Harassing cops at Occupy Denver with chants of, "The police are the army of the rich!" In reality the police are the army of civilized society that lives by the rule of law.
In the interest of being “fair and balanced” my family and I recently stopped by Occupy Denver at Civic Center Park across from the state capitol. Back in 2009, we also attended the pre-Tea Party stimulus bill protest at the capitol, then the follow-up Tea Party protest.
This time around we were in Denver for the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Expo to enjoy the fruits of capitalism provided by evil corporations like Vail Resorts and Intrawest. I’m pleased to report that Colorado ski resorts and ski and snowboard retailers were doing a brisk business.
It’s strange how the free market works: People provide a product based on demand and then compete to make that product as economical and accessible as possible in order to profit from said product. Everyone wins who wants to win in this system. The catch is that you have to work, and work hard, to succeed.
Meanwhile, just around the corner at Occupy Denver, the dregs of society were gathered to protest that same system. They claim it’s Wall Street in particular they’re protesting, but by and large they blame capitalism in general for society’s ills.
What they haven’t figured out is that while Wall Street is certainly a problem, especially its cozy relationship with porky politicians in Washington, D.C., it is not the poster boy for capitalism. The poster boy, among many other poster boys, is the person exhibiting at the Ski and Snowboard Expo working hard to deliver a great product.
In one of my earlier eyewitness Tea Party posts, I wrote the following:
Another striking thing about the protest was how orderly and well-behaved everyone was. This was in stark contrast to your typical left-wing protest, where profanity, invective, and mean-spiritedness prevail. My hope is that the hard-working, family-oriented American wins the day and wins back our country.
An f-bomb throwing evangelist exchanges pleasantries with f-bombing anarchists at Occupy Denver. Nice.
Some objected to these general characterizations as being unfair to progressives, but the dichotomy between the Tea Party and Occupy protests I witnessed proved the theory, at least at the Denver versions of the protests.
Immediately upon arrival at Occupy Denver the onslaught of “profanity, invective and mean-spiritedness” began in earnest. A group of anarchists was harassing the cops, who were merely hanging around to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. They chanted, “The police are the army of the rich!” I asked one of the policemen if he was part of the army of the rich, and he just shook his head as if to say, “Yeah, right.”
Then, an “evangelist” approached the anarchists, waving a Bible and punctuating every other word with the F-word. They yelled at each other for awhile, the anarchists matching every evangelical F-word with their own F-bombs and some sacrilege to boot.
That scene got old rather quickly, so we wandered into the heart of the beast, a motley collection of 911 Truthers, punks with spikes and tattoos, neo-Nazis, hipster dufus wanabees, the homeless and a lonely man with a Ron Paul t-shirt. The area in which they congregated was dirty, disheveled and disorganized. We didn’t stay long; there wasn’t really much to see, other than losers with nothing better to do.
Running with the Devil: The motley crew of anarchists, communists, neo-Nazis, punksters, 911 Truthers, the homeless and other losers at Occupy Denver.
My overall impression was that those who were first attracted to the movement and who may have had a legitimate beef about the abuses of Wall Street likely abandoned the protest to the fringe elements. This reinforces my theory that anyone who’s really serious about reforming Wall Street should join the Tea Party. Tea Partiers, at least this Tea Partier, very much resent the immoral and unethical relationship between Wall Street and the Federal government whereby the largest Wall Street donors are ensured bailouts when their risky, shady deals go south. Everyone else can go to hell.
The system is rigged, but it’s rigged by big government. Banking regulations, for instance, favor the existence of giant banks. The regulations are designed to make it difficult for small banks to be competitive, thus capital and the risk associated with it are concentrated in very few hands. If that risk was spread out among smaller banks, systemic crashes would be averted. Now, when one giant bank collapses it threatens to collapse the entire system, but that’s how porky politicians like it.
Now that's more like it... People buying and selling goods and services at the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Expo. These ordinary, hard-working people were decidedly happier, enjoying the fruits of their labors, than were the bitchy baby Occupiers around the corner at Civic Center Park in Denver.
