Myrhaf

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog In the last two days I have seen speeches by Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. The Clintons' speeches said what the Democrats wanted to hear -- and what they needed to hear if the Clintons were to have any future in the party. And both speeches were lies. The Clintons do not want Obama to win in November. They want Obama to lose so they can say, "I told you so," and Hillary can run for President in 2012. If you have any doubt that the Clintons were lying -- like that's never happened before, right? -- remember that Bill said this yesterday: “Suppose you’re a voter, and you’ve got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don’t think that candidate can deliver on anything at all. Candidate Y you agree with on about half the issues, but he can deliver. Which candidate are you going to vote for? “This has nothing to do with what’s going on now.” Why did he bring it up if it has nothing to do with what's going on now? What the hell was talking about then? He was sending a signal of what he really believes. He was cynically telling the world that his speech supporting Obama was a task he had to perform, but don't put too much weight on his words -- wink, wink. Although she smiled and applauded at the right times, Michelle Obama had a distrustful look in her eyes during the Clintons' speeches. There daggers lurked. And she is quite right to be wary, for the Clintons are NOT her friends. Joe Biden's speech was heartfelt and passionate. Unlike the Clintons, he believed what he said. Biden was incoherent. He talked about his Mother admonishing him to get up when he fell down. That's fine. That's self-reliance. Then he criticized Bush because our government is not helping people get up when they fall down. That's not self-reliance, but dependence on the government. If the government gets in the business of helping people when they fall down, then people will forget how to get up by themselves. They will learn to lie there and whine until their keepers come along and help them to their feet. Biden said we are losing the American dream. Right -- we are. Why is that? Why was the American dream strong in the 19th century and now it is in trouble? Could it possibly be the growth of the welfare state? Could it be that replacing individualism with collectivism destroys the American dream? Could it be that everything the Democrats stand for destroys the American dream? The Democrats are a party of ignorant altruists. At this late date, you have to be stupid to want more government control over the economy and to think it will work. There has been much stupidity on display for the last three days. I think deep down the more intelligent Democrats understand that socialism will not work, but they evade in order to keep the impracticality of socialism unclear and undefined. And then they have the environmentalists whispering to them that the less the economy works, the more moral it is. This is not an idea they can take to the American public yet, although Al Gore is almost there. Only the image of American individuals sacrificing for the collective moves them. Their only desire is to have power over all that sacrificing. They don't understand the arguments of people like Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand that show how their morality does not work and is not good. That it is impractical, they don't ultimately care; they will follow their morality into the abyss of destruction and poverty, cheered on by the environmentalists. That their morality is actually immoral -- is a morality of death -- they evade. And that is their greatest sin. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog There has been moonbattery at the Democrat Convention, although the MSM has wisely ignored it. Such nuttiness does not make the Democrat Party look good and is unlikely to persuade independents. Senator Harry Reid went far left to find red meat for the Democrat base: For the past eight years, the man in the Oval Office has tipped his hat over his eyes, kicked back his chair, and snoozed at his desk. Charged with protecting our national interests, he slept on duty while his vice president conspired with oil industry cronies. Tasked with cutting off funding to terrorists, he slept on duty while oil shortages worsened, oil prices soared, and dollars by the ton were delivered to terrorists’ banks in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Faced with a new kind of war, this president and his vice president helped their friends the old-fashioned way: through war profiteering, tax cuts for billionaires, and in many cases out-and-out corruption. There are honest answers to the problems we face, but they call for hard solutions and common sacrifices, the kind of sacrifices that this administration has only asked the American people to bear when it lined the pockets of the obscenely rich. (At what income level does one become obscenely rich? Would John Kerry qualify? Jay Rockefeller? George Soros? Or is the term "obscenely rich," rather a name that socialist idiots call rich people they don't like?) Does anyone seriously believe Harry Reid's cartoon version of the war in Iraq? That Bush and Cheney would send America's fine men and women in the military to die in Iraq just so they and their friends might get rich? Where is the evidence? But notice what Reid thinks is the solution to the supposed problem of oil: sacrifice. Yes, sacrifice is the Democrat answer to every problem. He praises Jimmy Carter for getting it right. President Carter warned us about it in the 1970s when he proposed real solutions—conservation, fuel efficiency, and alternative fuels—to what he correctly named the “moral equivalent of war.” His proposals were ridiculed by Republicans who forgot that both Presidents Nixon and Ford had joined him in calling for America’s energy independence. To Carter and Reid the solution is that Americans must do with less, with their collective sacrifice directed and coordinated by our wise masters in Washington, D.C. -- people like, oh, Jimmy Carter and Harry Reid. The real solution is laissez-faire capitalism. Get the government out of energy production. Eliminate all impediments erected by the state and let the market work. Prices would plummet to all-time lows and gas would flow. But we can't have that. Americans would be more productive and richer -- an environmental disaster! Worse, they would be independent and happy, living their lives without direction from our benevolent masters in Washington, D.C. And where would that leave people like Harry Reid and Jimmy Carter? They would no longer be important, would they? Read Reid's speech, and then consider: he is one of the most powerful men in America. Yes, it is frightening. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog So this is how fascism came to America. It came in the form of a young, idealistic politician. A handsome fellow and a brilliant orator, he is a man set on fire by the ideals of altruism, collectivism and statism and who has the ability to pass the fire in his soul on to others. Unlike other politicians -- notably Bill Clinton -- who signal their cynicism, Barack Obama absolutely, without any doubt, believes in his purpose. He is a politician and something more -- a missionary, a prophet, a Moses ready to lead us to the promised land. He is a man imbued with moral certainty. He is a somewhat odd man, one who is hard to define and pin down. He has described himself at times as a "rorshack test" and a "blank screen." He has been called a flake: Barack Obama is a flake, and the American people have begun to see it. The chief characteristic of a flake is that he makes choices that are impossible to either understand or explain. These are not the errors of the poor dope who can't grasp the essentials of a situation, or the neurotic who ruins things out of compulsion, or the man suffering chronic bad luck. The flake has a genius for discovering solutions at perfect right angles to the ordinary world. It's as if he's the product of a totally different evolutionary chain, in a universe where the laws are slightly but distinctly at variance to ours. When given a choice between left and right, the flake goes up -- if not through the 8 th dimension. And although there's plenty of rationalization, there's never a logical reason for any of it. After awhile, people stop asking. ... Back at school, Obama got himself named editor of the Harvard Law Review. This is a signal achievement, no question about it. The kind of thing that would be mentioned about a person for the rest of his life, as has been the case with Obama. But then... he writes nothing for the journal. Now, let's get this straight: here we have one of the leading university law journals in the country, one widely cited and read. Entire careers in legal analysis and scholarship have been founded on appearances in the Review, including some that have led to the highest courts in the country. Yet here's an individual who, as editor, could easily place his own work in the journal -- standard practice, nothing at all wrong with it. But he fails to do so. And the explanation? There's none that I've heard. We can go even farther than that, to say that there is no explanation that makes the least rational sense. We follow Obama down to Springfield, where as a state legislator, he voted "present" over 120 times. What this means, as far as I've been able to discover, is that he voted "present" nearly as much as he voted "yes" or "no". ... We turn eagerly to learn what his term in the U.S. Senate will reveal, only to be disappointed. But it's not surprising, really. After all, he was only there for 143 days. Or he is like Woody Allen's Zelig, a cipher who fits in and reflects any reality about him. If he is a fascist, it is because his party is fascist, our ideals are fascist, the spirit of our time is fascist. Fascism is the form of socialism in which the means of production are nominally left in the hands of private ownership, whereas the ends of production are dictated by the state. In America the dictation is called "regulation." By regulating business politicians are able to achieve their statist ends while maintaining a pretense that America is still a free country. When their intervention causes a crisis, politicians blame the crisis on greedy businessmen and use it to justify further intervention in the economy. Every assumption underlying the economic proposals in Barack Obama's acceptance speech tonight is fascist. He lacks any glimmer of understanding of freedom and assumes the state has the right to dictate any terms to business. For example, Obama criticizes McCain because, "he's said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars." By what right does the state tell automakers what their fuel efficiency must be? Don't businessmen have property rights? Don't our politicians understand that a free country does not violate rights, even if it means having inefficient fuel standards? These questions are never asked in contemporary, fascist America. Obama's ignorance of economics is so complete, so unquestioned and so impenetrable that this man has no understanding that his ideals will not work and will destroy freedom in America. Fascism did not come to America the way it does in Hollywood. It was not brought by an evil mastermind. It was not brought by a greedy white industrialist intent on abusing the common man. Fascism was brought to America by a Peter Keating, a social metaphysician who earnestly believes the bromides of our culture and lives by the ideals of altruism, collectivism and statism because they are all he has heard. He is a man who simply thinks he is giving America what it wants. But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you. Obama's speech is titled "The American Promise." It is about America's ideal. And what exactly is this ideal? ...that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one. No, it is not the promise of the Declaration of Independence, the "pursuit of happiness" -- that would be a selfish, individualist promise. To Obama the American promise is collectivism: our destiny is inextricably linked and our dreams can be one. This is the promised end of a President Obama's change. Americans will stop being selfish and will sacrifice to the collective. It won't be easy, but Michelle Obama has already warned us of that. "Barack Obama," she said, "will require you to work." Nobody gets out of this deal. We're all in this together. All my life I have wondered if America really could sink into the abyss of dictatorship as Europe did in the mid-20th century. Intellectually I have know it could happen as we have lost freedom after freedom to "regulation." Tonight in Obama's acceptance speech fascism in America was made concretely real as it never was before. Now I am convinced it can happen here. