I sure am glad our Governor, Bev Perdue, was joking when she made her remarks to the Cary Rotary Club the other day, as reported in the Raleigh Views and Disturber. Ms. Perdue called for the suspension of Congressional Elections, just this once mind you, so that Congressmen wouldn't have to worry their little heads about getting re-elected, and then maybe they could honestly go about the business of ignoring their constituents wishes. Sipsey Street Irregulars is a good place to start. Fellow NC Blogger Randy's Right has more. Or, if you can stomach it, here is Think Progress's take.
You will remember that our President, several months ago, at a La Raza rally, mentioned that unnamed people had urged him to take dictatorial powers, and that he was tempted. The Virginian has the story. Now, I don't for a minute believe that Ms. Perdue was joking. A Governor doesn't joke about ignoring the Constitution in front of a group of constituents, even if she might joke about it among her staff. And I don't believe for a minute that the members and guests of the Cary Rotary Club took Ms. Perdue's comments as a joke either. Some of them were no doubt appalled. Coming on the heals of the Sleasly administration, this embarrassment to North Carolina must be replaced with someone who has at least an ounce or two of integrity. But Ms. Perdue doesn't appear to have any real motive for wanting to suspend Congressional elections. So, what was she up to?
Ms. Perdue is yet another Progressive, running as a Democrat. There are many conservative Democrats in North Carolina. I meet them all the time, and they and I have much in common. But to a man, or woman, their politicians have all been taken over by the Pod People and are governing as Progressives. Progressive, if you recall, is another name for Communists, Socialist, or Fascist, and sometimes Liberal. Now, I can't prove this, but what I believe is that Ms. Perdue is carrying water for the Obama administration. They are testing just how much of a fuss we might put up about this.
So, let's discuss that shall we? The most likely scenario for taking dictatorial powers is a massive economic event, which the administration has done everything in its power to exacerbate all along. Of course the looters would riot since they would no longer have their "free stuff" taken from the productive. Union thugs would work to get people riled up and would in all likelihood initiate the violence as agents provocateur did at Kent State University. Police at the local and State levels would be overwhelmed. I am sure the MSM already has the editorials and opinion pieces written to call for a decisive Federal response. Say the Congress gives him such powers. The fact is that a substantial portion of the Republican leadership is as "Progressive" as the that of the Democrat leadership. Our now President for life, would in turn use those powers to declare martial law and suspend Congressional elections. Now the fight to keep our government accountable turns to the courts, where some are probably going to find, in the emanations of penumbras, or behind the walls of the Courthouse, or...well who cares where they find it, certainly they don't...that the declaration, and suspension are, surprise, Constitutional. Now it goes to the Supreme Court where I can already count 4 votes in favor, and 4 votes for the original meaning of the Constitution. So, it will come down to one man...ONE MAN...Mr. Justice Kennedy, to decide the fate of the nation. Let us hope he did not eat a plate of bad oysters the night before.
If Mr. Justice Kennedy decides the case for giving the President extraordinary powers is more powerful than the Constitution, then, as Mike Vanderboegh has said, we all get to vote one more time. I pray the President knows the dangerous game he is playing, and the horrible consequences of it. Americans will not stand still for this. Meanwhile, that wretched Governor Perdue shames everyone living here. She should be impeached.
May the Lord yet deliver us.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Speaking with a Liberal, if you must
Yesterday, I was having a conversation with a co-worker over lunch about how much better cars are today than in the 1960s. For instance, I remember that in the 1960s, living in the snow belt, it was not uncommon to see a 5 year old car with rusted fenders flapping in the breeze as it tooled down the road. Today, with greatly improved paints and corrosion protection, that is a rare sight, even for unprotected cars in the rust belt. My co-worker mentioned that cars also last longer. In the 1960s, a car was pretty much used up by about 100,000 miles. Today, it is not uncommon for a car to last 200,000, or even 300,000 miles. The conversation shifted to fuel economy. He mentioned that the 15 passenger van he was driving got 16 miles per gallon (mpg). I mentioned that in the 1960s, 16 mpg would have been a good mileage for a 5 passenger sedan. He said it was even worse than that-between 8 and 10 mpg. Turns out he was right. The average fuel economy was apparently 13 mpg.
About that time, the resident Leftist in the group asked if I thought the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) fuel standards might have had anything to do with forcing car companies to raise gas mileage. There followed this exchange, paraphrased because I can't remember well enough to quote:
Me: "Well, I think market forces should have been tried instead."
Him (frowning): "Market forces! How would that work?"
Me: "Consumers would have demanded higher mileage as gas prices rose."
Him: "Aw, that's just ridiculous. There is no hammer to force companies to build higher fuel mileage vehicles!"
Me: "True, but it works in other areas of our lives." Realizing that again, he was looking to pick a fight, and this being work after all, I tired to close the conversation peacefuI and said, "but we will never know. The government chose to regulate, and thus foreclosed any market based solution that might have come about. What might have developed never did, and we have instead a more powerful EPA."
It occurred to me later that if I could show that average mileages were trending upward in the years before the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards took effect, that would add weight to my contention. I know, for example, that in 1975, I traded in my Plymouth Fury for a new, 1975 Volkswagen Rabbit, a horrible mistake, but one driven by increasing gasoline prices. The closest I have come to finding an answer is a 2006 article from Freeman magazine by Michael Heberling entitled Government Mandated Fuel Efficiency Standards. While somewhat dated, it is a pretty good overview of the CAFE and the unintended consequences of its passage. The article says that indeed, the average mileage of automobiles during that period was getting higher, in no small measure, because of purchases of foreign made vehicles. But at the same time, there were several experiments in producing an American made car that got good mileage, such as the Corvair.
Francis Porretto spoke about a similar incident he had with a liberal here.
Now, I truly don't know whether or not market based solutions would have worked or not. But as I said at the time, it has often worked in the past, and I think leaving it up to each individual, it would in time have found a balance between fuel economy and the other factors in selection of a car. The price of gasoline is only a small factor in purchasing an automobile. Other factors include size of your family, or the need to haul stuff, the image one wants to convey, the price one can afford, and so on. By letting individuals make their own decisions, everyone would be happier with the choices and government would be smaller by at least the amount required to administer the CAFE. Of course, this situation would not have made our betters happy, since no doubt some Americans would have made the "wrong" choices.
On the other hand, I was stunned by the utter surety of my co-worker that regulation was the only way. Regulation has had unintended consequences that have not been good for Americans. The family station wagon has been replaced by the SUV and the minivan. The SUV, being built on a truck frame, has looser CAFE requirements than the station wagon had, which is built on an automobile frame. Many green types decry the SUV, but they have only themselves to blame. The Japanese auto giants gained a foothold in the American market as a result of imposition of CAFE, and have exploited that foothold for everything it is worth (and I don't dismiss the mistakes that the Big 3 made along the way either.)
Now, imagine the government imposed a one size fits all healthcare solution...oh, wait.
About that time, the resident Leftist in the group asked if I thought the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) fuel standards might have had anything to do with forcing car companies to raise gas mileage. There followed this exchange, paraphrased because I can't remember well enough to quote:
Me: "Well, I think market forces should have been tried instead."
Him (frowning): "Market forces! How would that work?"
Me: "Consumers would have demanded higher mileage as gas prices rose."
Him: "Aw, that's just ridiculous. There is no hammer to force companies to build higher fuel mileage vehicles!"
Me: "True, but it works in other areas of our lives." Realizing that again, he was looking to pick a fight, and this being work after all, I tired to close the conversation peacefuI and said, "but we will never know. The government chose to regulate, and thus foreclosed any market based solution that might have come about. What might have developed never did, and we have instead a more powerful EPA."