Therefore, why would one who doesn’t like the games Wall Street plays want to make the Federal government larger? So that it can continue to consolidate its political power with economic power? This is a recipe that will ensure the poor get poorer while the connected few rich get richer, which is why the likes of Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin, George Soros and Warren Buffet are in favor of this disaster recipe arrangement.
There really is no rational reason to vote Democrat, the party dedicated to growing government at the expense of the individual. Leftist movements have historically left misery and destruction in their wake, from the French Revolution to the people’s revolutions in Russia, China, Korea and Cuba. The Occupy protest I witnessed was a microcosm of what happens when the left is in control, which is to say hell on earth.
There’s a simple truth about economics: Market forces could care less about your skin color, your sex, your sexual preferences, your ethnicity, or anything else that superficially divides us as human beings. Did it matter much that the Soviet Union incorporated a rainbow of ethnic groups in its national mix? No. The economic system sucked, and still sucks. The same goes for Cuba, Venezuela, Greece and any other wannabe spread-the-wealth worker’s paradise.
This is one of many reasons I can’t comprehend the left’s fascination with race, ethnicity and identity in general. I figured the election of someone with a mixed racial background would finally end the nonsense, but it’s gotten worse.
America is not a racist nation. It was a racist nation, but systemic racism has been all but eradicated. Sure, there’s still racism (now mostly found on the left; more on that below), and there always will be. As long as there are people there will be hatred and strife. It’s just a fact of life, but if you live in a Utopian dream world filled with rainbows and unicorns, I suggest you bring yourself back to earth and read some history.
Free market capitalism turns humanity’s weakness – its overriding selfishness – into a strength. Economic central planning does the exact opposite; it exploits humanity’s weakness to reward the select few.
Let's send someone to the White House who is less likely to favor cronies and identity groups and more likely to allow Americans to exercise their liberties.
What does this have to do with race and identity politics? Two words: Herman Cain. I am endorsing Mr. Cain for President. Am I supporting Mr. Cain because he’s black, or because I’m excited about someone who’s not part of the traditional political structure and who actually speaks truth to power?
I’m exhausted by career politicians with degrees from Yale and Harvard who tell us they’re going to fix everything for us because they’re so damn smart. They may be “smart,” but they’re also arrogant, and the combination is toxic (see Enron, see also the Financial Meltdown of 2008).
Cain is smart, but he also has common sense, something you find in short supply in the rarefied air of Harvard, Yale, Lehman Brothers and the Beltway. He believes in limited government, personal responsibility and that all people are created equal, which is the only sensible way to govern a free people. Free people expect little from their government. Free people prefer to be treated based on the common denominator of their humanity rather than the vagaries of whatever identity group into which they may fit.
Our government was instituted to protect citizens from foreign and domestic enemies so they can pursue life, liberty and happiness. It was not instituted to provide life, liberty and happiness. Cain understands this, and the concept that the larger the government, the smaller the citizen.
The left, however, sneers at Cain and his accomplishments. They call him an “Oreo” and an “Uncle Tom”; he is a traitor to his race and not authentically black. Remember, these are people who call themselves “progressive.”
What of Dr. King’s dream? “I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Progressives, however, prefer to live in a nation where we are judged by the color of our skin, not the content of our character. This is progress?
Unlike the left, I judge Herman Cain, and Barack Obama for that matter, by the content of their character. I can’t stand Obama’s politics, but I have nothing against him personally. And again, I could care less if he’s black, white, purple or blue. Note that the left demonizes its opponents, labeling them as evil, stupid or both. Rather than debate policy positions, the left personalizes and polarizes.
The difference between the two men – Cain and Obama – has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with philosophy. Two divergent backgrounds produced two opposing philosophies. Obama worked hard and succeeded through academia and politics. He lived a life of social theory and never had any practical experience in the real world.
Cain also worked hard, but excelled in business, despite rising in the ranks during a time when racism was much more prevalent. Cain has practical experience. He’s met a payroll, as the pundits like to put it. In other words, he’s more likely to understand how big government impacts the average person negatively because he’s been there. People like Barack Obama have never been there and are far less likely to understand basic, real-world economics.
