Chuck Colson

During the seemingly endless build-up to the Iowa caucuses, there was one consistent refrain repeated over and over. It’s like the big lie — the more you keep repeating it, the more people are going to believe it, but it remains a lie.

The lie was simply this: that the political parties have to choose between social issues and economic issues. This year, the media and the party machines are telling us ad nauseam that the only issue that matters is the economy.

So any candidate who wants to win the White House should just shut up about things like marriage, the sanctity of life, religious liberty, and those other annoying issues that distract us from focusing on jobs and the economy.

But that’s crazy! Doesn’t anybody get the connection between the social issues and economics issues

One candidate who does, Rick Santorum had the courage to link the two in a recent Iowa town hall meeting. (And before I go on, please, folks, I’m not endorsing him or anyone. I never do.)

Here’s what Senator Santorum said:

“Yes, [the election is] about growth and the economy, [but] it’s also about what is at the core of our country . . . faith and family. You can’t have a strong economy, you can’t have limited government if the family is breaking down and we don’t live good, moral, and decent lives.”

Precisely right. And what does he get for his remarks? Backhanded compliments for his showing in Iowa and a stern warning from, among others, the conservative National Review:

Here’s what the National Review wrote online: “In a general election…where the focus is almost certainly going to be on economic issues, it is questionable whether Santorum’s relentless focus on social issues will play well with independent voters, especially in the crucial suburbs.”

Hogwash. If the nation’s current economic crisis has taught us anything, it’s that a healthy economy cannot thrive in the midst of moral breakdown. Ethical failures on Wall Street, Main Street, and Capitol Hill put us into this mess we’re in today, as I’ve said many times before.

But how about some facts? I’ll have the citations for you at BreakPoint.org: Take incarceration rates: something Santorum has alluded to and I’ve seen with my own eyes: “Young men who grow up in homes without fathers are twice as likely to end up in jail as those who come from traditional two-parent families.” And “70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes.”

How about education? 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes. And children from low-income, two-parent families outperform students from high-income, single-parent homes.

I could go on and on.

Do you think that crime rates, incarceration, low educational achievement, out of wedlock births, affect the economy and government spending? Of course they do, and the statistics prove this!

If you want a healthy, thriving economy you’ve got to have a strong moral societal foundation. And any so-called “conservatives” who think otherwise are simply deluding themselves; the two issues simply can’t be separated.
As Christians, we can’t buy into the lie that we can separate economic prosperity from moral behavior. And we can’t be afraid to hold the candidates’ feet to the fire on this, either.

HT: Break Point (read full article)

Conservatism is the natural political outgrowth from the real life experience. Humans are naturally flawed, greedy, and untrustworthy. Conservatives recognize that fact and promote the market system and divided government in order to pit one greedy person against another.

Conversely, the left continually denies and fights against human nature (inevitably losing to it). For leftists, it’s always a matter of finding the right human to rule — the disinterested regulator, the consumer-protecting bureaucrat, the messianic president, etc. That is the nature of the OWS protests: to replace one group of self-interested people on Wall Street with another group of magically not self-interested people in government. But because government isn’t magic, utopias never quite work out in real life — not even in Zuccotti Park. In one news story after another, Thatcher’s “facts of life” are on display. Let’s look at four examples.

Conservative Fact of Life: Give a man a fish, and he’ll stick around for another.
Providing for folks in need is a good thing, but handouts are dangerous tools. At any point in the giver-receiver relationship, there’s a risk of doing more harm than good. If the recipient becomes dependent or feels entitled to his benefits, his initiative atrophies like an unused muscle. Too often the receiver is left less prepared and less likely to succeed in the future. Thus long-term well-being is sacrificed in the name of short-term “help.”

The negative effects of welfare can appear quickly, as OWS recently learned. Zuccotti Park has become a hotspot for vagrants in search of free food. Protestor Lauren Digioia recently explained to reporters that OWS has “compassion toward everyone,” but that “there are rules and guidelines.” Specifically, “[i]f you’re going to come here and get our food, bedding and clothing, have books and medical supplies for no charge, they need to give back.” Digioia added, “There’s a lot of takers here and they feel entitled.”

Conservative Fact of Life: Everybody is wealthier than somebody, but that doesn’t give anyone the right to take from others.
Protestor Nan Terrie allegedly came to Zuccotti Park with a $5,500 Mac laptop (near the top 1% of portable computers, perhaps). One night after Terrie succumbed to fatigue after a long day as a kitchen volunteer, preparing meals for fellow protestors, a thief made off with the high-end computer.