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog Did the networks censor what delegates they showed on camera? I never saw any "San Francisco Democrats" or leftist nutjobs or gays or lesbians. For that matter, I saw no silly hats festooned with buttons. Gotta have the silly hats and the balloons at the end -- and we got neither. Someday the older Obama daughter will be a stone cold HEARTBREAKER. I think Obama had such a serious look on his face in his acceptance speech as a response to McCain's and the 527's attacks. This is more fallout from the Swiftboat trauma the Democrats suffered in 2004. I have never heard a Republican call a Democrat unpatriotic. Anti-American, yes -- but not unpatriotic. Of course, Dems act as if any criticism regarding foreign policy or war is an accusation of patriotism. As usual, they are trying to shut their opponents up by delegitimizing any criticism. John McCain should say something like, "Why does Obama act as if I said he does not put country first? When I use 'Country First' as my campaign slogan, I'm putting that idea forth as an ideal to which we all should aspire. I'm delighted Obama shares my ideal. But I'm baffled as to why he is so defensive about it. When I say I put country first, he acts like I've impugned his patriotism. I have news for you, Obama: not everything I say is about you. Grow up." McCain should answer Obama's bravado about debating him with a call for more debates. "All right, Obama," he should say, "let's get it on. Bring it." Perhaps it is adolescent, but after Obama got in McCain's face in his speech, McCain must give it back or he will look weak. The most suspense in the convention was watching MSNBC to see which of Keith Olbermann's colleagues he would anger next. What is Clinton trying to show when he pulls this face? Is this the face of grizzled experience? Statesmanship? Or is this bizarre grimace the product of a subconscious mind fucked up from a lifetime of lies and evasion? The leftist argument about the Bush administration is full of nonsense trumped up by the MSM and repeated to the point that Democrats take it for reality. Guantanamo, torture, violating the Bill of Rights, not enough diplomacy, the world no longer loves us -- the list seems non-essential and beside the point, even if it were true. They don't think in principle and find the fundamental problems with Bush. On Bush's economy the left gets even more surreal. Bush expanded big government. What would the left have done different, besides not cutting taxes, Bush's best policy? If a Democrat had been President for the last eight years, with the same economic policies (and 3.3% growth this quarter), the MSM would talk about how great the economy was. The "reality based community" sees the world it wants to see. Obama needs to do townhall forum-type events in which he answers all questions from voters. Right now people only have a vague idea of who he is and he needs to correct that. By answering unscripted questions he can give his personality some definition. We need to see who he really is. I'd like to know what percentage of the delegates at the Dem Con work for the government. I count public school teachers as government employees. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog The premise behind modern conventions is that free TV time is too valuable to waste on anything but an infomercial for the candidate and the party. All that other boring stuff conventions used to do should now be done before the convention starts. All that matters is the show. What a show the Democrats are putting on! After two nights it looks like they are determined to put a face of middle-class, traditional values normality on the party. I have not seen or heard anything remotely controversial -- no gay or lesbian antics, no minority grievances, no Native Americans bewailing the white man, no foreigners denouncing American imperialism, no illegal immigrants begging for amnesty, no stoners calling for the legalization of dope. All the left-wing stuff is left out with the anarchists on the streets. Inside the convention hall, you'd think it was a Republican convention. Where are the nutcases raving that Bush and Cheney are war criminals who should be tried and hanged? Where are the truthers giving earnest demonstrations on how Bush was behind 9/11? Where are the calls to bring our troops home now? Where are Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore and Dennis Kucinich? Where are Al Gore and John Kerry? This must be the phoniest convention in history. You don't think Barack and Michelle, when they're sipping white wine in Bill Ayer's radical salon, don't talk about "American imperialism," "social justice," "false consciousness," "alienation" and the rest of leftist terminology? Remember this: His mild-mannered style has thrown off even some angry black radicals, who want him to speak out more forcefully about the legacy of U.S. racism and economic inequality. One is Princeton professor Cornel West, a militant black and self-described socialist. Reportedly, West was reluctant to join the refined Obama's presidential campaign until Obama took him aside and explained to him that he had to walk a rhetorical tightrope to reassure whites. West is now solidly on board his campaign as an adviser. The Obamas are putting on a show to gain voters' trust. They're doing what they have to do to gain power. I thought the Kossacks would be angry and disappointed at how boring and "white bread" the show is, but they're delighted by the convention. They are collecting their favorite attacks on Republicans like stamp collectors at a philately convention. Apparently, there had been just enough red meat to keep the angry base happy. Everyone seems to understand that the Democrats need to hide their true leftist nature in order to appeal to the heartland. They already have the votes of the Upper West Side and Castro Street; in this convention they're going after the Reagan Democrats, FDR Democrats and independents. They want to assure religious, small-town Americans that Obama is just like them. I expect the Republicans to attack this facade and expose it for the lie it is next week. I also expect them to be denounced for "swiftboating" and "throwing red meat to the rabid right-wingers." But if the Republicans don't tell the truth about the Democrats' Potemkin Village Convention, who will (aside from little blogs like this that few read)? The MSM cannot be depended on to do the job. Bring on the swift boats. UPDATE: Revision. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog Jane Hamsher indulges in a frequent fantasy of the left, the idea that their political opponents will lock them up in concentration camps if they gain power. I myself have heard a Democrat seriously express this fear. As outlandish as it sounds, the fear is real to them. It is projection. Deep down leftists know what they would do if they found themselves with absolute power, and it would not be play cricket and drink tea. Having been taught by modern philosophy that there are no absolutes and reason is a myth, they really only take force seriously. They cannot believe their opponents would not do what they would do. I am convinced that America is very, very lucky that Democrats have made it to the White House only twice in the last 40 years with the rise of the irrationalist New Left in their party. These are people who believe that the end justifies the means. The only thing that has stopped them from abusing power so far is they have not been able to get away with it. They are working at "change" -- Obama's favorite word -- using public education and the universities to change America to a more collectivist and statist culture. Someday they hope to reform America in their image. They still have some work to do softening the character of the American people and moving them away from their Enlightenment heritage of individualism. Sooner or later, in the midst of a crisis created by intervention in the economy at home or appeasement abroad, the fissures in our culture will widen, the weak places will snap. The left will see that opportunity has finally knocked after all these years, and they will pounce. Their future power grabs will arise from the same premises and psychological phenomena that fuel their odd fantasies today. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog I could only watch seven minutes of Rick Warren's interview with Barack Obama before I gave up. Warren, an evangelical preacher, asks Obama what are his and America's greatest moral failure. Obama's answer is pure altruism, with which Warren heartily agrees. Obama says he did drugs and alcohol when he was young because he was selfish. He says he had to learn "it's not about me." Warren at that point says, "I like that!" The audience laughs at Warren's remark, which makes me think Warren has written in his books the very point that "it's not about me." I have to point out here what seems to me obvious: abusing drugs and alcohol are not selfishness, but are acts of selflessness and self-destruction. Getting past drugs and alcohol is quite selfish if one wants to lead a long and happy life. Although Obama's position is absurd, Warren agrees with him entirely. Obama went on to say America's greatest moral failure was the failure to be sufficiently altruistic, although he didn't use these words. He quoted scripture to back up his idea that we have to help the least among us. Well, there you have the perfect nightmare, the joining of the New Left with the religious right. Rick Warren, a man greatly admired by the religious Republican Hugh Hewitt, was in complete agreement with Obama's altruism. How can Republicans resist Obama's altruism when they hold the same morality? From what I read at the Dougout, McCain's answer to Warren's question about America's moral failure was as even worse than Obama's: McCain said the nation's greatest moral shortcoming is its failure to "devote ourselves to causes greater than our self-interests." America's greatest moral failure is in fact altruism, the morality of Rick Warren's religion and the ideal held by both Obama and McCain. The Declaration of Independence holds that Americans have a right to the pursuit of happiness. Altruists hold that the pursuit of happiness is immoral and that everyone has a duty to sacrifice for the least among us. The differences between the Republicans and the Democrats are mere quibbling over who sets the standard of sacrifice, God or the state. Whichever candidate wins in November, the next four years should see liberty in America take some terrible blows. We will be marched down the road to serfdom in the name of sacrifice, with Biblical scripture quoted to justify every step of the way. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog Eleanor Clift joins the effort to discredit all attacks on Democrats as smears by looking at history. The Republican formula hasn't changed much in the almost four decades since the Nixon campaign branded George McGovern the candidate of the three A's--acid, amnesty and abortion. McGovern, still trim and agile at 86, explained to an audience of political buffs at the National Press Club this week how that caricature took hold, and what little resemblance it bore to his positions on those issues. "I told my staff we don't have to answer this stuff," he said, adding, "I was wrong." McGovern thought his views on these issues spoke for themselves. He opposed legalizing hard drugs, but he thought marijuana possession should be a misdemeanor, not a felony. He opposed amnesty in the midst of a war, but said he would look at it after the war ended, telling protesters, "It's the law of the land. If you don't want to go, be prepared to go to jail." His position on abortion was conservative; he thought it should be left up to the states. President Nixon wouldn't debate him or even risk appearing in the same city. "Judging by the results, I don't know what he was afraid of," McGovern quipped. Nixon won in a landslide. The Vietnam War raged on and McGovern was dubbed a peacenik. He had been a decorated bomber pilot in World War II, service he didn't showcase. He didn't think his love of country or his patriotism would ever be questioned. I would not be surprised if Nixon smeared McGovern. Nixon was a disastrous president in many ways, the ultimate pragmatist who governed by the seat of his pants. But I don't think Nixon's paranoid smears were as important as McGovern's weaknesses. I was 15 years old in 1972. In many ways I was your typical public-educated idiot. I was not interested in politics. I was interested in playing Rock'n'Roll, acting in plays, drinking Schlitz and smoking -- tobacco and, er, other stuff. My education came later, after I read Atlas Shrugged at age 20 and became interested in the world of ideas. I remember one thing about McGovern. This memory might not be accurate through the haze of 36 years, but it's what I remember: McGovern promised to give everyone in America $1,000. (I don't know if I remember this from 1972 or from later reading about McGovern in a bound edition of The Ayn Rand Letter.) Now, since McGovern did not himself have that kind of money to throw around, where would it come from? From taxpayers. It was a redistribution scheme, taking from the rich and giving to the less rich and the poor. It was a crude attempt to buy votes. Ironically, this year the government gave everyone $600. The Republicans today have almost descended to where McGovern was in 1972. Today America is more corrupt and statist than it was in 1972. Back then McGovern's redistribution scheme was novel and somewhat shocking. It was seen for what it was: socialism. (Thanks to Bush and today's Republicans for blurring that truth! Too bad there's not a hell because the entire party deserves to rot in it.) I don't remember Nixon's idiocy about McGovern. I remember McGovern's idiocy. The American people were smart enough in 1972 to understand who McGovern really was. He represented the left wing of the party, the New Left that now controls the party. Back then there were still right-wing Democrats, and McGovern was not one of them. Nobody needed Nixon's help to see this. The notion that for 36 years Democrats have lost mainly because of Republican smears and playing on the fears of voters is not true. It's a gross underestimation of voter rationality. It's the kind of thing liberal-leftists tell themselves in order to evade the truth. The simple truth is that the Democrats are to the left of the American people. This reality might be changing or it might not. The New Leftist ideologies -- multiculturalism, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, and so on -- are indoctrinated into Americans throughout their public education (government schooling). At the same time, religion is spreading and growing stronger in our culture. How all this is changing America we don't know yet, but I fear some ghastly mutant will arise from this swamp of collectivism-altruism-mysticism -- a monstrous hybrid of environmentalism and religion. It will be a creed dedicated to renunciation of life on Earth in the name of God and the Holy Spotted Owl. The Democrats don't want to examine their ideas, so they blame their losses on Republican smears. This is partly projection; as emotionalists and irrationalists, they have lost confidence in reason. They believe lies and character assassination are metaphysically potent, whereas reason is just a game philosophers play in their ivory towers. The left's obsession with smears is based on a profound contempt for the American people. It makes sense, given their collectivist premise: the people are a helpless, only temporarily able mass that must be taken care of from cradle to grave by the wise altruists of the state. Such creatures would be incapable of reason. Democrats take the fact that many Americans vote for Republicans as evidence that they are not smart enough to vote for their self-interest. After all, Democrats think, we'll take care of you! Those cruel Republicans will send you out alone into the snow. As I noted in the comments to my last post, this entire campaign against right-wing books is not about answering lies with reason. Instead of answering their critics, the left is trying to shut them up by discrediting the very idea of anti-Democrat books. They are fighting what they call smears with a smear campaign. Their main focus is not to answer point for point using reason to find the truth. Their goal is to make people associate books against Democrats with smears. The MSM is chugging away, hoping that if they repeat this notion enough times, it will become... what's the word? Not the truth, because there is no objective truth in postmodern philosophy. They hope this notion will become our collectively accepted narrative. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog A stand-up comic on the radio (I forget her name) made me laugh when she talked about Canada. She said it's like America's attic; we forget it's there, then when we go up there we find all kinds of interesting stuff we had forgotten about. Mexico, she continued, is like America's basement -- messier, but a lot more fun. I don't know if her jokes would make Canadians laugh or just remind them of how Americans think of their country as "America's attic" -- when they think of it at all. America is so dominant in every aspect, from economy to military to culture, that many Canadians must feel some envy and resentment to that big noisy place down south. Canada has a population of some 33 million, a little less than that of the state I live in, California. With 36 million people, California is the seventh largest economy in the world. Canada ranks ninth. Canada has a disproportionate number of comedians in American culture. Jim Carrey, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Phil Hartman, Rich Little, Howie Mandel, Rick Moranis, Martin Short and many other funny people. It's that accent. It's like Minnesota, only more so. Luke, I am your father, eh? The most interesting question about Canada to me is defining its national identity. Is Canada more European than American? Something in between? Something its own? The Canadian Objectivist John Ridpath, as I recall, noted that America revolted against British rule, but the Canadians never did. This difference is reflected in the character of the two peoples. Americans are more independent and individualist; Canadians are more collectivist and statist. I know there are many exceptions in both countries, but we're trying to define the culture-wide sense of life. I think of Canada as the canary in the statist coal mine. It serves as an existential cautionary tale: this is what happens when a nation gives up its freedom to the encroaching welfare state. How bad will things get in America? Just look north. Freedom of speech has suffered dreadfully up north in our time. The Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn cases show what happens when political correctness pushes individual rights out of a culture. In Levant's latest post he mentions the case of Guy Earle, a comedian who must stand trial for his politically incorrect retorts to hecklers. If you want to see in concrete, horrific fact how welfare states lose their freedoms, just look north. You might remember that a few years back some books from the Ayn Rand Institute were held briefly at the Canadian border for suspicion that they were hate speech. (I couldn't find a story about it to link to.) Free countries do not tell their people what they can or cannot read. In its egalitarianism and multiculturalism, Canada is destroying freedoms that Enlightenment thinkers thought had been established for all time. 18th century intellectuals could not have imagined the irrationality of modern welfare states banning speech because it is is hateful. They took it for granted that the individual can use reason to judge hate speech for himself. They would have thought it absurd that a government should protect individuals from even hearing offensive speech. Canada's system of socialized medicine is another dying canary that Americans would do well to observe and learn from. As Richard E. Ralston writes: Canadians, we are told, have a better system because they live longer than Americans. Are there other demographic factors involved—didn't they also live longer before they nationalized their heath care system? Is it a better system because, although some prescription drugs are sold at a lower price, many more are not available in Canada at all? Is it better because Canadians wait an average of 17 weeks for referral to a specialist? Is the fact that Canadians come to the United States to spend more than $1 billion a year on health care an indication that Canada has better health care? One wonders why this superior system resulted in the Canadian Supreme Court striking down the law forbidding private insurance "because access to a waiting list does not constitute access to health care." Why did the Canadian Medical Association recently elect as their new President a physician who owns an illegal private clinic in British Columbia if they think Canada has a better system? Significant new spending by the federal government in Canada does not seem to be having much impact on improving the situation. As I always ask my liberal friends when they advocate more state intervention in medicine in America, "If we socialize medicine in America, where will rich Canadians go for health care?" If you look at one of the "widgets" in the sidebar on this blog, the one labeled Flags, you'll see that Canada is second only to America in reading this blog. As I write, 5.1% of the hits come from Canada; the next highest, the UK, is only 1.9%. Does this mean Canadians are more interested in American politics than the rest of the world? Since most of my readers are not statists -- like most people, statists prefer to read blogs they agree with -- can we conclude that Canada is a mixed case, with more individualists than the rest of the world? I'm not sure what to make of this anecdotal evidence. I've never been to Canada. From horror stories I've heard, you do NOT tell Canadian border agents that your trip to Canada is in any way related to work. You tell them you're going on vacation. If they hassle you, maybe it would be best to say, "I'm just a dumb American with a wallet full of money that I want to spend in Canada to help your economy. Would it expedite things if I directed some of my money your way?" I'm keeping an eye on the country to our north. You can learn a lot that way. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog LA Times columnist Tim Rutten explains right-wing books: "The Obama Nation" was written and printed because major American publishing houses have decided that there's money to be made in funding right-wing boutique imprints modeled after the Washington-based Regnery, which has made a small fortune stoking the hard-right furnace with combustible prose. Corsi's book is published by Threshold Editions, a division of Simon & Schuster, which hired right-wing political operative Mary Matalin to edit the imprint. Random House has a similar imprint in Crown Forum, and Penguin Group USA has Sentinel. Their business model -- and this is all about business -- is predicated on the existence of an echo chamber of right-wing radio and television shows willing to promote these publishers' products -- however noxious. Beyond that is a network of conservative book clubs and organizations willing to place the sort of advance bulk orders for controversial books that will guarantee them a place on the bestseller lists. The unspoken assumption beneath this reasoning is that it's impossible for the right wing to be honest and fair. They must smear their opponents to succeed, thus they build "echo chambers" that promote their ideas to unsuspecting Americans. You'll note there there is never any talk of "left-wing" publishers. In America left-wing publishers are called publishers, just as left-wing media are called the media. The left is considered the normal, the uncontroversial standard against which all lesser ideas are judged. Conservative book clubs are actually willing to place advance orders on controversial books. Imagine such a thing happening in America! Publishers that don't conform to PC standards like civilized people who have been trained in universities to think acceptable thoughts. And these right-wing publishers crank out these controversial books just to make money because controversy sells. To Mr. Rutten there is something wrong with the profits these firms make. There must be because they're right-wing. Only the liberal-left is in possession of truth and morality. Only the liberal-left can be trusted with something as important as book publishing. In Mr. Rutten's perfect world, there would be no "controversial books." The left would make its case and that would be the end of the argument. Maybe he would be happier working at Pravda. Or is the Los Angeles Times close enough? PrestoPundit explains the importance of The Obama Nation and books like it. Right wingers who haven't read the book but who are trashing it based on misleading information they've gotten via the Obama campaign need to take a step back and read the