilian citizen were to pay the taxes as proscribed by the government, they would have to hand over everything they earned, and somehow come up with another 30% more. Any government could probably go as high is 300% or more , and still collect money. It is all a function of how badly you want to create criminals.

You see, the problem that countries such as Brazil get into with unrealistic tax policies is that they breed contempt for their government. They literally are creating law breakers, but like most liberals (Brazil is a profoundly socialist nation), they don't care. Rather than coming up with a feasible tax system, they just keep finding new ways to tax people figuring that not everyone can dodge all taxes all of the time. If they don't get you one way, they'll just keep trying different ways until they do.

The only proper way to understand the Laffer curve is to look at it assuming there are no tax shelters or loop holes. The decreasing revenue with increasing tax rates occurs, because the more you tax, the more you cripple the economy to create wealth. The proper view of the Laffer curve is that decreasing the percentage of taxation creates a bigger economy that allows more revenues to be collected with a lower tax rate. If a pie is increasing in size, then a slice of the same percentage will contain more pie.

The way I see it, there are 3 ways to look at taxation. There is the principled liberal position, the unprincipled liberal position, and the proper conservative position on taxation.

The principled liberal position believes in the definition of the curve I found on the web. They are the ones that will seek to optimize the taxation rate to maximize the revenues collected by the government. I actually do not believe that there are any such liberals. I certainly have never heard of any liberal seeking to optimize revenue. I only created the 'principled liberal position' just to give some of them the benefit of the doubt.

Every other liberal I know is very unprincipled in the taxation they want. Most of them are like the caller to the radio show. They flat out don't believe that such a thing is possible. They could never get their brain wrapped around the idea of the laffer curve if they tried.

The few that do, also believe that seeking a rate that will get the wealthy to comply with the law is nothing more than giving in to them. Rather than letting the wealthy get away with not paying their "fair share", they would rather act like the Brazilian politicians, or institute Draconian law enforcement. The most important thing to understand about this group is that they would rather stick it the rich than maximize the revenue collected by the government.

The proper conservative principle on taxation does not seek to optimize the government revenues either. They just avoid it for different reasons than the unprincipled liberal. And what would that be? The Wikipedia web site had something about the conservative position, but all it did was confirm for me that it was written by a liberal:

...Another contentious issue is whether a government should try to maximize its revenue in the first place. Discussions of the Laffer curve tend to be focused on the tax rate at which public goods and services are maximised, rather than the lower tax rate at which total goods and services are maximised (i.e. public goods plus private goods).

First of all, only a liberal would state that the Laffer curve was seeking to maximize public goods and services. The Laffer Curve maximizes revenue, not what is done with the revenue. Any true conservative would know that most of what the government spends its money on damages our society and its economy. The last part which could be considered conservative "the lower tax rate at which total goods and services are maximised" is just a bunch of words, written by someone who was stating the conservative position without really understanding it.

Allow me to elaborate.

Anything that the government spends its revenue on that allows our economy to grow is worthy of collecting taxes for. These things include police, fire and infrastructure expenditures that allow an economy to work, such as providing a monetary system. Even the military is a good use of revenue because it allows people to have enough confidence that our nation will survive that they are willing to invest in our economy. The important thing here is that the revenue is collected for things that provide value as seen by the citizens.

All other tax money that is collected is used primarily to get politicians re-elected, such as any welfare program or special interest spoils system. As the old saying goes "Stealing from Peter to pay Paul makes you very popular with Paul." This use of tax money prevents it from being used productively. This then acts like an anchor on our economy preventing new jobs from being created and limiting the number of people who can benefit from a larger economy.

Put simply, it is the size of the economy that determines the number of people it can support and what their standard of living will be. You can either implement a system that maximizes the economy, such as what conservatives want, or you can maximize the revenue that the government can collect at the expense of limiting the economy, which is what the liberals claim to want.

A saying that is attributed to Winston Churchill puts the difference of what conservatives and liberals want most succinctly:

Capitalism is about spreading the wealth, communism is about spreading the misery.

I think the most intriguing aspect of the Laffer curve is that as powerful it is at explaining the effect of taxation on an economy, it is ultimately completely useless. Liberals don't use it because they can't or won't understand it, and conservative don't use it because they do.

The Terrorists Have Won

2006-11-08T12:29:00.000-08:00

Last night, as I was watching one house seat after another fall to the Democrats, I was reading yet another letter to editor of a liberal defending CNN's decision to show the insurgent propaganda video. It struck me then just how related these two things are.

For those of you who don't know, Iraqi insurgents video taped their snipers killing our soldiers, then sent these videos to all of western media to show them to us. Some, including CNN, decided to show them.

The people defending CNN's decision say that this is the truth, not lies, so CNN had a duty to show them. First of all, CNN does not care whether these were the truth. I have seen them and others in the MSM show the staged Palestinian productions that come out of the Gaza strip, so them being the truth is not a factor. I certainly did not see any attempt by CNN, or anyone else, to verify they are legitimate.

Most importantly, even if they are the truth, this is a pretty low bar to set. Just because something is the truth, doesn't mean it should be shown. Do these liberals believe that military secrets should shown or printed? Sane people would say no, but as the NY Times is want to do, anything is fair game if it makes the Bush administration look bad.

The facts are is that there was nothing to be learned by watching these videos. CNN did not decide to show them in order to inform their viewers. They did it in order to demoralize any Bush supporters, and scare more people to the cut-and-run Democrats.

The only criteria to use on whether to show these videos should be whether the terrorists wanted them to be shown. Does this advance their cause? Do they consider it a victory that CNN showed the videos? If so, then they should not be shown.

So how does this relate to what happened last night? The people who voted the Democrats in were no different these people who defend CNN. The fact that their actions help our enemies is oblivious to them. The fact that they are on the same side as the people killing are soldiers carries no weight for them. The only thing that matters is their hatred of Bush.

Our enemies are dancing in the streets. Theirs and the Democrats victory is clear. Thanx Nancy Pelosi, you ran a very effective campaign.

Kool-Aid Drinker Test

2006-11-01T11:34:00.000-08:00

It's not often that we are presented with such a wonderful opportunity to test whether or not you are a kool-aid drinker, like we have with John Kerry's statement that if you don't get good grades in school you'll get "stuck in Iraq". As I explained in a previous post about what a Kool-Aid drinker is, it's takes more than just telling lies to advance your cause to make you one, you have to knowingly convince yourself that the lies are true to be a true kool-aid drinker.

Let's make sure we understand the facts that are not in dispute. The first is that John said to a group of students at a city college that if you make the most of your education, you can do well, but if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq. The following day he then attacks the GOP for knowing that he told a joke about the president that went wrong, and instead was making it look as if he was insulting the troops. After all, he said, no one cares more about the troops than he does.

From the Democrat pundits I saw talking last night, they seem perfectly willing to believe this explanation. The problem is that his explanation does not square with history, so you must be willing to dismiss history in order to buy into it.

Let's first look at what that joke might have been. If anyone cared to analyze what John said the next day, you will notice that he did not try to explain what the joke was, so we can only guess at what it might have been. Was the joke that "the president didn't get good grades so that is why he got 'us' stuck in Iraq"? If that's what it was then of course he wouldn't want to explain it, because everyone knows President Bush got better grades at Yale than John Kerry did. So the notion that this was a 'joke gone wrong' is patently false.

The most important aspect of history is John's own words when he accused of his fellow soldiers in Vietnam of committing war crimes. That was back in 1971, and he has pointedly not apologized for them since. Then there is what he said just last December when he accused our current soldiers of terrorizing innocent Iraqis in the middle of the night.

Finally, what he said at the city college matches perfectly to the days when he was in college, and then later in the Army, when people sought good grades in order get deferments so that they won't get "stuck" in the draft.

I find it ironic that he is running from a statement that far too many in the left believe, which is that the only people joining the military are doing so because they have no other options. From Michael Moore to Bill Maher I hear the same thing. Their impression of the average soldier is that he/she is someone from a poor family who doesn't have the grades to get into college, so why would John Kerry believe differently than the othe liberals I hear.

The facts, though, say something else.Our Army's recruitment records say that the average recruit has above average grades than the average population for his/her age group, and come from families above the average in income. These people have many more options than going into the service than joining the military.

So if your a liberal/Democrat, you fall into two different groups. You either know that John Kerry was speaking the truth, that our troops are victims with no other opportunities, or you see our troops as heroes, and you believe his explanation the next day. If you're one of the former, then your a liar/politician for not supporting his first comment, and if your of the later, then you're a Kool-Aid drinker for believing that he really does care for the troops. Neither speaks well of you.

post script

It looks like the troops are on to him already. Here's something from them in Iraq.

Proposition 86

2006-10-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

I thought I had seen it all when it came to liberal's actions producing the opposite results of what their stated goals are. Things such as solving poverty by getting people dependant on welfare, and solving racism by making people more race conscious with affirmative action. Yet their support for the upcoming ballot measure, Proposition 86, really takes the cake. With this one, even their stated goals are in opposition with each other.

Leaving aside how much the cigarette smugglers are just salivating over how much profit they are going to make when this passes, let's just look at the logic behind the stated goals. Here is a direct paragraph from one of the supporters of the bill.

Proposition 86 presents a realistic way to immediately improve the health and well-being of millions of Californians. The initiative would achieve two basic goals: it would reduce smoking - especially among kids, and generate needed funds for critical health care priorities, including chronic disease prevention, medical research, children's health insurance and emergency room care.

To begin with, my alarm bells always go off whenever a liberal uses the word 'realistic' to describe anything they propose, and this one is a particular whopper. They claim they want to reduce smoking, yet they want to pay for 'critical health care' with taxes generated from the sale of cigarettes. Only a liberal could possibly dream up a program where if they were effective in one part it, they would knowingly cripple the funding of the other, unrelated part. If these health care programs are critical, why are the supporters of this proposition not securing funding for them in a way that doesn't require people to consume lethal products?

The past couple of tax increase on cigarettes kind of made sense in that the money collected went into funding anti-tobacco related programs. At least if these were effective they would decrease the need to fund the programs. This new one just leaves me shaking my head at the liberals stupidity.

Or are they that stupid?

I know why I started smoking as a kid. It was a counter-culture sort of thing. People like to point to peer pressure as the reason why teens start smoking, but they do so as if this pressure occurred in a vacuum, not related to others outside of the group. The reality is that the peer pressure would not work without adults telling kids they can't smoke. This is what gives smoking that rebel appeal. If you make cigarettes more expensive, then you make it more appealing by making it more exclusive.

Maybe these liberals know full well that this will not work at curbing smoking among teens. After all, it is already illegal for them to buy them, what difference does it make to jack up the price.

You think I'm being too cynical about liberals? Do you think it's not fair that I accuse them of knowingly implementing a program that will not work? Let's just look at the facts, which liberals are fully aware of. Things like the vast majority of smokers are the poor. So taxing smokers is about taxing the poor. Liberals like to talk about how they just want to tax the rich more, but if they are willing to implement a tax that primarily only effects the poor, why not accuse them getting teens addicted to cigarettes in order to fund their pet projects?

If they really did care about getting teens to stop smoking, then a whole new approach would be required. This would involve changing the image off smoking by first making them legal and cheap, which would make them common, not exclusive. Instead of laying down the law on the teens, you should ridicule them for being rubes of the tobacco industry. Being harsh with them won't work, but laughing at them will.

Because Conservatives Actually Have Ethics

2006-10-14T21:01:00.000-07:00

Just as I finished posting my last blog on the Mark Foley affair, a co-worker of mine, whom I would not classify as either conservative or liberal, asked me "Why it seemed that it is the Republicans that are always getting into ethical dilemmas that lead to them having to resign."

"Well," I responded "The short answer is it's because conservatives actually have ethics, and liberals don't."

This response seemed to have caught him off guard, and he asked me if I was serious or just exaggerating. I first reassured him that I believed that as individuals most liberals had ethics, but as a group, liberals absolutely, positively have no ethics what so ever. Not only do many liberals state as much, but they have good reason not to have them.

Take the most obvious example, which is President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinski. If Bill had been the CEO of a private company, his actions of having sex with an intern would have gotten him fired. It could have also lead to lawsuits of sexual harassment.

The more important thing is that if he were a CEO of a company, instead of a Democrat politician, the liberal feminists would have had a fit over this. They are very quick to point out that women cannot give proper consent in situations like this where a man has such obvious power and authority over a mere intern.

Yet what was their reaction to his behavior? It's only sex the liberals say. One feminist columnist in New York even went so far as to say that she would dawn knee pads and service him herself as long as he protected her 'right to choose.'

I could site many examples of this, where a politician's actions in his personal life were not considered important by liberals as long as he/she voted the right way. Like the example I gave in my last post, Gerry Studds gave liquor to a 17 year old page and openly had a sexual relationship with him. Yet not a peep of protest out of the liberals.

On the other hand, any bad personal behavior by conservatives is immediately made headline news (or delayed for a pre-election surprise), and is excoriated by the liberals. More importantly, his fellow conservatives will not defend him and demand his resignation. I want to make it clear that I am not complaining about an obvious double standard by the liberals. Sure it would be nice if liberals were held accountable for their actions, but I don't want lighter treatment for conservatives. I want them held accountable whether the liberals are mad or not.

There is a good reason why liberals give their fellows a pass and conservatives don't. The liberal view of things is that government is all important, and absolutely necessary in solving the problems we face. For them, the people who make up the government are just interchangeable cogs, because it is the system that does the good, not the individuals. Hence, the columnist willing to 'service' her President who voted correctly. As long as the politician votes the right way, they don't care what their person life is like.

Conservatives on the other hand, know that it is the people, not the government, that will solve our problems. What we need from our politicians is actual leadership, which absolutely requires setting a good example.

The final nail in the coffin on whether liberals have ethics was delivered a few months ago when Joe Lieberman could not win his party's nomination for his own seat as the Senator from Connecticut. If there is a more ethical Democrat currently serving this nation I can't think of who that might be. He has stellar liberal credentials, and was even the vice presidential nominee just 6 years ago. Yet the liberals did not want him to represent their party. And why? All because of his vote on the Iraq war, and his highly ethical refusal to not stand behind his vote.

"So," I told my co-worker "In order to resign from an office you must have ethical standards to begin with. Seeing Republicans resign for their bad behavior is a good thing. As for liberals, ethics are a luxury they can't afford. With a political agenda based on emotion, not reason, ethics are only going to get in the way."

The Debate Now Ends For Media Bias

2006-10-10T13:13:00.000-07:00

One thing that this Mark Foley affair has done is that it has forced the major media drop all pretense of being unbiased. The only way for this story to remain "As serious as it gets" (according to Nancy Pelosi) is for the media to intentionally distort the time line of who knew what when.

Let's make sure we all know what's going on here. This firestorm has nothing to do about some really perverted and sick messages sent by Mark Foley. He has resigned in disgrace, as he should have. The real controversy here is what did the Speaker of the House Denny Hastert know, and when did he know it. If you just listen to what is being said through the major media, you would get the idea that he knew about these messages over a year ago and buried them to protect the Republican party instead of children, which of course is a distortion of the truth.

What Speaker Hastert knew is no different than what several major newspapers knew, including ABC News (who were the ones to finally go public with it just 5 weeks before the election), after sitting on it for over a year. What was known was that Mr Foley sent several e-mails to a page asking things like "what do you want for your birthday," and "Would you send me a picture of you." When these were brought to the attention of Speaker Hastert, he had Mr. Foley notified that he should stop any contact with the page. It wasn't until this story broke that the real sick stuff came out by other former pages. That was when the Speaker forced Mr. Foley to resign.

Should he have done more sooner? I admit that the original messages he sent were a bit creepy, just not actionable. Can you imagine what would have happened if Speaker Hastert tried something if Mr. Foley were a Democrat. There would have been a great hue and cry from all of the liberals about the unwarranted persecution of a homosexual by the mean, homophobic republicans.

I know this to be true because of how the Democrats reacted to one of theirs, congressman Gerry Studds, who openly declared to having sex with a 17 year old page. No great hue and cry about that. No "we must protect our children" then. This was actual sex, not just perverted messages. And what happened to Mr. Studds? Was he condemned by his party and forced to resign like Mr. Foley? Heck no! He was hailed as a hero for coming out of the closet and won re-elections at least six more times.

So the notion that Ms. Pelosi cares about the children is preposterous. They only way she can say what she does is because she knows she can count on the media to blur the truth. She knows she will never be called on by her party's support of Mr. Studds. And she also knows that the media will make it look like Speaker Hastert knew about all of the perverted stuff for over a year. Like this cartoon I came across today shows, yes, the media is presenting the facts, but how you present them effects the message.

That's just how things work right now. Democrats offer up what ever sound bites they want, and the liberal media are only too willing pass them along without question. The debate over whether the media is biased in favor of the liberals is dead. It is now a proven fact.

****************

Last Friday I was listening to an interview with the director of political news at ABC. He said that he believes that there is some liberal bias in news, but professed that he wanted to eliminate that bias, because he had no desire to alienate a large section of viewers. A caller then suggested that he balance out his staff with more conservatives as a way to deal with the bias, but the director just dodge that suggestion. He said that he wanted to hire people who could be unbiased in their reporting, not say it was OK to have a bias as long as it was balanced out.

Only a liberal can believe that someone could be unbiased. Liberals view the word bias just like the word prejudice. To them they are both evil and must be avoided. The reality is that prejudice just means that you use what you have learned in the past to help you decided what it is you are try to understand. Just because there are some idiots who use stupid things like race to judge people, doesn't mean you should never be prejudiced.

In fact, you cannot function in life without being prejudiced. You can't go around completely re-evaluating everything you come across. Advanced civilizations are advanced because they build on what they have previously learned. Of course there are times when you should re-evaluate things, but believing something absurd like you are unbiased will mean you will not do it when you need to.

Take for example a liberal journalist who hears a conservative say one of our bedrock truths like "Lowering taxes will increase revenue to the federal government by allowing the economy to expand." To a liberal this must be a lie, and reporting a lie will go against his principles of reporting the truth. It also means he will refuse to see any evidence validating it, because, after all, there cannot be any facts that support a lie.

I believe it is possible for a news program to be effectively unbiased, but it takes more self-critical analysis than this news director will ever engage in. I find it interesting that news organization feel the need to get other races involved, such as the fiasco with Jason Blair at the New York Times, but not people with actual differences of opinion.

What Ever You Say Brad

2006-09-14T18:49:00.000-07:00

"Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able."

-- Brad Pitt in the October Esquire

Now do you suppose Brad had polygamist Warren Jeffs in mind when he said that?

Probably not.

Brad has certainly raised a great deal of praise and condemnation with those words. My favorite reaction came from Cintra Wilson in the San Francisco Chronicle who both praised and condemned him. As a big liberal she has of course praised him for his solidarity with the gay wedding movement. At the same time she condemns him because he has given bachelors all across the country a morally defensible out of any committed relationship.

I can see it now ... "Sorry dear, but it's just not right for us to get married when others who would like to cannot."

I don't blame him though, because I know he just can't help himself. Liberals are incapable of actions that accomplish what they claim to want. Just as they try to solve poverty by getting people dependent on welfare programs (which keeps them poor), and they try to solve racism with affirmative action programs (which makes people more race conscious), Brad demonstrates just how important marriage is for gays by not getting married himself.

This man has a child with a woman whom he does not believe it is necessary to marry, yet some how this is suppose to communicate how important it is for people who cannot have children together to get married?

Riiiiiight. What ever you say Brad.