It occurred to me later that if I could show that average mileages were trending upward in the years before the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards took effect, that would add weight to my contention. I know, for example, that in 1975, I traded in my Plymouth Fury for a new, 1975 Volkswagen Rabbit, a horrible mistake, but one driven by increasing gasoline prices. The closest I have come to finding an answer is a 2006 article from Freeman magazine by Michael Heberling entitled Government Mandated Fuel Efficiency Standards. While somewhat dated, it is a pretty good overview of the CAFE and the unintended consequences of its passage. The article says that indeed, the average mileage of automobiles during that period was getting higher, in no small measure, because of purchases of foreign made vehicles. But at the same time, there were several experiments in producing an American made car that got good mileage, such as the Corvair.
Francis Porretto spoke about a similar incident he had with a liberal here.
Now, I truly don't know whether or not market based solutions would have worked or not. But as I said at the time, it has often worked in the past, and I think leaving it up to each individual, it would in time have found a balance between fuel economy and the other factors in selection of a car. The price of gasoline is only a small factor in purchasing an automobile. Other factors include size of your family, or the need to haul stuff, the image one wants to convey, the price one can afford, and so on. By letting individuals make their own decisions, everyone would be happier with the choices and government would be smaller by at least the amount required to administer the CAFE. Of course, this situation would not have made our betters happy, since no doubt some Americans would have made the "wrong" choices.
On the other hand, I was stunned by the utter surety of my co-worker that regulation was the only way. Regulation has had unintended consequences that have not been good for Americans. The family station wagon has been replaced by the SUV and the minivan. The SUV, being built on a truck frame, has looser CAFE requirements than the station wagon had, which is built on an automobile frame. Many green types decry the SUV, but they have only themselves to blame. The Japanese auto giants gained a foothold in the American market as a result of imposition of CAFE, and have exploited that foothold for everything it is worth (and I don't dismiss the mistakes that the Big 3 made along the way either.)
Now, imagine the government imposed a one size fits all healthcare solution...oh, wait.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
The Road to Hell is a Compromise
I once had a young man, who obviously had not been through the war on guns, and who had heard only one side of the story, ask me why we couldn't just compromise on a few "reasonable" restrictions on guns. My first thought was to simply laugh in his face, but I thought better of it. I then went through the long effort to restrict our rights, and showed how it was we, not those who wished to control guns, who had compromised all along. Now, we were standing our ground. Not one inch more. As Jesse Helms said, "Compromise, hell! If freedom is right, and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as a roll of roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?"
But it is not only on gun control that we have compromised. Most of us in the gun rights movement are not the single issue voters we are made out to be. We don't just want our Second Amendment rights, we want them all. Most of us also have jobs and responsibilities such that it is impossible to keep up with the thousands of ways every day that governments at the local, State and Federal levels violate not only the Constitution, but their own statues. Guns, thus, are a convenient short hand, for how a politician thinks about guns will almost always indicate how he will think about the rest of the Constitution. Make no mistake, every politician, and every judge knows the real purposes of the Second Amendment. Hint: it ain't about hunting.
So, it was good to read in the American Thinker the other day a piece by Jay Huag entitled Why Liberals Love Compromise. It explains how the Left has used the claim that we on the right do not compromise, to slowly frame the debate ever more leftward. They offer a proposal that is somewhat left of the status quo, and then invite us to "compromise." We lose every time. Today, we have Republican candidates for President talking about saving Social Security, an Unconstitutional law, and a Leftist ponzi scheme that threatens to drive us all bankrupt. Most times, the Left poses some change to the status quo. Suddenly, the debate is framed in such a way that those who are defending the status quo are...well...defensive. I understand why this is, even if I don't understand how so many can be taken in so consistently. It has been said that a lie will go around the world while the truth is pulling its boots on. It is, first of all, often an emotional issue, or it is made to seem so. In the case of gun control, innocent victims are sometimes gunned down in horrific crimes. The Virginia Tech massacre is a prime example. We feel empathy for these people, and wish we could do something. The Left often plays on these emotions while offering up its favored solution. Meanwhile it takes time, effort, and money to marshal the facts to counter the lie. Even so, the lie will often have become such common wisdom that a sizable number of the public will believe it. Thus, gun control is thought by many to control crime, when the opposite is true. In John Lotts formulation more guns, less crime.
So, what do we do to pull the culture back towards a Constitutional understanding of the proper role of government? Mr. Huag's view:
Part of reforming is to stand our ground. No compromise. Never. Why should people "treat freedom as a roll of bologna to be bartered one slice at a time?" Yes the Leftists will wail and scream. They will protest, and perhaps get violent. But we have the guns, remember. Let them. It is no different than when your child throws a tantrum, and it is for their good as well as our own. We must take back the school boards, take back the churches, take back the city councils, take back the State houses. In short, we must march through the institutions. It will be a generational fight, but freedom and liberty are at stake. We must win.
If the recent debt ceiling deal did not teach anything else, it should have taught everyone on our side that there is no compromising with the Left.
But it is not only on gun control that we have compromised. Most of us in the gun rights movement are not the single issue voters we are made out to be. We don't just want our Second Amendment rights, we want them all. Most of us also have jobs and responsibilities such that it is impossible to keep up with the thousands of ways every day that governments at the local, State and Federal levels violate not only the Constitution, but their own statues. Guns, thus, are a convenient short hand, for how a politician thinks about guns will almost always indicate how he will think about the rest of the Constitution. Make no mistake, every politician, and every judge knows the real purposes of the Second Amendment. Hint: it ain't about hunting.
So, it was good to read in the American Thinker the other day a piece by Jay Huag entitled Why Liberals Love Compromise. It explains how the Left has used the claim that we on the right do not compromise, to slowly frame the debate ever more leftward. They offer a proposal that is somewhat left of the status quo, and then invite us to "compromise." We lose every time. Today, we have Republican candidates for President talking about saving Social Security, an Unconstitutional law, and a Leftist ponzi scheme that threatens to drive us all bankrupt. Most times, the Left poses some change to the status quo. Suddenly, the debate is framed in such a way that those who are defending the status quo are...well...defensive. I understand why this is, even if I don't understand how so many can be taken in so consistently. It has been said that a lie will go around the world while the truth is pulling its boots on. It is, first of all, often an emotional issue, or it is made to seem so. In the case of gun control, innocent victims are sometimes gunned down in horrific crimes. The Virginia Tech massacre is a prime example. We feel empathy for these people, and wish we could do something. The Left often plays on these emotions while offering up its favored solution. Meanwhile it takes time, effort, and money to marshal the facts to counter the lie. Even so, the lie will often have become such common wisdom that a sizable number of the public will believe it. Thus, gun control is thought by many to control crime, when the opposite is true. In John Lotts formulation more guns, less crime.
So, what do we do to pull the culture back towards a Constitutional understanding of the proper role of government? Mr. Huag's view:
Part of the reason liberalism has appeared so inevitable is that "compromise" has replaced "reform" as the game that is played. What I say is this: stop playing their game and start playing ours. Conservative reform is what America needs. Their game has bankrupted the country, ruined our schools, hamstrung our economy, and confused our foreign policy. Their game failed in the '70s and is failing again now. We conservatives cannot win until we change it at every level of government, local, state and federal.