But because Cain’s real-world view that government’s coddling of victim groups, which leads to dependency and poverty (you can look it up; Google “poverty black family since war on poverty”), he’s a racist traitor, according to the left. Back in the real world, Cain is exactly right that just because white liberals and big government treat you like you’re stupid and lazy, doesn’t mean you are.
The left seeks to divide. By dividing, they conquer. And when they conquer, they destroy. E Unum Pluribus!
In a geocentric universe the sun has nothing whatsoever to do with earth's climate.
That’s right. I’m waging a personal war on science at home and abroad. It is, nonetheless, a limited war whose prosecution is not aimed at destroying science. The aims of my war are simply to hold “science” accountable for its claims.
Progressives love to “question authority,” but only when the authority in question that’s being questioned does not toe the Progressive line. Those authorities that do, however, are not in line for questioning; they are to be believed without question.
And, if you do question Progressive authorities you will be smeared as a racist, a homophobe, anti-science or even as the clichéd and worn-out Nazi Holocaust denier. There will be no debate, since debate would expose the single-minded, irrational totalitarianism of Progressive ideology.
There are various areas where this applies, but I’ll tackle two of the most recent and newsworthy battles: Evolution and global warming/climate change. Recently, someone asked Rick Perry about evolution, to which he replied that it’s a theory with “gaps” in it. He also mentioned that he’s not sure how old the earth is.
Inevitably, the Progressive priesthood cried foul and began to brand Perry as an ignoramus who is waging a war on science. To add insult to injury, Perry is skeptical of man-caused climate change, or global warming, or whatever. This was too much for Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell, who opined:
Never mind that larger droughts in the southwestern U.S. have long been predicted by scientists who model the changes we are likely to face due to ever-rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Never mind that Texas dumps more carbon pollution into the atmosphere than any other state in the nation – higher than California and Pennsylvania combined. Were it a separate country, Texas would be the seventh largest carbon polluter in the world.
Never mind that, during his first term, Perry signed legislation to speed construction of 11 new coal plants for the state. Or that he has lead [sic] the charge to undermine the EPA’s right to limit greenhouse gas pollution.
None of this matters. Because as Perry wrote in his new book, global warming is “all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight.” Still, the earth’s climate is changing, and so we must pray.
God help us.
Note that Goodell does not address scientific skepticism about global warming (climate change, whatever), of which there is plenty out there. Rather, his evidence is that there’s weather, Texas is trying to generate energy for its citizens and Perry believes in God. This is the typical line of reasoning on the Progressive left, since those who have completely bought into evolution and global warming have bought into a religion.
Also note Goodell’s contempt for the Constitution. Goodell says that Perry seeks to undermine the EPA’s “right” to limit greenhouse gas pollution. Under the Constitution, the EPA has no “right” to do so. That “right” is restricted to Congress and well it should be since members of Congress were duly elected by the people. Where do I go to vote out the EPA? That’s right. I can’t.
Just as Galileo’s inquisitors were fully invested in a geocentric universe, Progressives have morphed theory into dogma. Progressives are philosophically wedded to both theories – evolution and global warming – because they both degrade the individual as a polluter and cosmic accident.
Rather than a special creation with basic rights endowed by the Creator, the individual is of very little worth and should be subservient to the so-called “public” good. As a polluter and contributor to global warming, the individual needs to be restricted and restrained by those who know better, because the planet is more important than the individual. As the Apostle Paul put it: “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator, who is forever praised. Amen.”
Please note that “those who know better” are exempt from the rules they create to restrict, restrain and regulate the masses. This brings to mind a passage from my favorite book in the Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis:
“Well, then, it was jolly rotten of you,” said Digory.
“Rotten?” said Uncle Andrew with a puzzled look. “Oh, I see. You mean that little boys ought to keep their promises. Very true: most right and proper, I’m sure, and I’m very glad you have been taught to do it. But of course you must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys – and servants – and women – and even people in general can’t possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages. No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy is a high and lonely destiny.”