book. They'll learn much more about Obama reading the book than they've ever learned about Obama combing through the NY Times and Washington Post for the last two years. Really. Much, much more. The only thing that would have come close for content on the life of Obama is to have been a regular reader of PrestoPundit. And if you're a PrestoPundit reader, you'll know that Corsi is routinely and overwhelmingly on track, and only rarely fumbles. A very good record when your subject is the life of someone as secretive and dishonest as Barack Obama. One reason Corsi's account of Obama seems so relatively complete to me -- beyond his own extensive reporting -- is perhaps because Corsi has been familiar PrestoPundit and my Obama postings, and he's clearly combed through this and many other blogs for links and information about Obama. Corsi is conversant with what the smartest bloggers have discovered in the Chicago papers and from international sources -- as well as in Obama's own memoir. These "right-wing" books have value because left-wing publishers and left-wing media, better known as the publishing industry and the media, cannot be depended upon to report the truth about Obama or to explore anything remotely controversial about "the One." If it were up to the media, there would be nothing but puff pieces and bland stories all the way up to Obama's coronation day. It seems that the only lesson the left learned from the 2004 election is that they must do everything they can to delegitimize right-wing propaganda. The Swift Boat attack traumatized the Democrats. The lesson they should have drawn is that they need to field a better candidate; he needn't be John Wayne, but perhaps they could find a candidate who didn't throw away his medals and compare our troops to Genghis Khan. Is that so much to ask? Yes, it is too much to ask of a radicalized party, a party that has moved so far left in the last 40 years that Joseph Lieberman is now reviled. The "Scoop Jackson Democrats" are a distant, fading memory. Remember, being a leftist means never, ever learning from your mistakes. Why learn when you can just blame the right wing and everyone you know will nod in smug moral approval? View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog No one has been a harsher critic than I of John McCain, but I have to give him credit where due. He was right about Putin and Russia long before most people were. Mr. McCain has called for expelling what he has called a “revanchist Russia” from meetings of the Group of 8, the organization of leading industrialized nations. He urged President Bush — in vain — to boycott the group’s meeting in St. Petersburg in 2006. And he has often mocked the president’s assertion that he got a sense of the soul of Vladimir V. Putin, who was then Russia’s president and is now its prime minister, by looking into his eyes. “I looked into his eyes,” Mr. McCain said, “and saw three letters: a K, a G and a B.” His hard line has been derided as provocative, and possibly dangerous, by some so-called realist foreign policy experts, who warn that isolating Russia would do little to encourage it to change. But others, including neoconservatives who deem promoting democracy a paramount goal, see Mr. McCain’s position as principled, and prescient. Now, with Russia moving forcefully into Georgia as Mr. McCain seeks the presidency, his views are being scrutinized as never before through the prism of Russia’s invasion. For Mr. McCain, the conflict came after months of warnings about the situation in Georgia. Mr. McCain befriended Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, over the course of several trips there, and even nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 (in a letter that was co-signed by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York). McCain's response to the Georgian crisis has been strikingly superior to Obama's. (HT: TIA Daily) Of course, talk is cheap and Republicans are often softer than their rhetoric, but still... it is revealing that Obama gives a standard, bland response then goes on vacation. Like all liberal-leftists, he lacks interest in standing up for an American ally against a hegemonic tyranny. It's not important to Obama. Bill Quick, one of McCain's most vociferous critics, announces he will vote for him. His number one priority is survival in a dangerous world, and we can't worry about the economy or anything if we're dead. I wouldn't go that far, certainly not yet -- but it's something to think about. The Democrats in their private moments of honesty must be worried that history has not "ended," for national security issues always favor Republicans. People like Hugh Hewitt know this and try to scare the base every day about liberals handling national security. The difficult task is sorting through the spin to find the truth. **** And the least intelligent thought about the Russian-Georgian conflict comes from -- may I have the envelope, please? -- Andrew Sullivan! Since Cheney has exactly the same view about the use of American military power as Putin does about Russian power, I'm not sure what grounds he has to complain. Maybe we should start complaining when as many Georgians have perished as Iraqis - and when Putin throws thousands of innocent Georgians into torture chambers. The Iraq War is morally equivalent to Russia invading Georgia? America invaded a dictatorship and has turned it into a relatively free country (freer than it was, at least); Russia invaded a relatively free country, and the outcome is undetermined as I write, but if autocratic Russia has its way, the end result will not be the spread of freedom in Georgia. Sullivan's argument is tantamount to arguing that murder is the same as killing in self-defense. When you divorce these actions from their purpose, then they're both just the act of killing. Whenever I read Sullivan these days I ask myself, "Was his thinking this bad back when I agreed with him?" **** This article in the Wall Street Journal is the best analysis of the conflict in Georgia I have read. South Ossetia is not, as some have suggested, tit-for-tat payback for American and European recognition, over Russian objections, of Kosovo's independence from Serbia. Russia has been "at war" with democratic Georgia for some time. Driven to distraction by Mr. Saakashvili's assertiveness and Georgia's desire to join NATO, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin first tried to bring the country to its knees through economic warfare beginning in 2005. He cut off access to Russian markets, expelled Georgians from Russia, quadrupled the price of Russian energy to Georgia, and severed transport links. Georgia failed to collapse. To the contrary, it has flourished: After the Rose Revolution of 2003 ended the corrupt reign of Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister, Georgia instituted far-reaching reforms to its governing structures, cleaned up the endemic corruption that infected every facet of pre-Rose Revolution life, and found new markets for its products in Turkey and Europe. It persevered with some of the most profound and thorough economic and pro-business reforms ever undertaken by a developing country -- slashing taxes and government regulations, and privatizing state-owned enterprises. All of which is reflected in Georgia's meteoric rise on the World Bank's Doing Business indicators. The irrelevance of Russian economic sanctions to Georgia made the ideological challenge that the Rose Revolution posed to Putin's vision of Russia even more profound. It is important to understand -- and this point gets obscured, especially by Russian propaganda and pragmatism from State Department types -- that there is no moral equivalence between Russia and Georgia. Russia is guilty of a terrible crime against a country that is, by the standards of that part of the world, free. From the passage quoted above it looks like the Georgians understand economics better than McCain, Obama or Clinton. UPDATE: David Horowitz says it well: What was the response of the two candidates to be the next commander-in-chief? McCain condemned the invasion and called on the Russians to withdraw. Obama called on "both sides" to stop fighting and said the matter should be turned over to the UN -- that is to the pro-Islamist Arab dictatorships and their allies. This is a real world test of what Obama would be like as a commander-in-chief. A disaster. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog Edward Cline's post on The Sensitivity Syndrome got me thinking how potent are the New Leftist ideologies of multiculturalism, environmentalism, feminism, etc. The New Left is far more dangerous -- far more sturdily constructed -- than the Old Left ever was. The Old Left was Marxism. Marxism is an economic theory with a lot of strange ideas for which Marx never gave evidence. For instance, Marxism holds that history progresses from feudalism through capitalism to socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Late in his life Marx scribbled a note that maybe society could jump from feudalism to socialism, and when Engels published this passage the Bolsheviks made much of it, as they wanted to argue that Russia needn't pass through modern capitalism on her way to socialism. They were rather impatient to get to dictatorship as fast as possible. The entire theory was nothing but a rationalization for state power. It was a reactionary philosophy, a reaction to the greatest, most liberating revolution in history: the coming of capitalism and the industrial revolution. Though Marxists called themselves "progressives," they were regressive through and through. (Today's progressives are no better.) The 20th century served as a vast laboratory showing in experiment after experiment that capitalism (freedom) leads to wealth creation and happiness and socialism (state power) leads to poverty and slavery. It is remarkable that an illogical, discredited economic theory prevailed in the east as long as it did. The New Left is not burdened by Marx's fantasies, and is therefore more effective. Its goal is the same as Marxism: the destruction of capitalism (freedom) and the reordering of society under state power. Instead of a relatively shallow economic theory, the New Left is organized around the more philosophic idea of egalitarianism. Egalitarianism is how altruism is effected in society. Altruism demands that the strong sacrifice to the weak, the rich to the poor. Egalitarianism is how this gets done. In their quest to make everyone the same, egalitarians never focus on making the poor richer or the less intelligent more intelligent. Instead, they make the strong weaker. They redistribute money from the rich to the poor. They stop honoring the smartest student as valedictorian and just call the entire graduating class valedictorian. They stop one side from winning in children's soccer and declare both sides the winner. The strong are punished for the sake of the weak. Egalitarianism is the most destructive doctrine in history because its destructive purpose is never mentioned and seldom understood. Egalitarians never say, "We want to destroy X"; instead, they announce, "In X there are no standards -- nothing is better than anything else." When there is no standard of value, then you lose all value. The destruction is done for the altruistic purpose of helping the weak. Multiculturalism, for instance, does not set out explicitly to destroy capitalism. Multiculturalists say instead that all cultures are equal. We must not impose our way of life on some neolithic tribe on a remote island, but leave them alone to wallow in their squalor. We must not offend Muslims with cartoons of Mohammed because we are strong and they are weak. The strong must sacrifice to the weak. Environmentalists hold that man must sacrifice his interests and productivity to plants and animals and even rocks. Environmentalists (usually) do not attack man as evil, but merely claim that nature has an intrinsic value apart from man's values. It is a highly abstract form of egalitarianism. Feminists in their more collectivist variety do not just want individual rights for women; they want women to be considered metaphysically equal to men even in physical areas in which they are not as strong. Thus women who cannot carry a man out of a burning building are given employment as fire fighters under lower standards. Affirmative Action does not strive to give minorities equal individual rights, but preferences at the expense of the majority. Minorities are not lifted to the level of the majority, but standards are lowered for them. The New Left assault on capitalist culture has been a brilliant success, much more successful than blundering Marxism ever