Part of reforming is to stand our ground. No compromise. Never. Why should people "treat freedom as a roll of bologna to be bartered one slice at a time?" Yes the Leftists will wail and scream. They will protest, and perhaps get violent. But we have the guns, remember. Let them. It is no different than when your child throws a tantrum, and it is for their good as well as our own. We must take back the school boards, take back the churches, take back the city councils, take back the State houses. In short, we must march through the institutions. It will be a generational fight, but freedom and liberty are at stake. We must win.
If the recent debt ceiling deal did not teach anything else, it should have taught everyone on our side that there is no compromising with the Left.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Taking a Good Look at Ron Paul
Jonah Goldberg makes several excellent points, points that are quite libertarian, today in his article at Townhall.com entitled Tyranny of the Typical. Since Mr. Goldberg says it much more elegantly than I can, instead of making a hash of things let me just quote a couple of graphs. However, to set up the first quote, Goldberg is at pains to describe Murray Rothbard's "bias of the status quo." He does so by introducing a story that Mr. Rothbard had told in his Libertarian Manifesto called the "Fable of the Shoes.":
I will make a confession here. I got to see Ron Paul in October of 2007 at the Gun Rights Policy Conference held across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. He was the only candidate then running, from either party, that bothered to show up. While his message was the same as it is now, I was turned off by the cult of personality that his supporters affected. Most of them were young people, kids to me at my age. Of course, they had no real experience, but they had tons of energy and enthusiasm. I have since reread Washington's farewell address. I have reread Eisenhower's warnings about the military-industrial complex. I have been working my way through Glenn Beck's Original Argument. And I have lived with as close to a fascist dictatorship as I care to get. In short, I am a convert to small "L" libertarianism, thanks in no small part to my friend, Francis Porretto.
Frankly, Dr. Paul's message is as close to the original ideas propounded by the founders as anyone today running for President. His foreign policy, often dismissed as "kooky" would be met with general approval all around. The founders' view was that we should trade with all countries, but be absolutely neutral in their affairs. To that end, we should have a strong military, especially a strong Navy, to defend our neutrality. But, we should back out of all entangling alliances. We should get out of the hundreds of places where our troops are now stationed such as Korea, Japan, Germany, and who knows where else. America's greatness is not that she can overwhelm any other force on the planet. That role, if it was ever thrust upon us, is no longer needed. America's greatness is in the freedom and liberty she provides to her citizens. We should be a shining city on the hill, an example to others, and a rebuke to petty tyrants and dictators everywhere.
Second, there is an unspoken assumption built into Blitzer's question "... are you saying that society should just let him die?" That assumption is that our stricken man does not in fact own his own life, that society has at least a partial ownership of him, and therefore it is up to society to see that he gets the proper care, or dies, based on its interests at the time. That is the whole, unspoken truth behind ObamaCare. It is a foreign idea that has insinuated itself in our culture that says we can not do for ourselves. But we did for 141 years.
If our republic is to survive, we must change ourselves, and our neighbors. Health care is not a "right," desirable as it may be. It is a good. Someone has to go to some expense to provide it. Socializing the provision of any good, be it health care or shoes, creates moral risks and unintended consequences. The unintended consequences include a scarcity of providers, and the eventual rationing of care because prices have been taken off the table. When that happens, one wonders which situation Blitzer would find moral: Letting the man die, due to his own decisions, or denying him the care he has been forced to pay for, thus letting him to die because government can not deliver on its promises?
Update: Steve McCann has an excellent summary of the steps the Obama regime has taken to bring us fully under a Fascist government over at the American Thinker today. The article is entitled Obama's Fascist Economy. It may be a good idea to keep this one close to hand when discussing the situation we find ourselves in with friends and neighbors.
First, why is the extremely liberal CNN moderating our first televised debate with a leftist moderator? Fox News has much higher ratings than CNN, and we could certainly find a neutral, if not friendly moderator. Brit Hume would be a good moderator, and would ask the kind of questions we really wanted to know the answer to, without the "gotcha." I am concerned that once again the media, and the Republican "establishment," whoever they are, are going to select our standard bearer. Dr. Paul is already being dismissed as not electable, and we haven't even held our first primary! It is in no small measure to the kind of questioning he got at the hands of Wolf Blitzer. Dr. Paul's message is not easily reduced to sound bites, so this style of debate does not show him well.
It's worth keeping this fable in mind as the reaction to last week's CNN-Tea Party Express debate hardens into popular myth. Moderator Wolf Blitzer had asked Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) what should happen if a man refuses to get health insurance and then has a medical crisis. Paul -- a disciple of Rothbard -- explained that freedom is about taking risks. "But, congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?"
I will make a confession here. I got to see Ron Paul in October of 2007 at the Gun Rights Policy Conference held across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. He was the only candidate then running, from either party, that bothered to show up. While his message was the same as it is now, I was turned off by the cult of personality that his supporters affected. Most of them were young people, kids to me at my age. Of course, they had no real experience, but they had tons of energy and enthusiasm. I have since reread Washington's farewell address. I have reread Eisenhower's warnings about the military-industrial complex. I have been working my way through Glenn Beck's Original Argument. And I have lived with as close to a fascist dictatorship as I care to get. In short, I am a convert to small "L" libertarianism, thanks in no small part to my friend, Francis Porretto.
Frankly, Dr. Paul's message is as close to the original ideas propounded by the founders as anyone today running for President. His foreign policy, often dismissed as "kooky" would be met with general approval all around. The founders' view was that we should trade with all countries, but be absolutely neutral in their affairs. To that end, we should have a strong military, especially a strong Navy, to defend our neutrality. But, we should back out of all entangling alliances. We should get out of the hundreds of places where our troops are now stationed such as Korea, Japan, Germany, and who knows where else. America's greatness is not that she can overwhelm any other force on the planet. That role, if it was ever thrust upon us, is no longer needed. America's greatness is in the freedom and liberty she provides to her citizens. We should be a shining city on the hill, an example to others, and a rebuke to petty tyrants and dictators everywhere.
Second, there is an unspoken assumption built into Blitzer's question "... are you saying that society should just let him die?" That assumption is that our stricken man does not in fact own his own life, that society has at least a partial ownership of him, and therefore it is up to society to see that he gets the proper care, or dies, based on its interests at the time. That is the whole, unspoken truth behind ObamaCare. It is a foreign idea that has insinuated itself in our culture that says we can not do for ourselves. But we did for 141 years.
Just so.
Paul calmly replied that he's not in favor of letting the man die. A physician who practiced before Medicare and Medicaid were enacted, Paul noted that hospitals were never in the practice of turning away patients in need. "We've given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves and assume responsibility for ourselves," he observed. "Our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it."
If our republic is to survive, we must change ourselves, and our neighbors. Health care is not a "right," desirable as it may be. It is a good. Someone has to go to some expense to provide it. Socializing the provision of any good, be it health care or shoes, creates moral risks and unintended consequences. The unintended consequences include a scarcity of providers, and the eventual rationing of care because prices have been taken off the table. When that happens, one wonders which situation Blitzer would find moral: Letting the man die, due to his own decisions, or denying him the care he has been forced to pay for, thus letting him to die because government can not deliver on its promises?
Update: Steve McCann has an excellent summary of the steps the Obama regime has taken to bring us fully under a Fascist government over at the American Thinker today. The article is entitled Obama's Fascist Economy. It may be a good idea to keep this one close to hand when discussing the situation we find ourselves in with friends and neighbors.
Restaurant Turns Back on TSA at Lunch Counter
A while back I had a post about the TSA called Dominate. Intimidate. Control in which I advocated humiliating and embarrassing TSA agents as a way of changing policy. Of course you should only do this when they are away from work. Now I read that a Seattle area restaurant refuses to serve TSA agents here.