“Stealing is our biggest problem at the moment,” Terrie told reporters. A problem indeed. Suddenly it didn’t matter that the computer was $2,000 more than even the most tricked out MacBook Pro available in the Apple online store. Or that scores of laptops exist at a fraction of the price (the computer I’m using to write this article was 1/10 the price of the Terrie’s stolen Mac). No, the only thing that mattered was that taking something that someone else earned was wrong. That fact holds for a college student’s electronic devices as well as a hedge fund manager’s compensation.

Conservative Fact of Life: Rugged individualism is the only sensible approach to life.
America was built by people who refused to wait around for someone else to make them a living. From the frontiersman who left everything to chase his dreams in the American West to the entrepreneurs of the Forbes 400 list, Americans who make their own way are the most successful.

It didn’t take long for protestor Peter Hogness to learn whom he could trust. Angry about empty promises regarding the protestor status in Zuccotti Park, Hogness stumbled upon true wisdom. “One thing we have learned from this is that we need to rely on ourselves and not on promises from elected officials,” Hogness told reporters.

Conservative Fact of Life: Though she’s a seductive mistress, Utopia never quite works out as a wife.
Conservative author and columnist Dr. Thomas Sowell once said that he would love to live in the kind of world envisioned by the left. In such a world we would have few inequalities, few wants, and men would act as angels, working for the common good. The problem for the left is that their vision is based on a premise that does not exist in the real world.

The longer the OWS protests last, the more they confront the real world. As money has begun to roll in from supporters (reportedly $500,000), life has only become more complicated. “F**k Finance,” said Bryan Smith when he couldn’t get access to the funds he wanted. “I hope Mayor Bloomberg gets an injunction and demands to see the movement’s books.”

When Elija Moses requested $8,000 to replace his vandalized drum set, he was turned down. “We don’t have the power for [purchases that large],” explained Finance Committeeman Pete Dutro. “They have to go to the General Assembly.”

Moses put it best when he simply said, “I’m really frustrated.” Yes, Utopia can be quite frustrating for anyone who believes it can exist. Alas, an earthly Eden does not exist, and its mortal imitations are no more than an unwieldy collection of committees, assemblies, and frustrated citizens.

It’s unlikely that these experiences will change minds among the Occupiers. (But there’s always hope — even Sowell was once a committed Marxist.) Unfortunately, once Occupy Wall Street has picketed its final bank, sung its last rendition of Cumbayá and gone home, it will take just one sentence to define the movement: “The truths of conservatism stared them in the face; sadly, they failed to notice.”

HT: American Thinker

How delicious is irony, how fickle fate?

Just a little more than two years ago, liberals were ecstatic about Barack Obama’s election and Democrats’ control of Congress. Liberal pundits were all atwitter about the brand new Democratic Era that voters had ushered in. America would finally become what America should have been years ago: a European-style social democracy.

Boy, did Democrats misread their mandate! With very little hindsight needed, it’s apparent to all but ideologically-blinkered liberals that the Democrats’ gross overreach isn’t what voters wanted or expected. Voters wanted a redo of the Clinton years. Instead, in the person of Barack Obama, voters got an amalgam of FDR and LBJ with a dash of Neville Chamberlin thrown in.

But here’s the real kicker. Two years of Obama-Reid-Pelosi overreach and excesses may have been the table-setter for the real revolution now unfolding. Voters and taxpayers first needed to see the irresponsibility and recklessness of unalloyed liberalism to appreciate that conservative government is far superior. Thank you, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid.

Of course, the real revolution began last year with the 2010 midterm elections. Yes, the GOP made the largest gains in U.S. House seats since 1948. But the underappreciated story is that the GOP racked up huge gains in state legislative contests, and further down ballot, Republicans swept plenty of local offices. State legislatures control congressional redistricting. Republicans now dominate enough key statehouses to lock-in GOP congressional electoral advantages for a decade.

Had voters limited their ballots to throwing out the rascals in Congress, a fair argument could be made that 2010 was just a protest vote — an attempt by voters to shake up the Democrats. But when voters drill down to change party control of legislatures, city halls, and county commissions, you can bet that they’re thoroughly repudiating the party in power. The 2010 repudiation of Democrats was a clear expression of what voters did and didn’t want from government.