As he said this he sighed and looked so grave and noble and mysterious that for a second Digory really thought he was saying something rather fine. But then he remembered the ugly look he had seen on his Uncle’s face the moment before Polly had vanished: and all at once he saw through Uncle Andrew’s grand words. “All it means,” he said to himself, “Is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants.”
The rhetoric from the so-called Progressive left has become progressively poisonous. It is difficult to fathom that one would write or say, let alone think, the disgusting, profane things said and written by leftists about conservatives, particularly conservative women and minorities.
Palin and Bachman are evil bitches and C words, held up as effigies of a particularly degrading form of politicized propaganda. Black conservatives are Uncle Toms who have somehow betrayed their race, simply because they think their race is better than the condescending white guilt that treats them as if they were idiotic children.
This dehumanizing objectification has become the defining tactic of the left; there is no logical defense available for leftist ideology, thus it sinks to the lowest depths of depravity to make its point, such as it is.
When fascism comes to America it will be driving a Prius with a COEXIST bumper sticker.
Witness the Tweets Henshaw regurgitates here in all their glory, and then the righteous indignation, accompanied by profanity and insults, when the Tweeter finds their Tweet at The Daily Plunge. Also witness the commentary on leftist sites like Daily Kos and The Huffington Post. Offensive comments are not relegated to the left side of the blogosphere, but the sheer volume of mean-spirited, ugly commentary is somewhat shocking.
Then again, maybe this is not so shocking. Years ago as an idealistic college student I was attracted to liberalism based on its professions of tolerance and open mindedness. Enthusiasm soon dissolved into disillusionment.
Oddly enough, one of my epiphanies came during an MTV News report on a pro-choice concert headlined by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was rather jarring to me that a rock band with a fairly large collection of misogynist songs in its repertoire would be “pro woman.” Then it dawned on me that being pro-choice is not pro-woman at all. It’s another way to degrade women and to tell them that they’re too stupid and immoral to make a right choice before conception.
For some reason, the left embraces an ideology that basically says we’re not much better than animals, and thus need to be treated as such. This is one of the founding principles of the Progressive movement, from its early years as it dabbled in eugenics to its modern-day insistence that man is not a special creation, endowed by his creator with certain inalienable rights.
This is an important area of separation between right and left. If rights are endowed by the creator, government has no real right to either grant them or take them away. However, if rights are endowed by your fellow man, they become arbitrary and subject to the whims of those in power. Moreover, if I am endowed by my creator, I have individual worth, regardless of my views. But if I am just another animal, a parasite on Mother Earth, then it’s easier to make me one of “them” and thus expendable.
Ultimately, what I found was that liberalism was neither tolerant nor open-minded. In fact, liberalism, in its post-modern sense, is not liberal at all; it is totalitarian. This becomes increasingly clear as one samples the vast media landscape of leftist voices, from the anonymous comments at The Daily Kos to the rants of Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann, Janeane Garofalo, et al.
They do not respectfully disagree; they demonize anyone who disagrees with them. They aim to take away the very humanity of their opponents, an ancient and effective means of politics that has sometimes led to genocide.
This is yet another reason I believe in limited government. I do not want to be subject to the whims of people who hold such contempt for others in their heart, a contempt that borders on inhumanity. The great massacres of the 20th Century were perpetrated largely by dehumanizing and degrading those being murdered so that the majority of people would simply look away as the atrocities were committed.
The defining characteristic of genocidal regimes is that all real power is concentrated in the central State; all else is subordinate. While I’m obviously concerned about the totalitarian leanings of the left, someone on the left may be concerned about a theocracy. Fair enough, but all of us, left and right, should advocate for a limited federal government because when all power resides in the federal government, we’re all screwed.
At first I thought the video below was a parody, but no… it’s serious. College Democrats of America put a video together explaining why they’re Democrats. Let’s just say after watching it I still don’t have a clue as to why they’re Democrats.