Good.
If I lived anywhere near Seattle I would eat lunch at this place every day to support him. He has the right idea. TSA agents should shunned like the Jewish collaborators who collected taxes for Rome were shunned. They should be humiliated as the French collaborators with the Nazis were humiliated. Our government has, in some ways, become a foreign invader using home grown collaborators to carry out their agendas. But those agendas trample all over our rights, and take away from the citizen the responsibilities that should be his. Get mad citizens, and begin to resist. Here you have a blue print for how to resist.
Good.
If I lived anywhere near Seattle I would eat lunch at this place every day to support him. He has the right idea. TSA agents should shunned like the Jewish collaborators who collected taxes for Rome were shunned. They should be humiliated as the French collaborators with the Nazis were humiliated. Our government has, in some ways, become a foreign invader using home grown collaborators to carry out their agendas. But those agendas trample all over our rights, and take away from the citizen the responsibilities that should be his. Get mad citizens, and begin to resist. Here you have a blue print for how to resist.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Postmodernism and the Democratic Party
I was in the middle of a discussion with a Leftist on the Constitution when the conversation turned to, apropos of nothing at all, Scooter Libby and whether or not he should have been convicted. I was flabbergasted, as the Scooter Libby affair, and Valerie Plame had no place in the discussion. But understanding the connection between Leftists and Postmodernists helps to explain why my erstwhile debating partner pulled this particular rhetorical trick at that juncture of the debate: I was winning. But what is postmodernism, and one of its offshoots, deconstructionism? For that you could do worse than to read the American Thinker today as Paul Jacobson gives the layman a quick overview of The Postmodern Party.
I will just quote this one passage, and then let you, dear reader, ponder the entire article by clicking above:
Postmodernism needs to be rooted out of our culture and our politics. It is a childish way of thinking where something is so because the child wishes it to be so. It is an adolescent chafing at the hard rules of reality. But those hard rules, rightly understood and practiced, actually permit a great degree of freedom. Conversely, when one has no rules, one finds only tyranny. Postmodernism is the lazy man's approach to all problems, and we must find it within to return to rigorous thinking about reality as it is, if our country is to be saved.
I will just quote this one passage, and then let you, dear reader, ponder the entire article by clicking above:
The "living Constitution" theory is like playing a game that asks "What would James Madison and the other founders say if they were alive today?" But the answers to such a question say more about the one answering than they do about the Founders. Jacobson is correct that to find out what they intended, all one has to do is read what they wrote. Unlike sifting through an archaeological dig of an illiterate civilization, these men wrote much material for posterity explaining what they meant. But the founders also recognized that they were mortal men, prone to all of the failings that have plagued man from the start. So they also gave us a way to amend the Constitution should we see the need. That process, though difficult, has been successfully accomplished on twenty seven occasions, so it is not impossible. But Leftists, in their rush to create their own version of hell on earth can't be bothered with going through the hoops needed to get an amendment passed. Instead, they employ the notions of deconstructionism to make the Constitution say whatever the latest Leftist fad says it should say.
It would be hard to find a more perfect example of the fashionably foolish nonsense of postmodernist "deconstruction" and other putative postmodernist "thinking" than the utterly bogus, deceitful model of constitutional interpretation, so worshiped by "critical legal theory" proponents and their deluded Democrat janissaries, that says the U. S. Constitution is somehow a "living, breathing document." Read: the Constitution is a wax nose to be pummeled into any shape radical-left Democrats desire at the moment to advance their tyranny. Who says we can't know what the founders meant when they wrote the Constitution? Those patriots were some of the most prolific writers in human history. Yes, there was some disagreement among them but vastly more agreement; otherwise, they wouldn't have bequeathed us our Constitution. Every one of them would surely be scandalized to learn that some citizens today imagine they know better than the founders themselves what they, the founders, meant.
Postmodernism needs to be rooted out of our culture and our politics. It is a childish way of thinking where something is so because the child wishes it to be so. It is an adolescent chafing at the hard rules of reality. But those hard rules, rightly understood and practiced, actually permit a great degree of freedom. Conversely, when one has no rules, one finds only tyranny. Postmodernism is the lazy man's approach to all problems, and we must find it within to return to rigorous thinking about reality as it is, if our country is to be saved.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Ten Years Later, Have We Learned Anything?
I remember September 11, 2001 as clearly as the day John Kennedy was killed. I was at the Navy Yard, across the Anacostia River and the Potomac River from the Pentagon that day, as I was every work day. It was a Tuesday, and one of the first days that the humidity was low, the sky was blue and cloudless. I will not include a lot of the details. Mine was just a small part of a big event, and others played a more pivotal role. I have recounted the tale a number of times to folks who were either in Washington or New York. Then there is the self sacrifice of the heroes on Flight 93 who stormed to cockpit and forced the plane into the ground rather than let it hit another target in Washington. Pray for these men and women, and remember them always.
I remember M------, one of the women working in the Analyst division came around the corner and said that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers, and I could see it on live television down in the Milcon department. I ran down there, and as I watched, a second plane hit the tower. I remember saying to the person next to me that we were at war. I imagine a lot of Navy Officers were thinking the same thing.
The Navy Yard went into immediate lock down. All was confusion, as we did not know if other planes might be targeting the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon, or even the Navy Yard. I heard about the plane that hit the Pentagon an hour later, and went up on the parking deck to look at the black cloud. I had friends in the Pentagon, but there was no word, because the cell phones did not work, and the land lines were overloaded. Mrs. PolyKahr was unable to reach me, so feared the worst. She would not find out if I happened to be at the Pentagon when the plane hit it until 7:00 pm that night. There were a lot of questions, and very few answers that day. Who did this and why would not be answered for several days.
In the ensuing years, I have talked to many people who remember 9/11. I even have talked with a contractor who was in the Twin Towers when they were hit. He and his crew got out, because he is a proactive guy. Others were not so lucky.
Of all the remembrances I have read this morning, the one that makes the most sense to me is Francis Porretto's over at Eternity Road entitled Ten Years After. Porretto sets us straight on just who it is that is at war with us, and the need to understand. There is evil in the world, and those who do evil will kill us unless we fight back. There is no reason to be bashful, here. Christ's admonition to turn the other cheek was not a call for pacifism in the face of death. But let Porretto's elegant words say what I can not:
Just so. There are no "moderate Muslims," and if someone says they are such, you can't really trust that to be true. The practice of Taqiyya means that they will never reveal their true beliefs and motives to you, an infidel, and may even deny their faith. So you have the Christian martyrs who refused to deny their faith, and the muslims who do it as a legal practice. You may have Muslims living among us who claim to be Christian as a matter of Taqiyya. This is evil. I place this on the same level as the Marxists who hide behind other names like Communist, Socialist, Fascist, Liberal, and now Progressive.
More Porretto:
Update: I read this Monday morning from Crime, Guns, and Videotape Airline Hijacking with a Difference. The bloghost relates the story of a hijacking that ended with the hijacker shot, but not killed. If Americans could still carry guns on planes, we would probably have ended the scourge of hijacking years ago. There are all kinds of scenarios where it may not make sense to shoot a hijacker. For instance, where a team of such hijackers took over a flight, and could each watch the others back. But a single hijacker would be at a severe disadvantage against a plane full of people, some of whom were likely armed. Even a team would still not want to face a possible shooting from an unpredictable member of the public. Their aim is to terrorize, not go immediately to get their 72 virgins. For that, becoming a suicide bomber is the best way.