Jimmy Carter Is Now An Embarrassment

2006-09-11T05:04:00.000-07:00

The very first election that I was old enough to vote in was the presidential election of 1980. At the time I was a registered Democrat, and in fact had spent the past two years working for the Democrat party with things like helping people to register to vote. It should have been a pretty easy thing for me to vote for Jimmy Carter's re-election, but I just couldn't do it. What with the Iranian hostage crisis and other leadership issues, I felt that a change was called for, and I voted for Ronald Reagan instead. At the time I thought Mr. Carter was a good man, just not the person we needed right now to run the country.

Later on, this opinion of him as a good man was strengthened by his work with Habitat for Humanity. I had just started my conversion to conservative politics at the time, and the idea of private citizens assisting the poor in home ownership, without any government tax monies, seemed to fit right in with my new perspective.

It wasn't long though that my opinion started to change. He wasn't keeping quiet about his negative opinions of conservative politics, so it would seem that maybe he was just another flaming liberal after all. The luster really came off after I started to look to buy a home for myself. Here were these poor people having homes handed to them, but a hard working individual such as myself, who couldn't afford a home in the San Diego housing market, could just forget about getting any help from them.

I then started to see how liberal ideology may lean toward government solutions, but this ideology is just as damaging when applied in private solutions as well. One of the things that I hear from the supporters of Habitat for Humanity is that these homes help the poor turn their lives around, because the responsibilities of home ownership makes these people more responsible themselves.

I believe that home ownership does make people responsible who have worked hard to buy them, but I have never seen a case where anyone has respected anything that was just handed to them. Why would homes be any different. And even in the cases where people really did turn their lives around, I have to wonder just how much more they would have improved if they had gotten their home by working hard to get it.

The facts are that Habitat for Humanity is no different than any other liberal boondoggle that really does nothing more than reinforce that there is a certain class of people that have no chance of succeeding in life without the paternalistic assistance of bleeding hearts like Mr. Carter. It doesn't matter whether it is the government that is offering the handout, or a private citizen, liberal policies will ultimately always keep people down.

Just as giving money to a beggar on the street does nothing more than pay him to stay on the street, Habitat for Humanity teaches our people that our country is inherently unfair. It teaches them that no matter what you do, if it wasn't for handouts they would always be poor. How many people there are now waiting for their handouts, rather than getting off their lazy asses to earn it themselves, can never be measured and only denied even exists by the likes of Mr. Carter.

So my opinion of Mr. carter as a good man was lost some time ago, but with his recent interview with Der Spiegel, it now can't get any lower. This man is an embarrassment. A joke. He calls himself a man of peace, but he believes that Israel's response to the Hezbolla attacks are unjustified. He also spouted all the standard lies of Hezbolla that Israel has bombed all of Lebanon and has 10,000 political prisoners. Mr. Carter is either pure evil or pure stupid. Neither looks very good and only reinforces my belief that I made the right decision in my first election.

More Than 2 Sides To A Campaign

2006-08-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

The next elections in the state of California are over three months away, and already the TV campaigns are in full swing. One of the issues that is attracting a lot of money on both the Yes and No sides of it is Proposition 87. This one is presented as a tax hike on oil companies, and the usual suspects are forking over millions of dollars to persuade voters to vote for their side.

The people advocating the proposition are really in la-la-land. One line from one of their commercials goes something like "It's time the oil companies paid their far share and make it illegal to pass on the cost to us (emphasis mine). Yeah right. Like making something illegal has ever been effective at stopping anything from happening. Even if they some how were able to make this one work, it doesn't get around one of the basic laws of economics, which is that commodities always go to where the most money is available. Translation: If the oil companies can get more money somewhere else, then that is where the oil go. If Pro-87 crowd succeed, you count on big whopping gas lines for California.

So this is a rather easy NO!!!!!! vote for me. But what is attracting my attention is what is not being said by either side. The oil companies are making huge profits right now, and as I have pointed out in a previous post, we are not being gouged. These oil companies are able to command the prices they charge, because of the lack of competition, and neither side wants the voters to pay attention to why this is so.

The oil companies do not want to discuss this for obvious reasons. They don't want to break down the government regulation barriers that are preventing others from getting into the game. They are just going to stick with their campaign of "Why create a multi-billion dollar bureaucracy with no clear directive for results." But why not the other side? Will they present in their campaigns why oil companies are making money hand over fist?

Are you kidding me!?! The socialists on the other side are all about creating government regulation barriers. They are not going to say anything that makes government regulations look bad. And besides, if the oil companies are not making monstrous profits, then these socialists won't have anyone with deep pockets to go after. They certainly are not going to 'dirty their hands' by actually competing with the oil companies. Heavens No!!!

So what appears to be a battle of two different sides really isn't at all. Both sides want the oil companies to make obscene profits. What they are really fighting over is what to do with the money. Neither side is advocating what is best for the consumers, so don't expect any commercials telling our side in this campaign, just theirs.

Conservative Conversion Primer Update

2006-08-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

I have updated my primer to include a definition of liberalism. Please see my link to it on the left.

Conservatism Is Not Finished

2006-08-16T12:50:00.000-07:00

My favorite liberal is at it again. In a recent column titled 'The End Of the Right?', E. J. Dionne Jr., ponders whether conservatism is finished. He begins to answer this question with the following statement:

The question is being asked by conservatives themselves as they survey the wreckage of their hopes, and as their champions in the Republican Party use any means necessary to survive this fall's elections.

He then goes into a long list of the sins committed by conservative leaders, such as President Bush, where they have instituted big government solutions to problems. Things that conservatives such as myself, take a great deal of umbrage to. Culminating with a recent vote in the Senate to raise the minimum wage while lowering taxes on inherited wealth.

It is rather amusing to watch a liberal getting all upset about conservatives acting like liberals. They way he puts it, it seems like he is most upset that conservatives are invading on liberal territory. The main flaw in his reasoning is believing that this shift has to do with conservative leaders no longer believing that conservatism works. The reality is that he is seeing the actions of career politicians, who always will sacrifice their beliefs in order to keep their jobs. And as I have stated in the past, career politicians cannot be true conservatives.

My view of what is going on is that the political left has totally lost it. With things like the Democrats in Connecticut voting out Liebermen for Lamont, politicians on the right feel safe to move into the center in order to make themselves more electable.

This whole column is nothing more than a grand self-delusion on Mr. Dionne's part. He wants to live in denial of the fact that while the right-winged crazies remain on the fringe of Republican party, the left-winged crazies have taken over the DNC and most liberal PACs. The real problem here is that there is no longer any credible competition in the political arena.

Yes, I do enjoy reading Mr. Dionne's columns. Just when I am in despair of the actions of my so-called leaders, he comes along and demonstrates that the liberals are even more screwed up than we are. And as long as they continue to avoid any self analysis on what is going wrong with them, we will continue to do quite well.

Translation: Israel Must Be Destroyed

2006-08-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

The main headline of my newspaper today is "Israel rules out cease-fire." Hmmmmm..... let me see if I got this straight. Israel first agrees to a cease-fire, but when Hezzbollah takes this opportunity to strike at the IDF, it's Israel that is ruling out the cease-fire. It seems to me that it's Hezzbollah that has ruled out a cease-fire.

The facts are that if Hezzbollah were to lay down their arms there would be no more war in the region. But if the IDF were to lay down their arms there would be no more Israel. Yet it's the Israelis that are being blamed for no cease-fire?

I am now convinced that I have travelled to some alternate universe where up is down and right is wrong. There are so many things being said surrounding what is happening in Lebanon that defy any attempt at sound reasoning. The big one is that Israel's response to Hezzbollah should be proportional to what Hezzbollah is doing. Proportional!? Say what!? Are these fools saying that Israel should target hundreds of rockets a day at Lebanese civilians?

I came across the following cartoon the other day that captures my perception of the situation. The guy on the left is a Palestinian, but it applies just as well for Hezzbollah.

With cross-purposes such as this, where one side wants to protect its children, and the other wants to use them as shields, how can there be any negotiations of any kind?

So when I hear things like 'Israel's attacks must be proportional,' or 'Israel must initiate an immediate cease-fire' I translate them as if the speaker is saying 'Israel must be destroyed,' because no other line of reasoning fits these remarks.

Capitalism Is Not A Choice

2006-07-26T12:17:00.000-07:00

Robert J. Samuelson of Newsweek magazine recently had a column titled "Must CEOs be Multimillionaires?" In it he details a long list of evils that are coming from CEOs being paid too much. The problems with his litany of mostly conjecture is the paucity of facts in the column, and how lamely he tries to tie them together. The facts he presents are:

From 1995 to 2005, median CEO compensation rose 151 percent, from $2.7 million to $6.8 million... ...in the same period the median sales of these companies increased 51 percent... ...by contrast median pay increase for full time workers... ...was only 32 percent.

These are the only facts he uses to support his diatribe, which leads me to ask a big fat "So what?"

So what if CEO compensation increased greater than sales? Maybe it just plain costs more to get good CEOs, and maybe the corporations that didn't pony up enough money for them lost profits because of it.

So what if full time workers didn't keep pace with CEOs? It's not as if paying the CEOs less means there will be more money for workers. CEO pay comes out of the money given as dividends to share holders. If the share holders think the CEO is overpaid, then they can vote in a new board.

Besides, worker pay is based on supply and demand. If you're a full time worker who wants to be paid more, then get into a field with a higher demand. Don't just whine about how much the boss is making. My decision process for deciding who I'll work for centers more on who is going to pay me what I believe I am worth. I'm certainly not going to be looking for the corporations that pay their CEOs the least, as if this will mean I will be paid fairly. That's just absurd.

Like all liberals, Mr Samuelson's anti-capitalism ideology is based on his belief that it is just not fair that the rich get wealthy, and what he believes is needed is another economic system with greater social justice. He believes that our choice of capitalism is a mistake, and some other choice should be made.

The problem with this line of thinking is that capitalism is not a choice. Capitalism describes how economies work. You can no more choose capitalism than you can choose the color of the sky. Capitalism is what happens naturally when governments limit their role to do nothing more than protect its citizens from force and fraud. (Providing a monetary system is also a good thing for a government to do, but that is just getting into the details)

Now, just as you can choose to put on rose colored glasses to trick yourself into believing the sky is another color, you can have the government make economic decisions such as implementing socialism/communism. How much socialism you want the government to choose is a function of how much you want to destroy the economy to bring about what we believe to be fair.

Not that these decisions will actually make things fair. Socialism is a proven failure at accomplishing anything, unless of course you believe that making everyone poor is what's fair. Then. yes, it does accomplish that.

On the other hand, true capitalism, which is an economy where every person can freely choose to spend their money where they please without government interference, is about 'the people' deciding what's fair, not a bunch of select elites.

Towards the end of his column, Mr Samuelson really demonstrates his economic naiveté when he states:

Would Exxon's Lee Raymond have worked just as efficiently for $50 million as he would for $400 million? If so, then he was over paid.

Duhhhhhhh.....Though the real question is, would he keep working for $50 million when he could get $400 million somewhere else?

If Mr. Samuelson truly believes that CEOs are being paid too much, then he should put his money where his mouth is. Corporations that are paying too much for anything have an unsupportable cost structure that makes them ripe for loss of market share due to good old-fashioned, capitalistic-style competition. Here is a prime opportunity for him to show everyone just how it's done, and make a lot of money to boot, by putting these stupid, evil corporations out of business with his brilliant economic acumen.

Yet I suppose that expecting this liberal to actually know how to run a business would not be very 'fair' of me, now would it?

Talk Radio vs Internet Bulletin Boards

2006-07-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

This is the last of a five part series on my experiences at the Ann Coulter Online Community (ACOC). If you would like, you can read the first two posts, part 1 and part 2, but part 3 and part 4, must be read before continuing.

In this part I present my view why bulletin boards are not proper places for conservatives to hang out at.

I see in the news that the liberal talk radio show, Air America, is not doing so well, and if it wasn't for large donations from wealthy liberals, it probably would be gone all together. I of course knew this was going to happen, just as many conservatives expressed at the time when it was started. Yet most of the conservatives I saw expressing its inevitable downfall, did so because they saw the premise of it as being false. The people launching Air America felt that conservatives had too long dominated talk radio, and what was needed was some balance. Conservatives knew this reasoning to be nonsense. Conservative talk radio was the balance.

Liberals once had complete and total control over every form of media until Rush Limbaugh came on the scene. The conservative belief as to why liberal talk radio would fail was based on the assumption that liberals had plenty of other forms of media, so why, they ask, should liberals pay attention to talk radio aimed at them? There is a certain amount of truth to this line of reasoning, but it doesn't get to the heart of the matter.

By the time Air America came out, I had been on the liberal bulletin boards for sometime. While I had not got the idea of why liberal talk radio would fail fully fleshed out in my head until I had spent some time on the ACOC, I knew enough to know that liberals were not interested in talk radio, Why? Because there is no 'groupthink' in talk radio, and there is almost nothing but that on the liberal bulletin boards.

My first experiences with bulletin boards were with the ones focused on programming, and more specifically, Perl programming. I found them very useful in figuring out how to program in Perl, but even though they were not political in nature, there was a lot of discussion about the superiority of Perl over other languages that I thought was a bit out of place. I thought the advantages of Perl was self-evident, and didn't need the hype that was going on amongst the true believers at the site.

Things got even stranger still when while looking for a good bulletin board on VB programming that I stumbled on my first political one centered on liberalism. As a former liberal I found a certain affinity to it, but as a I had recently finished my Critical Thinking class while working on my BSIT degree, it was easy for me to spot a lot of the fallacies in their reasoning. Initially I tried to work with them on seeing the problems with what they believed, but reasoning had little to do with why they were there, because they were only there for the groupthink.

Wikipedia
Groupthink is a mode of thought whereby individuals intentionally conform to what they perceive to be the consensus of the group. Groupthink may cause the group (typically a committee or large organization) to make bad or irrational decisions which each member might individually consider to be unwise

Some may quibble that this definition does not conform to what occurs on a liberal bulletin boards, but what I saw were all of the classic symptoms of groupthink, which are:

ChangingMinds.org
-Illusions of invulnerability where the group thinks it is invincible and can do no wrong.
-Collective efforts to rationalize or discount warnings.
-Unquestioned belief in the moral correctness of the group.
-Stereotyped views of the out-group, often as too evil, weak or stupid to be worth bothering with.
-Self-censorship as people decide not to rock the boat.
-Pressure to conform.
-A shared illusion of unanimity (everyone always agrees with everyone else).
-Protecting the group from contrary viewpoints, by self-appointed ‘mind-guards’.

As the old saying goes, 'If it walks like a duck....'

Groupthink was clearly going on there, but why? My belief that I have always suspected, and these bulletin boards proved, is that liberalism is not something that a person can arrive at by using reason. People who are liberal are so because they 'feel' it is the right thing. They can't point to any firm evidence that liberalism accomplishes what they want, so they need to surround themselves with like minded people. The more people they find who believe the way they do, the more comfortable they are with their decision to be a liberal.

This leads to the difference between those who listen to talk radio and those that participate in bulletin boards. The stereotype that I have always heard from liberals about conservative talk radio listeners is that they are nothing but a bunch of robots who are looking for their marching orders from their conservative leaders. It is based on this silly assumption that Air America was launched. The facts are quite different.

Conservatives can listen to, and weigh the facts, in order to determine if what they believe is right. Through nothing more than sound reasoning they can sleep well at night knowing that what they believe is correct. All they are looking for from talk radio is a perspective and facts that they don't get from other sources.

Liberal ideology is something different. You can chant all you want about how socialism is good and the wealthy are evil, but there is no reason to believe them. In order to sleep well at night you need someone else to affirm that your beliefs are OK. The more people who affirm you are right in believing what you do, the better you will feel about it. With talk radio there is no personal affirmation. The person behind the microphone cannot congratulate you for thinking the right things. So if you can't stand on your own with your beliefs, then talk radio is not for you. You can get all of the liberal 'facts' you want from plenty of other sources.

When I first came upon the ACOC I was quite surprised by it. From what I knew of bulletin boards I didn't think there would be any conservative ones. When I poked around a little I definitely found the symptoms of groupthink, but there was also a great deal of diversity in thought. There were libertarians and atheists posting their opinions and receiving civil responses from the community, so I thought that maybe I was wrong about this. Maybe I had found a place where I could drop my guard and speak my mind without worrying about the attacks I got when I did at liberal sites due to groupthink.

Yet it only took a couple weeks to see that I was right in the first place. While there was far more diversity of opinions at the site than the liberal ones, that diversity was only tolerated as long as you claimed you were not a conservative. I don't cleave to conservative orthodoxy, and I will not accept any label for my beliefs other than conservative. To do so would mean to cede the high ground on what conservatives should do to advance the conservative cause.

This resulted in a great deal of the personal attacks typical of those in the thrall of groupthink. I was even accused of being an undercover liberal who only claimed to be a conservative to trick people into my views (just exactly how does one 'trick' others to believe anything I have no idea). This was really the last straw. I wasn't interested in defending my motives for the ideas I was posting. If they weren't interested in discussing the merits of them on their face value, then I had no business remaining.

I now see that bulletin boards are not conducive to conservative reasoning. The activity of replying with quick responses to other peoples ideas makes it much easier to post something that will be emotional in nature. And because it is down in writing, it's very difficult to back track or act like you didn't mean something you wrote. This forces you to defend something you would not normally want to stand behind. My blogs on the other hand take many days of writing and re-writing. I'd hate for the first draft of anyone of them to end up being posted.

Now I'm sure most of the people going to this conservative bulletin board were not looking for personal affirmation of their views, but that is the nature of these places. The activity becomes almost a drug where people then desire it, and they end up believing in things for the same reason that liberals believe what they do. It's not that the bulletin boards will turn you into a liberal, they just corrupt your thinking in the same way liberals corrupt theirs.

Just take the near universal belief at the ACOC that we need hate in order to win the war on terrorism. This is not something that can be arrived at by reason. If hate is what is needed to win then we have already lost. There is no way we could out hate the islamo-facsists we are fighting.

The only reason the members believed this is because groupthink causes you to one-up others in an effort to get positive affirmation. Only those who have taken the discussion to another level receive this affirmation. This then becomes a cycle as you affirm others who have one-upped you. You have to do this in order to justify what you originally believed. This process inevitability drags you to areas of beliefs that you would not normally have gone to by reason alone.

Can there be a true conservative bulletin board? I suppose so, but not likely. While I enjoy having political discussions with people, bulletin boards require a discipline of thought not common amongst most people that will prevent groupthink from taking hold. It is very difficult to see yourself as being influenced by it, and you certainly would never admit to yourself that you are.

We all need to conform to some degree in order to belong to any group. Whether it is in what we do or what we wear, we all have to conform in some way in order to belong. Yet most conformity is with external things that do not really define who we are.

The problem with the bulletin boards is that the only kind of conformity that can take place there is conformity of thought. Only ideas are present in these places, and the one area that no one should ever conform to is in what they think. Only by the use of reason should anyone change what they believe in, and no one should believe in anything just to belong.

Hate vs Courage

2006-07-10T13:48:00.000-07:00

This is the fourth of a five part series on my experiences at the Ann Coulter Online Community (ACOC). If you would like, you can read the first two posts, part 1 and part 2, but the last one, part 3, must be read before continuing.

The replies I had received to my previous post that criticized my assertion that hate served no useful purpose fell into two categories. There were those that believed hate was a necessary response to evil deeds, such as child molesters, and there were those that believed hate was a good motivator to gain the courage to fight their enemies. I find the notion that hate is required to do good to be absurd, but I'll indulge this debate anyway.

Let's begin with hate leading to courage. I have seen plenty of times where feelings of cowardice have lead to hate, but hate leading to courage? Never. Hate and courage can never occupy the same place in a person's heart. Hate is what you fill yourself up with when you can't find the courage to do what you feel must be done.