Move now to the present time. Republicans are on the march in Congress. Late last week, House Republicans passed a budget bill containing $61 billion in cuts. It’s not the $100 billion that conservatives aimed for, but it’s substantial and can be considered a down payment. The House Republican proposal now goes to the Senate. The budget process wrangling is just in its first phase. Moving forward, the GOP will have multiple opportunities to push more cuts.

And look what else House Republicans are doing. They’re using the budget process to hamstring Obamacare by denying it funding. Shutting down and then nixing ObamaCare would be an historic victory in the fight to end liberalism’s nearly hundred-year dominance; it would be one of those critical turning points in history — like Vicksburg and Gettysburg — a momentum shifter that leads to other key victories, such as entitlements reform.

Also, Indiana Republican Mike Pence offered and passed an amendment cutting funding for the odious abortion mill called Planned Parenthood. Another amendment, offered by Oregon Republican Greg Walden, that passed, chokes off funds for the Federal Communications Commission’s net-neutrality gambit. Net -neutrality would concentrate more power in the FCC’s hands and stymie free speech across the internet. Net-neutrality could well have been made in China.

Of course, the revolution just beginning isn’t confined to the Halls of Congress. Chris Christie, New Jersey’s intrepid Republican governor, fired the first shots last year in the burgeoning struggle to bring sanity back to state affairs. Christie’s efforts aren’t limited to balancing state budgets and reining in taxes, important as those things are. Christie is working to limit government and expand the playing field for the private sector. As we’re seeing, government without proper limits is a ruinous beast. California is a prime example.

Now newly elected Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is making headlines because he dares to say that his state is broke and that the public employees’ gravy train needs to end. Governor Walker wants to end collective bargaining for public employees, excepting police and firefighters, on the simple, common sense premise that employees shouldn’t be negotiating the hours they work, among other things.

In Ohio, Governor John Kasich is gearing up to slash budgets, rollback taxes, cut regulations, and confront the Buckeye State’s public employee unions. There’ll be fireworks aplenty in Columbus.

Thomas Jefferson is being proven right again. The states are the laboratories of democracy. Christie, Kasich, and Walker are seeking to demonstrate that limited, financially responsible government is best for economic and societal health. If successful — and we should all have high confidence that these governors will succeed — the lessons will not be lost on voters and politicians in other states. Revolutions are like that; it takes just a few courageous leaders to embolden others and for revolutions to spread.

A marvelous, if unintended, consequence of this burgeoning conservative revolution is what it’s doing to liberalism. The budding conservative revolution is starting to place strains on liberalism; beginning to make liberals and their allies fight defensive battles in multiple — and multiplying — places. Call this a modified Cloward-Piven — or Cloward-Piven turned on its masters.

Challenging liberal governance, and pressing limited government reforms, will help bring down liberalism across the nation. And that should be an indisputable aim of the new conservative revolution. Liberalism became a pox on the nation years ago. Marginalizing liberalism would be an incomparable service to generations to come — and to those kids being lied to now by too many Wisconsin teachers.

“Change We Can Believe In.” Mr. Obama’s slogan always had a nice ring to it, but it was misapplied and a little ahead of its time. With the conservative revolution, change we can really believe in has arrived. How’s that for rich irony?

HT: American Thinker

After months of “change,” Americans have had enough. An Aug. 8 Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows only 30 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction. Two-thirds (65 percent) think America is on the wrong track.

The same overwhelming majority tell Rasmussen they want smaller government – one that does less, costs less and operates far more efficiently.

Progressives scoff, asserting that Americans want Big Government – they just don’t want to pay for it. Besides, they argue, there are no other options: Conservatives have no ideas on how to address our problems.

They’re mistaken. The proof is found in “Solutions for America,” a comprehensive 54-page guide from The Heritage Foundation that presents more than 120 conservative policy prescriptions to get our nation back on the right track. Some of the recommendations are groundbreaking. Others are familiar. All have one thing in common: They would return power to the people. And, collectively, they will transform America.

For example, “Solutions for America” calls for ending the era of open-ended entitlements. Spending on the Big Three entitlement programs – Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – is on auto-pilot, consuming an ever-increasing share of GDP without even a vote in Congress. Lawmakers need to bring these programs into the budgetary process, establishing firm, five-year budgets and making sure that those needing help the most get it.

We should raise the Social Security retirement age, and encourage people to work longer by eliminating payroll taxes for those over retirement age. We should let needy families choose how to spend their share of Medicaid dollars, allowing them to purchase higher quality private insurance. And when entitlement spending exceeds congressionally approved levels, automatic triggers should keep costs in line.