I remember M------, one of the women working in the Analyst division came around the corner and said that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers, and I could see it on live television down in the Milcon department. I ran down there, and as I watched, a second plane hit the tower. I remember saying to the person next to me that we were at war. I imagine a lot of Navy Officers were thinking the same thing.
The Navy Yard went into immediate lock down. All was confusion, as we did not know if other planes might be targeting the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon, or even the Navy Yard. I heard about the plane that hit the Pentagon an hour later, and went up on the parking deck to look at the black cloud. I had friends in the Pentagon, but there was no word, because the cell phones did not work, and the land lines were overloaded. Mrs. PolyKahr was unable to reach me, so feared the worst. She would not find out if I happened to be at the Pentagon when the plane hit it until 7:00 pm that night. There were a lot of questions, and very few answers that day. Who did this and why would not be answered for several days.
In the ensuing years, I have talked to many people who remember 9/11. I even have talked with a contractor who was in the Twin Towers when they were hit. He and his crew got out, because he is a proactive guy. Others were not so lucky.
Of all the remembrances I have read this morning, the one that makes the most sense to me is Francis Porretto's over at Eternity Road entitled Ten Years After. Porretto sets us straight on just who it is that is at war with us, and the need to understand. There is evil in the world, and those who do evil will kill us unless we fight back. There is no reason to be bashful, here. Christ's admonition to turn the other cheek was not a call for pacifism in the face of death. But let Porretto's elegant words say what I can not:
We are at war with Islam, and have been since Iranian "students" stormed the American Embassy in Tehran, took 52 Americans hostage, and kept them for 444 days.
Don't bother to argue with me about this. Either we are or we aren't. If we aren't, the evidence for the proposition demands a better explanation than any I've heard. Worse, there's no objective evidence that we aren't, and no Islamic apologist has dared to present any.
But we're not fighting that war. We're acting, in large measure, as if some other force were responsible for the crimes and atrocities committed in Islam's name. We're acting, in other words, as if Islam and Muslims generally are the victims rather than the cause and the perpetrators.
Just so. There are no "moderate Muslims," and if someone says they are such, you can't really trust that to be true. The practice of Taqiyya means that they will never reveal their true beliefs and motives to you, an infidel, and may even deny their faith. So you have the Christian martyrs who refused to deny their faith, and the muslims who do it as a legal practice. You may have Muslims living among us who claim to be Christian as a matter of Taqiyya. This is evil. I place this on the same level as the Marxists who hide behind other names like Communist, Socialist, Fascist, Liberal, and now Progressive.
More Porretto:
Yes, it's a Christian's part to hate the sin but forgive the sinner and pray for his repentance. But it's a free man's part to fight the evildoer with all his power -- especially when at the end of the contest, one of you will be dead, and the other free to go on as he's done.
We are at war with Islam. We've been at war with Islam for forty-one years. Let's get serious about it.
***
Yes, I'm trying to influence your opinion. Yes, I want you to analyze and respond to events as I do. Yes, yes, yes.
Does that invalidate my argument, or any aspect thereof?
Try reading this concise report on Muslims' behavior in Western countries to which they've been admitted. Try rationalizing its evidence against any other conclusion than that Islam is an aggressive program of totalitarian conquest of the world, with a few theological trimmings as protective coloration.
Try imagining how "tolerance" for such a creed could eventuate any other way than in mass slaughter of the "tolerant" and the subjugation of the survivors.
Never forget
Update: I read this Monday morning from Crime, Guns, and Videotape Airline Hijacking with a Difference. The bloghost relates the story of a hijacking that ended with the hijacker shot, but not killed. If Americans could still carry guns on planes, we would probably have ended the scourge of hijacking years ago. There are all kinds of scenarios where it may not make sense to shoot a hijacker. For instance, where a team of such hijackers took over a flight, and could each watch the others back. But a single hijacker would be at a severe disadvantage against a plane full of people, some of whom were likely armed. Even a team would still not want to face a possible shooting from an unpredictable member of the public. Their aim is to terrorize, not go immediately to get their 72 virgins. For that, becoming a suicide bomber is the best way.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
A Conservative Look at Immigration
I read an article today in the UK Telegraph by Tim Stanley entitled Mexican Death Cult is fueling America's Anti-Immigration Backlash: This is about Crime, not Race. Of course, Stanley is writing for an audience in the UK, that doesn't truly understand American conservatism. Even so, I have generally liked Stanley's writing. But this time, I think he misses the mark just a little bit.
First of all, illegal immigration is itself a crime. That's why it is called "illegal." One hates to state the obvious, but sometimes it is necessary for clarity. The moment these people crossed the border, they committed a crime, no matter what else they may do. Often, they also trespass on private property. If all they do is leave a mess for the owner to clean up, he can count himself lucky. People have had property destroyed, and have been murdered on their own property by illegal aliens. Now, if these people wanted to go about the process of coming here legally, simply to work, the State Department has programs to give temporary workers status as legal aliens. Such a status gives these people the full protection of our laws, a valuable thing to have in a foreign country. The State Department would also screen for criminal behavior and possible diseases, which is valuable to us. Stanley got that part right, it is about crime, not about race. What's more, they can obtain a drivers license legally, buy property, and most other things a citizen can do. Why don't they go that route? One suspects it is a certain disdain for law, which in their country of origin is a terrible joke that varies from place to place depending on who you ask.
Second, the claim is made frequently by Leftists, and the open borders Libertarians, that these "undocumented workers" are just here for a better life. They will do the jobs Americans won't do. I heard Bob Beckel repeat this lie just the other night on Fox News The Five. Of course, it is not true that Americans won't do some things, but rather that Americans won't do them for the price employers are willing to pay. Americans would do many of these jobs for the right price. Beckel says that nobody wants to hang wall board, for example. But I have a nephew who would jump at the chance. Hanging wallboard pays good money. But the Mexicans have largely taken over the work, and he finds himself aced out of the market. Americans built this country, and did all the dirty jobs that come along with building something great. Now, employers, for competitive advantage, want to use illegal Mexican labor to keep wages low. I remember years ago having a conversation with a Leftist about the topic, when the Leftist blurted that he did not want to pay $10 for a head of lettuce. Therefore the selfish...pr..er...person, was willing to keep a bunch of illegal aliens down on the plantation to pick his lettuce. I said I doubted that lettuce would ever get to $10 per head. Something else would inevitably be done to reduce costs. Perhaps a mechanical lettuce picker would be invented. And, right on time, so it has. But orders for the mechanical picker are not coming in. Why would that be?
Which brings us to the third item, the exploitation of these people because we can. Because they are not legal, and therefore have no status here, they take the wages offered, which are admittedly better than Mexico. This is very close to slavery. People should not be treated like this in this country. It does nothing but breed resentment that their children, because of their own choices by the way, can not advance and take their place in society. But that raises yet another problem: assimilation.
In past waves of immigration, it was typical that the parents often remained in enclaves where they knew everyone, and everyone spoke the same language. But their children learned English. By the second generation, these recent immigrants had become fully assimilated into the American way of life. For many, they retained some of their own traditions, usually associated with holiday celebration, but they had adopted the American traditions as their own. But because of a stubborn belief that all cultures are equal, there is no incentive for the illegal Spanish speaking immigrants to assimilate, or to learn English.