Let's take a look at what Bill Maher said shortly after 9/11. He said something to the effect that he believed the pilots of the planes that were flown into the towers demonstrated a lot of courage. At the time, there was a great deal of condemnation for what he said, but I never heard expressed to my satisfaction why he was wrong by anyone in the media. Allow me.

There is a reason why there is a term called 'blind hatred.' When you hate something, that thing you hate becomes your focus. The more you hate, the more everything else is driven from your mind except the object of your hatred. It is then pretty easy to commit acts that you should have been afraid to do - that common sense should have told you not to do. And why? Because you are not even considering them, they may as well not even be there. This is not courage.

Real, actual courage occurs when you have thoroughly considered the ramifications of your actions, and yet you proceed into danger anyway. When your heart is not filled with hate, but yet you do what you know must be done, then and only then, are you demonstrating courage.

As for hating people like child molesters...

I am quite sure that if a man were to molest one of my daughters I would be filled with a great deal of rage. Probably with enough rage to pump a few .38s into him. But to what purpose? At the time when my daughter would need me the most, I will be in prison for my vigilante actions. Yeah, maybe I could get a jury to not convict me, but I still would not be there for my daughter, nor could I ever really be there with hate in my heart.

There is a reason why the most spectacular cases of false arrest and imprisonment occur with child molestation cases, such as the McMartin Pre-School case. The most wildest accusation are taken at face value because "As God as my witness, this child molester is not going to get off on some technicality." When hate fills your heart, the mere thought of considering exculpatory evidence is an anathema. This even becomes a vicious cycle. The more hate you feel, the more you only "see" evidence of guilt, which leads to more hate.

When you say you must hate child molesters, then you are saying you must enter the vicious cycle because you don't want to consider the humanity of the person you believe to be guilty. This gets to the heart of why you hate. You are afraid that if you don't hate them then you may start to accept them. Instead of having the courage to stand by your convictions, you seek the easy route of filling yourself with hate.

Believing that hate is required to eliminate evil describes a world without any courage, and a world without courage is not worth living in anyway. If we really want to protect our children then we must be effective in apprehending and prosecuting child molesters, and hatred has no useful role in this.

So go ahead and hate if you must. I know I do from time to time. The only difference is that I know I will not accomplish anything with my hatred, and I know I never will until I get over it.

Would this post have had any effect if I were to have posted it at the ACOC. I doubt it. People who are wrapped up in the "Ends justifies the means" mentality, see their hatred as not only justified, but part of the punishment process for those that they hate. Not hating them would be "letting them of the hook" as far as they would be concerned. Yet they never consider that it is really themselves that they are punishing the most with their hate.

In my next and final post in this series I document my observations on why my experience at the ACOC is typical for all bulletin boards, be they of a liberal or a conservative bent, and why this activity has nothing to do with true conservative thought.

Post Script

For the person who is replying to my posts by writing that I must hate the jihadists because they hate me, you need to realize that you are becoming just another version of what you hate.

As an analogy - I see the jihadists say that I must hate in the color of blue, and you say that I must hate in the color of red, yet I don't see in either of you why I should hate at all. Neither of you are attracting anyone who deosn't already believe the way you do.

Does Your Hate Serve You Well?

2006-07-07T08:06:00.000-07:00

This is the fourth of a five part series on my experiences at the Ann Coulter Online Community (ACOC). If you would like, you can read the previous posts, part 1 and part 2 before continuing.

My previous attampt to challenge the biases of the ACOC did not fair well. I probably should have just left things alone, but I wanted to understand the core issue with them. Instead of trying to convince them of how justifying evil was harming them, I decided to poke around what it is they wanted to accomplish with their hatred, and why it seemed to them like it was a good choice to make.

ACOC Post 6-30-06
What I have observed in people who are lost in the 'Ends Justifies the Means' mentality, is that they also show no responsibility for the hatred they feel. For the same reasons that they believe that because their intended goal is good, then their deeds to accomplish that goal must be good, they also believe that it is the ones that they hate that are responsible for the hatred they feel.

I'm sure you feel quite justified in hating those that you believe to have transgressed against you, but I have to ask you, does your hate serve you well? Does it serve some function that actually helps you in your life?

Before I can continue with the main thrust of this post, I need to cover a couple of points that will prove relevant later. Please bear with me.

The first point to cover is the Biblical parable of "turning the other cheek." I have heard this saying parsed up one way and down another to the point that there is probably as many meanings to it as there are people who have pondered it. Here is the way I see it.

If turning the other cheek emboldens the attacker to strike it, then you must not turn it. In this view, enabling evil deeds makes you as much responsible for them as those who commit them. Also, every good citizen has a responsibility to protect those who cannot defend themselves. Criminal elements who are embolden by weakness never stop at their original victims, so turning the other cheek is not just about what happens to you, but also what happens to others.

On the other hand, if turning the other cheek breaks a cycle violence, then you must turn it. In this view, turning the other cheek is about showing trust and respect in those that you take issue with. It also minimizes the harm caused to the innocent when, because you perpetuated the cycle violence, they are harmed by those seeking retribution against you.

Keep in mind that there are times when turning the other cheek does not show cowardice, but in fact, shows far more courage than lashing out in acts of vengeance ever will.

The second point I want to cover is the ramifications of Proposition 82 that occurred here in California just a few weeks ago. There has been some national coverage of it, but I don't see in the actions of most conservatives that they are taking advantage of what this means.

As a review for those in 'Rio Linda,' proposition 82 (belittled around here as the Meathead Bill, because it's sponsor was Rob Reiner) was a proposition to tax the richest 1% of Californians to finance pre-school for every child in the state. It needed 67% of the vote to pass, but only got 40%.

Let's look closely at this. In one of the bluest states in the nation, a proposition to sponsor pre-school (something that any good lib should love), financed by the taxing the richest 1% of Californians (people that any good lib should hate), didn't just fail, it went down in flames. When you consider the brazen political use of taxpayer money to finance a multi-million dollar ad campaign to praise the benefits of pre-school [u]before[/u] the campaign for the proposition even started, this defeat should be stunning news for everyone.

As I have always known, and the defeat of this proposition proves, most of the people who call themselves liberal or Democrat do not support the principles we conservatives abhor in the Liberal agenda. The liberal elite are socialists who know their agenda cannot advance without lying to those they claim to lead. They only got into trouble with this proposition because they were so wrapped up in their groupthink that they badly played their hand with it. Yet they are learning from this mistake, are you?

Now back to the main thrust of this post.

There are two legs that are supporting the Liberal agenda. These legs are the lies from the left, and the hate from the right. Knock out either leg and the entire agenda collapses.

A key lie the left tells their followers is that they are the ones who care more for them, and it's the conservatives who want to do them harm. I convert liberals all of the time, and the hardest thing I have to deal with is convincing them that this is a lie, especially with all of the hatred that is on display from the right. You may not believe there is all that much hate on the right, but it only takes a little for the liberal elite, and their co-conspirators in the MSM, to make their lie seem credible.

I'm sure you feel justified in hating Democrats, but where is that hate getting you? The majority of the people you are hating are actually ripe for moving to your side, but yet you continue to do the things that help the liberal elite drive them away from you. From my perspective you either want to drive them away, or you have no problems being played by the liberal elite. You certainly don't have advancing the conservative cause very high on your list.

And that brings us to the core issue here. As long as you blame others for the hatred in your heart, you will leave yourself open for someone to jerk your chain. The first step in taking control of your life is taking responsibility of all of your emotions. It lacks all credibility to say you can control something you claim you are not responsible for.

I have never seen a situation where hatred has been a productive part in solving problems. What ever the issue was that may have triggered the hatred, it will always be easier to deal with it if you remain calm. If you allow hatred to dominate you, not only will you have to deal with the original issue, but you will also have to deal with all of the other problems that are created by your hatred.

One thing is for certain, I have never heard of anyone turning the other cheek while hatred ruled their heart.

The only purpose I have ever seen hate serve is to prop up foolish pride, but I might wrong. Maybe there is something to hate that would justify wallowing in it like I see so many do. What do you think?

Does your hate serve you well?

From the reaction I got from this, you would have thought I had set off a bomb. A few people seemed to understand where I was going with this, but the vast majority seemed to believe that this finally exposed me as the communist/liberal that they always thought I was.

What was really bizarre is that the disagreements came in two forms. Most thought that hate was a wonderful thing. They thought it was an excellent motivator to do the right thing, and gave them courage to do battle against their enemies. The rest, on the other hand, were quite indignant that I would accuse them of hatred. Talk about a split personality. "So which is it? Is hate great, or are you insulted to be associated with it?"

When one of the indignant ones threatened to have me banned from the site because of this post, I felt it was time for me to take my leave from the ACOC. I made one last post apologizing for causing them trouble, and signed off that they 'Go with God.'

I could have told them what I really thought, but where would that have gotten me? Their minds were sealed tight to anything I would have wrote. On my next post I'll write what I would have responded with had I believed they were worth the effort.

The End Never Justifies The Means - Redux

2006-07-05T07:20:00.000-07:00

This is the second in a five part series on my experiences on the Ann Coulter Online Community (ACOC). Read Part 1 before continuing.

Up until now I had posted some pretty tame stuff, nothing too controversial for this group, but I just couldn't take all of the "ends justifies the means" mentality that I kept running across. So I decided to run my The End Never Justifies the Means post from my Blog. I felt it should be safe to post there because I was pointing out how Liberals were getting caught up in it, not conservatives. But alas, I was wrong. These people were really hung up on the idea that if their goal is good then the deeds to accomplish that goal must be good.

So I tried the following reply to see if I could clarify things.

ACOC Post 6-23-06
One thing I didn't take into account when I started this thread was the need to establish a common definition of evil. Most of the people posting replies believe that as long as your goal is good then your actions are good. Yet if you are really doing something good, then there is no need to justify anything. Only evil actions require justification.

Take as an extreme example the war in Iraq. We must be there. We must not let Iraq fall into the hands of the terrorists. Our goal is just. Our soldiers know their cause is noble. Yet there is a terrible price to be paid for what our soldiers must do. It is not possible to kill people and not have it effect you in some negative way.

My neighbor, for instance, just completed his second tour over there. I knew him before his first tour, and I can tell you he is not the same. He is proud of what he has done, and will get back again when ordered, but even he will admit that it has cost him some of his humanity.

Evil actions take their toll. Not just with your humanity, but more often than not, they get in the way of actually accomplishing anything. The intent of my initial post was to debate a method of determining a measured response to the evil around us. Without a measured response you may as well just execute shoplifters. No one would advocate this, because what most of us really want are actions that actually work to end the evil.

Evil does not end evil. Even our soldiers in Iraq know that what they are doing will not end the war. It takes good people establishing a stable government that the people in Iraq are going to trust to actually end the war.

This post has never been about coddling criminals, as some have implied. We must hold all law breakers accountable for their actions. It is actually the most humane way of dealing with them. Only when they are held accountable will they turn themselves around. All I am saying is that we shouldn't kid ourselves into believing we are doing something good when we lock someone up in prison.

There is an incremental price to pay to your soul as you deceive yourself into believing your evil actions are good. It sneaks up on you. Only those that experience the extreme, like going into battle, actually see it coming.

I could tell from some responses that I might have gotten through to a few, but the majority were clearly unpersuaded. I should have just cut my losses then and there, but when one person just responded with "Horse Hockey" I felt I should try another tactic.

OK, let's try this...

It is not the spanking of our children that is good, it is the result that we want from spanking that is good. If spanking was good, why not have good night spankings instead of good night kisses?

And spanking alone will not give you a good child. It is the love and respect that you give your child that will make him good. If all you do is spank your child you will end up with a miserable wretch.

Good parents know that when they do spank their children, they can't just spank and walk away. There is a damage that occurs in the child/parent relationship that requires letting the child know that the parent still loves the child in order for that damage to heal.

So why not seek an alternative that does not require healing? Believing that spankings are good closes your mind to alternatives that might also work.

When I do spank my children, I don't go into liberal speak gobbledygook like "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you." All the child sees is a parent who believes that the child needs a spanking.

Yet to myself I say a prayer. I pray to God that I hope to one day see an alternative to what I am doing. This does several things. It reinforces my ability to see alternatives to this. It keeps me calm so I know I will not be spanking in anger. But more importantly, it focuses me to see that I am also doing damage to myself that requires repair.

When the spanking is over, it's not just our relationship that I am repairing with the love and attention I give my child. It is also myself, and the kind of person I want to be, that I am also repairing.

How's that? Yeah, Yeah, I know.... Just more horse hockey

This of course did not persuade anyone new. And one person responded with "If you think spanking your children is evil, then why do you do it? Just for Kicks?"

With that response I should have left the ACOC all together, but I felt I should try one last time to see if I could crack through their "haze of hatred," but that will be in part three..

An Unapologetic Former Liberal

2006-06-29T11:02:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a five part series of posts that document my brief time as a memeber of the Ann Coulter Online Community (ACOC). While I had spent a few days commenting on other threads, this is the first on that I started that I posted as a way to introduce myself.

ACOC Post 14 Jun 2006
I converted from liberalism to conservatism back in the 80's and have spent much of my time since then quietly going about the process of converting other liberals. I spent most of my efforts in liberal circles, including liberal BB's. I am not one of the 'drive-by' conservatives who flame liberals then move on. That activity doesn't gain converts. It's only about scoring points in some meaningless game.

I am subtle, and don't come off like I am trying to convert anyone. The funny thing is, all I do is introduce reason and logic into the discussion in the guise of just trying to help the cause, then picking off those who privately want to talk further. Liberalism cannot survive reason and logic. It's all about emotion and caring a lot.

I never much considered conservative BB's, because I thought it would be more about 'preaching to the choir,' which would just bore me. But after a week on this BB I see I was way wrong. It looks like I have a lot of things to write about. The groupthink I see here is just staggering.

The first thing I would like to write about are the other former liberals who feel they need to apologize. I have seen several posts of this nature here. Former liberals should have nothing to apologize for, unless they knowingly engaged in unethical behavior. If so, they should apologize for that, not for being liberal.

I personally would no more apologize for at one time being a liberal as I would apologize for at one time being a child. In both cases all I did was grow up... I matured, nothing more.

I say this because it is us former liberals who are going to have the greatest impact in converting other liberals to conservatism, and one the most significant ways that former liberals hamstring their efforts is by going in with an attitude that those they are trying to convert will also need to apologize.

When I converted from a liberal to a conservative I never changed who I was. I never stopped caring about the poor and marginalized of our society. Through careful analysis, I came to see that liberalism not only could not solve the problems of our society, it actually made things worse. This understanding is the basic building block that works in most cases with converting liberals. Get them to understand that if you really care about those you are trying to help, then you're going to have to engage in activities that actually work.

They key turning point for my political conversion was realizing that politics are not a person's core values. Politics are only part of how you express your core values. I think one of the more important distinctions between conservatism and a liberalism, is that a liberalism believes politics is the only legitimate expression of a person's core values.

So all you former liberals here, stop apologizing. There is nothing to be proud of in being a former liberal, but there is nothing to be ashamed of either. You have a perspective to politics that is needed now more than ever in the conservative movement. There have been some great strides in the conservative agenda as of late, but a lot of the arrogance that I see on display around here, if allowed to percolate out into the conservative community at large, could end up squandering those gains.

When I'm on the Liberal BB's and I read the hatred they're spewing; the grand conspiracies they are spinning; the self-congratulatory pats on their collective backs they give themselves on how smart they are, I just quietly chuckle to myself. I even egg it on it, because I know this is the breeding ground of their own destruction. (It really is quite amusing, although I only recommend trying it if you have a strong stomach)

I don't want paint everyone at this BB with a broad brush. There are enough replies here that show the real conservative ideology that I respect. If there wasn't any I wouldn't bother sticking around. Maybe I'm just a little sensitive because of where I spent a lot of my time before here, I just don't want to see the same mistakes made there happen here.

For the most part, the replies were very positive, and most had a 'Welcome aboard' theme to them. A few though, took issue with the accusatory nature of what I posted about my observation of groupthink. The following are representative comments that are shown to set up my replies

churchill72 wrote:
Please define "groupthink."

Put simply, it's believing what the group you identify with believes for the purpose of acceptance within that group. We like to consider ourselves as individuals, so it is very difficult to believe we are guilty of it, but we are all social beings, and engage in it to some degree. The question is, how much is too much?

The best way to spot the destructive variety is to look for things people write that are more for emotional appeal than intellectual enlightenment. It is often characterized by people "one uping" each other in what they are writing. The more "out there" they get with what they are writing, the more true to their beliefs they feel they are being. In fact, they are only engaging in self-deception, or groupthink. If your looking for an example of it at this BB, try the 'Ann is not a conservative' thread that I have been replying to.

churchill72 wrote:
In short, if you are defining "groupthink" as a mindless, kneejerk support for the republican party...its not to be had here.

Considering how much the liberals excoriate their Democratic leadership in their BBs, and how deeply and profoundly mired in groupthink that they are, I would not use the fact that you criticize the Republican party as any sign that you have not succumbed to it.

These replies did not placate him. So here are some more replies to his concerns.

churchill72 wrote:
Im also not sure about how well that definition of groupthink applies to any "online community" as the "people" here are nothing more than "posts" in an electronic "thread." I know none of them personally...

We are not exchanging ideas for the sake of just exchanging ideas. This is a form of socializing, so it is a community. You don't have to agree with everything within a group to belong to it. You just have to want something out of it, and contribute something into it, in order to be part of it. The only people who are not part of this group are the flamers. They really don't care about anyone and what they believe. They just want to score points in some imaginary game going on in their heads.

churchill72 wrote:
I can assure you that my conservative worldview predated my ever finding, registering and posting in the Ann Coulter forums.

I'm not completely sure I know what you mean by this, but I'll respond as if you feel that I have accused you of not thinking for yourself. First, I want to state that I did not accuse you specifically of groupthink. I only stated in my previous post that what you offered as evidence that you were not groupthinking wasn't valid. Second, even those engaged in groupthink are still thinking for themselves. They have simply made a choice that group praise is more import than constructive discourse.

As an example of what I mean by destructive discourse in the form of groupthink, check out the 'Why Ann Coulter is not a conservative' thread. Most of the people on this thread are hell bent on proving their uber-conservative status at a terrible cost. What they are doing is something that goes on regularly at the liberal BBs which is divide and conquer amongst our own. It's a sort of self-cannibalism that liberals have down as an art form.

It's bad enough that there are republican politicians that are distancing themselves from Ann, we don't need these guys making some ridiculous claim that Ann needs to be reclassified away from us also.

"United we stand, divided we fall"
"If we don't hang together, then we will certainly hang separately"

Someone noted what appeared to be a contradiction in what I originally posted.

desertdink wrote:
perl10 wrote:
...I am not one of the 'drive-by' conservatives who flame liberals then move on. That activity doesn't gain converts. It's only about scoring points in some meaningless game...

...I even egg it on it, because I know this is the breeding ground of their own destruction. (It really is quite amusing, although I only recommend trying it if you have a strong stomach)...

So...which is it? These are seemingly contradictory motives of thoughtful conversion and goading of liberal idiots.

The drive-by flamers are not interested in understanding any ones perspectives on the site. They do not want to work with anyone, they are just there to piss them off.

My 'egging them on' was done more to appear to be one of them. I wanted to appear to be delving into their groupthink. If you don't, you will never be taken seriously. Any one who appears 'wish-washy' in their liberalism is at best dismissed, at worst excoriated. Although I will admit I found it all very amusing.

It is because of this activity that I believe I have gained an insight on what groupthink is all about.

Quite a few replies warned me to be aware of the Libertarians out looking for converts. Here's how I replied to one of them.