We must cap welfare spending, which now, across all levels of government, approaches $1 trillion. Congress should consider all 71 means-tested welfare programs as a whole, eliminating duplicative programs and capping annual increases in welfare spending at the rate of inflation.

Moreover, lawmakers should break the culture of dependency by making sure that able-bodied welfare recipients give something in return for their benefits. In some areas, this will mean strengthening work requirements. In others, it may involve treating some benefits as loans to be repaid.

Spending overall also needs to be restrained. “Solutions” recommends a mechanism to force Congress to live within a reasonable budget: a binding cap that limits future year-to-year growth in federal spending to inflation plus population growth. The general goal should be to lower spending to the historic norm of no more than 20 percent of GDP.

Other common-sense policy proposals in “Solutions” include:

– Aligning the top tax rate on corporate earnings with those of our 30 largest trading partners, so we can better compete for business globally.

– Letting states opt out of inflexible, D.C.-based programs, so they can resume their traditional leadership roles and freely pursue innovative approaches in areas such as education and transportation.

– Ending corporate welfare and earmarks.

– Returning to a foreign policy of “peace through strength” to deal with the growing threat of nuclear proliferation and well as the dangers posed by global terrorism and hostile conventional forces.

At a recent fundraiser, President Obama asserted: “The other side isn’t offering anything new.” As if centralized government based on the principles of control, spending, debt and redistribution of wealth is new. It isn’t. It’s been tried worldwide and has consistently failed.

Yet the calls for lavish spending continue – the only answer we get from the current leadership. Conservative answers start from a very different place. The counterpoint to thoughtless and expensive government programs is not new thoughtless and expensive government programs. The counterpoint is real reform.

The principles that our nation was founded upon aren’t ideas to be discarded. They’re exceptional goals to be rediscovered. Real government reform is itself an untested idea. That’s what conservatives offer. It’s an idea whose time has come.

HT: CNSnews

Dennis Prager

Next Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010 is not Election Day. It is Referendum Day.

It may be commonplace for commentators to announce that every election is “the most important election in our lifetime” or something analogous. But having never said that of a presidential election, let alone an off-year election, this commentator cannot be accused of crying wolf when I say that this off-year election is not simply the most important of my lifetime. It is the most important since the Civil War.

The reason is that unlike all previous elections, this one is actually a referendum on the direction of the United States of America.

If the Democrats win:

– The American people have announced, consciously or not, that they support the Democratic Party’s “fundamental transformation” — those were President Obama’s words when he campaigned, and he has lived up to them — of America from a liberty-based state of limited government into an equality-based welfare state with an ever-expanding government.

– America will change from a country that emphasizes producing wealth to a country that emphasizes redistribution of wealth.

The left has never been primarily interested in creating wealth. Its primary goal always and everywhere has been to redistribute it. That so many businessmen and much of Wall Street are only now awakening to this fact is only a testament to the staggering lack of wisdom in big business.

– America will produce increasingly narcissistic citizens.

For proof, just look at the virtual shutdown of much of France and the ubiquitous rioting of vast numbers of its citizens over a tiny change in its welfare state — raising the age of retirement from 60 to 62. The idea that one will work two more years before receiving benefits until death so offends vast numbers of French — including young people who have every reason to believe they will live until the age of 100 — that they are fighting it as if their very lives were in jeopardy. That is the self-centeredness that all welfare states engender in their citizens.

– America will further reinforce the conviction that minorities are victims — who must be protected from their fellow Americans by the state.

Latinos, blacks, Muslims, gays and vast numbers of women have been told by the left and its political party that they are all persecuted by a country that is SIXHIRB — Sexist, Intolerant, Xenophobic, Homophobic, Islamophobic, Racist and Bigoted. That America is the least SIXHIRB country in the world is a fact that has been all but drowned out by the left-wing domination of television and print news media, all the entertainment media, and the high schools and universities.

– America will continue to undermine its unique ability to Americanize people of all ethnic, national, racial, and religious backgrounds.

With a Democratic victory the country’s very motto — E Pluribus Unum, “Out of Many One” — will continue to erode as ethnic and racial identities rather one American identity are increasingly celebrated. Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel has just announced that Germany’s experiment with multiculturalism has “utterly failed,” but the left and its political party, the Democrats, have redoubled their efforts to supplant E Pluribus Unum with multiculturalism.

– America will continue its economic slide.