I think a few examples will suffice to show that multiculturalism and nonjudgementalism are loony moombattery and utter hogwash. First example: is a cannibalistic tribe in the jungles of South America equal to a republic founded on the principles that each individual has a right to life, liberty, and property? Really, you can say that? OK, then: Does a tribal culture that believes in treating women as property, and in beheading apostates and hanging homosexuals equal to a society in which women have rights and property rights, and in which homosexuality is tolerated, even if not accepted as the best lifestyle? How about this, would you rather live in a society that officially offers free healthcare, free education, and a host of other "free" stuff, but delivers on none of them (and prevents you from doing it yourself) or a society that says you can have anything you can pay for, and where even their poor people have automobiles, television sets, air conditioning, and are often rather plump. I will tell you that if you ask the average legal immigrant, they will without hesitation say that the latter culture in each of the examples is heads and shoulders superior to the ones they left behind.
As a conservative, I demand that anyone entering our country must first and foremost respect our laws. America is a nation based not on blood and soil, but on a Great Idea. That Great Idea is that everyone has a right to life, liberty, and property, and that no man is above the law. Anyone who wishes to share in that Great Idea, and is willing to do what it takes to get here legally is welcome. I understand that the process has become onerous and expensive, and I think we need reforms to change that. However, having been tricked once before into supporting amnesty with the promise of border enforcement, and never getting the border enforcement, I am now unwilling to be tricked again. If the Leftists truly believe what they say about America being a nation of immigrants, then they would be insisting on assimilation too. We can not be a nation, if we speak many languages, and have differing customs and traditions. The only way we can be a nation is by assimilation, and if the immigrants do not believe America is the superior culture, they don't have to come here.
First of all, illegal immigration is itself a crime. That's why it is called "illegal." One hates to state the obvious, but sometimes it is necessary for clarity. The moment these people crossed the border, they committed a crime, no matter what else they may do. Often, they also trespass on private property. If all they do is leave a mess for the owner to clean up, he can count himself lucky. People have had property destroyed, and have been murdered on their own property by illegal aliens. Now, if these people wanted to go about the process of coming here legally, simply to work, the State Department has programs to give temporary workers status as legal aliens. Such a status gives these people the full protection of our laws, a valuable thing to have in a foreign country. The State Department would also screen for criminal behavior and possible diseases, which is valuable to us. Stanley got that part right, it is about crime, not about race. What's more, they can obtain a drivers license legally, buy property, and most other things a citizen can do. Why don't they go that route? One suspects it is a certain disdain for law, which in their country of origin is a terrible joke that varies from place to place depending on who you ask.
Second, the claim is made frequently by Leftists, and the open borders Libertarians, that these "undocumented workers" are just here for a better life. They will do the jobs Americans won't do. I heard Bob Beckel repeat this lie just the other night on Fox News The Five. Of course, it is not true that Americans won't do some things, but rather that Americans won't do them for the price employers are willing to pay. Americans would do many of these jobs for the right price. Beckel says that nobody wants to hang wall board, for example. But I have a nephew who would jump at the chance. Hanging wallboard pays good money. But the Mexicans have largely taken over the work, and he finds himself aced out of the market. Americans built this country, and did all the dirty jobs that come along with building something great. Now, employers, for competitive advantage, want to use illegal Mexican labor to keep wages low. I remember years ago having a conversation with a Leftist about the topic, when the Leftist blurted that he did not want to pay $10 for a head of lettuce. Therefore the selfish...pr..er...person, was willing to keep a bunch of illegal aliens down on the plantation to pick his lettuce. I said I doubted that lettuce would ever get to $10 per head. Something else would inevitably be done to reduce costs. Perhaps a mechanical lettuce picker would be invented. And, right on time, so it has. But orders for the mechanical picker are not coming in. Why would that be?
Which brings us to the third item, the exploitation of these people because we can. Because they are not legal, and therefore have no status here, they take the wages offered, which are admittedly better than Mexico. This is very close to slavery. People should not be treated like this in this country. It does nothing but breed resentment that their children, because of their own choices by the way, can not advance and take their place in society. But that raises yet another problem: assimilation.
In past waves of immigration, it was typical that the parents often remained in enclaves where they knew everyone, and everyone spoke the same language. But their children learned English. By the second generation, these recent immigrants had become fully assimilated into the American way of life. For many, they retained some of their own traditions, usually associated with holiday celebration, but they had adopted the American traditions as their own. But because of a stubborn belief that all cultures are equal, there is no incentive for the illegal Spanish speaking immigrants to assimilate, or to learn English.
I think a few examples will suffice to show that multiculturalism and nonjudgementalism are loony moombattery and utter hogwash. First example: is a cannibalistic tribe in the jungles of South America equal to a republic founded on the principles that each individual has a right to life, liberty, and property? Really, you can say that? OK, then: Does a tribal culture that believes in treating women as property, and in beheading apostates and hanging homosexuals equal to a society in which women have rights and property rights, and in which homosexuality is tolerated, even if not accepted as the best lifestyle? How about this, would you rather live in a society that officially offers free healthcare, free education, and a host of other "free" stuff, but delivers on none of them (and prevents you from doing it yourself) or a society that says you can have anything you can pay for, and where even their poor people have automobiles, television sets, air conditioning, and are often rather plump. I will tell you that if you ask the average legal immigrant, they will without hesitation say that the latter culture in each of the examples is heads and shoulders superior to the ones they left behind.
As a conservative, I demand that anyone entering our country must first and foremost respect our laws. America is a nation based not on blood and soil, but on a Great Idea. That Great Idea is that everyone has a right to life, liberty, and property, and that no man is above the law. Anyone who wishes to share in that Great Idea, and is willing to do what it takes to get here legally is welcome. I understand that the process has become onerous and expensive, and I think we need reforms to change that. However, having been tricked once before into supporting amnesty with the promise of border enforcement, and never getting the border enforcement, I am now unwilling to be tricked again. If the Leftists truly believe what they say about America being a nation of immigrants, then they would be insisting on assimilation too. We can not be a nation, if we speak many languages, and have differing customs and traditions. The only way we can be a nation is by assimilation, and if the immigrants do not believe America is the superior culture, they don't have to come here.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Tell Me Sweet Little Lies
Sultan Knish, AKA Daniel Greenfield, has a piece on his website entitled 5 Biggest Lies about Liberalism. I wish I could have said it as well. After I read it, I was sorry I did not see it before, when it ran a year ago. One could take issue with which lies of the left are are top five, but certainly multiculturalism, feminism, being friends of the poor, being pro-peace, and being patriotic are in the top ten. I would add that the Left claims the mantle of science and rationality, while being irrational and fanatical.
On multiculturalism, Greenfield writes:
and on feminism, he writes:
In exposing what the Left is really about with their multiculti, feminazi hatred of everything and everyone, their historical revisionism, their constant and pathological lies about their true motives, and their real goals, one would think that a open minded reader would at least begin to question just what their leaders have in mind. Recently, Senate Majority Leader Reid allowed a bit of truth spill out, buried in amongst the lies, that let us have a glimpse of what they were really trying to do. Harry Reid excoriated the Republicans for holding up the the FAA extension over a provision to cut subsidies to 13 small airports, when in fact it was the Democrats who wanted to add provisions to unionize flight attendants. In doing so, Reid had to know that most of the news media would back him up, or bury the true issue deep in the story. Even if John Boehner objects, his message will never get out. To make matters worse, the particular flight attendants they wanted to unionize, Delta, had voted not to be represented by a union. But the union can't seem to take "no" for an answer. So, who are the Democrats representing: the flight attendants or the union bosses? The union bosses may believe that Delta employees don't really know what's good for them, but should that be the concern of the Democrats? Indeed, should that be the concern of Government at all?