Been there -- Done that -- Didn't last long

When the Republican Governor of California, Pete Wilson, signed the mandatory motorcycle helmet law I promptly renounced my Republican party affiliation and joined the Libertarian party. I had been studying them for sometime, and they seemed like a good alternative. I had to sign some statement that said something to the effect that I could not advocate the initiation of force (or something like that), but I didn't think much of it at the time. I wasn't inclined to use force to achieve political objectives, so it seemed safe enough.

For a few months I was having a good time at the monthly meetings discussing politics (this was in the pre-BB days), until the first Gulf War hit. I of course was for it, and when I brought it up for discussion I was slammed down. I was then rudely reminded that I had signed a statement that I could not advocate the use of force. So that was that as far as they were concerned.

They were a bunch of loons as far as I was concerned. I left the party then and there, and have not looked back.

Continue with part 2 of 5

The Real Target of Terrorists

2006-06-21T07:27:00.000-07:00

Who are the real targets of terrorists? When a suicide bomber blows himself up, are the people around him the intended targets? I don't think so, and the recent suicides at Guantánamo prove it.

When I first heard about the suicides, the only thought I had at the time was "3 down, more to go." Later that weekend I read a column by some general who described the suicides as just more asymmetrical warfare that has been happening in Iraq and elsewhere for some time. This seemed like sound reasoning to me. Then later still, a distraught liberal wrote the following to the paper.

To call the three suicides that recently occurred at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility "an act of warfare against us" is a gross misuse of language. The three men who committed suicide caused no bodily harm to anyone other than themselves. The fact that their suicides will focus world attention on the facility does not constitute "warfare against us" in any sense of the term.

All suicides are pleas for attention to the situation of the victim. Whether it is the suicide of a teenager who sees no hope for his future, the suicide of a mental patient who sees no hope of ever fitting into the culture around him, or the suicide of a prisoner who sees no hope of ever getting out of his cell, they are all profound requests for the rest of society to look closely at what is going on in a particular situation at a particular time.

Rather than inappropriate labeling of this sad situation, I think the U.S. government needs to look closely at what is actually occurring at Guantánamo and do something about this terrible facility.

KAREEN NOVAK
San Diego

Wasn't that just stunning. I couldn't have written a better caricature of a bleeding heart liberal if I tried. The depth and breadth of absolute cluelessness is so vast I could spend days dissecting this flawed analysis, but I'll spare you the details and just go right to the core flaw. The main thing this woman doesn't get is who our enemies' intended target is. My suggestion is that she hold up a mirror.

The people we are fighting know they cannot beat us in battle, so they need to get us to cut and run. The actual targets of our enemies are the knuckleheads in our nation like this lady. These 'useful idiots' may be dumb as posts, but their brains still function at a high enough level to operate a ballot machine, and our enemies know this. They also know that their real victims can be hit just as easily from Gitmo as from Baghdad.

Is there a finer example of why liberals cannot be allowed back in power?

********************************************************************
And speaking of liberal caricatures, here's my version of a joke going around the Internet.

There is this conservative and a liberal who are alone, but not with each other.

They each have a concealed gun.

They each are attacked by a knife wielding islamo-facsist who is yelling "Allah Akbar!!"

How does each respond?

The conservative pulls the gun and makes another Muslim martyr.

As for the liberal, this is a false premise. He would not have a gun because he knows it is the government's responsibility to protect him.

So as the islamo-facsist approaches, the liberal sees that he is alone, and immediately blames the government for not doing its job.

As the islamo-facsist is hacking his head off, the only thing going through the liberal's mind is "Why is he attacking me? I didn't vote for George Bush"

The Liberal Shield of Victimhood

2006-06-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

Do you know what actions committed by terrorists that I consider to be the number two thing on my list of why they are scum of the Earth? Of course the number one thing is the direct targeting of innocents. The next thing, which I consider right up there with number one, is hiding behind innocents so that the innocents will be killed when anyone retaliates against them. This allows their supporters to claim that the people trying to stop terrorism are the really guilty party.

Not me, I blame the terrorists. They are the ones who act as cowards by hiding amongst the innocents in order to use them as shields. So they are the ones responsible for the safety of those they endanger. Fair minded individuals who actually want peace in this world, and are not out to serve some political agenda, must denounce all people who exploit others in such a way.

Just as terrorist are cowards in their actions, Liberals are cowards in their ideas. As Ann Coulter details in her new book "Godless: The Religion of Liberalism", she lists 22 instances where Liberals sought out and elevated victims to deliver political messages that they were too cowardly to deliver themselves. The Liberals use the victimhood of the these people as a shield that Conservatives are not allowed to respond to.

This activity is a 'twofer' for the Liberal elites. First, they can have patently absurd lies like 'President Bush is responsible for what happened on 9/11.' to be out in the media, without actually being held accountable to them. Then secondly, it gives them an opportunity to portray Conservatives as further victimizing these spokes people when they respond to these accusations.

One group in particular that Ann has harsh words for is the four women that are collectively known as The Jersey Girls, or as she likes to call them, The Witches of New Brunswick. These are the four widows of men who died in one of the towers on 9/11. They made all the rounds in the Main Stream Media (MSM) telling everyone how they believe President Bush was responsible for their husbands deaths. I would like to look at a couple of things Ann wrote that are causing quite a bit of consternation with her critics. The first one is:

How do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies?

Seems a bit harsh, but not in the context of the point she is making in the chapter that it appears. First of all, let's take the harpies comment out of contention. Their shrill cries of 'President Bush is to blame' makes that comment undeniable. That just leaves the question of whether their husbands were about to divorce them that needs further explanation.

If someone who presents himself as an expert on terrorism makes some absurd claim like 'Because President Bush invaded Iraq, we are now more in danger of terrorist acts,' I am inclined to question his legitimacy. The questions I would have would include, but not be limited to: What books or articles have you written? Where did you get your education? What studies have you done to verify this claim, or is this just a feeling you have? All of my questions would be used to determine whether or not I should believe a word this expert has to say.

Back to the Jersey Girls, just how am I suppose to question their legitimacy? They are not experts in the field. They are not even representative of 9/11 widows (at least they had the decency not to make such a claim). It would appear that their entire basis for anyone listening to them is because of their relationship to men who died in the towers on 9/11. If that is their only claim to legitimacy, why can't Ann question that claim? Would these women be viewed so sympathetically if their husbands had already planned to divorce them? They certainly aren't behaving like anything I'd want to be married to.

There is another quote about the Jersey Girls that is causing even more consternation. It's:

I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much.

This remark seems unwarranted, but not in the context of the paragraph it is written. I don't need Ann to tell me what their life has been like since they became the darlings of the MSM. They were lauded during their regular appearances on the morning talk shows. They even turned up on the cover of Vanity Fair. It was clear that they were having a grand ol' time, and what were the circumstances that created this opportunity for them? The deaths of their husbands.

An extensive search at Google News turned up loads of criticism about Ann's book. None of it dealt with the point she was trying to make. All of it was about how mean Ann was for going after the Jersey Girls, which actually proves her point, but I don't think her critics are bright enough to realize it.

What I found disheartening was the conservative people who were criticizing her also. Their pious pronouncements always went something like "While I completely agree with the points she is trying to make, her ad hominem attacks are uncalled for." This shows that they too are missing the point. Their criticism is analogous to people criticizing our soldiers who happen to kill innocents when the insurgents hide amongst the civilians.

The real blame here belongs to the liberals in the MSM. The Jersey Girls had nothing to add to the discussion about what happened on 9/11. The MSM kept them in the spotlight for the sole purpose of doing their dirty work. These women should have been allowed to go through a normal grieving process, but instead they had their righteous indignation pushed higher and higher, because they knew what the people who were praising them wanted to hear.

Ann concludes this chapter in her book with what should be understood by anyone complaining about her comments.

If these Democrat human shields have a point worth making, how about allowing it to be made by someone we're allowed to respond to?

Voting Ethics

2006-06-09T12:28:00.000-07:00

Here in San Diego county there was a bitter campaign to replace US House Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham. He was the politician that got caught red handed taking bribes from lobbyists. This campaign featured a dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrat Francine Busbey, versus a former lobbyist Republican Brian Bilbray, in a very Republican district.

In the week prior to the election, Ms Busbey was caught on tape telling an audience of mostly Latinos that they did not need to be here legally in order to vote. When confronted with what she said, her first reaction was to express outrage that members of Bilbray's campaign were recording her. She later said that what she really meant to say was that you need not be a legal resident in order to help in the campaign. As if that is any better? What really shocked me was to hear from the talking heads on the news that said these statements would cost here votes in the election. Ya, right. I would be surprised if she lost one vote over them.

Yes, Republicans have also committed unethical acts concerning elections. I consider this inevitable with all career politicians. They are desperate to keep their jobs, and will do anything to keep them. The difference is that if a so-called conservative is caught, it will cost him votes.

If you're a liberal you probably would disagree with my assessment. I'll bet you're saying to yourself, 'Surely the conservatives are doing the same thing.' The reason liberals feel this way starts with their knowledge that their agenda cannot be advanced without deception. Take Proposition 82, the Meathead Proposition, which was on the same ballot as the Bilbray vs Busbey contest. This proposition sought to pay for preschool for everyone by taxing only the richest 1% of Californians, yet it went down to a crushing defeat. Preceding this election there was a massive campaign, paid for with public funds, which touted the benefits of preschool, and still it could not pass.

Since the people will not support the true liberal agenda when its laid out honestly, the liberal elites (socialists in disguise) know they must lie to accomplish what they are sure is in everyone's best interest. Once they have it in their heads that they can't win without lying, they also need to maintain the belief of their moral superiority over their adversaries, so if they are lying, then the other side must be doing worse.

Francine Busbey did not lose a single vote with her moment of honesty. In the End Justifies The Means mentality of liberal politics, her supporters would probably accuse her of incompetence if she wasn't going after the illegal alien vote.

Put simply, if you believe that a strong central government is needed to take care of its citizens, then any act that gets you in control of the government is justified. If you believe that the citizens must take care of themselves, so that they can properly direct the government to do their bidding, then who is elected is not important. What is really important is what ideology people have, and supporting unethical politicians will not help with that.

Heroes or Victims

2006-06-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

A profound form of memorial that can be conducted for those who have died in some cause is a 'reading of the names.' In this type of service, someone will read the names of each person who has died. By doing so, those who conduct this type memorial are stating that those who have died will not be forgotten. Over the past couple of Sundays, Garry Trudeau has been listing the names of those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, in his Doonesbarry cartoon strip, as his own form of a 'reading of the names.' The question I have is, 'Can someone engage in an activity associated with honoring someone, yet insult them instead?' Of course they can, just look at flag burning.

When you have a flag that is faded or worn, and in need of replacement, do you just throw it away? No. The proper method of disposing of a flag is to burn it. If you can't burn it, then you should give it to the Boy Scouts or the VFW for them to do it. By burning the flag, instead of throwing it in the trash, you are demonstrating how much you honor it. At he same time, are the street protestors that you see in the news who are burning our flag are doing so to honoring it? Of course not. So the same activity can mean different things based on intent.

For Mr. Trudeau's act to be considered an honor, he must first be grateful for what these soldiers are doing. He must believe that he is being made safer by the actions of our military in Iraq, but as a major league liberal, he most certainly does not. He does not see our soldiers as heroes, he sees them as victims. It is not his honor that he is giving our soldiers with his stunt, it is his pity.

The Goal Of War

2006-06-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

This past Memorial Day, rather than reflecting on those who have died to protect my freedom, I was forced to ponder what liberals think about war. My feeling for sometime now is that their view of war is very superficial. I believed that they only saw the violence of war, and never pondered the real causes of them, nor considered the ramifications of not going to war, which would allow really horrific acts to progress.

I already knew they had a superficial understanding of capitalism. When they see a rich person buying a yacht, all they see is that rich person playing on the yacht. They never consider how the yacht represents jobs for those who build them. And not just any jobs. The jobs created by the rich people who are acquiring the things they want are usually high paying jobs. These are the so-called 'living wage' jobs that liberals are always screaming we need more of, yet they have no clue how to create one without a government subsidy. Could their understanding of war be just as superficial?

I was forced to ponder these things when I made the mistake of watching 60 Minutes the day before Memorial Day. While I have always found their reports politically biased, once you understand this, they can be very informative. And even when they had a particularly infuriatingly biased report, I could always look forward to an amusing commentary by Andy Rooney at the end. In the past few years though, I have been finding him less funny, and at times, quite stupid to put it frankly. Last Sunday's commentary went far enough for me to call offensive. It started off all right, but then he said this:

There is more bravery at war than in peace, and it seems wrong that we have so often saved this virtue to use for our least noble activity - war. The goal of war is to cause death to other people.

Huh? The goal of war is to kill people? I must assume that he believes our soldiers are in Iraq just to get their 'thrill kill on.' There have been countless wars committed by mankind over the many thousands of years that such things have been recorded, and I don't recall any of them being just about killing people.

He then concluded his myopic monologue with:

I wish we could dedicate Memorial Day, not to the memory of those who have died at war, but to the idea of saving the lives of the young people who are going to die in the future if we don't find some new way - some new religion maybe - that takes war out of our lives. That would be a Memorial Day worth celebrating.

Wishing for peace will NEVER bring it about, and will usually result in a war or our enslavement. There are some very evil people in this world who see our mere existence as a threat to them. Their greatest hope is that we will do nothing but wish for peace. Only when they know war is a certainty if we are threatened will we have peace.

Regardless of what Andy wants, Memorial Day will always be for me about honoring those that have paid the ultimate sacrifice to ensure our freedom. Our national anthem ends with "...the land of the free, and the home of the brave." I would say we live in the land of the free because of the brave, and Memorial Day must always be a tribute to that.

Self-Esteem Cannot Be Bestowed

2006-05-26T11:49:00.000-07:00

I read an article today from the Associated Press that states that high school football coaches in Connecticut can be suspended if they allow their teams to run up a score of more than 50 points greater than what the opposing team scores. This is another classic example of how liberals just don't get the concept of self-esteem. They are always talking about how much they care about developing it in our children, but like every other attempt they make at "legislating our way to a great society," they only make things worse.

I was lucky when I went to school. At that time, they even allowed the kids to pick the sides for sports teams in PE class. As a tall, gangly, highly uncoordinated youth, I was usually picked last. Sure it made me feel sad, but I knew I had two choices. I either had to get better at sports, or find something else to excel in. I certainly didn't look to others to "make things more fair" for me.

Self-esteem comes from picking yourself off the ground when you have failed. You can't just be bestow it on someone. I would even put forward that there cannot be any evidence of self-esteem unless you are exposed to criticism, such as being picked last for a team. No one can be said to have self-esteem if they are only exposed to praise and adulation.

Most attempts by liberals to improve our society only work to destroy it on one dimension. This law is a double-whammy, because it does it on two dimensions. The first is that it affirms in kids minds that their self-esteem is tied to the outcome of sporting events, which makes them ill-prepared to deal with adversity later on in life. The second is that it increases the number of kids with self-esteem problems, because it allows a team that would have only beaten the other by 30 points to say they would have beaten them by 50 if it wasn't for the law. Think of this law as an affirmative action program for losers.

Campaign Finance Reform

2006-05-20T20:50:00.000-07:00

I was listening to a talk radio show the other day, and the host had a politician on with yet another campaign finance reform plan that he was advancing. I believe this kind of thinking, which is that somehow if the right law were passed all our problems would be solved, is the root of all problems that are only exacerbated by what politicians do. Laws can only address symptoms of problems, and in fact, by addressing only the symptoms, the real problems just get worse. The previous campaign finance reform, called McCain-Fiengold, is a classic example. Anyone who believes that law lead to a more civilized campaign season really needs to wake up.

Let's have a close look at this latest proposal and I'll show you what I mean by laws just making things worse. What this politician was proposing is that 30 billion dollars be set aside to finance the campaigns of politicians. If someone running for office accepts the money from the government to finance his or her campaign, then they can not accept any contributions from anyone else. He even had the audacity to proclaim that we'll end up saving money because there will be less money spent on pork barrel projects that politicians pass in order to reward those who have contributed to their campaign. Ya right!

First of all, who decides who gets the money? Every time government starts throwing money at something, it always attracts the lowest form of vermin looking to scam their cut of the action. The bureaucracy needed to ensure only legitimate campaigns get this money could be monstrous. Even then, assuming it could pull that off, there are legions of kooks who will believe they have a legitimate voice to be heard.

Second, like all campaign finance proposals, all forms of Main Stream Media (MSM) will not be limited. They will have free reign to say, write and show any manner of idea they want in order to advance the politicians they support. This is one of the reasons the MSM is always behind these things, because they know it will ultimately lead to a monopoly for them.

Like I stated above, all of these campaign finance reform efforts are attempts to treat symptoms when we actually need to work on the root cause. The root problem is not the politicians, nor the people looking to advance their agendas with campaign donations. The root problem is with the voters. They are the ones that seem to be effected by the commercials and everything else that the campaign money is spent on. If the voters refused to be persuaded by slick TV campaigns there wouldn't be anything to spend the money on, ergo, no reason for anyone to give money to the politicians.

The true course of action must be to get the voters to take on the responsibility of getting the information on the politicians for themselves. In this day and age, anyone can setup a web site for $15 or less a month to inform anyone else why they should be elected. The state could then list directories of everyone registered for an election.

Does this seem a bit unrealistic to you? You certainly do if your a liberal. Inherent in being a liberal you must believe the majority of people are victims who are unable to decide for themselves what is best for them. This means that the populace must be spoon fed what is right for them. On the other hand, conservatives know that if all citizens do not take an active roll in determining what our government should do, we are screwed.

This is nothing more than expectations. Without passing any laws, we need to start expecting people to do due diligence in being citizens by researching for themselves what candidates to vote for. This of course is an anathema to liberals. They know that this activity requires you to stop perceiving yourself as a victim, which will lead to the liberal agenda downfall (as if it hasn't started already).

This also leads to what really bothers me about all campaign finance reforms. The basic assumption here is that the problem is the money or those seeking to advance their agendas. In reality, the problem is with the politicians who are willing to sell out our country for their own personal benefit. Campaign finance reform does nothing more than say to politicians that we don't blame them for the problem.

Isn't it just like politicians to try to pass legislation that will in no way minimize the amount of money sent to them, yet make it appear that they are doing something to fix the problem. So in the end, these laws mean that real problems are not addressed in anyway, and in fact are only made worse because politicians get a pass. With all of this scapegoating going on, is it any surprise that politicians have an entitlement mentality? They know they will never be held accountable.

What Liberals Think of Democracy

2006-05-09T10:11:00.000-07:00

Some times I have to wonder what the liberals think about the concept of democracy. Most conservatives view democracy as a way for the citizens of a nation to decide for themselves what is in their best interest. In this view, there isn't any royalty or a special class of people deciding what's best for everyone else.

I have always suspected that liberals thought differently, but couldn't really prove it. It is the liberals that are always talking about "power to the people," but I have always felt that this saying was nothing but a platitude to them.

Then I ran across something from E.J. Dionne Jr of the Washington Post. He's probably my favorite liberal when it comes to confirming my suspicians of them. In a recent column of his, he was debating with a fellow liberal what the Democrats needed to do to take congress from the Republicans. His partner stated...

...what the Democrats need to do is destroy today's "radical individualism" and replace it with "a politics of a common good."

EJ then responded with...

That's fine, but we need to hear more about "self-interest, rightly understood."

With "self-interest, rightly understood" he displays the very cynical view that I have always thought of liberals. EJ knows that "common good" won't sell to the masses. The masses need to hear "self-interest" so they will get the impression that they will have a say in what happens in our country. Yet the "rightly understood" part means that not everyone's opinion of what is in their own best interest is correct. 'After all,' as the liberal elite believes, 'a welfare state that takes care of the poor is in everyone's best interest, right?'