With a Democratic victory, unsustainable debts will mount, wealth-producing companies will continue to flee from higher taxes and more regulations, energy use will be taxed in the name of environmentalist utopianism, and the government will continue to print dollars.

– America will become increasingly secular.

With a Democratic victory, the left’s goal of rendering America’s other motto, “In God We Trust,” an anachronism will come closer to fruition. Leftism is a jealous god. As in Western Europe, the Judeo-Christian roots of this country are ceasing to play the indispensible moral role they have played since before 1776.

And what would constitute a Democrat victory next Tuesday? Anything other than a Republican landslide. Any other result will be interpreted by the media and by the Democrats as solely a result of the economic recession and as the normal losses of the dominant party in off-year elections.

In other words, the only way to ensure that the electoral results are seen as a repudiation of the growth of the state and the other Democrat and leftist goals is through an enormous Republican victory.

Only then will America understand that this election was not first about jobs. It was above all about America.

HT: DennisPrager.com

The first: the tea party is not a “threat” to the Republican Party, the tea party saved the Republican Party. In a broad sense, the tea party rescued it from being the fat, unhappy, querulous creature it had become, a party that didn’t remember anymore why it existed, or what its historical purpose was. The tea party, with its energy and earnestness, restored the GOP to itself.

In a practical sense, the tea party saved the Republican Party in this cycle by not going third-party. It could have. The broadly based, locally autonomous movement seems to have made a rolling decision, group by group, to take part in Republican primaries and back Republican hopefuls. (According to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, four million more Republicans voted in primaries this year than Democrats, the GOP’s highest such turnout since 1970. I wonder who those people were?)

Because of this, because they did not go third-party, Nov. 2 is not going to be a disaster for the Republicans, but a triumph.

The tea party did something the Republican establishment was incapable of doing: It got the party out from under George W. Bush. The tea party rejected his administration’s spending, overreach and immigration proposals, among other items, and has become only too willing to say so. In doing this, the tea party allowed the Republican establishment itself to get out from under Mr. Bush: “We had to, boss, it was a political necessity!” They released the GOP establishment from its shame cringe.

And they not only freed the Washington establishment, they woke it up. That establishment, composed largely of 50- to 75-year-olds who came to Washington during the Reagan era in a great rush of idealism, in many cases stayed on, as they say, not to do good but to do well. They populated a conservative infrastructure that barely existed when Reagan was coming up: the think tanks and PR groups, the media outlets and governmental organizations. They did not do what conservatives are supposed to do, which is finish their patriotic work and go home, taking the knowledge and sophistication derived from Washington and applying it to local problems. (This accounts in part for the esteem in which former Bush budget chief and current Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is held. He went home.)

The GOP establishment stayed, and one way or another lived off government, breathed in its ways and came to know—learned all too well!—the limits of what is possible and passable. Part of the social and cultural reality behind the tea party-GOP establishment split has been the sheer fact that tea partiers live in non-D.C. America. The establishment came from America, but hasn’t lived there in a long time.

I know and respect some of the establishmentarians, but after dinner, on the third glass of wine, when they get misty-eyed about Reagan and the old days, they are not, I think, weeping for him and what he did but for themselves and who they were. Back when they were new and believed in something.
Finally, the tea party stiffened the GOP’s spine by forcing it to recognize what it had not actually noticed, that we are a nation in crisis. The tea party famously has no party chiefs and no conventions but it does have a theme—stop the spending, stop the sloth, incompetence and unneeded regulation—and has lent it to the GOP.

Actually, Maureen “Moe” Tucker, former drummer of the Velvet Underground, has done the best job ever of explaining where the tea party stands and why it stands there. She also suggests the breadth and variety of the movement. In an interview this week in St. Louis’s Riverfront Times, Ms. Tucker said she’d never been particularly political but grew alarmed by the direction the country was taking. In the summer of 2009, she went to a tea-party rally in southern Georgia. A chance man-on-the-street interview became a YouTube sensation. No one on the left could believe this intelligent rally-goer was the former drummer of the 1960s breakthrough band; no one on the left understood that an artist could be a tea partier. Because that’s so not cool, and the Velvet Underground was cool.

Ms. Tucker, in the interview, ran through the misconceptions people have about tea partiers: “that they’re all racists, they’re all religious nuts, they’re all uninformed, they’re all stupid, they want no taxes at all and no regulations whatsoever.” These stereotypes, she observed, are encouraged by Democrats to keep their base “on their side.” But she is not a stereotype: “Anyone who thinks I’m crazy about Sarah Palin, Bush, etc., has made quite the presumption. I have voted Democrat all my life, until I started listening to what Obama was promising and started wondering how the hell will this utopian dream be paid for?”