- Hope is the stuff of dreams
- Patriot Act
- Because I’m a Christian
- Every child has a right to an education
- There’s no difference between a janitor and judge
- America is a democracy and not a theocracy
- Paying into an entitlement system that rips me off and bankrupts the country
Yeah, I added that last bullet point, but the rest are reasons these people gave for being a Democrat. Any young person who is a Democrat is woefully uninformed about the grave nature of our fiscal problems. The Democrats are the party of bankruptcy.
I’m a huge fan of the Cretaceous Period. It was hot as hell and if you whined about it there was always someone around who’d rip you to shreds.
For some reason, Mitt Romney decided to weigh in on the farce that is Global Warming, or Climate Change, the term officially adopted by the chattering classes since it could mean practically anything. We’ve been down this road at The Daily Plunge repeatedly, parsing the absurdity of the Climate Change hysteria that mysteriously infects socialists, so-called progressives and other advocates of big government.
It is apparent, however, that the Republican front runner for the 2012 nomination is unaware of the absurdities. Like many of his Beltway colleagues he robotically repeats tribal knowledge, simply because it’s been repeated so often. I’m not sure that this shows his leadership ability as much as it does his ability to be suckered and manipulated.
“I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that,” he told a crowd of about 200 at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Here’s what kills me about such statements. First, that the world is getting warmer. This may or may not be true, based on which part of the world you’re talking about. It’s certainly debatable, which is why the media has subtly switched the conversation from Global Warming to Climate Change. Very clever, that is, since any change in weather or shifts in climate patterns can be blamed on Climate Change, a.k.a., the same freaking thing the climate has been doing for the past four billion years or so.
However, and more importantly, so what if it is getting warmer? As I have explained in previous posts, warming is good and cooling is bad. There is empirical, historical data to back up this fact. So why worry about warming? We worry, and Mitt Romney worries, because we’ve been told to worry despite the facts, and simple common sense.
Finally, humans may or may not contribute to climate change (using lowercase here to differentiate between the thing the climate has been doing for the past four billion years or so, that is – changing – as opposed to the hysterical use of the phrase). Again, this point is debatable, but so what if we’re contributing? Who’s to say that our contribution isn’t positive, particularly if we’re helping to warm the earth and make it more hospitable for living things?
It would be fantastic if we could somehow manipulate the earth’s thermostat, but I’m afraid we don’t have that power, unless we figure out some way to control the sun. And, if we could manipulate it, who makes that decision? Keep in mind that making New York City more like San Diego will have repercussions on climate in, say, Kenya (often referred to as “unintended consequences,” the progressive’s stock in trade). But who cares about Kenya? Sure as hell not the Climate Change crybabies who want us to stop burning fuel so that we change the climate (back? forward?) to some unattainable climate ideal. Ironically, Climate Change crybabies do want to change the climate, but where they want to change it to I’m not quite sure. 1990? 1856? 1365? 67 A.D.? 4,000 B.C.? 12,000,000 B.C.? But if they could change the climate, I guarantee they’d make it nice and cozy for themselves and the rest can suffer through colder winters and narrower temperate zones since the crybabies “saved the planet,” a.k.a., their own asses. In other words, screw the Third World!
In the big picture of the presidential race, Climate Change is probably not much of an issue given the totality of issues facing any presidential candidate. However, it speaks volumes about the candidate when they’re willing to embrace what’s essentially an Urban Legend writ super-large.
I wasn’t planning to vote for Romney in the primaries, but this seals the deal. America doesn’t need another baby-talking, politically-correct drone, but bold, unflinching leadership from someone who doesn’t care whether or not the media likes them.
“We are simultaneously supposed to gasp in awe at teachers’ raw dedication and forced to listen to their incessant caterwauling about how they don’t make enough money. Well, which is it? Are they dedicated to teaching or are they in it for the money? After all the carping about how little teachers are paid, if someone enters the teaching profession for the big bucks, aren’t they too stupid to be teaching our kids?”
Ann Coulter, Godless
Since we’re randomly lobbing missiles for “humanitarian” purposes, why stop at Libya? How about Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the Ivory Coast? At least when we blow up missiles someone has to make more missiles, which is a lot more productive than supporting the fat-ass government bureaucracy that produces nothing but regulations and kids who can’t read.