So the liberal elite really does not believe that "we the people" can decide for ourselves what is in our best interest. For them, the democratic process is some sort of shell game where the masses think they are voting for what is in their best interest, but only provide what the liberal elite believes they really need.

Conservatives see the democratic process as "we the people" deciding what our country should be doing, so our elected representatives in Washington are there to do our bidding. On the other hand, the liberal elite want the masses to trust them to decide what's best for us, so they only want us to focus on who is being elected. This is not a case of semantics. It is a question of who is doing the deciding in our society; 'we the people' or an 'elite of the self-righteous'.

We Are Not Being Gouged

2006-05-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

There is a great deal of sound and fury over the high gas prices and record profits reported by the oil companies. Many politicians are claiming the citizens of this nation are being gouged, and are even floating out "windfall taxes" as a way to respond to them. Of course it doesn't surprise me that politicians would choose an action that pretends to be about helping the "people", yet would in fact do nothing to lower prices. This is nothing more than politicians seeking to get their cut of the action.

Capitalism is a wonderful system that does a better job than any others at ensuring the goods and services that people want are delivered to them at the lowest possible prices. Gouging can occur during emergency situations, but there is no emergency here. This is a situation completely of our own making, and should be expected with the past policies of our government.

It amazes me how many people believe that oil is some sort of magical substance that doesn't adhere to the economic law of supply and demand. I'm not talking about the theory of supply and demand, this is a law that no economic principle can avoid. All attempts by governments to mess with this law, from price controls to government take-overs, only creates shortages.

My wake up call at how stupid the general populace is concerning economics came in the mid-80's. At the time, car insurance rates were rising dramatically in California. Instead of analyzing why this was taking place, many people just leaped at the easy explanation that the insurance companies were gouging us. This lead to some group collecting enough signatures to get an initiative on the ballot to force all insurance companies to lower their prices by 20%, which, to my dismay, got enough votes to pass.

I then realized that the America I thought existed was gone. If the insurance companies were really charging too much, then that would have been a perfect opportunity to for an enterprising person to start their own insurance company, under cutting the supposed gouging companies, and make huge profits. That's how capitalist systems work.

The most naive economic notion that most people have is that they believe capitlism leads to monoplies. The reality is that government action is required to create a monopoly. It takes a government, through its regulatory authority, to prevent competition. True capitalist economies would never have monopolies. If any collusion tried to take place among existing companies, then some one outside of the group will see an opportunity for them to make their fortune.

This leads to why we have such high gas prices. There is no industry more heavily regulated than the oil industry. These regulations greatly effect the supply of gas because they inhibit existing companies from delivering product, and they also prevent any new companies from getting into the game. Just ask yourself, with such large profits being made, why are there no new oil companies getting started?

Any other actions by our politicians that do not seek to resolve that question will only lead to gas lines.

Liberals Care A Lot

2006-04-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

Do liberals care more about politics? Are they more passionate about who is elected than conservatives? I asked this of myself as I was standing outside the cubicle of a liberal co-worker of mine. Taped on the wall for all passers-by to see is a sheet of paper with a dozen or so pictures of President Bush, with corresponding pictures of a chimp making the same expression he was. One picture of the president just had the words "I can't find a picture of a chimp with a face as dumb as this one" next to it. What makes liberals hate him so much?

I ask this because I couldn't think of any conservative acquaintance of mine who hated President Clinton. Sure, there were news reports from the MSM of conservatives who hated him, but I never met them. Every conservative I knew thought of him at worst as a disgrace to the presidency, but I never saw any hatred. I can't think of any liberal politician that I hate, nor do I know any conservative who does. Yet walking around where I work it's easy to spot the liberals who hate President Bush. Is it because conservatives just don't care as much as liberals about who is the leader of our country?

The only conclusion I can come to, to explain this disparity in hatred between the ideologies, is the basic fact that mankind fears and hates that which it does not understand. Liberal hatred of conservatives leaders is positive confirmation that they do not understand us. They then ascribe motives to us that are evil in order to justify that hatred in them. On the other hand, conservatives know liberals are well intentioned, but misguided in what they want in our government. This means we don't have any need for hatred.

Another thing to consider, how does someone come to hate someone else that they have never met. Consider what the country thought of President Franklin Roosevelt during his time in office. He served almost 4 full terms as president, yet most of the country didn't know he couldn't walk without assistance, and spent most of his time in a wheel chair. The press at the time supported the president, and wouldn't print anything that might cause people think less of him.

The only way anyone could have such a negative personal opinion of someone they have never met, is by allowing someone else to manipulate them. These Bush Haters are nothing but Kool-Aid Drinkers, who have rendered themselves ineffectual in politics, because their blind hatred will never attract anyone who doesn't already share that same blind hatred. It's one thing to disagree with a person's politics, it's another to allow your emotions to cloud your judgment on how to deal with them. I'm sure there are some pretty proud people within the MSM when ever they view someone chanting on the street "Bush Lied, People Died."

Another item on my co-worker's wall is something with the caption "Everyone has a dream, and this is mine." It's a "photo-shopped" picture of a Time magazine cover with "Bush Resigns" on it. I couldn't imagine living a life where a dream of mine involved someone I hated. Not only is it a miserable existence (I'm sure he thinks it's just funny), but even if this dream of his came true, where will it get him. Only conservatives are in the line of succession, and President Bush is hardly a standard bearer for conservatives. No one on this side of the ideological divide is going to weep with his downfall.

Our current struggle is a conflict of ideas, not personalities, and it appears that liberals are fighting the wrong battle. Instead of moving forward on policies that will bring about positive changes in this country, too many liberals want to spin their wheels on pipe dreams. This brings to mind an observation I heard from Rush Limbaugh:

The liberal says "Do not judge me by my lack of accomplishments, judge me only by how much I care."

In this light, the hatred expressed by liberals actually makes sense. If what you are doing isn't bringing about the accomplishments you want, what better way to demonstrate how much you care than by heaping large amounts of scorn and ridicule on someone you believe is preventing you from accomplishing your goals. Liberals are certainly not going to start blaming themselves for their ineffectualness (that would be my pipe dream).

So, do liberals care more about politics? Yes they do. It's not that we conservatives don't care at all. It's just that what we care about is this country, and as I explained in my Conservative Conversion Primer, our government is not our country. The liberal's view our country is paternalistic. They see a vast amount of people who need to be taken care of, and only a strong welfare state can accomplish that. Conservatives on the other hand see a great potential in this country's citizens that can only be tapped if the siren's song of the welfare state is silenced.

If the only way liberals know how to help people is through the government, then of course they are going to care more about who is elected. Yet as long as it is more important to them that they demonstrate how much they care who is elected, the less effective they are going to be at getting someone they want.

Gay Marriage & Media Bias

2006-04-12T12:16:00.000-07:00

Whenever anyone tries to tell me that the Main Stream Media (MSM) does not have a liberal bias, I like to point them towards the debate on gay marriage as an obvious example that it does. If all you went by was what the MSM has to say on this issue, you would think that it was between religious homophobes, who want to harm anyone not like them, and well-reasoned people, who want to bring respect to an unjustly persecuted minority of our community. This is an example of controlling a debate by pretending to present the opposition, when in fact, you are only showing the extremists of the side you disagree with.

I, like most everyone I talk to about this, do not use religion in my opposition to gay marriage, yet you will never hear that from the MSM. If after years of debate in the MSN, and I still do not see my views being represented, which are no different than the majority of the people I know, I can only conclude its omission is deliberate.

What are those views? Let's first examine the message the MSN is on full tilt to deliver. They want us to believe that the love between two people who happen to be gay can be just as strong and loving as between a man and a woman, and therefore should be just as entitled to have their union sanctioned by marriage. Notice that they are framing this issue in terms of how strong the love is between the couples, implying that this is the only criteria that should be used to determine whether a marriage should be legal. Yet if this is true, why not provide a marriage to a bother and sister who love each other. Heck, why stop there? Let's legalize polygamy. What ever gets your groove on, man!

The concept of marriage is about what our society wants to promote to make our society better, and loving couples do not need any help from the government to do that. Both love and sex are something we are all hardwired to do naturally. So getting the government involved is like having a governmental bureaucracy to make the sun rise in the morning. For marriage to make any sense, it has to be about promoting something that we don't do well on our own, and that something is the parenting of our children.

What I, and everyone I know who does not want to see gay marriage become law believe, is that marriage must be about what is best for raising our children. And what's best for our children is seeing that their mothers and fathers are in the same home with them. Our society's survival quite literally requires that most of our children learn how to function in a loving, respectful home with a man and a women as an example. For me to accept that gay marriage is the equivalent of a conventional marriage requires me to believe that it's not important for a child to have his mother and father involved in their lives, which is something I could never do.

When those like me say that gay marriage undermines the institution of marriage, many liberals like to respond with 'How can the marriage of two people you have never met impact your own marriage?' Directly, it can't. Indirectly, quite profoundly. Gay marriage is just another example of how unimportant our society continues to believe parents are in raising children. I don't care how many times I am beaten over the head with 'It takes a village to raise our children' I'm not going to buy it. I know it takes a parent to raise a child, and all of the slogans in the world will not change that.

I have experienced first hand how our society devalues what I as a father has to offer my children. Because I have a child from a previous marriage, I have seen our government in action in ensuring that my money is delivered to my child, but not me as a father. Mark my words: A society that considers what is found in a father's wallet to be more important than what is found in his heart, is a society that is doomed. I see gay marriage as nothing more than a continuation of this theme.

Traditional marriage has been under assault for many years in our society, long before gay marriage rolled around. Welfare has been the largest slayer of marriage. 'Why go through the hassle of dealing with a man when a government paycheck will take care of you.' But the most insidious form of destruction has been the liberal notion of putting love in front of everything else in a marriage. It's as if love is the only thing that is required for people to get married. This attitude is what has lead us to where we are today. It's why gay marriage is even debated. The reality is that the only thing required to make a happy, healthy marriage is respect. Respect for your spouse, and most importantly, respect for your children. And if you really respect all of our children, then you are going to do what you can to promote keeping their mother and father in their lives.

(I know what your asking now. 'But What about love?' 'Isn't love important too?'. Of course it is. But a man and a woman who respect each other and the family they are creating, will eventually love each other. In spite of what you hear, love is no great mystery. It's what we are hardwired to do.)

This then leads to the argument used by the promoters of gay marriage that really burns me the most. It goes something like this: 'Gay marriage does not disrespect marriage. It's marriages like Britney Spears' 48 hour fling in Las Vegas that really cheapens marriage. What we want respects marriage far more than that does.' In this passionate plea for understanding, the origin of this line of reasoning is completely left out. It is the liberal notion that love is all that matters that leads to spectacles like Ms. Britney's wedding. Then the liberals use the destruction that they have wrought as justification as to why the institution of marriage should be further watered down by gay marriage. The unmitigated gall of this claim is on par with watching someone burn down your house then demand to be paid to build it back up.

Before I conclude this post I want to make sure I'm clear about what I believe concerning the raising of children. What I am writing about is what I want our society to promote. I'm not writing about what I want our government to permit. That is, I'm not part of the crowd that wants to ban gays from adopting children. It is much better for orphaned children to be with a parent who loves them, and is willing to commit to their welfare, than it is for them to remain wards of the state. Children need parents, not a village.

It's too bad that I can't do more to promote gay adoption of orphaned children. With the MSM so focused on promoting gay marriage by dishonest means, they can't allow the argument to drift over to what is best for children, because that is a sure loser for gay marriage. As usual, the reality of what is best for our society must be subverted to the liberal utopian dream of what is best. This dream is the one where all lifestyles are equally valid and deserve equal respect, except of course lifestyles based on Christian Conservative values.

Just don't try a convince me there is no liberal bias in the MSM.

Much Ado About Immigration Protests

2006-04-04T15:32:00.000-07:00

The recent immigration protests are a classic case of much ado about nothing, both pro and con.

The supporters of these protests like to compare them to the civil rights marches of the 60's. Personally, I don't see the comparison. In fact, I see one significant difference. The civil rights marches were able to draw support to the cause of those who marched, but I don't see anyone changing their minds in favor of the protesters. With all of the Mexican flags being waved around, most people not rabid supporters of La Raza see this as nothing but a figurative sharp poke in the eye.

Those on other side of the this issue are also a bit off base. They see a group of people who are attempting to take back California for Mexico. Let's get real here. These protestors are the ones with so little personal fortitude that they had to run from the country they love in order to get a job, rather than stay and fix their broken political system.

Both sides of this issue are nothing but a lot of sound and fury.

The Union's Dance of Death

2006-03-26T07:47:00.000-08:00

This weeks big story concerning unions is the attempted buyout by GM of 30,000 union jobs by offering 126,000 employees $35,000 to $140,000 to leave. Wow! Think about it. GM's economic condition is so turned upside down that instead of having employees who make them money, their employees cost them so much they would rather pay them to leave.

Under normal circumstances, if a company doesn't have enough work for the number of employees it has, it can layoff some so others can continue in a functioning, prosperous company. Not in this case. Not with the contracts the United Auto Workers (UAW) union negotiated. GM, which lost $10.6 Billion (that's Billion with a "B") last year is forced to push itself to the brink of bankruptcy to entice employees to leave. What a choice for the union membership. Should they take the money now, or risk that there won't be a GM in the future to retire from. So how does a company end up in this position? It engages in a dance of death with a union.

Not all union contracts are this way. Many unions engage the company their members work for with an attitude of being partners with the company. But they are the exception, not the rule. The majority of them are like the UAW, where they fight extremely hard to extract everything it can from the company. The company will agree to the terms, but these terms will only work in a particular economic market. Both the union and the company are doing this of their own free will, so that is why I call it a dance, although I call it the union's dance because it is the union that initiates it. It is also a dance to the death, because all markets change, and any company tied down by the binding contracts of unions will not be able to properly adapt to those changes.

This is the liberal way of conducting business. Unions seek to get as many employees as it can to believe that the union can protect them with their strong arm tactics, such as what the UAW got from GM that prevents layoffs. Instead of following a process that maximizes the wealth creation of most businesses, liberals seek a business climate that spreads the most misery around. They like to believe that fewer people will be hurt this way, but the reality is quite different. As a company is allowed to be prosperous and create wealth, the more opportunities there will be for others to benefit. What liberals seek will squander wealth, which ensures more people will be harmed.

The security created by unions is a false security. Union contracts do not change how markets work. They only prevent companies from adapting, which actually maximizes the number of people who will have to go, or everyone will lose their job when the company collapses. Not only that, but due to the false sense of security they were feeling, the loss of the job will be particularly devastating, because they weren't preparing for it.

If unions really cared about their members they would be partnering with the company to ensure its success, and preparing their members for the changing market, so that the fewest number possible could move on (not laid off) to other careers without all the trauma. Yet that would entail the union teaching its members to be independent of the union, so I won't be holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

Why Liberals Are Now Progressives

2006-03-15T14:33:00.000-08:00

I was watching one of those talking head news shows the other day, and I heard yet again from another liberal who is rejecting that label, preferring himself to be called a 'progressive.' For the same reason that secretaries are now called administrative assistants, and stewardesses are now called flight attendants, liberals are running from their self-assigned label. Why do you suppose that is?

Both liberals and conservatives have been doing their darnedest to turn the other's name into a pejorative for some time now. Yet you don't see conservatives telling others to refer to themselves by some other name. This is particular stunning when you consider the near lock that liberals have on the mainstream media.

As a way of analyzing this, take a look at why secretaries and stewardesses decided to change their names. There was a time when the people in these professions could look proudly at what they did, but because of circumstances within our culture, these professions started getting negative connotations associated with them. Their jobs never changed, just how our culture viewed the jobs had changed. Rather than taking on the monumental task of redefining what it means to be a secretary or stewardess to the public at large, they chose to address this problem by using a name change as a vehicle to get others outside of their profession to understand what their job is really like. The relevant thing here is that the people within their profession never changed what they did when they decided on using the name change. This was only done for communicating to those outside of their profession.

So who are the people that are outside these progressives that this name change is meant to communicate to? The easy answer would be that the name change is for the conservatives, but this would be wrong. The secretaries and stewardesses changed their names for people who were not paying close attention to them. This name changing routine only works on people who are using our culture to define a group, and are not actually analyzing for themselves what this group is. Since conservatives are paying very close attention to liberals, they would not be swayed by any name change.

The answer to this mystery takes an understanding that I have always had about liberals, and that is that liberals are composed of two groups, the elites and the victims. Liberalism requires that there must be victims to be taken care of, and elites who believe they have the all the answers for the victims. Liberalism cannot exist without this dichotomy.

The elites actually have a very condescending view of those among them who are the victims, and the name change to 'progressive' proves it. The elites either believe the victims are incapable of taking care of themselves, or they cynically believe they can, but choose to deceive the victims into needing the elites in order to derive political power from them. In either case, the elites know they can't explain themselves to the victim class, so they must employ gimmicks like name changes to convince the victims that they only have their best interests at heart.

Conservatives on the other hand, are not composed of multiple groups. A critical part of being a true conservative is that you must not be a victim. As a conservative, you must see the government as something that is more likely to cause you problems, rather than as a solution to them. All conservatives are expected to understand what conservatism is, so gimmicks like name changes are not even considered.

Conservative Conversion Primer Update

2006-03-08T13:04:00.000-08:00

I have updated my Conservative Conversion Primer. A link to it can be found in the left side bar. I cleaned up some language through out it, and I added a new ending reflecting the view point that conservatives are happier than liberals. Post any comments you may have here.

Saddam Is Not Needed

2006-02-28T12:12:00.000-08:00

It disheartens me to say that I find myself in complete disagreement with the man I consider to be the greatest living conservative thinker today, William F. Buckley Jr. I have always looked to his wisdom to understand the events of the day, even when I have had trouble understanding the words he has chosen to use to explain them. Yet there is no doubt in my mind that he is wrong in his latest column for the National Review titled "It Didn’t Work" (24 Feb 2006). In it he postulates that due to the recent bombing at the Shiite mosque in Sumara, and the subsequent violence, we have now failed in our mission in Iraq. We may still fail there, but that point has not been reached, nor will it as long as we maintain our resolve.

Mr Buckley's error in judgment can be highlighted by the following in his column

It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously cited American soldier that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each others' throats.

This is a typical lament I hear from many people who doubt our mission in Iraq. They believe that he Iraqis are incapable of self governance due to their differences. Yet it has been my observation in life that whenever there are groups of people at each others throats there is always someone, or some other third party group, causing the strife for their own advantage. Saddam was not need to keep the peace. He was the one causing the problems between the Sunni and Shia. He needed them at their throats just so he can build and maintain his power.

It really is no different than what is going on in this nation with people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton stoking racial animosity, or liberals in general stoking class hatred. There will always be someone seeing the advantages available in times of turmoil, and then doing their best to build or maintain them. The only way past it is to persevere, do not respond to their provocations, and keep your focus on your goal.

Mr Buckley illuminates the required action when he states the reaction of some Iraqis after the insurgents have struck:

The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors.

This is nothing more than a problem of managing expectations. The Iraqis should have never have been allowed to expect us to protect them in the first place. We are not an occupying force. We must continue to train the Iraqi military to defend themselves, which is actually going quite well, no matter what the MSM would have us believe.

The Conservative Values of the Olympics

2006-02-17T08:06:00.000-08:00

In Kyle Smith's recent article at OpinionJournal.com titled The Real History of the Olympics, he proposes that the Olympics should be cancelled because he believes it causes a great deal of strife between nations. He starts his history with the dream of its creator as being a source to bring about peace to this world, then presents many examples where it only causes problems. From cheating athletes, to bias judges, to a world turned into a bunch of "hockey dads," he believes a more harmonious world wold be created if we just got rid of the Olympics. My retort is, "Is the Olympics the cause of the strife between nations, or is it just a clarifying event?"