The Left has consistently lied about Anthropogenic Global Warming (Goofball Wormening). They have everywhere claimed that the "science is settled," which then absolves them from debating the topic. But as any real scientist knows, the science is never settled. New findings must always be tested by proving or falsifying predictions made from the new theory. But whenever the so called "climate models" have been tested on a past climate, they have been found inaccurate. Satellite data has been routinely ignored because it didn't show a warming trend. Even land based temperatures have not shown any warming for 10 years. But the Left uses its strangle hold on the media to keep these messages under wraps. Timothy Birdnow has an article entitled Warmists Strike Back at the American Thinker which discusses the active role the climate "scientists" took in ensuring that skeptics would not have a forum to present their counter findings. What he presents is a consistent series of lies, misdirections, and energy put into discrediting their critics that defies belief. A sane person would have to ask himself why, when they could see the raw data, and working behind the curtains they had to know the tricks, would they have kept up the facade so long?
Then there are the lies being told about Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry. According to these liars, Perry and Bachmann would initiate a Christian Theocracy in the United States. Of course, especially in Bachmann's case, this line of reasoning ignores the the first 100 years of American history. If the Constitution permitted a theocracy, it would have already occurred. But the Founders did not intend to establish a religion, instead allowing each to worship as he pleased. Indeed, this freedom is enshrined in the First Amendment. But, to take these liars at their word, which mandate would a Bachmann Presidency be required to uphold? On the one hand, there is the mandate from her alleged god to force all people to bow down to Jesus, and on the other, God witnesses that she will uphold the Constitution? In point of fact, this is all much ado about nothing, as pointed out by David French at National Review Online here. We are all dominionists now.
Paul Kengor has a piece at the American Thinker entitled The Democrats Invincible Ignorance. Dr. Kengor paints a bleak picture of trying to convince people with facts and statistics that they can go and look up for themselves. Kengor writes:
Upton Sinclair said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on him not understanding it!" And here, at last is the reason...the lesson. When people have lost all moral understanding, and when lying, cheating, propaganda, even murder, become acceptable means to an end, and that end is a payday in terms of money and power, then this is what you get. The shriveled, ugly heart of the Left.
This will be the most ruthless campaign season that I can remember. I hope you are up to it, because I don't see the Republicans helping us much. Indeed, the Republicans just want to take us there slower.
On multiculturalism, Greenfield writes:
Multiculturalism is really only class warfare disguised as opposition to bigotry. Take away all the historical revisionism about the Democratic party's ugly civil rights history and the empty slogans about diversity, and what you have left is naked political opportunism. The Democratic party trafficked in racism when it suited them (and still does) and dons the halo of tolerance when it suits them now. The left was equally at home working both sides of the street, and the views of great socialists from Jack London to Karl Marx on race, differed little from those of the Nazi party.
and on feminism, he writes:
Like multiculturalism, owning the feminist brand has been convenient. And it was easy enough to manage once feminism became a wholly owned product of academia, funded by liberal groups like the Ford Foundation. This brand of feminism has as much to do with equal rights for women, as African Studies have to do with equal rights for African-Americans. They're basically little more than ways to repackage the agenda politics of the far left in identity colors. That way socialism can be dressed up as a civil rights agenda, and opposition to it becomes racism or sexism.
In exposing what the Left is really about with their multiculti, feminazi hatred of everything and everyone, their historical revisionism, their constant and pathological lies about their true motives, and their real goals, one would think that a open minded reader would at least begin to question just what their leaders have in mind. Recently, Senate Majority Leader Reid allowed a bit of truth spill out, buried in amongst the lies, that let us have a glimpse of what they were really trying to do. Harry Reid excoriated the Republicans for holding up the the FAA extension over a provision to cut subsidies to 13 small airports, when in fact it was the Democrats who wanted to add provisions to unionize flight attendants. In doing so, Reid had to know that most of the news media would back him up, or bury the true issue deep in the story. Even if John Boehner objects, his message will never get out. To make matters worse, the particular flight attendants they wanted to unionize, Delta, had voted not to be represented by a union. But the union can't seem to take "no" for an answer. So, who are the Democrats representing: the flight attendants or the union bosses? The union bosses may believe that Delta employees don't really know what's good for them, but should that be the concern of the Democrats? Indeed, should that be the concern of Government at all?
The Left has consistently lied about Anthropogenic Global Warming (Goofball Wormening). They have everywhere claimed that the "science is settled," which then absolves them from debating the topic. But as any real scientist knows, the science is never settled. New findings must always be tested by proving or falsifying predictions made from the new theory. But whenever the so called "climate models" have been tested on a past climate, they have been found inaccurate. Satellite data has been routinely ignored because it didn't show a warming trend. Even land based temperatures have not shown any warming for 10 years. But the Left uses its strangle hold on the media to keep these messages under wraps. Timothy Birdnow has an article entitled Warmists Strike Back at the American Thinker which discusses the active role the climate "scientists" took in ensuring that skeptics would not have a forum to present their counter findings. What he presents is a consistent series of lies, misdirections, and energy put into discrediting their critics that defies belief. A sane person would have to ask himself why, when they could see the raw data, and working behind the curtains they had to know the tricks, would they have kept up the facade so long?
Then there are the lies being told about Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry. According to these liars, Perry and Bachmann would initiate a Christian Theocracy in the United States. Of course, especially in Bachmann's case, this line of reasoning ignores the the first 100 years of American history. If the Constitution permitted a theocracy, it would have already occurred. But the Founders did not intend to establish a religion, instead allowing each to worship as he pleased. Indeed, this freedom is enshrined in the First Amendment. But, to take these liars at their word, which mandate would a Bachmann Presidency be required to uphold? On the one hand, there is the mandate from her alleged god to force all people to bow down to Jesus, and on the other, God witnesses that she will uphold the Constitution? In point of fact, this is all much ado about nothing, as pointed out by David French at National Review Online here. We are all dominionists now.
Paul Kengor has a piece at the American Thinker entitled The Democrats Invincible Ignorance. Dr. Kengor paints a bleak picture of trying to convince people with facts and statistics that they can go and look up for themselves. Kengor writes:
I've only recently come to realize the nature of the hurdle this country faces in trying to turn around a stalled economy and horrendous deficit. Here it is: liberal Democrat politicians have completely convinced huge numbers of their followers that our economic/fiscal mess is the result of two principal demons: 1) "the rich," and 2) the Tea Party. The former, of course, has been a longtime liberal scapegoat; the latter is a new one.
...
I've realized this painfully only in the last few weeks as a result of several commentaries I've done (USA Today, FoxNews, among others), viewed by a large portion of Americans from across the political spectrum. In these commentaries, I tried to stick to statistics and facts. I naïvely thought my approach would be convincing. It was not.
Upton Sinclair said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on him not understanding it!" And here, at last is the reason...the lesson. When people have lost all moral understanding, and when lying, cheating, propaganda, even murder, become acceptable means to an end, and that end is a payday in terms of money and power, then this is what you get. The shriveled, ugly heart of the Left.
This will be the most ruthless campaign season that I can remember. I hope you are up to it, because I don't see the Republicans helping us much. Indeed, the Republicans just want to take us there slower.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Nobody Really Knows How Life Came to Be-And Don't Let Them Tell You Otherwise
Ann Coulter argues against a straw man today, and...surprise!...wins the debate. Her latest column can be seen at her website entitled Liberals View of Darwin Unable to Evolve. The truth is that Darwinian evolution has largely been discredited years ago. There are many evolution theories out there now, one of which, intelligent design, is compelling. Of course, to believe in intelligent design requires a belief in a designer. But Coulter is right to point out that a lot of these theories seem to start of with the notion that there is no God, hence, how else to explain life on earth? While nobody wants to say it, the real question everybody has floating in the backs of their minds, is what is our purpose in being here?