Do you really want to help teachers? Do you love teachers? Then let’s get rid of make-work BS six-figure government jobs like Climate Change Program Manager, pay teachers based on merit, fire those that need to be fired and make schools compete. In the process, you’ll help the children as well.
When faced with a choice of having to pay a little more for their own pensions and health care, public employees in Wisconsin basically rioted. Instead of doing the right and rational thing they chose to force Governor Walker to institute layoffs to help bring a modicum of sanity to the state’s budgetary Armageddon.
So let’s get this straight… When asked to fly a little closer to the reality the rest of us live in, teachers and their unions said, “Hell no, we won’t go.” I’d love to have a sweetheart deal like that, one that guarantees I can’t get fired for incompetence or laziness (or just about anything else), that pays more than most other professionals earn (you can look it up), basically free health care and pension plans, and about a third of the year off for vacation. It once again begs the question posed by Ann Coulter above, that given that, “aren’t they too stupid to be teaching our kids?”
Unfortunately, I live in a reality called the private sector, a sector being abandoned by more and more people as they realize that the crime of big, corrupt and crony government surely does pay. I discussed this problem earlier after reading a job description on one of the job boards for a Climate Change Program Manager at the National Park Service. I won’t rehash the whole thing, but this pointless make-work job brings in anywhere from $103,000 to $155,000.
When progressives protest budget cuts and clamor for more and more government, they cite the saints of public service – teachers, fire fighters and cops (the only time they like cops). I’m actually well and good with paying all of the above handsomely, though I must add that it should be merit based and they should be able to be fired.
The problem is that you can’t pay those who are actually rendering a public service handsomely when some Schmoe is pulling in six figures at a BS National Park Service job. The bigger problem is that there are literally thousands of the Schmoes at all levels of government with BS jobs raking in the dough at the taxpayer’s, and teacher’s, expense.
The following excerpt from the Dec. 11, 2009 edition of USA Today bears repeating here:
Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months — and that’s before overtime pay and bonuses are counted. Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector… When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.
These disgusting statistics are merely the tip of an iceberg, with state and local governments aboard a federal Titanic steaming full speed ahead that isn’t equipped with enough lifeboats. And yet, progressives fight any budget cuts and limits on government tooth and nail, despite the fact that doing both would benefit their beloved teachers, fire fighters and cops.
Progressives are notoriously ignorant of economics. I don’t think progressives are stupid, by and large, but willfully ignorant. They are generally economically illiterate because any cursory knowledge of economics would explode their entire ideology and they’d have to become conservatives, or at least libertarians.
Progressives fail to realize that government monopolies are, by their very nature, resistant to any type of positive reform or innovation. Thus they ossify, becoming inflexible and of no practical good to anyone but those who work for the system. Modern liberalism is, in fact, illiberal and has become the worst kind of conservatism you could possibly imagine.
People try to put us down… Yeah, that’s because you screwed future generations with your My Generation crap, dumbasses. And, by the way, you didn’t die before you got old like you were supposed to.
Reform education? Hell no! It’s all about “the children,” so we must not improve it or allow any of the unwashed masses a choice. Rather, we should pour more money into it, most of which goes to the adults and their precious paychecks, pensions and health care. Reform entitlements? Hell no! They’re headed for a massive implosion, but I’ll have mine for my retirement and I’ll be dead by then, so let them drive clown cars!
My children are quite thankful for these selfless adults. Still, they wonder why the Worthless Generation didn’t take Roger Daltrey’s advice in My Generation to heart.
One of the consequences of pouring more manpower and money into government work and jealously guarding government monopolies in certain areas, like education, is either a negative or flat return on investment. But start providing data and evidence and a liberal’s eyes will start glazing over because there’s no emotion in numbers or logic. Stephen Moore laid it out in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial:
The employment trends described here are explained in part by hugely beneficial productivity improvements in such traditional industries as farming, manufacturing, financial services and telecommunications. These produce far more output per worker than in the past. The typical farmer, for example, is today at least three times more productive than in 1950.