What do I mean by a clarifying event? Take the current media storm about our vice president accidentally shooting his friend. Under normal circumstances this would have been a minor event where the focus would have been on the welfare of the victim. Also under normal circumstances, the person responsible would have been left alone to grieve for his friend. But these are not normal circumstances. This event has allowed us to take a very good look at the Main Stream Media (MSM). The MSM has made this issue all about them. "Why weren't we notified." And not just that, but "why weren't we notified immidiately." It also presented them with another opportunity to completely savage the vice president.

This is a clarifying event because it allows us to see the complete arrogance of the MSM. They act like it was written into the constitution that they be formally informed of everything that goes on in the administration. It also shows that savaging a vice president is far more important to the MSM than informing the public of what should be the real priorities of the day.

Yes, it's terrible what has happened to Mr. Wittington, and it's equally terrible what is still happening to Mr. Cheney, but we are not often presented with such a clarifying event that lays so bare the arrogance and the agenda of the MSM.

The Olympics also serve as a clarifying event. It may not directly bring about the world peace like its originator dreamed, but it will allow us to see how close we really are to achieving it. I can't think of anything that puts a person's true character on display than how they react to defeat or victory in hard fought competition.

When I heard a person whom I consider a great conservative mind also express that the Olympics should be cancelled, I could only shake my head and sigh. It seems far too many conservatives view the Olympics the same way they view the United Nations. Yes, in both cases their stated goal is world peace, but in reality they have morphed into a venue for the world to gang up on the United States, but that is where their similarities end. The Olympics is not like the UN, where liberal principles are held in high esteem. At the Olympics there are actual winners and losers, which liberal dogma patently forbids. The conservative values taught in the Olympics are sportsmanship, competitiveness, pride in ones nation, and the joy that can only be experienced in a finely-tuned healthy body not whacked out on drugs.

Yes, there are cheating athletes and biased judges, but so what? These are not real problems, and eliminating the Olympics will not solve one real problem in this world. With the Olympics intact, we not only get an excellent vehicle to teach non-liberal principles to our citizens that can only be learned through competition, we get a clarifying event that shines a spot light on the things we need to work on to bring about real peace in this world.

The Dhimmitude of Conservatives

2006-02-14T14:01:00.000-08:00

Diana West wrote an editorial titled 'Cartoon Rage' (The Washington Times, February 10, 2006) where she puts forward the proposition that our society needs to learn a new word, dhimmitude. The word derives from the Arabic word Dhimmi, which as she explains were...

...populations of Jews and Christians vanquished by Islamic jihad... were tolerated, allowed to practice their religion, but at a dehumanizing cost. There were literal taxes (jizya) to be paid; these bought the dhimmi the right to remain non-Muslim, the price not of religious freedom, but of religious identity. Freedom was lost, sorely circumscribed by a body of Islamic law (sharia) designed to subjugate, denigrate and humiliate the dhimmi. The resulting culture of self-abnegation, self-censorship and fear shared by far-flung dhimmi is the basis of dhimmitude.

The extremely distressing but highly significant fact is, dhimmitude doesn't only exist in lands where Islamic law rules.

She then continues by showing examples of dhimmitude by how most media outlets are treating the Mohammed cartoons...

... we have seen the proud Western tradition of a free press bow its head and submit to an Islamic law against depictions of Mohammed. That's dhimmitude.

Not that we admit it: We dress up our capitulation in fancy talk of "tolerance," "responsibility" and "sensitivity." We even congratulate ourselves for having the "editorial judgment" to make "pluralism" possible. "Readers were well served... without publishing the cartoons," said a Wall Street Journal spokesman. "CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam," reported the cable network. On behalf of the BBC, which did show some of the cartoons on the air, a news editor subsequently apologized, adding: "We've taken a decision not to go further... in order not to gratuitously offend the significant number" of Muslim viewers worldwide. Left unmentioned is the understanding (editorial judgement?) that "gratuitous offense" leads to gratuitous violence. Hence, fear - not the inspiration of tolerance but of capitulation - and a condition of dhimmitude.

Still a little fuzzy about what dhimmitude is? Consider the following photograph taken at a Muslim demonstration in London over the cartoons.

Now get into the frame of mind of the person who wrote and/or displays that sign. Can you imagine the absolute contempt he has for Western society to show this. He is so sure we are completely whipped and cowed that he knows he can brazenly display this without impunity. He is counting on our 'dhimmitude' to accomplish his goal of world wide Islamic control.

Western society needs to take this threat more seriously, but I have my doubts it will. Not just because of our dhimmitude towards Muslims, as demonstrated by all of the scared apologists' statements towards the cartoonist and the papers that publish them, yet no real condemnation of the protesters, but also because of the conservatives dhimmitude towards liberals here in our country.

This dhimmitude of conservatives towards liberals is understandable considering how liberals shout down conservatives on universities; throw pies into the faces of conservative speakers; squirt urine on Republicans attending their national convention; bang pots and pans at the State of the Union; and much more, all in the name of free speech.

Yet none of these activities have anything to do with speech. They are all about harassment. The liberals have no intention of changing anyone's mind, which should be the basis of anything that should be protected as freedom of speech. They are trying to intimidate the ones they disagree with in order to get what they want.

All forms of intimidation must be resisted if we are going to deal with the real threat of islmofacism. Dhimmitude begins with accepting the milder forms of intimidation like what liberals are throwing at us, and this then makes it easier to submit to what Islam has in store for us. Never forget that Islam is Arabic for 'submission.' And anyone who believes that this isn't serious threat, need only Ask The Imam!

Ford Field Did Not Cost Anyone Their Job

2006-02-07T10:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I heard someone who I thought was a conservative lament that he could not enjoy the Superbowl because of the name of the of the football field that it was played on. He wondered, 'How many jobs could have been saved if the Ford Motor Company had not bought the naming rights for the field?' That's a pretty easy question to answer, none.

Only in a socialist paradise, like France, are companies seen as a means to provide jobs for workers. In a capitalist economy, companies only provide jobs to workers that can provide more value than cost to those who employ them. It is absurd to believe that any company would fire people who were making them money, particularly a company that is struggling like Ford. The money for naming that football field came out of the pockets of the share holders. It is they who have a right to complain about this, not the workers.

The workers who are being laid off should have known their company was not making cars that the public wanted. They should have seen that they were not contributing any real value to the company. That is, work that is seen as beneficial to the customers, not to just themselves. The lamenting this guy and others are making are not helping these workers take responsibility for there lives, it just helps them justify their belief that they are some sort of victim, who need not worry about whether their company is run right.

I would never work for a company that didn't adhere to proper capitalist principles, because I would not believe that it would stay afloat. The company that I work for, I do so because I know I am providing more value than cost to them, and I know the leadership is guiding the company properly for a bright future. I know this because I pay attention to the products we make and the market place we serve.

The Justification For Having Children

2006-02-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

Last night, while running an errand for my wife, I found myself listening to the Jerry Doyle Show. I generally don't listen to "angry conservative" talk shows, but at least Jerry is not over the top like Michael Savage and his Savage Nation show. Last night, though, Jerry seemed a little more angrier than usual, and the subject he wanted to talk about was his reservations about having children.

From what I could understand, he is married but does not have any kids, and could not imagine bringing a child into this world with all of the problems we are having. He then went through a long litany of problems from terrorism to the national debt that he believes should not be shouldered by our next generation. It was as if him having a child was making him responsible for these problems being forced on the child.

At first I didn't know how to respond to him. The only thing I could think of was something I heard about how to address the problem of world overpopulation. It was to have more children in the hopes that maybe one of these children will come up with a good solution for it. This may sound like a joke, but it actually is quite serious.

The problem Jerry was having was that he could only picture his children as children, and not as the potential problem solvers that they could be. One of the greatest responsibilities we have as members of the human race is to bring respectful and responsible children into this world. Not having children is no way of dealing with the problems that we face. He should show more respect for his children in believing that they will do better at solving these problems than he would.

Just before my errand was complete he finally restated his problem in terms I could respond to. He said "how can you justify having children during these times?" Justify? You can't justify having children. Children are their own justification. They are, in fact, self-justifying. If you don't have any children, this may seem like a bizarre thing to say. It takes having children, then realizing that you could not imagine your life without them, to really understand this.

I was only able to listen for a little while. Hopefully by the end of the show someone was able to talk him into being a father. In reality, though, this isn't something you get talked into. It's just something you do when you have hope for the future. And whether you have that hope has more to do with your frame of mind, than your perception of the world around you.

Hooray Exxon Mobil

2006-02-01T12:45:00.000-08:00

Hooray for Exxon Mobil! Their profit for 2005 is reported to be a record $36.1 Billion. Isn't this great news? No? Are you part of the crowd that thinks an oil company making large amounts of money is bad? There certainly are a lot of politicians making this out to be a travesty. There's even a US Senetor calling for windfall taxes to be imposed on Exxon Mobil. How about we look at all of the anti-capitalist rhetoric that's being thrown around right now, and show it as the absurd non-sense that it is.

Before we start, we must establish what is the basic purpose of a corporation, which is to deliver to the share holders a dividend. They are not there to provide jobs, or to charge as little as possible for the products and or services they provide. The more real value they provide to our economy, the larger the dividend they can provide to shareholders. This in turn means there is more money that the shareholders have to spend on other goods and services. This is how an economy works and grows.

Now let's consider how many shareholders are there for Exxon Mobile, which is over 3 million. Many of them retired seniors living off their investments. We are not talking about a rich cabal of republicans making out big time, but mostly average people who are now going to have more money to spend on other things. This leads us to why liberal politicians want windfall taxes. Rather than private citizens deciding how the money should be spent, politicians want the money to be spent on the programs that will help keep themselves in power.

Do you believe Exxon Mobil got its profits by unfairly gouging the public? Why is that? They are not a monopoly. Do you think they are in colusion with other oil companies to artificaily raise gas prices? If so, then start your own oil company and under cut them. Of course that will never happen. The typical liberal hasn't a clue on how to run an oil company, yet their are quite certain that this one is being run improperly.

Of course their profits are due to higher oil and gas prices, but that is the nature of a free market. There is a much greater demand for oil all over the world, and the supply is fixed. Liberals are quick to complain about higher priices, but not about how their policies have limited the ability to increase the supply.

Another thing I have been hearing from politicians for sometime now is the introduction of price controls. This is an incredabaly stupid idea, and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding on how economies work. So let me put it in very simple terms:

Price Controls = Gas Lines

If an oil company can sell its products at a higher price in some other country, that is where they are going to sell their products. The more politicians force the price away from what the real market value is, the longer the gas lines will be. It really is that simple. If you think our economy is having a hard time adjusting to these higher energy prices, just wait until you factor in all of the dead time from people waiting for gas.

But everything is not all bad. In fact, adjusted for inflation, gas prices are still lower than they were in the 1970's. Also, it is higher gas prices that will cause more investment into alternative energy sources. As a side note, this is another thing that drives me crazy about liberals. The tree-hugging crowd has been asking that taxes be raised on gas to reduce consumption for some time now, but it seems they only want this if the goverment gets the money. If private citizens are going to get it, then for some reason it's wrong.

I Guess I Am A Racist

2006-01-28T14:07:00.000-08:00

Until recently, if someone were to ask me if I was a racist, I would have said no. But then I defined racism as wanting to harm a person, or hold someone back from succeeding, based on their race. In fact, I don't even recognize the justification that most people implement racist acts. Most racists see our economy as a finite size pie, where if someone gets some part of the pie, this will decrease what is available for others. Racism is then a cheap method to eliminate competition. I see our economy as an infinite size pie, where the more people there are contributing into it, the larger it grows. This in turn means there is more wealth for me to pursue. With this view of our economy, it is insane to do anything to prevent others from succeeding.

This was my view of racism until I found myself listening to this talk radio show the other day. The host was interviewing a liberal professor from a mostly white university. The professor was concerned that because of the lack of minorities on campus, the students were not exposed enough to the other races in our society, so he created a course that I would describe as teaching white students to feel guilty about their race, and how they are racist, whether they realized it or not.

His method of demonstrating that racism was still quite prevalent within white society, and hence the need for his course to address it, was to ask the mainly white students to raise their hands if, assuming this was medically possible, they would be willing to change their race to African-American. Since no one would raise their hands, this was all the proof he needed of the oppression minorities still experience today, and what racists these student were. Well if the new standard for racism is not wanting to be another race than the one that I am, then I guess I'm a racist too.

Of course, if I were conducting this course I would delve a little deeper as to why all of these white students wouldn't change places with blacks. I know I don't see the oppression and segregation that existed 40 years ago, yet at the same time, I do believe there is an advantage to being white.

It's not that I believe that someone will give me something just because of my race. I often hear criticism of this nature from minorities and liberals, that I belong to a race of privilege. In fact, I would say the opposite is true. I see plenty of the 'affirmative action' type programs where blacks get a pass on a lot things that I know I never will. Even if it were true that some one would give me a job over a black, it's not like I can rely on that. I can't go through life as if my only competition for jobs, or other things I want in life, will be from someone of another race.

This is what the real advantage to being a white is. If I fail at something, no one is going to feel sorry for me, and allow me to blame someone else for my problems. Society expects me to succeed on my own, which in turn forces me to be self-relient.

Unlike 40 years ago when blacks only had to worry about the actions of whites holding them back, they now have to worry about members of their own race doing it. I could not imagine what it would be like to go through school in this day; where getting good grades would be seen as a betrayal of my race; where succeeding outside the proscribed liberal-agenda-approved processes would prompt others of my race to call me an Oreo.

Yet as a white person, I can openly ridicule any member of my race who claims I am betraying it. It is a big advantage in life to not have to fail, just so that those who claim to represent me can gain power from that failure.

Am I proud of this advantage? No. It's just the way things are in this highly race conscience society of ours. Quite frankly, I wish it would go away. Once it's gone, it will indicate that everyone is contributing their fullest to our economy. The only advantage anyone really needs to succeed in life is to be a citizen of this great nation. The only advantage I have in life that I am proud of is the advantage of being an American.

Law Abuse

2006-01-18T11:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went through quite a high and a low when I heard about the Supreme Court ruling on Oregon's Assisted Suicide law. Today I am just plain angry.

The high point occurd when I heard that the court ruled the Attorny General over-reached in his attempt to stop Oregon's law from going into effect. The low point occured when I found out how the court split on the ruling, and particular after reading the written opinions. These opinions demonstrate complete and total hypocracy on those who have written them.

Can it be possible that a ruling be right for all the wrong reasons? Yes and no. Yes, because I agree with the outcome, but ultimately no, and that is going to take some explaination to understand.

But first, for those not in the know, this ruling is about the the Attorney General's attempts to use the the Controlled Substance Act of 1970 as a means to stop the Assisted Suicide law from going into effect. By doing this the attorney general commits an act that I despise in all lawyers (and judges for that matter) when they do not find the law they need. They then begin to root around within the wording of other laws to find the meaning they are looking for. The intention of the law be dammed, if the words are right, then they are going to use it.

I think I can say with relative certainty that every politician who voted on the Controlled Substance Act of 1970 had no idea it would be used to block an assisted suicide law. If John Ashcroft was so certain that stopping the law was the right thing to do, then he should have gone to congress to ask for a law stating so.

We conservatives like to bemoan the fact that Roe v Wade was a poor Supreme Court ruling because no where in the constitution is there a right to abort your children. We believe that our Founding Fathers who voted on the constitution and the bill of rights would be horrified if they found out that what they voted for used for such a purpose. Yet it was Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas who dissented, by backing the actions of the Attorny General.

As for the other side of the court, who proclaimed that the Atterny General's actions were 'incongruous with the statutory purposes and design' of the law, how does this fit with their support of Roe v Wade? It's quite clear that both sides of the court voted based their judgement on what they perceive to be right or wrong about assisted suicide, not based on what their role as judges are in our nation.

This gets me back to the question of 'Can it be possible that a ruling be right for all the wrong reasons?' It is an abuse of a law to use it for any other purpose than what it was intended for, and the primary role of the supreme court is to prevent these kinds of abuses. With these incredably hypocritical opinons form both sides of the court, I am not left with any confidence that the court is prepared to execute its proper role in the future. So the answer to the question is, if the reasons are wrong, then so is the ruling, regarless of the outcome.

To Union Or Not To Union

2006-01-16T11:38:00.000-08:00

When I got out of the Navy, and went to work at a civilian manufacturing plant, I didn't have much of an opinion on unions, neither good or bad. I knew I liked the basic concept of unions. After all it's "United we stand, divided we fall" right? Based on what little history I had of them they seemed to be necessary. That was my basic opinion of them until I actually had to deal with one. When I got the job at the plant, all I was told by the manager that hired me was that this was an "open shop," which meant that I did not have to join the union in order to work there. Nothing more.

From the very first day I started working I was told by the union employees that if I didn't join, then I was nothing but a scab who was taking advantage of the hard earned privileges that they had fought for. There was never any attempt to convince of why they were right. They considered it self-evident, and quite frankly, beneath them to explain anything to me.

This was not a good approach for them to take to getting me to join. I have always been a rather rebellious person, and I never took too well being told what to do. Needles to say, I never joined, and as I soon found out, neither did about half of the people in my department.

For the three years I worked within that department, I was able to get a good look at how unions work, and let me tell you, it wasn't pretty. The worst aspect was the need for the unions to maintain an antagonistic relationship with the company. They had to justify their existence by making sure the "rank and file" believed the union was necessary for their protection. I didn't see any need for protection, but you couldn't convince the union members of this.

When I was in the Navy, I recalled several people who really hated it. They just couldn't stand the Navy, and as soon as their enlistment was up, they got out. The thing is, I never met anyone in the Navy who hated it as much as some of the union members hated the company they worked for. They absolutely despised it. They acted like the management were the most evil people who walked the planet, yet they continued to work for the company. How whipped you must be in life to work for a company you despise I hope I'll never know. I can tell this though, it takes working for a union to get there.

Unions like to talk about all of the great things they believe they brought about in our society, like better working conditions, shorter working hours and greater benefits. This may be true, but I can make a good argument that they had nothing to do with them. Let's just say for the sake of an argument that it is true. So what? I'll bet the buggy whip manufacturers thought they made the greatest buggy whips in their day, that's still no reason why they should stay in business.

Most unions currently operate under a false premise that companies exist to provide jobs for employees. Nothing can be further from the truth. Companies exist to provide goods or services to their customers at a price their customers consider to be of value. Focusing on this, and not on what jobs a company can provide, is what will benefit our society the most. Jobs should only be considered a side benefit of having companies, rather than everyone just working for themselves.

Take for example a news program I saw about 10 years ago. This broom manufacturing plant was going out of business because they couldn't compete with the cheap foreign imports. The reporter was interviewing a union employee who was absolutely devistated by the loss of her high paying job. She was holding up one of the brooms her company was making, and comparing it to one of the ones coming from Mexico. It was quite clear that the American broom was of much better quality. No question about it. The thing she never understood was that it was just a broom. I know I'm not going to pay $20 for one of her brooms when I can pay just $5 for the poorer quality one. It's just a broom.

The real problem here was the trust she put into her union leadership to take care of her. Union leaders make a big talk about how they are acting in what's in the best interest of the members, but they have an extreme conflict of interest by making sure that their members remain members, even if the industry is dying, and the workers really should be looking to get into another career.

No matter what industry you are in, if it takes certain amount of people to accomplish a specific task now, it will take even fewer in the future. Most unions today are not geared to accept this fact. Instead of working with companies to prepare for the market forces that require a reduction in a work force, they work against it. They go so far in working against it that they would rather see any company go out of business, rather than respond properly to what the market place demands.