I know this will sound like I have been taken over by the post modern pod people, or perhaps turned into a stepford husband, but the truth is that all knowledge, everything we "know" and think we "know" in this life is provisional. When we express something as a scientific certainty, it is merely that we have not yet had an instance where the "certainty" has been falsified. For example, I am unaware of any occurrence where the "law" of gravity has failed in the realm of Newtonian physics, but that doesn't mean that tomorrow when I drop an apple, that it will not go up. But it is viewed in Newtonian physics as a "law" because everywhere we know of it acts the same way, and has never failed to act that way. Now take the several theories explaining how life came to be on earth, and more particularly, how we came to be. You can run an experiment right now to test the law of gravity. But you can not run an experiment to test the supposed theories of evolution. You can collect evidence, and attempt to interpret that evidence. But such interpretation of evidence is not science. Indeed, it partakes more of a court of law than of science. We can never "know" with certainty that all the evidence has been collected. We also can not know for a certainty that the evidence may not be plausibly interpreted in more than one way. Nobody was there at the instant, so we have no witnesses. In a court, such a possibility would be called reasonable doubt. I would also point out that even if a thousand PhDs from accredited universities believed in the secular view of evolution, and only one believed in the religious view-what is called a "consensus"-if that one turns out to be correct, does the "consensus" really matter? Of course, in a court, where evidence is weighed, it does. But if evolutionists wish to claim their study as a science, then no, it does not. The only test in science is can the theory explain the phenomenon under consideration, and can the theory be falsified. All it takes is that one lone dissenter.
Interestingly, what I have read of intelligent design seems compelling to me. Of course there is the paucity of intermediate steps in the fossil record, but that is explained by the fact that the chances of preserving a creature as a fossil are very small. More interesting is the mathematics. She mentions that the number of mutations that are preserved because either they are beneficial, or at least not harmful is again, astronomically small. But then you find that in some cases a number of mutations have to occur at the same time, all being beneficial to the organism, to have the species as it now exists. Think of the number of adaptations that have to occur simultaneously to have an eye for example that actually confers some special advantage over the other organisms. Any one of the random mutations by itself confers no benefit, so might well have died out. The chances of that happening randomly are vanishingly small. You can say, "well, the odds are small, but it had to happen that way," but did it? Or take our own brains. To be the top predators on this planet, we hardly needed all the power our brains have. Perhaps numbering ability might be useful, but abstract mathematics? As I type this, I am using a devise that attempts to simulate my brain, a computer. Did we really need that much brain power? Or, enough brain power to contemplate the existence of our Creator? Given broadly two different theories, both of which seem plausible, I as a honest juror would have to admit to reasonable doubts about the secular view of evolution.
When a person comes to believe that theories are in fact Truth, they no longer are scientists, hunting for the truth, but have become religionists proselytizing to everyone they meet. They are the very opposite of the open minded inquiring mind. So stop acting so sophisticated, you Leftists. You turn out to be more closed minded than Perry or Bachman.
Update, 4 September 2011: Michael Bargo, Jr has an article today touching on the topic of my post entitled What Darwin Said about God. It is a good read, and I highly recommend it. In fact, I had read the Origin of Species perhaps 40 years ago, but do not remember a lot of it. At the time, as I recall, I was taking high school biology, and had only the dimmest sense of the scientific method. The system of natural selection seemed reasonable to me then, and still does today. Interestingly, intelligent design does not negate the theory of "natural" selection, if one understands that all of nature is God's. Indeed, natural selection is an integral part. Intelligent design merely proposes that God has acted in nature to bring about His desires. If you believe in a God, the rest is not so implausible. If you don't, you should at least admit the possibility. Knowing what we don't know is the beginning of understanding.
May the God of Creation bless and keep you all this holiday weekend.
I know this will sound like I have been taken over by the post modern pod people, or perhaps turned into a stepford husband, but the truth is that all knowledge, everything we "know" and think we "know" in this life is provisional. When we express something as a scientific certainty, it is merely that we have not yet had an instance where the "certainty" has been falsified. For example, I am unaware of any occurrence where the "law" of gravity has failed in the realm of Newtonian physics, but that doesn't mean that tomorrow when I drop an apple, that it will not go up. But it is viewed in Newtonian physics as a "law" because everywhere we know of it acts the same way, and has never failed to act that way. Now take the several theories explaining how life came to be on earth, and more particularly, how we came to be. You can run an experiment right now to test the law of gravity. But you can not run an experiment to test the supposed theories of evolution. You can collect evidence, and attempt to interpret that evidence. But such interpretation of evidence is not science. Indeed, it partakes more of a court of law than of science. We can never "know" with certainty that all the evidence has been collected. We also can not know for a certainty that the evidence may not be plausibly interpreted in more than one way. Nobody was there at the instant, so we have no witnesses. In a court, such a possibility would be called reasonable doubt. I would also point out that even if a thousand PhDs from accredited universities believed in the secular view of evolution, and only one believed in the religious view-what is called a "consensus"-if that one turns out to be correct, does the "consensus" really matter? Of course, in a court, where evidence is weighed, it does. But if evolutionists wish to claim their study as a science, then no, it does not. The only test in science is can the theory explain the phenomenon under consideration, and can the theory be falsified. All it takes is that one lone dissenter.
Interestingly, what I have read of intelligent design seems compelling to me. Of course there is the paucity of intermediate steps in the fossil record, but that is explained by the fact that the chances of preserving a creature as a fossil are very small. More interesting is the mathematics. She mentions that the number of mutations that are preserved because either they are beneficial, or at least not harmful is again, astronomically small. But then you find that in some cases a number of mutations have to occur at the same time, all being beneficial to the organism, to have the species as it now exists. Think of the number of adaptations that have to occur simultaneously to have an eye for example that actually confers some special advantage over the other organisms. Any one of the random mutations by itself confers no benefit, so might well have died out. The chances of that happening randomly are vanishingly small. You can say, "well, the odds are small, but it had to happen that way," but did it? Or take our own brains. To be the top predators on this planet, we hardly needed all the power our brains have. Perhaps numbering ability might be useful, but abstract mathematics? As I type this, I am using a devise that attempts to simulate my brain, a computer. Did we really need that much brain power? Or, enough brain power to contemplate the existence of our Creator? Given broadly two different theories, both of which seem plausible, I as a honest juror would have to admit to reasonable doubts about the secular view of evolution.
When a person comes to believe that theories are in fact Truth, they no longer are scientists, hunting for the truth, but have become religionists proselytizing to everyone they meet. They are the very opposite of the open minded inquiring mind. So stop acting so sophisticated, you Leftists. You turn out to be more closed minded than Perry or Bachman.
Update, 4 September 2011: Michael Bargo, Jr has an article today touching on the topic of my post entitled What Darwin Said about God. It is a good read, and I highly recommend it. In fact, I had read the Origin of Species perhaps 40 years ago, but do not remember a lot of it. At the time, as I recall, I was taking high school biology, and had only the dimmest sense of the scientific method. The system of natural selection seemed reasonable to me then, and still does today. Interestingly, intelligent design does not negate the theory of "natural" selection, if one understands that all of nature is God's. Indeed, natural selection is an integral part. Intelligent design merely proposes that God has acted in nature to bring about His desires. If you believe in a God, the rest is not so implausible. If you don't, you should at least admit the possibility. Knowing what we don't know is the beginning of understanding.
May the God of Creation bless and keep you all this holiday weekend.
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