Where are the productivity gains in government? Consider a core function of state and local governments: schools. Over the period 1970-2005, school spending per pupil, adjusted for inflation, doubled, while standardized achievement test scores were flat. Over roughly that same time period, public-school employment doubled per student, according to a study by researchers at the University of Washington. That is what economists call negative productivity.
During Hosni Mubarek’s rambling speech in which he refused to give up the presidency the day before he actually did, he referred to himself as a “father” and the people of Egypt as his “sons and daughters”. Really?
This, however, is not an unusual delusion for penny-ante dictators throughout history. Totalitarian states are notorious for being overbearing parents to their rambunctious children, and we know, or should know, the results of that relationship.
Concentrate wealth and power in Washington, D.C., and this is what you'll get.
That’s why I have such a hard time understanding Progressive ideology, which seeks to solve all of our perceived problems with big government. Some call it the “nanny state,” but it’s going beyond nanny and straight to evil stepmother. Cinderella is progressively harassed into submission whilst the sisters enjoy special favors. That’s how Evil Stepmother government works.
Hosni Mubarek emerged a billionaire from his 30 years of parenthood. He geared Egypt’s economy to enriching himself and his friends, family and political cronies. Mubarek’s version of central planning was less Keynesian and more Cinderellaian. But that’s the problem when you concentrate too much wealth and power in one central body, whether it’s a single dictator or 500 or so politicians.
Witness the spending spree over the past few years. People wonder why this supposed Keynesian approach to stimulating the economy didn’t work. Maybe it’s because, like Hosni Mubarek’s Egypt, it was Cinderellaian.
The bailouts and Obamacare were mainly pork-laden monstrosities meant to benefit the politically connected. Why else would groups who pushed for the health care bill suddenly receive waivers to shelter themselves from the ramifications of the bill? I sure as hell didn’t get a waiver, but I’m not part of the Teamsters Union or any other politically-connected group.
This is one of the primary reasons I’m conservative. I do not trust the Federal government to be my parent, which is why it’s shocking to me that those who consider themselves “liberal” do. I understand liberalism at a local and even a state level, but I don’t get it at the Federal level. Logically, Progressives should also be for a limited Federal government and enact their Utopian dreams locally.
Boulder, Colorado, for instance, is the model progressive state. There are cameras all over the place and you can barely breathe without some official breathing down your back about what you’re eating, smoking (unless it’s pot) or thinking. That’s fine, but it’s also why I don’t live there.
What happens when the values of Boulder, and the laws which follow, are force-fed to the rest of the nation? Is that really fair? I don’t think so. Let California go bankrupt after its failed experiment with Cinderella state socialism, but leave Colorado alone (except for Boulder)! Why else do immigration patterns in the U.S. show people fleeing blue states for red states? Maybe it’s because progressive parental policy is a big, fat failure.
Productive people prefer to help people directly, either through a charitable organization or one-on-one. Productive people don’t like having their money siphoned through the evil stepmother, who first hands it to the evil stepsisters and then gives the crumbs to someone who, more often than not, needs to get off their butt and get a job.
The problem is that Americans are becoming more dependent on the state than ever before. When nobody has fathers anymore, and they’re taught that fathers and parents are irrelevant, the state slips in and supplants the family. It’s been one of primary strategies of tyrants throughout the ages and is an effective means of ensuring a parent-child relationship between state and citizen.
Therefore, we should see in Hosni Mubarek and others like him a warning for us. If we limit government, we reap freedom and liberty. If, on the other hand, we decide that a large central government is the answer to all that ails us, we will reap a childish serfdom. The evil stepmother will dispense her favors through a humorless bureaucrat behind a window at some federal agency. The stepsisters will get the cash directly.
Tasty at the ballpark, but downright disgusting when packaged as news.
There are various ways to describe the traditional media in America. By traditional, I mean the media that dominated American newsgathering and dissemination for most of its history, first with the metropolitan daily papers, then radio and finally weekly newsmagazines and the big three television networks: ABC, NBC and CBS.
To some degree, the first all-news cable network, CNN, was and is part of this traditional media mix. But it was the forerunner of the New Media, which has successfully fragmented the monopolistic hold traditional media had on reporting news.