Contrary to the impression you have probably gotten so far, I am not anti-union, I am no more anti-union as I am anti-government. I'm only against how unions are most often implemented. I still consider the basic premise of a union to be quite valid. People with similar skills banding together to support one another, to provide benefits, and keep each other trained and abreast of industry trends, I think is a great idea. My view of unions and governments are exactly them same. Unions and governments that help me to "be all that I can be," I am all for. Unions and governments that want to protect me and decide for me what's in my best interest, I want no part of.

Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, protects workers like a good economy. When companies have to compete for workers, the workers will always benefit. Most unions, on the other hand, are a poor protector of workers because of how they only focus on their workers to the detriment of the economy as a whole. In fact, for these types of unions to thrive it is a conflict of their interest to participate in improving the economy. They are nothing more than parasites, sucking the life out of it.

Pat's At It Again

2006-01-06T13:46:00.000-08:00

It appears that Pat Robertson has performed another cranial rectal inversion by stating that Ariel Sharon's stroke was caused by God in order to punish him for splitting Israel. Let it be known here that Pat does not speak for this Christian.

What I perceive to be Christ's message to us is that there are peaceful solutions to all problems, but in my ignorance as a mortal man, I don't always see that solution. At the same time I believe that doing nothing can be more evil than actually committing other evil acts, which is why I support the war in Iraq.

In no way will I ever ascribe to the Lord that I worship such ignorance as needing to commit evil to accomplish His goals. Maybe He does, but I see no benefit in believing it.

What Pat Robertson is doing is projecting the evil that he feels toward Ariel Sharon onto the Lord in order to deal with the guilt his sub conscience is experiencing. By saying God wants the evil that he feels in his heart, he is doing nothing more than living in denial.

The Need For Torture

2006-01-04T11:13:00.000-08:00

There has been a great deal of noise in the MSM over the need to outlaw all forms of torture. I wasn't planning on posting anything on this, but now that the president seems to be behind this effort, it appears I must. The two reasons I am hearing from those who advocate this outright ban are that torture is not effective, and that it is generating a lot of ill will from people in other countries.

The first reason is pretty silly. I think our military are in a much better position to determine the effectiveness of the torture they are conducting. Sure, any one being tortured could just say anything to get them to stop, but I believe the ones conducting the interrogation are professional enough tell if what they are getting is any good.

To believe that torture is ineffective, requires you to believe that the motives of our military are pretty sadistic. As a former military man, I believe their motives are that they want information that will save peoples lives, and that's why they are doing it. That leads me to believe that it is effective, or they would not be doing it.

The second reason is far more ridiculous than the first. If we were to in act the ban, we would not gain one ally, or change the mind of one single person in our favor. Those who hate us (both foreign and domestic) do so because of who we are and what we represent. Nothing short of us losing our super power status will ever satisfy them.

There are limits that I would recognize on torture, but they already exist with the Geneva Convention rules of warfare. Those who are captured on the battlefield, and in uniform, should not be tortured in any way, and in fact, should be treated with respect.

I believe the source of the thinking on this ban comes from a twisted reasoning for the Geneva Convention rules. This thinking is as if we signed on to the Geneva Convention rules to demonstrate what great people we are. And of course, if we are great people, then surly we would extend these rights to everyone, including those held in Guantanamo Bay.

This reasoning is complete nonsense. We signed on to the Geneva Convention rules to hold our enemies accountable to their actions towards our soldiers who may end up being captured. If we give everyone these rights, then what incentive do our enemies have in abiding by the Geneva Convention rules?

This is one of the reasons that I hate that incredibly inane saying called the Golden Rule. In no way are we going to get our enemies to treat our soldiers with respect just because that's how we treat theirs. A ban on torture is just as much a folly as a ban on war. Neither should be entered into lightly, but both must remain viable options in order to accomplish real peace in this world.

Force Multipliers

2006-01-03T11:54:00.000-08:00

The primary intent of my blog is to post my original thoughts, but occasionally I'll post someone else's work when I feel it needs more attention. Case in point is the following poem by Vietnam Veteran Russ Vaughn called Force Mulipliers.

Wikipedia: force multiplier-a military term referring to a factor that dramatically increases (hence multiplies) the combat-effectiveness of a given military force.

In Iraq an IED explodes,
An American soldier dies,
But that blast will grow as the media blow
It up before our eyes.
And trumpet to the watching world,
These fifth column falsifiers,
Like sheep they bleat we face defeat,
Our foe’s force multipliers.

Osama and his minions know,
In combat they can’t beat us;
So they hope and pray will come a day,
Our own media will defeat us.
Ignoring all the good we’ve done,
Liberals focus on the gore,
On losses mounting and body counting,
To prove we’ve lost this war.

They disgraced us once in Vietnam,
So now these leftists feel,
That again they’ll win with media spin,
And make America kneel.
But defeatists aren’t the only ones,
Learned lessons from the past;
Back then we swore we’d lose no more,
This time we’re standing fast.

The Internet’s exposed them,
As elitist media liars;
They stand unclothed and widely loathed,
Our foe’s force multipliers.
Some day when all our troops return,
With Iraq on freedom’s path,
The liberal elite who sought defeat,
May face some Righteous wrath.

Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66

Well said if I must say. If you are interested in reading more of Vaugn's work, check out this link.

Liberal Professors

2005-12-29T11:08:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, a person wrote a letter to the editor of my local paper defending the liberal bias on university campuses. The entire text follows:

Regarding the ongoing discussion about the preponderance of "liberal" versus "conservative" professors on university campuses, let me offer the following thoughts.

Liberalism is the philosophy of the broad-minded, the free- thinking and the tolerant. Conservatism advocates deference to tradition and is characterized by an unwillingness or slowness to accept change or new ideas (dictionary definitions, not mine). The relevance here is that while liberalism promotes "out-of-the-box" thinking, conservatism discourages it.

It is for this reason that the universities promoting "liberal" thinking are more successful in advancing knowledge. Let's not forget that it was "conservative" attitudes that led to the arrest and conviction of Galileo for endorsing the Copernican model of the solar system.

We are lucky indeed that "liberal" thinking pervades the faculties of our major universities today. Had "conservative" scholars controlled the advance of knowledge in the last few centuries, the Earth would still be flat. Like Kansas.

Enrique Lombrozo

I didn't change or cut a single word of it. This was his honest testimony on why liberals should run universities. I was too busy this month to write a response, and I also figured there surely would be someone else who would, so I let it go. Someone did respond who made a good comparison with the actions of liberals on universities to the Brownshirts of 1930s Germany, but nothing to address the inanity of the arguments made by Enrique.

Now that I have some time on my hands to write, I just sent the following into the paper:

In Enrique Lombrozo's letter to the editor (12-19), he offered his thoughts on why university campuses should have a preponderance of liberal versus conservative professors. He begins by offering simplistic definitions of liberalism and conservatism, then concludes with two of the biggest historical myths still around as evidence that he believes supports his point of view.

Allow me to play the role of myth buster. First of all, Galileo was not jailed for believing in the Copernican model of the solar system. He was jailed because he cared more about insulting the pope than advancing his belief. Considering the current action of liberal students in shouting down those they disagree with, it appears that nothing has changed much in the centuries since.

As far as the flat versus round Earth debate, there were very few who actually believed in a flat earth. Most of those who disagreed with Galileo at the time still believed the Earth was round. Even those who believed Christopher Columbus's journey was a folly didn't do so because they thought the Earth was flat. They believed that it was too far to sail from Europe to Asia, which it was. Columbus didn't believe them, and went anyway. The only thing that saved this "out-of-the-box" thinker's life was that he ran into another continent on his way.

If Mr. Lombrozo wishes to engage in any further debates on the superiority of liberalism over conservatism on university campuses, I suggest he reference a more authoritive definition of conservatism than a dictionary (probably written by liberals). I suggest the Kirk Center at www.kirkcenter.org. There he will find that conservatism is more about valuing our past history in deciding how to proceed in our society, rather than going along with what ever societal fad is in fashion at the time.

Allen Gilson

I don't know about you, but I seemed to find that the arguments given by liberals in defence of their beliefs are getting more childish and cliché-driven. It is almost as if they believe the superiority of liberalism is so self-evident that any thoughtful debate would be beneath them.

I just want all you liberals who may be reading this to know that I don't consider it beneath me to defend conservatism. I consider it an honor and a duty. So please, respond. Let's have an honest debate.

What Are Words For - Part 3

2005-12-27T20:24:00.000-08:00

Successful politics require effective communications. This is the third and last in a series of posts on the problems I see that most people, and liberals in particular, have with effective communication.

There are many ideas that are understood well in one language that are not easily translated into others. The language a person uses has an impact on how they perceive the ideas in their head. Everyone should be keenly aware of how their words effect their thinking.

An example of how words impact a persons thinking are what I call the non-existent opposites. One such non-existent opposite is the concept of light and dark. Light does exists. Turn on a light and photons are emitted from the bulb. When the light is turned off, it doesn't start emitting darkness. That is because dark does not exist. The word dark was created as a communication tool. Rather than saying 'the room has insufficient light in order to see anything,' we just say 'the room is dark.'

There are many other examples of this. Another common one is hot and cold. There is no such thing as cold. What actually exists is varying levels of heat. Instead of saying 'there is insufficient heat in a room to be comfortable,' we say 'the room is cold.'

So what's the big deal? It is important to understand how words can shape our thoughts, and persuade us to believe in things that aren't true. Just because we have a word for something doesn't make what the word represents real.

There are some serious consequences for believing in nonexistent opposites. As a trivial example, most people actually believe that refrigerators make cold. They believe that if you leave a refrigerator door open it will eventually cool off a kitchen. This is a false belief. A refrigerator is nothing more than a heat pump. It moves heat, which does exist, from the inside of it to the outside of it. At the same time, the refridgerator generates heat in order to make this transfer. While there would be an initial wave of cool air when the refridgerator door is opened, leaving the door open will actually heat up the room.

What all of this is leading up to is a discussion on the very destructive non-existent opposite of us and them. We use the terms 'us' and 'them' to help us categorize the people in our lives, but these categorizations are manifistations we have created, and are not real.

When I hear either political side talking about 'us and them' politics, which is where someone seeking power creates a 'them' for 'us' to rally against, it is generally assumed to be bad. We all see that this as nothing more than naked manipulation, but it works because we all, ultimately, buy into the concept that there can be a 'them.' The only way to keep these power seekers in check is to realize that there is no them; there is only us.

Not only does buying into the existence of a 'them' allow others to control us, it also blinds us to what it will take to solve the problems we see in our lives. Just consider how you feel about someone who commits a crime that you consider to be one of 'us,' as opposed to one of 'them.' When one of us commits a crime we think of things like redemption and forgiveness. Yet when one of them commits the same crime we think in of things like retribution and revenge. This is because placing someone into the 'them' category is the first step to dehumanize them. We certainly are not going to dehumanize one of us, we are only going to do that to one of them. Then once they are not one of us, it's all right to think of all manner of evil things to visit upon them.

Yes, I do use words like dark, cold and them. But in no way do I let them dictate how I think. When I place someone into the 'them' category, I know that this was my decision, and I don't let it control my thinking about those whom I have placed into it. I know for a fact that there is only us, and the only valid way to find the political solutions needed to make our country better is by keeping that in mind.

This is a key distinction between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives are more likely to see liberals as part of 'us,' while with liberals, conservatives will always be one of 'them.' If you are a liberal who is reading this, you probably could not disagree more with what I just wrote, and as a former liberal, I understand why. This is because I see how much Main Stream Media (MSM) accuses conservatives of playing 'us and them' politics, so I would not be surprised by your reaction.

This is an excellent example of what's called projection. Projection is where you incorrectly see in others bad things that you are guilty of yourself. After all, any bad thing that you are willing to do, surely must be committed on a larger scale by those you feel morally superior to, such as those you have dehumanized into the 'them' category. In fact, you are going to look for even the slightest provocation to prove your projection to be right in order to live with the guilt of the evil you commit. In this light, projection is just another form of self-deception.

It is quite easy to see the truth about who engages more in 'us and them' politics. The foundation of liberal politics is to use the government to transfer from the supposed 'haves' to the supposed 'have nots.' In liberal politics you are primarily either a victim or a perpetrator, which is the essence of 'us and them' politics. The liberal elite, in their quest for the power to create their workers utopia, play this up so badly that members of the victim groups are shamed as betrayers of their group if they better themselves outside the processes that the liberal elite have created.

The simple truth is liberals are more inclined to view the actions of conservatives as evil and selfish, which are deserving revenge and retribution, certainly not any form of respect. This focuses their attention on using the government to force their solutions on those they disagree with, because they do not want to 'dirty their hands' by working with 'them' to solve our nations problems.

On the other hand, conservatives see the policies of liberals as well intentioned, but misguided. Conservatives want to focus on the individual, and what it takes for 'us' to decide for ourselvse what is in our best interest. Conservatives see that in order for the government to favor any group it must trample on individuals categorized as 'them,' which will never help 'us.'

What Are Words For - Part 2

2005-12-07T11:28:00.000-08:00

Successful politics require effective communications. This is the second in a series of posts on the problems I see that most people, and Liberals in particular, have with effective communication.

Another critical concept of communication is context. What meanings words have depend greatly by the circumstances that they are used in. Words that are understood within context mean that the person who read or heard the words understands the entire environment they were used in. Taking them out of context allows different meanings to be applied other than what the author of the words intended.

The most obvious example of taking words out of context is when only a part of what someone wrote was used, such as the example I used in my post on Liberals NOT supporting the troops. In that example, only two lines were used by a so-called journalist to make it look like Cpl. Jeffery Starr was resigned to die in combat, instead of being proud of his service. This is easily rectified by taking the time to read the entire passage, not just going by what a journalist with an agenda had to say.

The most insidious form of taking words out of context occurs when you have read the entire passage and believe you have heard everything you need to pass judgment on something. This kind can really trip you up. Take an example I read in another book on this subject.

Let's say you and I are having a conversation that is being recorded. During the conversation I happen to mention that it would be cool if I had a light saber. You and I would know that I was referring to the preferred weapon of the fictional Jedi Masters. On the other hand, someone reading the conversation two thousand years from now would probably think I wanted a sword that didn't weigh much.

Even if that person read the entire conversation a dozen times, he or she would come to the same conclusion for two reasons. The important one is that the they would not understand the Star Wars context. The other is that they had an easily understood, or as I would say, preferred, meaning for the words. The meaning that came to mind for the words I used fit within the context they wanted to use, so they accepted it.

The reason I bring all of this up is that Liberals are at an incredible disadvantage when it comes to understanding the context that conservatives use when discussing politics. First, there are no former conservatives within the Liberal community to translate what conservatives are saying. Yet there are many former Liberals among the conservatives (like me) who understand the context of Liberals in order to offer a translation.

Then there is the Main Stream Media (MSM), which offers its Liberal slant to news and entertainment on a continual basis. Liberals really are not offered much of an opportunity to understand the conservative context. Conservatives are constantly bombarded with Liberal dogma, and have to go out of their way to find information based on a conservative context. This makes Liberals much more susceptible to group think, than conservatives are.

For example... When conservatives say they want to end welfare, it doesn't mean they want the poor to starve. When they say they are being taxed to much, it doesn't mean they don't want to pay their fair share. When they advocate a strong military, it doesn't mean they want to go to war. When they say they want a smaller government, it doesn't mean they want corporations to take over.

You can continue to chose what ever context you want to supply for the meaning of the words used by conservatives, there really is no way anyone else can chose for you. Just remember that if your not actively searching for the context of the words the author intended, your using the one that best suits your objectives. This is what self-deception is all about. If all you want to do is hate and belittle those you disagree with, then self-deception is the preferred method to achieve this. If on the other hand you want to actually accomplish something meaningful, then I wouldn't recommend it.

What Are Words For - Part 1

2005-11-29T19:12:00.000-08:00

Successful politics require effective communications. This is the first of a series of posts on the problems I see that most people, and Liberals in particular, have with effective communication.

The most critical, and least understood, aspect of communication is taking ownership of the ideas in your head. This appears to be a pretty strange thing for me to say. But consider this, of all of the ideas running around in your brain, what percentage of them are your original ideas, as oppose to those you have learned from someone else? Would you believe it's 100%? If you don't believe that all of the ideas in your head are your ideas, then you will always have problems with taking control of your life.

Let's start with looking at what communication is. Some would say it is the transfer of ideas from one person to another. The problem with this definition is that no such thing has ever taken place (not counting the possibility of telepathy). What actually occurs is that someone with an idea translates that idea into words (either spoken or written, it doesn't matter) then another person translates, or as I prefer, interprets those words into ideas in their head. So any idea in their head, they put there themselves. The transmitter of the words may have inspired the receiver, but it is the receiver who is responsible for the specific ideas in his or her head.

Another way to put it is that the only meaning you can get out of the words you see is what you bring to them. It is the experience that you have gained up until the moment that you read those words that will determine what meaning you will get from them. The person who wrote those words played no part in what experiences you have had until then, so they really are not responsible for any new ideas you have gained by reading the words. With this understanding of communication, it is easy to see why so many people read things into words the writer never intended.

Effective communication requires a feedback process where the receiver of the words replies back with their understanding of what they have received, and the transmitter confirms or corrects the receivers reply until a true understanding takes place. Now imagine how, if at all, this feedback process would work with people you have dehumanized as evil people. Do you really think you are going to understand anything that they say?

As a side note, and in the context of what I am presenting here, what is the difference between art and literature? They are both forms of communication by different mediums, but the real difference is the expectations placed on them. With literature there is an expectation of a specific message being transmitted with the words used, while with art, you are free to arrive at what ever meaning you can get out of the painting you see. The sad truth is, most people are as likely to read anything they want into the words they see or hear, as they are with the art they experience.

One way that people give over control of themselves by not taking ownership for the ideas in their head is in the way they choose to be offended. Let say I told you to "go f*** yourself." You would probably be offended, but why? I wasn't the one who taught you to feel offended by the 'F' word. You were the one who chose that word to be offensive. In fact, if you had chose not to be offended, then I would be disarmed in my ability to control you. With everything you choose to be offended by, you create buttons I can press to have my way with you.

I'm not saying this to give me free reign to use the 'F' word. I would have been using it with the intent of being offensive, and that should not be tolerated, At the same time, there are other ways of dealing with me that don't involve you being offended.

What is really bad is the Liberal agenda of being offended at things the transmitter never meant to be offensive. This twisted line of reasoning is about gaining political power by being a victim.

Take the current rage du jour (for the past couple decades actually) about sports teams with native American names. The teams take those names to be associated with native Americans, yet because some native Americans feel marginalized in our society, they feel they can gain political power by making themselves a victim by proclaiming they are offended. Their use of the word mascot is actually a smoke screen to divert our attention of the real issue. No footabll player wants to be a mascot.

A large part of the Liberal agenda is about praising victim hood, so it is not surprising that so many Liberals resort to this to solve their problems. In this case though, there is nothing to be gained down this path. The native Americans claim they are being disrespected by these team names. Yet the teams took those name to be associated with the image they have of native Americans as warriors. The image the people on these teams are now getting out of all of this political nonsense is nothing like a warrior. Petty and spiteful are the only images being generated now. I don't see any respect coming from this course of action.

If you want to take control of your life you must be aware of how easy it is to find the things that you are looking for in the communication used by people you disagree with. If you do find evil in them, it is because you put it there. It may well in deed be true, but taking ownership of it will prevent it from clouding your vision about what you perceive in the words you see or hear.

Who Is The Imbecile?