was. Consider: in the 1950's communism was reviled in a movement led by Senator McCarthy. Many on the left disagreed that communism was bad, but it was clear among all that we were not communist. We were capitalist (or to be exact, a mixed economy) and our enemy was communist. Our school children were not indoctrinated in dialectical materialism. Today the New Leftist attacks on capitalism are held as moral ideals in our culture and indoctrinated into children throughout their 12 years in public education (government schools). The New Left has succeeded where the Old Left failed. Now we are taught egalitarian ideas that destroy the standards of value of capitalism. As a result, our culture is changing. State power is growing and freedom is disappearing. The growth of the state is never done explicitly, never with clarity. It is always done in a kind of fog. Statists do not discuss their ultimate purpose, but stop at altruism. "It is our duty to help the weak," they announce as they pass new regulations strangling corporations, violating property rights and stealing wealth. Statists are wise to focus their arguments on altruism, because it is the ethics of religion. This morality is already accepted by most Americans. When New Leftists expand the state in the name of altruism, their religionist opponents are disarmed. The New Left is so successful that it not only steers the Democrat Party, but its premises have penetrated deep into the Republican Party. John McCain, the presumptive nominee for President from the Republican Party, talks about expanding "national service" and "taking on" industry. John McCain promises to "reform" Wall Street. This will mean an expansion of government intervention in the economy. When Democrats promise anything so bold, conservatives scream that their opponents are socialists and a threat to freedom. The Republicans' own candidate is just such a threat to freedom. The ideas of the New Left are so widely accepted and so uncontroversial, sitting as they do on 2,000 years of Christian morality in the west, that they go unnoticed like the air we breathe. For the ignorant masses educated in public schools, seeing the New Left is as hard as describing the taste of water. It's just there like a metaphysical fact of nature. Marxism never came close to such success. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog One of the most significant (and depressing) political trends of the last few decades has been the left's abandoning of reason and adopting lies and character assassination to defeat opponents. They have taken a big step toward totalitarianism. Those who no longer respect the truth are capable of anything. Today we learn that some leftists, at least, consider expanding smears and intimidation not just to politicians but to Republican donors. Nearly 10,000 of the biggest donors to Republican candidates and causes across the country will probably receive a foreboding “warning” letter in the mail next week. The letter is an opening shot across the bow from an unusual new outside political group on the left that is poised to engage in hardball tactics to prevent similar groups on the right from getting off the ground this fall. Led by Tom Matzzie, a liberal political operative who has been involved with some prominent left-wing efforts in recent years, the newly formed nonprofit group, Accountable America, is planning to confront donors to conservative groups, hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions. … The warning letter is intended as a first step, alerting donors who might be considering giving to right-wing groups to a variety of potential dangers, including legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives. As Captain Ed comments, this will backfire. Big time. Republicans are not primarily motivated by love of their candidates -- certainly they have little love of McCain -- but by fear and loathing of the Democrats. This letter will feed that fear and loathing, and justly so. This is the kind of thing that made me predict that in the end Republicans will fall behind their candidate. They will vote for McCain even though they dislike him because they hate the left. If the Democrats were smart they would stay away from all lies, smears and brownshirt intimidation tactics -- all of which people like Hugh Hewitt use to whip up anger on the right and motivate the base. Apparently, leftists can't help themselves: they just have to release their inner thug. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog As Obama fades in the polls, people are asking why this is happening. Alex Castellanos, David Brooks, and Classical Values examine Obama's weakness as a candidate. I believe Obama's problem is that he has miscalculated because of his leftist premises. As a socialist and a postmodernist Obama does not believe that man can know the truth about reality. Instead, people's beliefs are determined by other things. You probably remember a few months ago when Obama said to his fellow leftists in San Francisco, You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. This is a materialistic explanation of values: because of economic hardship people turn to guns, religion, bigotry or protectionism. Leftists believe Americans labor under a "false consciousness" foisted upon us by greedy capitalists. Corporations keep Americans from seeing the truth that leftists, being special people motivated by altruism instead of greed, can see. Thus, Obama believes the truth is irrelevant when you're talking to the American people. Obama can say anything, take any position, contradict himself if necessary. The only standard is: will his statement help him gain power? For months Obama has either been so vague that his words can mean anything or when he has gotten specific, he has been all over the map, backtracking and flip-flopping. People are left wondering, "What does Obama really believe?" Obama underestimates the American people. More people care about logic and the truth than he thinks. Perhaps he is now learning that if your words are meaningless long enough -- if your statements are not firmly tied to reality -- people stop listening. How ironic it is that a man who won the Democrat nomination by appealing to voters' idealism has been undone so far by excessive cynicism. His idealism was as empty as his cynicism is rich and full to the brim. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog Maybe this blog is right about Obama. Maybe, just maybe, he is not merely a vacuous welfare state politician who craves attention. Maybe he is a committed ideological communist. The very word communist evokes snickers from leftists. They think it is an exaggerated concept, something blown all out proportion by McCarthyist right-wingers who use the word to smear Democrats and progressives. But there are still real communists in this world. As few communists as there are left in America, Obama has managed to associate with a surprising number of them. Here is a picture of Obama when he was a part-time lecturer at the University of Chicago. Greg Ransom explains the picture: What Obama is teaching here is from the play book of radical pressure politics developed by Saul Alinsky. The record suggests that Barack Obama had so internalized the "ends justify the means" logic of Alinsky radicalism that Obama was comfortable with the power politics of even physical intimidation. And this is the sort of stuff Obama was teaching in the classrooms of the U. of Chicago Law School. [At the top it says "POWER ANALYSIS". The next line reads "RELATIONSHIPS BUILT ON SELF INTEREST". The link between "CORP" and "MAYOR" is "$". That's how Obama sees the world -- regardless of whatever words his speech writers might put in his mouth this campaign season.] Many Americans would not find Obama's Power Analysis controversial at all, so widespread is anti-business bias today. His argument does originate with Marx; it implies that we need noble government knights in shining armor like Obama to regulate the greedy corporations that corrupt mayors with their $. (McCain would agree entirely with Obama, which is why he is so dangerous and why I will NOT vote for McCain. It's either Obama or abstain.) As a young man Obama followed the radical Saul Alinsky: "As Obama was preparing to graduate from Columbia he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. Finally, in 1983, he decided to follow in the footsteps of one of his heroes, radical leftist and communist fellow traveler, Saul Alinsky. He concluded, "That's what I'll do… I'll organize black folks at the grass roots… for change." ... So who is Saul Alinsky? According to Wikipedia, "Alinsky was a critic of a passive and ineffective mainstream liberalism. In Rules for Radicals, he argued that the most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired ends, and that an intermediate end for radicals should be democracy because of its relative ease to work within to achieve other ends of social justice." In Rules for Radicals Alinsky writes, "There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution." This is where Senator Barack Obama's campaign about "Change" comes from. He is not talking about positive change but rather the change outlined by his mentor Saul Alinsky. Revolutionary change. Socialist change. Could Obama's lack of substance be a conscious, Machiavellian -- or should we say Alinskyan -- deception? Are Obama's flip-flops his way of doing whatever is necessary to gain power? Who is the real Obama? And don't forget this: His mild-mannered style has thrown off even some angry black radicals, who want him to speak out more forcefully about the legacy of U.S. racism and economic inequality. One is Princeton professor Cornel West, a militant black and self-described socialist. Reportedly, West was reluctant to join the refined Obama's presidential campaign until Obama took him aside and explained to him that he had to walk a rhetorical tightrope to reassure whites. West is now solidly on board his campaign as an adviser. If this is true, then Obama is hiding his radicalism in order to gain power. From that same article: Cone says [Obama] wants to see a "new system" in America "in which people have the distribution of wealth." If this is true, then Obama has plans for America that he is not sharing with us. And then there is his wife Michelle's disturbing ideas: ...Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your division. That you come out of your isolation. That you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual; uninvolved, uninformed. Some of her ideas are laudable, but none of this comes within the proper role of government. The state has a legal monopoly on the use of force, and force is how the state gets things done. It is a violation of individual rights for the state to force people to shed their cynicism, come out their isolation, move out of their comfort zones, etc. In a free country the state does not "require you to work." I'm not sure what to make of all this. Is Obama a Peter Keating type or a stealth socialist? Or some combination of the two? As I wrote in my last post, Obama has no mandate, so if he has hidden radical plans, he will have a hard time getting them done. Maybe he is counting on help from the MSM and the Democrats in Congress to foist radical change on un unsuspecting American public. Whatever, we should take comfort that it's hard to effect sweeping, radical change in the American system of government. Obama is to some extent only doing what the rest of the Democrat Party has done since the ascension of the New Left and the debacle of the McGovern candidacy in 1972: appearing moderate to get elected. Political reality forced both Carter and Clinton to govern moderately. If the political reality changes because of the deterioration of the American sense of life and the "dumbing down" of America, then we could be in for some nasty surprises in the coming years. I offer these thoughts for our consideration as we struggle to figure out how to vote in November. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog 1. He has no mandate. Yes, he has campaigned on the word change, but change from what to what? His rhetoric is empty. He is not a crusader for bold new programs. 2. He is a social metaphysician. Like that pathetic guy you once knew who agreed with everything you said just to be your friend, Obama is more concerned with what other people think than with the facts of reality. As do Bill Clinton and many politicians, Obama wants to be loved more than anything. Basking in the adoration of mass crowds will be more important to him than reading tedious position papers and actually getting something done. Such a character trait promises mediocrity. 