The most common term used to describe traditional media is Mainstream. This misses the mark, however, because it is increasingly irrelevant and no longer in the mainstream of American life. Conservatives derisively refer to it as the Lamestream Media, the Dinosaur Media and the Drive-By Media, among others. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to hang onto Mainstream. I suppose it’s comforting to hearken back to a day when news was controlled by the elite few whose opinions were developed in the vacuum of academia, Manhattan, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Imagine all the people, murdered for Utopia.
I have no faith in humanity. The ironic thing is that the left does. On the one hand the left constantly cries about evil corporations and the racist theocrats populating the Tea Party, then on the other expects us to entrust everything to a corrupt centralized bureaucracy.
The left is very selective about the inherent goodness of humanity and who, exactly, inherited this supposed goodness. Apparently, those of us who believe in limited government and that our rights are endowed by the Creator did not receive this magical gift of goodness. We are racist homophobes who also hate children.
The entire concept of denigrating one group of people and painting them as evil incarnate whilst imaging all the people living life in peace as we progress toward some secular humanist Utopia is the definition of irrational.
Please keep in mind that each time someone has envisioned Utopia and then seized the power necessary to make it happen that literally millions were murdered or shipped off to various types of camps for “re-education.” That’s the problem with Utopia; it requires the elimination of those who haven’t hopped on board the Utopian Express.
Ultimately, it’s a spiritual issue. Utopians are, if not anti-God, anti-religion. If they’re not atheists, apatheists (those who don’t really care either way) or agnostic, they believe in the equality of all religions and that none have a monopoly on the truth, though each religion actually claims to be the one and only truth. In other words, they want their cake, and they’d like to eat it, too, despite the fact that this all-religions-are-equal-I’m-a-spiritual-person-but-not-religious nonsense is an intellectual and spiritual cop-out.
All religions, except for New Age BS, force you to choose. However, you actually have to read the scriptures of that particular religion to get the full story. I would wager that most people who get teary-eyed about the beauty of the world’s religions and how they’ve embraced religious diversity have never actually spent time in the scriptures of the world’s religions.
Then, it’s these same people who turn around and call Tea Party members “tea baggers,” say ugly, deeply personal things about people with whom they disagree and generally treat people as objects. And therein lies the difference between the secular humanist, who loves the idea of people but basically has nothing but contempt for them as individuals, and the right-wing fundamentalist wacko Christian. The ignorant Christian is more likely to see each person as an individual, each with his or her own dignity and worth. That’s why Christians, and particularly fundamentalist Christians, tend to be conservative. Christianity is an individualistic religion that stands athwart of the socialist perspective. It also demands that the listener (or reader) decide. Either you believe that Christ was who He says He was – that is, the savior of the whole world – or you don’t. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity put it best:
“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg – or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”
The Christian believes that, as John wrote in his Gospel, “…men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” And, they include themselves as indicted and convicted in this verdict. They are no better than their fellow man, and this understanding undergirds all of the beliefs that follow, from individual relationships to politics.
Because the Christian believes in the inherent depravity, not the innate goodness of humanity, including himself, he believes in limited government. After all, if humanity is motivated by selfish aims is it really a good idea to entrust individual control to a small group of powerful people?
I’ve noticed an interesting common thread between people who lean both left and right. When you get into a discussion about the relative corruption of one political party or the other, they’ll say, “Well, they’re all pretty corrupt; it doesn’t matter which political party they’re affiliated with.” And I agree with this statement. But if you lean left and believe this to be true, aren’t you arguing against your own ideology? If politicians of all political stripes tend toward corruption, is it really a good idea to entrust them with greater power and more money?
But the progressive seeks to control and manipulate others, using the power of the state to realize their Utopian aims. It’s no different than the priest, pastor or holy man of your choice using their place as God’s spokesman to do the same thing. Given this, and the empirical and well-documented historical track record of mankind, it is only logical to decentralize and minimize the state as much as possible. Otherwise, when the state controls every aspect of the individual, from what he drives to what he eats, the individual is supplanted and liberty is destroyed.
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