2005-11-21T11:23:00.000-08:00

Let me see if I understand the Liberal accusation du jour correctly. President Bush lied about the existence of WMDs in Iraq, just so he could send in our troops, which would only prove himself wrong. Is that right? Even the stupidest cop on the planet knows how to plant evidence when they want to arrest someone on trumped up charges.

No doubt about it, someone here is a complete imbecile. If President Bush lied, then he is, but if he told what he believed to be true, then the people making these accusations are the imbeciles. I know who I'm picking as the ones lacking critical thinking skills.

While I'm on the subject, lets go over some other liberal lunacy concerning the war in Iraq. Those who don't accuse him of actual lying, believed he cherry-picked the intelligence that he wanted to see in order to "deceive" himself into war with Iraq. What cherry-picking would that be? Everyone believed Sadaam had WMDs, including numerous UN resolutions that said he should get rid of them. The UN cataloged them all in '94. If he got rid of them, why didn't he do it in front of inspectors so that the sanctions would be lifted. Oh, that's right, everyone at the UN was making a fortune with the oil-for-food scandal.

I wouldn't be surprised if he did come to them with wanting to prove they were being destroyed, but the UN said "no thanks, we like things just the way they are." Now it makes sense why Hans Blix was saying let the inspections continue, even though it was not his responsibility to find them. It was Sadaam's responsibility to prove he destroyed them. The inspectors need not go anywhere but where Sadaam said they were being destroyed. These inspections were nothing but a charade to keep the scandal going.

Then there is the one from Liberals about "I supported going into Afghanistan, but not Iraq." Really? The people we are fighting don't make that distinction. Their objective is to push us out of both countries. The only reason Afghanistan doesn't look like Iraq right now is that all of those Sunni terrorists would have to get through Shiite Iran. Considering how much Iran does not want a real democracy operating on its borders, I'm certain something would have been worked out by now if they were not so pre-occupied in Iraq. Once we have cut and ran from Iraq like they expect us to (they will never drive us out militarily), they will be able to turn their full attention on Afghanistan.

And lets not forget about the one about us creating more terrorist by going into Iraq, Talk about cherry-picking information. Liberals hear from the terrorists about how they are fighting the occupiers, but ignore all that the terrorists are doing to their own citizens. These guys are not fighting for freedom, but to prevent it. This claim of creating more terrorists is pretty weak when you figure in what happened on 9/11 without us occupying Iraq. We don't need to occupy anything for them to hate us. And if you think we have problems with terrorists now, just wait until they take control of Iraq.

There is one point of criticism that I do agree with the Liberals, and that is that President Bush did not prepare for the war properly. Although, I'm not in agreement with Liberals on why. Quite frankly, I wouldn't want to be a citizen of a nation that is good at invading nations, so that there are problems winning the peace doesn't surprise me. What I blame the president for is not preparing for the completely predictable and treasonous behavior of the Liberals in undermining our military. He should have learned from Vietnam that Liberals are particularly adept at turning military victories into political defeats.

The End NEVER Justifies The Means

2005-11-18T11:27:00.000-08:00

Many people wonder just how it is that well intentioned people like Liberals end up becoming, quite frankly, evil. How do people start off wanting to help the poor and disadvantaged, wind up lying, committing acts of vandalism, providing moral support to our enemies in a time of war, and even end up using urine-filled squirt guns on people trying to attend the 2004 Republican National Convention? Quite easily actually. They have fallen under the spell of "The end justifies the means."

This seemingly harmless saying is nothing but a lie. Worse still, buried deep within this lie is a trap. A trap that contains a poison so powerful that, if you are not prepared for it, will corrupt your very soul. Are you thinking I'm being a little bit too melodramatic? Stay with me on this and I will show you what I mean.

Lets start with the part about it being a lie. When someone sets about committing evil acts (the means) in order to accomplish some goal (the end) they don't see that the end that they perceive is also a beginning from someone else's perspective. Not only that, most means spawn many other beginnings that were never intended. So when it comes time too justify evil means (keep in mind that only evil ones require justification) you must factor in not only your goal, but all of the other unintended consequences that will come about. You spawned them, you must take responsibility for them. If you choose not to, then you have begun the slide into the trap.

Of the many unintended consequences that could develop, there is one that always does. When ever you commit an act of evil there is always a price to pay, and that price is damage to "that which defines you," or as I prefer to put it, your soul. People with strong ethical backgrounds inherently know that good deeds strengthen them, while evil acts tear them down. The only route to repairing the damage done by committing evil acts involves taking responsibility for all of the consequences that occur from committing them.

This damage that occurs is what sets you up for the trap that I mentioned earlier by clouding your perspective. It starts by you first not being so concerned that the goal that you intend to justify your means with isn't being achieved. You start to believe that all that really matters is that you intend to accomplish something good. This then frees you to commit almost anything. The trap finally gets sprung when, in order to deflect what you feel you are turning out to be, you start to believe the people you are directing your evil at "deserve" what you are doing. After all, it is their fault that you have chosen to use evil actions in accomplishing your goal, right?

Once you have crossed the line where they deserve this evil, you are lost. The trap is sprung. There really is no limit to what you would do because "they deserve it." The downward spiral of hate that you develop is as inevitable as your denial that this hate is in fact self-hatred of what you have become. The more hatred you feel, the more evil your actions become, the more self-hatred you develop, and on and on. All because "they deserve it."

Still think I'm being too melodramatic? Take a look at the urine squirters at the Republican convention. Do you think they got any converts to their side that day? In fact, there was not even a pretext of a goal in these actions. The one and only reason for doing what they did was because the attendees "deserved" it. So the bottom of this spiral occurs when a goal is not even considered. Hatred is done for hatred's sake alone. That's a pretty terrible existence if you ask me.

As a Christian, I take it as a matter of faith that there is always a peaceful and respectful solution to all problems, but in my ignorance I don't always see it. I also believe that the most evil acts I will ever be responsible for are the ones where I will choose to do nothing. If it is within my power to stop others from committing evil acts, and I don't, then I am just as guilty as the people who are perpetrating those acts. This means I sometimes have to commit evil acts, or endorse those acts that counter the acts that I consider to be more evil. So how do I keep from falling into the trap?

I start by never believing that who I am directing my evil at deserves it. This is completely unnecessary, and only serves to deflect my responsibility in this action. I am the one who chose evil to accomplish my goal, and if I am to heal the damage done to me by this decision, I must take full responsibility for it. Inherent in this is that I accept the responsibility of all of the consequences that arise from that decision by not just justifying my actions by my goal alone.

Finally, I always maintain my focus on the goal. I continually ask myself, "Am I being effective? Is what I am doing achieving the goal I seek?" If not, then I a committing evil acts only for the sake of committing those acts. Only by staying focused on actually achieving a goal am I avoiding the trap.

Red Fridays

2005-11-12T18:56:00.000-08:00

I normally do not forward on chain e-mails I receive, but the following not only got forwarded on, I think it is important enough to post here.

Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing Red every Friday. The reason?

Americans who support our troops used to be called the "silent majority". We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love our country and home in record breaking numbers.

We are not organized, boisterous or over-bearing. We get no liberal media coverage on TV, to reflect our message or our opinions. Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops.

Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday -and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that. Every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something red.

By word of mouth, press, TV -- let's make the United States on every Friday a sea of red much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers.

If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, co-workers, friends, and family. It will not be long before the USA is covered in RED and it will let our troops know the once "silent" majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on.
The first thing a soldier says when asked "What can we do to make things better for you?" is...We need your support and your prayers.

Let's get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example; and wear something red every Friday.

WE LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE, ONLY BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE.

THEIR BLOOD RUNS RED-WEAR RED!

I would never consider getting involved with some sort of public protest that is the kind typical of the left. This on the other hand looks like the kind of respectful action that sends the message I care without being "In your face" about it. I know what color my shirts are going to be on Fridays. What about you?

We Are Not A Democracy

2005-11-10T11:22:00.000-08:00

A hopefully telling thing has occurred here in the state of California. Eight initiatives went before the voters this week, and all eight failed to pass.

In this state, a group of people with enough money and/or popular support, can gather enough signatures to get a proposition on the ballot of an election in order to get a new law passed. Many people consider this a great thing. If we don't like the performance of our state legislators, then we can pass the laws we feel are necessary ourselves. After all, isn't democracy great?

Would you believe that our Founding Fathers thought the idea of democracy a horrible idea? What they founded over two centuries ago was a constitutional republic. In a republic, the people elect representatives who will have the time to deliberate and debate on the issues of the day, in order to pass the laws that are in the best interest of our nation. Our constitution exists to establish and limit the powers of the government our representatives work under. Our founding fathers saw a democracy as nothing but a "tyranny of the majority", and wanted nothing to do with it.

Our state initiative process does more harm than good for two important reasons. The first reason is that it allows our elected representatives to dodge the hard issues of the day. It then allows them to focus on what really matters most to them, which is to get reelected. Why should they stick their necks out on what matters most to voters, when the voters themselves will deal with it?

Many people in this state like to point to proposition 13 as something that makes our initiative process great. This proposition from the late 1970s rolled back some very oppressive property taxes that existed at the time. The initiative process acted like a safety valve for our politicians. Rather than the voters getting angry with the politicians, and holding them accountable for their actions, the initiative process allowed voters to vent their anger elsewhere, which probably saved many a politician their job.

The second reason this process is bad for our state is that laws are not passed based on whether they are right or wrong, but based on all manner of political chicanery. First, anyone with enough money can pay enough people to get the signatures needed to get just about anything on the ballot. So the appearance of a proposition on a ballet has nothing to do with whether there is popular support for something.

Then there is the uninformed populace that will be voting on them. Most people do not have the time or inclination to research the initiatives properly, so who knows what reasoning they used to vote yea or nay on any one of them. I certainly would hate to think that anyone used the outright lies that had inundated our television programs for the past several months to base a decision on how to vote.

And lastly there is the serious issue of whether the law that was passed by the initiative is even constitutional. The initiative process may bypass the republic part of our government, but there is no getting passed our constitution, and very few of the voters are scholars of constitutional law. That's why we are suppose to have elected representatives who can properly consider the ramifications of any proposed law, such as whether it will pass constitutional muster. With so many initiatives that have passed, and have subsequently have been overturned, this initiative process usually turns out to be nothing more than a popularity contest.

I am probably reading too much into the complete rejection of all of the initiatives this week. I would hope that the voters are finally getting wise and are ready to start demanding the kind of responsible action that our elected representatives should take. But then, I'm sure the labor unions didn't spend 70+ million dollars in television ads to defeat Arnold's initiatives for nothing. Oh well.

Liberals DO NOT Support the Troops

2005-11-04T11:47:00.000-08:00

One thing that continues to infuriate me is when a liberal claims to "support the troops, but not the war." What say we put this lie and/or self-deception to rest, shall we?

Liberals, more than conservatives, often engage in projection where they see what they feel or think in other people. Since they believe the war in Iraq is unjust, they naturally believe that our troops feel the same way, and would want to get pulled out of there. Yes, our soldiers would like to come home, but most know that they are there for the right reasons. I'm not surprised liberals think differently of our soldiers, considering the very selected information that gets out from Iraq.

As an example, there is currently a scandal going on at the New York Times, where one of their so-called journalists cherry-picked some information from something a soldier wrote, who had recently was been killed there. From what the article presented, you would get the impression that the soldier was resigned to being killed after he was sent there for the third time. What Corporal Jeffrey B Starr wrote, was found on his computer by his father, after it was returned to his father following his death. Below is the entire text, not just the cherry-picked two sentences (emphasis mine).

"Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I'm writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances. I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark."

Our soldiers do not need any liberal who thinks they know what is best for them, by sending them home before the job is done. How the liberals can be so condescending and patronizing and still believe they are supporting them I will never know.

If what I have written so far is still not convincing enough for you, lets look at why the insurgents continue to kill our soldiers. These terrorists do not stand any chance, what so ever, in defeating us militarily, but somehow they have got it into their heads that if they keep killing a few of us here and there we will eventually turn tail and run. Now where do you suppose they got that idea? Do you think it might be the "No Blood For Oil" crowd? As far as I am concerned, the only reason why our soldiers continue to be killed is because of the liberals. Liberals give hope to the insurgents, which drives up the cost in lives and dollars, then they turn around and blame the Bush administration for these costs.

Liberals DO NOT support the troops. They may not blame them, like they did during the Vietnam War, but they are certainly not supporting them. It's cold comfort to our troops to know that they will at least not be spit on when they return, but I think they would prefer the kind of support that will actually help them to complete their mission.

If you're a liberal who, after reading this, still believes you are "supporting the troops" by protesting the war, that's your prerogative. Personally, I've never seen a case where self-deception has helped anyone who has engaged in it.

America Honors Law Breaker

2005-11-01T11:11:00.000-08:00

I want it noted here that the reason Rosa Parks was honored by lying in state at our nation's capitol was because she broke the law. I also want it noted here that, not only do I approve of it, I believe that this is one of the many things that makes our country great. In any other country there would have had to have been some sort of coup d'etat, forcibly removing the previous government, before such an honor of law-breaking would take place. Not in this nation though. There is an undeniable streak of not respecting authority that runs through most of the citizens of this nation. The fact that we would honor her as we did only seems natural.

I'm not posting the above because I'm advocating that more laws should be broken. Quite the contrary. I think all laws should be taken very seriously. Yet, they should not be taken seriously just because they are laws. I would hope that the politicians who passed the laws put as much seriousness into the passing of them as to insure that they will benefit our society, and that none were passed for frivolous reasons such as placating special interests, pork barrel projects, or other reasons that are only for political gain. I would hope this, but we all know I would be hoping in vain.

If you think about it, Rosa shamed the politicians of the day by standing up against a law that should not have existed. Those politicians were too cowardly to stand up to the "separate but equal" types to eliminate the law, which would have made her act unnecessary. I say, lets not have any more Rosa Parks in the future by showing the courage to strike down the laws that were passed for political expediency, and not for the benefit our entire society.

Conservative Primer

2005-10-27T21:41:00.000-07:00

I just got my Conservative Conversion Primer on the web. There is link to it in the side bar on the left. If you have any comments, please post them here.

Flag Burner

2005-10-21T11:27:00.000-07:00

Here is something that I submitted as a letter to the editor that actually got printed. Following that are some additional comments that I have.

For our nation to not only survive, but thrive, we must learn to be more tolerant and respectful of each other. The corner stone for that tolerance and respect is our constitutionally protected freedom of speech.

At the same time, no one should be free to stand on a street corner and scream profanities. The intent of this activity is neither respectful nor tolerant. Can someone please explain to me how the public burning of our nation's symbol is any different than screaming profanities on street corners?

I sent in the previous because of all of the people who were saying that flag burning was some noble gesture in our free society. I saw nothing noble about it, and said so. Since then some people got the idea that I would be in favor of the constitutional amendment to prevent flag burning. Well, nothing could be further from the truth.

If this amendment were to pass, flag burning would be elevated to a special kind of crime that malcontents will be lining up to commit in order to be some kind of martyr. Flag burners should be treated no differently than people who scream profanities, and held in the same kind of contempt.

Kool-Aid Drinker

2005-10-17T13:29:00.000-07:00

I am some what surprised when I see a liberal demonstrate confusion when a conservative accuses him or her of being a Kool-Aid drinker. These liberals seem to believe that anyone should know that they would only drink naturally sweetened fruit juices, so being called a Kool-Aid drinker just doesn't make sense to them. If you fall into this category, allow me to clear things up by offering a definition, and an example, of the term 'Kool-Aid drinker' as used by conservatives.

The genesis of this term comes from the Jonestown massacre where the followers of the reverend Jim Jones drank Kool-Aid spiked with poison, as ordered by their leader. Of course conservatives don't think liberals are actually drinking poison, but they do believe the liberals' actions, in support of their party, are detrimental to themselves.

As an example, a very wide spread act of Kool-Aid drinking was the response of most liberals to what we conservatives refer to as 'Rathergate', This is about the 60 Minutes 2 episode where an obviously forged memo was used to show how a general was disgruntled about having to give a younger George Bush preferential treatment during his National Guard duty.

The thing is, this was not about one group of people lying to another group. Even if the document was true, no one who supported the president would have cared whether he was given preferential treatment as a young man. He never used his National Guard duty as a reason to vote for him, so it wasn't something that could be knocked down for his supporters. What matters to them is what kind of person they believe him to be now.

No, this was about liberal reporters wanting to rally the troops by showing another example of what a privileged life that George Bush lived. They wanted to offer other liberals more ammunition to vilify him. This was a case of the leaders of a group lying to its own members. If your response to this was "That's OK, I know their intentions were good" or "They were only fighting the good fight to keep Bush from being re-elected", then you don't care about your leaders lying to you for nothing more than to elicit an emotional response. It also means that you are a Kool-Aid drinker.

The Cross On The Hill

2005-10-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

I keep waiting to wake up from this nightmare where the symbol of my faith is in danger of being taken down from the top of a hill due to the intolerance of religion, but it only looks like this nightmare is about to become real.

Now, I'm not blaming the Atheists for this nightmare. I will fight to the death to protect their right to complain about how their tax money is spent. After all, I want to preserve my right to complain about all the stuff that my taxes are spent on that I consider down right destructive to our society. And besides, it's only natural that in a society that celebrates those that wear the mantle of victimhood that the Atheists would claim that they are being oppressed by a cross on a hill. It doesn't demonstrate any strength of character, but it is only natural.

The real source of this nightmare are the judges that are going along with this travesty. When the first judge declared that the cross must come down I thought 'surely some other judge higher up will correct this', but after more than a decade, and still the cross is threatened, I have come to realize that no such correction is forth coming. It's so sad to think that the third branch of government of the nation that I love, actually believes that religious symbols on public land constitutes a theocracy. There are real, live theocracies on this planet for them to look at to see what a theocracy really is, and yet this continues.

Let's face it, the chasm between religious expression and religious imposition is so large that if an entire branch of our government can't make this distinction, our nation and its guiding principles are in deep, deep trouble, and this is what really scares me.

My First Post

2005-10-12T12:08:00.000-07:00

As my first post.. Here is a letter to the editor that I wrote that was never published:

It sure is nice to have confirmed what I have always known about the actions of the liberals concerning the hurricane Katrina catastrophe. In E.J. Dionne Jr.'s column (27 Sep) titled 'GOP Stalls, but Democrats are split' he writes "The truth is that opposition parties normally get a chance only when the governing party disappoints." With a frame of mind such as this, it only makes sense to constantly attack the opposition party, rather than debate the merits of what they have to offer.

Of course such a debate cannot take place. The liberal message is essentially "Vote for us because you need us to take care of you." Sure, liberals will say I have misrepresented their position, but the actions of the poor in New Orleans will bear me out.

Our founding fathers established a system of government that is founded on the principles that the power of the government is derived from the consent of the governed. With this system, it is the people who have the power, not the government. The problem with what the liberals have to offer, and socialism in general, is that you cannot make credible demands on something that your are depending on for your survival. When the people become dependant on their leaders, the people can no longer make demands of them. The power has then shifted from the people to the government.

The poor that were left stranded in New Orleans due to the lack of local accountability, could not make demands of their liberal mayor and governor. Criticizing their leaders could weaken their leadership's power to deliver what they have become dependant on. That left them no one to vent their hatred on but the Bush administration. The republicans have never represented themselves as something that will take care of them, so the republicans were a safe target to believe was the cause of their suffering. They actually should consider themselves lucky that they were living in a country that has such a target for them. If they were living in the worker's paradise that is Cuba, they would have had to accept what ever the government bureaucracy deemed was necessary for them.

Put simply, if we want a government that we can make demands of, we can not surrender our power to it by becoming dependent on it. This is why liberals can never engage in a true debate in the market place of ideas. For them, everything must be about getting people "disappointed with the party in power." Thanx for clearing that up E.J.