3. He lacks intelligence. I have yet to hear him say anything remotely intelligent or profound. Again, this points to a mediocre presidency of business as usual. 4. He lacks experience. He has done little in his life except run for office, and he will likely continue to do little in the White House. 5. He lacks integrity. He flip-flops on a dime for political expedience. He hasn't the spine to fight for serious change. 6. The Republicans will make his life hell. I expect the evil, obstructionist Republicans in Congress to oppose every breath Obama takes, and to harry him the way they did Clinton. They would not oppose McCain's big government policies the way they would a Democrat's. If the Republicans let us down here, then the entire goddamn party deserves to rot in the wilderness and shrink to marginal importance. 7. His presidency would expose big government. His failures would be attributed to big government liberalism, not to capitalism, as he does not pay lip service to freedom the way Republicans do (who pursue big government as much as the Democrats). A Democrat president would bring more clarity, instead of more of the confusion we have suffered under Bush. 8. He will keep us laughing. He makes so many gaffes, such as saying he has been to 57 states in America, that he will provide much entertainment and much content for this blog. 9. We can get beyond "the first black president." Once we have achieved the cultural milestone of electing the first black president, then race -- at least the black race -- should become a non-issue. No one will campaign to be "the second black president." Future African-Americans will have to campaign on ideas and policies, not their skin color, and that will be a good thing. (The only drawback is that the immediate focus will shift to "the first female president," and you know who that means.) 10. The religious right will suffer a minor setback. Abortion will be safe for the time being. Granted, Obama's judicial nominees will certainly be atrocious statists who view the Constitution as toilet paper and laugh at the concept of property rights... but I'm looking for positives here. To sum up, we stand at a dangerous moment in America. Both parties have embraced big government. Both McCain and Obama promise to march us down the road to socialism. In such a time, we need a president who will be the least competent in attaining his goals. By every standard of measurement, the major party candidate who promises to be more incompetent and ineffective is Obama. I believe his presidency would be like Bill Clinton's: heavy on symbolism, light on substance. The greatest irony in an election full of ironies is that the candidate who has campaigned for change will probably be a business as usual, status quo president. Even on Iraq, when you examine his statements, he promises the same things Bush does. Muddling on as we have for decades is not good, but it's not as bad as it would be under a crusading socialist like Ralph Nader. This post is not an endorsement for Obama -- it's still too early. I want to see the VP picks, the conventions, the debates and the serious mud-slinging in the fall before I decide. But this post shows my recent thinking. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog Let's look at two rhetorical products of Barack Obama, his initial response to 9/11 and his speech given yesterday, "A World That Stands As One." Like everything Barack says until he flip-flops for political expedience, these two effusions are leftist cliche. The 9/11 response was revealed in a long piece on Obama in the New Yorker -- the one that goes with the satirical cover in which Obama failed to see the humor. Here it is in full: Even as I hope for some measure of peace and comfort to the bereaved families, I must also hope that we as a nation draw some measure of wisdom from this tragedy. Certain immediate lessons are clear, and we must act upon those lessons decisively. We need to step up security at our airports. We must reexamine the effectiveness of our intelligence networks. And we must be resolute in identifying the perpetrators of these heinous acts and dismantling their organizations of destruction. We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair. We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad. We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern descent. Finally, we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe—children not just in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and within our own shores. This response is the worst possible one that any serious person could have at that time. Every point he makes is wrong, and more, it is deeply stupid. No one but the postmodernist philosopher Jacques Derrida could more misunderstand 9/11 than Barack Obama. First, to make a minor point that illustrates my major point, 9/11 was not a tragedy. You can call cancer, car accidents and earthquakes tragedies, but a terrorist plot that kills thousands is an atrocity. To call it a tragedy takes focus off of the injustice and puts it on the suffering; it gives the terrorists a break, just as the rest of Obama's statement does. And of course the focus on suffering fits the altruist view of a world in which all must sacrifice to all and self-reliance is a myth. The killers of 9/11 did not lack empathy for their victims. After all, they killed themselves too, and surely they empathize with their own selves. They were driven by an ideology, Islamism. They want to destroy the non-Islamic world and replace it with a global caliphate and Sharia law. They are at war with us. Obama bends over backward to make excuses for the killers, but has stern words for the victims (America). Despite our "rage," we must not respond with all-out war, but with multiculturalist understanding of the other and welfare state handouts for the poor around the world. Our enemies could hardly expect a better response from an American politician: not only does he advocate appeasement, but maybe they can get some of the hand-out money Obama wants to throw at the world. Stupid Americans! Not only do they long to be wiped out, but they will pay their killers to do it! **** John F. Kennedy went to Berlin when it was a divided city at the height of the Cold War to give a speech in which he said "Ich bin ein Berliner." Ronald Reagan went to Berlin when it was still a divided city to give a speech in which he said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Barack Obama went to Berlin yesterday to give a speech in which he called himself "a fellow citizen of the world." Kennedy and Reagan went to Berlin to reaffirm America's commitment to resisting the spread of tyranny. Obama went to Berlin to speak because Kennedy and Reagan made it a prestigious thing to do. Obama's speech, vague and a little flat as it was, essentially makes a "one world" argument of the altruist-collectivist left. Because modern communications bring the world closer together and because of the threat of global warming, we must all sacrifice for the biggest collective, the world. At the risk of being called a McCarthyist, I must note that the ideal of transcending nationalism was also shared by the communists. The USSR's national anthem was the "Internationale." Obama's speech has nothing in it about individual rights, but much about individual sacrifice. The communists whom Kennedy and Reagan opposed could find nothing to disagree with in Obama's words. They too believe the individual has a duty to sacrifice for the world. Unfortunately for Obama's one world vision, you cannot get rid of the state. If you don't have nations directing all this sacrifice that so inspires Obama, then you'll have one big socialist state ordering everyone about. Either way, the prospects for freedom are bad, but with individual states there is a chance that some states such as America will be somewhat free and oppose the outright dictatorships. Does Obama understand this, and is he cynically mouthing this one world ideal in his quest for power? Or does he naively believe what he says? My money is on the latter. I think he has been fed leftist bromides since he was a red diaper baby and he has never questioned what he has been taught. As religionists pass their mysticism and conventional morality on to passive, unthinking children, so leftists pass their worship of the state on to the same type of mind. Obama manages to blame America in this speech for unspecified wrongs: I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions. He apparently thinks these statements are self-evident and uncontroversial, as he gives no examples of what he is saying. It seems remarkable to me that a man running for President would go overseas and criticize America without fear that Americans, the only people who can vote for him, might object. If he is willing to say this, he cannot be trusted to fight for America's national self-interest in a hostile world. The Berlin speech has taken a lot of criticism, so I'll leave it at that. Obama continues to speak in such gaseous generalities that one can find things on which to comment only by examining the logical implications of his words. But this is common among American politicians, who expect their dumbed down audience not to think critically, but merely to soak in the emotional vibes of what their leaders say. The Kennedy and Reagan speeches in Berlin became defining moments of their Presidencies. Obama's speech should become known as the moment America had second thoughts about Obama and asked, "Is that all there is?" -- but don't count on it. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog Bush speaks on the economy: Explaining the current economic downturn to a closed-door fundraiser last week, President Bush said, "Wall Street got drunk." "There's no question about it," Bush said. "Wall Street got drunk, that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras. It got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments." Huh? What does this mean? "Wall Street got drunk" is a metaphor. So what exactly is this man saying? Who knows? Does he know? I doubt it. What exactly is wrong with "fancy financial instruments"? The implication of Bush's statement, which he is too stupid to understand, is that the market failed because there's just something wrong with capitalism. And the logical implication from there is that we need more government regulation of Wall Street. No, of course Bush didn't say this; he never thinks out the logical implications of his statements. He just speaks, like his favorite political philosopher, in woozy metaphors that can mean anything. Bush's statement indicates that he has learned nothing in his Presidency. He does not understand what a disaster it has been. As Mises and the Austrian economists taught us, boom and bust cycles result from distortions in the economy caused by government intervention. When government printing presses create credit expansion, eventually some bad things will happen. But Bush doesn't give a damn about that because oversaw a boom as he sent inflation through the roof to fund his Presidency -- and the next guy will have to worry about the bust. So if Wall Street got drunk, it's because the Bush administration kept serving drinks on the house -- long after closing time. For Bush to criticize Wall Street is like, to use another analogy, a pusher pointing to a bunch of addicts and saying, "Look at those junkies. Disgusting! Why don't they live a clean life?" What American freedom we still have has survived much in the last two centuries, but I don't think it can survive another moron in the White House. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog Boortz castigates Obama for his arrogance: After General Petraeus tells Obama that a timetable for withdrawal would be wrong – that withdrawal should be based on conditions and results, not a calendar. So what does Our Savior do after his meeting? Well, he basically says that Petraeus is wrong and he is right and that as commander in chief a timetable it will be. All well and good, but for one little snag -- Bush agrees with Obama, not Petraeus! U.S. President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki have agreed on "a general time horizon," not an "arbitrary timetable" for a drawdown of U.S. forces, the White House said Friday. Now, is a "general time horizon" any more based on conditions and results than an "arbitrary timetable"? They are both deadlines set in advance of any future conditions and results, but "general time horizon" allows Bush to pretend his timetable is not a timetable. As John LeBoutillier notes, Bush also caved on negotiating with Iran unless they cease trying to build nuclear weapons, thus leaving McCain out on a limb all by himself: They sent the Under Secretary of State, William Burns, to join the ongoing talks the EU was having with Iran. This sudden change of policy - granted, Secretary Burns was instructed to ‘listen’ and not to say anything - has sent shock waves throughout the foreign policy community. (At meetings like this there is much off-the-record conversation in hallways and back-rooms; this is where real breakthroughs happen - and where real communication takes place. Undoubtedly Burns had private face-to-face talks with Iran.) It is viewed as a total reversal by a lame-duck Bush White House which is now trying to patch up a badly damaged legacy. Obama has for over a year advocated a dialogue with Tehran. On the heels of this shocker came another: the Bush White House again reversing itself and agreeing to something called - and it sounds utterly Clintonian - ‘Time Horizons’ with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. Let’s face it, these Time Horizons are the very same Time Lines that Bush - and McCain - have been blasting for years. But Bush has now just - like Bill Clinton - used semantics to flip his previous position. Bush is now on the same page as Obama who, for years, has advocated a timetable of withdrawal. So we are left wondering once again: is there a dime's worth of difference between the two parties? View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog Are there two candidates in this presidential race? Or is this election just an extended publicity trip for Obama before his coronation in November? What's the other guy's name again? Oh, yeah. McCain. Ugh. Maybe it's just as well he's being ignored. Obama is going to Europe to speak to his people. His constituency: people who think the world would be better off if America was weaker. Too bad for him Europeans can't vote in American elections. Recently I read "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor. I won't spoil it by going into the plot, but my first reaction was: this story is evil. Not bad -- in fact, it's quite well written -- but evil. Flannery O'Connor was one twisted sister. As I write I'm working on an Urban station in my day job. Urban is what the radio industry calls stations listened to by inner city minorities. Lots of other people listen to it too, even people in small towns, but it's called Urban, perhaps to distinguish it from Country. Urban is Hip-Hop and R&B. So I'm a 51-year old white guy listening to Lil Wayne and Rihanna. If I didn't have this job and you had asked me to identify Rihanna, I might have guessed it was a sports car or maybe an Italian fashion designer. Rap music depresses me. But then, I don't like any format much. Country is unbearable. Top 40 or "Hits" is rap with white artists in the mix. Adult Contemporary is a soporific, "soft rock," which is an oxymoron. (John Tesh, anyone?) Hot Adult Contemporary is mostly songs that people are used to, up to 15 years old, with some newish songs, but no rap. Rhythmic plays Top 40 songs remixed with that constant disco beat that says "dance" to contemporary ears. Oldies and Classic Rock play the same songs over and over and over. Active Rock is heavy metal. Alternative is usually heavy metal, but some stations feature more indie artists -- those are my favorite stations. Adult Album Alternative is "world class rock" and often features whiny singer-songwriters with a little blues and reggae thrown in; these stations often make their image heavily environmentalist, as they equate morality with environmentalism. The idea seems to be that they have honesty and integrity in the music they play, and these virtues compel them to be environmentalist. Environmentalism is the secular left's substitute for religion. When they stick to bands and not singer-songwriters so much, these stations can be good. Variety Rock is mostly '80s, but some '60s, '70s, '90s and today. These stations always have a man's name, like Jack or Charlie or Doug. Usually Jack. Jack says hip, funny things and "plays what he wants." It's like Jack is an individualist who stands up to the corporate suits and ignores their playlists. Of course, Variety Rock has been thoroughly market researched, despite their image, and they have a playlist just like every other format. When I get in the car and turn on the radio, what do I listen to? Classical music, except when they do their pledge drives and beg for contributions, and sports talk radio, some political talk and some Classic Rock. Some young people hate classical music so much that convenience stores have been known to pipe Mozart through their speakers just to discourage mindless youth from hanging around on the property. Like Black Flag to roaches is Vivaldi to young idiots. Flibbertigibbet says he does not go for women because of this. Of course, Flibbertigibbet understands that it's funny because women don't act like that. Women never fart. UPDATE: I forgot one of my favorite formats, Urban Adult Contemporary. They play today's R&B and old school classic soul. You get the good stuff from the '60s and '70s -- Delphonics, Marvin Gaye, Earth, Wind and Fire -- tasty tunes. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog If you ever heard Tony Snow do a radio talk show, you know he was one of the most sweet-natured hosts ever. He never mocked or insulted anyone. You might disagree with him, but any fair person would have to judge him as a genuinely nice guy. So let's take a look at some of reaction to his death from those paragons of morality, the reality based community, the benevolent, bleeding heart liberal-leftists. Liquidstoke, a diarist at Daily Kos writes: I'm sorry but it just sickens me to read diary after diary of silly, bleeding-heart little condolensces to Snow and his family. I swear some of you weak-kneed progessive brethren of mine have no clue about the vicious nature of the ideological battle we are in. When a bad guy dies, we should rejoice, not sing his praises of wish him anything by scorn. There is a fundamental reason why the progress/liberal movement is so often impotent in delivering effective blows to the right-wing machine-- it has to do with "toughness". Tony Snow was a co-conspirator in probably the largest know fraud ever perpetuated and executed on the American public by it's own elected executive branch. He was Fox news anchor in the likes of Hannity, Cavueto, & Wallace. This guy was a practiced liar and propagandist before he ever stepped foot into the White House Press briefing room. The precise reasone Bush chose him was for his ability to so effectively lie and dance around tough questions that the American people demanded answers to. So now he's dead. I said "good riddance" and hell, some of your are falling over each other to condem me for it... But you know what? I DON'T GIVE A FUCK what you think of my "heartless" comments, because what i see is a parade of soppy condolensces for a co-criminal that far outpaces and far outnumber any conversations about the death of our own innocent citizen soldiers nor the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. Disgusting.... How do we win this generational ideological battle when we've got silly sissies on our side wailing over a another scumbag's death? I suppose when Karl Rove kicks the bucket, i'll have to endure more of the same weepy, hysterical, gullible eulogies.... (HT: LGF) Little of this screed has anything to do with reality, but it is interesting that Liquidstoke makes the "ideological battle" the standard for moral judgment. To the left morality is essentially collectivist and statist. It is because conservatives (supposedly) oppose socialism -- because they are not as willing as the left to use the power of the state toward altruist ends -- that they are evil. When it comes to personal morality, leftists are relativists and generally lack passion about the matter; but get to politics and they spit fire and brimstone as well as any Baptist preacher (if in cruder language). Patterico finds the following comments on a Los Angeles Times piece: There is special place in hell for Mr. Snow. As a co-conspirator of the Bush administration, I have no special sympathy for him. I only wish his suffering were more prolonged. I hope he suffered at the end. Just a terrible person. CANCER WAS TOO GOOD FOR HIM HOPE IT WAS PAINFUL. NOW FOR THE REST OF THIS SCUMMY ADMINISTRATION. COME ON CANCER, DO YOUR GOOD WORK.. You might get some of this nastiness on the right from time to time, but it is much more common on the left. The people capable of writing this stuff are totalitarians in waiting. Like the Bolsheviks and the Nazis, all judgment, all morality must report to their collectivist politics. If someone can wish more suffering on a political enemy who died of cancer, do you think he would bat an eye at consigning his enemies to concentration camps? Modern philosophy has been at war with reason for centuries, and it has won the war (for now). When reason is no longer practiced, it is replaced by force. We see in the ugly quotes above people who are ready to move on to the next stage, that of force. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog When I lived in New York, my roommate at the time -- let's call him Phil -- was approached by a stinking drunk on Second Avenue. The drunk asked him to buy a paper bag containing some rare coins for $100. Phil, sensing the goods were stolen and maybe he could rip off this drunk, took a look at the coins. He was no numismatist, but they were obviously old coins in those cardboard holders, with prices in the thousands written on them. But there was something else written on the paper bag. "If found, please return to Dr. [name] for a reward." There followed a telephone number. Phil was struck by pangs of conscience. He gave the bag back and told the drunk to call the number for the reward. The drunk would not have any of it: he wanted 100 bucks and he wanted it now. Phil then convinced the drunk to let him call the number to get the reward. The doctor at the other end of the line, a woman, was relieved and thankful that Phil had found her lost coins that had been her father's and meant even more to her family than the thousands they were worth. At this point the drunk got skittish and started to walk away. The doctor pleaded with Phil to give the drunk what he wanted and when she got there she would give Phil a reward of $400. So Phil told the doctor what street corner he was on and described what he was wearing. Then he ran after the drunk and paid him $100 for the bag of coins. At this moment he felt quite pleased with himself -- not only had he been a Good Samaritan and secured the return of the doctor's coins, but he would make $300 that day. Not a bad day's work! He waited for the doctor to arrive. And he waited. No doctor. Phil called the number again. Someone else answered and told him he had called a pay phone on the street. Yes, Phil had been conned by some very smooth, big city confidence artists. He paid $100 for a paper bag full of trash. I think he should have been tipped off by the note. Who writes on a paper bag full of rare coins, "return to so and so for a reward"? And who keeps rare coins in a paper bag? Moreover, Phil should have remembered this basic rule: if a perfect stranger wants you to give him money now in exchange for more money later, no matter how good the deal sounds, you are being conned. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog With Jim May's permission I repost below a post he made to the private HBL. (I have reformatted it for this blog, with minor stylistic changes such as putting book titles in italics, but the content is unchanged.) The post makes an interesting point about demagoguery I had not seen before. Usually we think of demagogues manipulating the emotions of large crowds -- but who is controlling whom? **** Obama, the Empty Vessel Robert Tracinski wrote: If you were fooled by Obama's secularist rhetoric, don't feel too bad. He described the essence of his political modus operandi in his campaign book The Audacity of Hope: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." I just finished reinstalling my jaw after reading that. This is why: Consider the following quote, where I substituted "THE DEMAGOGUE" for its actual subject. I predict most, if not all list members, will recognize who is being discussed before I reveal it at the end of the quote. No, evidently propaganda is not just the trick of "always saying the same thing" -- that would be too simple. . . Actually, propaganda changes and irradiates like swamp water in changing weather. The facts must constantly be interpreted, invented, falsified anew; overnight, friend must become foe; good, evil -- and always the force of faith must gleam through the veil of shifting truths. Without this power of faith, the propagandist cannot make people believe even the simplest truths, much less a tissue of contradictions and lies! . . . The truth is irremediably buried beneath these deceptions and contradictions. How, then, can the speaker expect to put through a single incisive, suitable lie, when from speech to speech, from sentence to sentence, he changes even the lies? Whom does he expect to persuade that he himself believes a single one of those mutually contradictory lies? And to what purpose does he try to spread an opinion among the people, when on the very next day he is going to sacrifice that opinion? Such questions are asked by those who do not understand propaganda, who understand propaganda as the art of instilling an opinion in the masses. Actually, it is the art of receiving an opinion from the masses.... THE DEMAGOGUE did not hammer the same simple statement into the minds of millions; on the contrary, he played with the masses and titillated them with the most contradictory assertions. It is this art of contradiction which makes him the greatest and most successful propagandist of his time. He does not dominate the minds of millions, his mind belongs to them. Like a piece of wood floating on the waves, he follows the shifting currents of public opinion. This is his true strength. The true aim of political propaganda is not to influence, but to study the masses. The speaker is in constant communication with the masses; he hears an echo, and senses the inner vibration. In forever setting new and contradictory assertions before his audience, THE DEMAGOGUE is tapping the outwardly shapeless substance of public opinion with instruments of varying metals and varying weights. When a resonance issues from the depths of the substance, the masses have given him the pitch; he knows in what terms he must finally address them. Rather than as a means of directing the mass mind, propaganda is a technique for riding with the masses. It is not a machine to make wind, but a sail to catch the wind. (Emphasis mine.) I have, until now, held that the Obama phenomenon has been about his followers signalling their readiness for a Maximum Leader, more so than about Obama himself. I did not know that he actually describes himself in terms that the quoted author, Konrad Heiden, uses to describe THE DEMAGOGUE, who is Adolf Hitler. I am still shaking my head that Obama openly confesses to being the same sort of selfless banality as Hitler was. I do not necessarily believe that Obama will be the next Fuehrer; the antidote, as weak as it is, remains active in the culture, unlike Weimar. But it is nonetheless disturbing to see this particular pattern show up so clearly, so soon, at the level of a presidential election. Quote source: pp137-140, Der Fuehrer by Konrad Heiden, 1944, 1st edition, Houghton-Mifflin, translated by Ralph Mannheim. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog Paul Krugman is in the wrong line of work. As a pundit for the New York Times, he is mediocre at best and usually much worse. He should be working for the Democrats as a guy who presents their case on the cable news shows, for his latest column reveals him to be the ultimate spinmeister. Titled "Rove's Third Term," the piece is a defense of General Clark's attack on John McCain's war record. The fact that he would defend a smear that even Obama has distanced himself from tells you something about Krugman. Like the rabid partisans at Democratic Underground and Daily Kos, Krugman never condemns a Democrat attack on Republicans, no matter how outrageous. First, he fudges about what Clark said, implying that all the attention it got is just Republican propaganda: What General Clark actually said was that Mr. McCain’s war service, though heroic, didn’t necessarily constitute a qualification for the presidency. It was a blunt but truthful remark, and not at all outrageous — especially given the fact that General Clark is himself a bona fide war hero. But here is Robert Novak's description of what happened: Clark, along with other Obama surrogates, followed the campaign's line of downgrading McCain's performance as a Vietnam War POW. But Clark was particularly insulting. ("I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.") Clark is in fact the eighth prominent Democrat to attack McCain's war record, evidence that the Obama campaign feels the need to attack McCain's character. McCain spent 22 years as an officer in the United States Navy, which Clark chose to belittle as "riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down." Yes, Clark's statement by itself is true, but is it a fair portrayal of McCain? Here is another blunt, true statement: John Kerry threw away his medals after he got home from Vietnam. Now, if Bush had sent surrogates on TV to argue that true statement, don't you think Paul Krugman would have been the first to object? But we have not even gotten to the outrageous spin yet. Yet the Clark affair did reveal something important — not about General Clark, but about Mr. McCain. Now we know what a McCain administration would represent: namely, a third term for Karl Rove. ... But the McCain campaign went beyond condemning General Clark’s remarks; it went out of its way to distort them. “This backhanded slap against John as not being a worthy warrior because he just got shot down is one of the more surprising insults in my military history,” said retired Col. Bud Day, who participated in a conference call organized by the campaign. In fact, General Clark had said no such thing. [bS. Clark's comment is an obvious insult. Day's characterization of Clark's meaning is accurate. Krugman is being too cute by half when he pretends Clark's statement was merely an innocent statement of fact. -- Myrhaf] The irony, not lost on Democrats, is that Col. Day himself has done what he falsely accused Wesley Clark of doing: he appeared in the 2004 Swift boat ads that impugned John Kerry’s wartime service. The willingness of the McCain campaign to engage in these tactics, employing such tainted spokesmen, tells us that the campaign has decided to go negative — specifically, to apply the strategy Karl Rove used so effectively in 2002 and 2004 (but not so effectively in 2006), that of portraying Democrats as unpatriotic. So because the McCain campaign fought back against an attack on McCain's character, the candidate is going negative! In the world according to Krugman, Republicans must not only desist in any attacks on Democrats, but if they even defend themselves against Democrat attacks, they are guilty of Rovian unfairness! Paul Krugman is a man who has, as the current phrase goes, "drunk the Democrat kool-aid." When Democrats smear a Republican's character, they are just being "blunt but truthful." When Republicans defend themselves, they are "going negative." Such is life in the liberal cocoon. View the full article

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog Barack Obama has given a second speech this week leading up to the Fourth of July. In this one he expands on his idea of national service that he mentioned in his previous speech. The speech is called, "A New Era of Service." Service to the state would be a priority in an Obama administration. Fourth of July speeches are a time to celebrate what makes America great, to speak about America's ideals. It is notable that Obama can see nothing worth talking about but statist-collectivist-altruist ideals. For a holiday that celebrates America's independence, Obama focuses on the opposite, on our supposed dependence on on another. For a holiday that traditionally celebrates freedom, Obama advocates expanded service to the state. I submit that there has never been a candidate for President of a major party who so grossly misunderstood the meaning of America as Barack Obama. Liberals can scream that I'm "questioning his patriotism" all they want, but I firmly believe Obama is the least American, most European presidential candidate ever. This little man has no idea what made America great. His vision of America's ideals is exactly what is destroying American liberty and individual rights. If a speech called "A New Era of Service" had been given on Independence Day 100 years ago, the audience would have been baffled. Why, they would have wondered, is this man on the anniversary of American independence speaking about servitude to the state? The bafflement would have quickly given way to anger and outrage. The audience would have considered such a speech as nothing less than an evil, nihilist attack on the essence of America. America has declined so far in 100 years that we are about to elect as President a man who personifies everything the Founding Fathers fought against. The Founders fought for individualism; Obama fights for collectivism. The Founders fought for liberty; Obama fights for statism. The Founders fought for the pursuit of happiness; Obama fights for individual sacrifice. The Founders fought for our national self-interest against foreign tyrants; Obama wants to appease our enemies so the rest of the world will think better of us. The Founders fought for lower taxes; Obama fights for higher taxes. Even more: in the founding era saying what you mean and meaning what you say were held as virtues. The Plain Dealer of Cleveland was named in that spirit. Obama, on the other hand, has bragged that his words are a "rorschach test" -- they mean different things to different people. Obama thinks that a life lived in the selfish pursuit of profit is a life without meaning. Only by sacrificing to the collective does one achieve noble values. Only by selflessly serving others is one moral. Read his speech if you can stomach it. Obama proposes an array of new programs and expansion of old programs, none of which will do a damned thing but waste money. It will all be make work and symbolism. College kids will think of the 100 hours they must spend in "community service" as jerk-off time they must endure to get a degree. Obama's idealism will only lead to greater cynicism as young Americans learn that what our culture holds as a moral value is a useless waste of time, whereas the important, selfish values of pursuing a career and making money are sneered at. When drudgery is praised and meaningful work is belittled, people give up on morality and fall into cynicism and despair. From there it's a small step to booze, drugs, and a life of mindless, range-of-the-moment hedonism. Obama's program for a new era of service must fail because the underlying morality, altruism, is entirely at odds with the requirements of man's life. Man must selfishly pursue his values to live and be happy, but altruism demands the sacrifice of higher values to lesser values. If followed consistently, which few can do, altruism leads to death. Altruists depend on people being inconsistent; it is a morality that depends on people being immoral by its own standards in order to remain alive. And if you want to be really depressed, consider this: John McCain is just as bad. He extols sacrificing for something greater than ourselves. He has contempt for the profit motive. He is as ignorant of economics as Obama. Just about the only good thing that can be said about McCain is that he doesn't come off as an effete European like Obama. His heroism in the military is unquestionable. Whichever fool lies and smears his way to the Oval Office, America will enter a new era of servitude. UPDATE: Greg Ransom on Obama's program for a new American slavery: THIS ISN'T THE ROAD TO SERFDOM, THIS IS SERFDOM. National service mandated by the state is what Europe had for centuries. It was called serfdom. For example, in France, citizens were required to perform public service building and repairing roads and other public projects for hundreds and thousands of hours a year. Serfdom wasn't eliminated in France until the French revolution, one of the "liberty" parts of that revolution. It was largely the American revolution which inspired this escape from serfdom. Indeed, the American revolution was all about escaping from the European model of servitude, with the American's insisting that even very moderate taxation without representation was a form of oppressive servitude. Incredibly, Barack Obama somehow believes that advocacy of a return to European style serfdom is a good way to celebrate the American Declaration of Independence from the oppression of English tyranny. UPDATE II: I mistakenly wrote that Obama calls his words a "rorschach test." It would be correct to write that he thinks of himself as a "blank screen." Robert Tracinski used the whole Obama quote in HBL: I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. View the full article