There is also this week a striking essay by Fareed Zakaria, no tea partier he, in Time magazine. He unknowingly touched on part of the reason for the tea party. Mr. Zakaria, born and raised in India, got his first sense of America’s vitality, outsized ways, glamour and crazy high-spiritedness as a young boy in the late 1970s watching bootlegged videotapes of “Dallas.” What a country! His own land, in comparison, seemed sleepy, hidebound. Now when he travels to India, “it’s as if the world has been turned upside down. Indians are brimming with hope and faith in the future. After centuries of stagnation, their economy is on the move, fueling animal spirits and ambition. The whole country feels as if it has been unlocked.” Meanwhile the mood in the U.S. seems glum, dispirited. “The middle class, in particular, feels under assault.” Sixty-three percent of Americans say they do not think they will be able to maintain their current standard of living. “The can-do country is convinced that it can’t.”

All true. And yet. We may be witnessing a new political dynamism. The tea party’s rise reflects anything but fatalism, and maybe even a new high-spiritedness. After all, they’re only two years old and they just saved a political party and woke up an elephant.

The second fact of 2010 is understood by Republicans but not admitted by Democrats. It is that this is a fully nationalized election, and at its center it is about one thing: Barack Obama.

It is not, broadly, about the strengths or weaknesses of various local candidates, about constituent services or seniority, although these elements will be at play in some outcomes, Barney Frank’s race likely being one. But it is significant that this year Mr. Frank is in the race of his life, and this week on TV he did not portray the finger-drumming smugness and impatience with your foolishness he usually displays on talk shows. He looked pale and mildly concussed, like someone who just found out that liberals die, too.

This election is about one man, Barack Obama, who fairly or not represents the following: the status quo, Washington, leftism, Nancy Pelosi, Fannie and Freddie, and deficits in trillions, not billions.

Everyone who votes is going to be pretty much voting yay or nay on all of that. And nothing can change that story line now.

HT: WSJ

Establishment Washington got yet another whipping last night, as “the unelectable” Christine O’Donnell — supported by Sarah Palin and the Tea Parties — rallied to convincingly beat liberal and well-connected Mike Castle in Delaware’s Republican primary for Senate. Castle, we were told by the powers that be, was the only electable Republican — and his loss is already being mourned by “Beltway conservatives” like Karl Rove and Dana Perino, not to mention the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has announced that O’Donnell will have to finance her campaign on her own.

Well, fine. The last time Republican voters agreed with the Beltway pundits (and the Democrats) and awarded a nomination to “the most electable Republican” who was “well-respected across the aisle,” we got John McCain. How did that work out? Just great — as long as you are a Democrat.

Thankfully, tiny Delaware’s voters ignored their party apparatus, actually held a true Republican primary, and chose the person who most closely represents what the Republican base voter believes in. This is what party primaries used to be for. It is what they should still be held for. It is simply unforgivable for Republican apparatchiks to choose sides in a primary — yet they do — and they are so often disastrous picks. Can you say “Arlen Specter”? “Charlie Crist”?

So while there’s no guarantee of success in November for O’Donnell, she joins a list of “unelectable Republicans” past and present like Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, Rand Paul, Scott Brown, Sharron Angle, Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio, to name a few. Their stories are varied, but all were deemed “unelectable” by the party insiders at some point in their careers, and they were all considered too conservative.

O’Donnell’s story of last night was simply a continuation of their stories in this very unusual 2009-2010 election cycle.

All faced establishment candidates and long odds — and yet all won by being unabashedly conservative. All read the tea leaves of the national mood much better than government insiders and political pros.

It is true that Angle, Paul, and Rubio have not won general elections yet — but they have already disproven the “unelectable” myth by staging huge rallies in the polls that we were told could never happen by the experts and insiders. Brown and Christie (who campaigned for Castle) meanwhile have shown that strong small-government conservatives can win in blue-state bastions like Massachusetts and New Jersey after all, destroying yet another inside-the-Beltway myth.

Compared to what Brown and Christie have done, Delaware might be relatively easy for O’Donnell. She had to come from way back in the polls just days ago, but she came so far so quickly that her win last night was never in doubt. It’s possible that she can do the same in the general election in a tiny state like Delaware, where face-to-face politics is the rule. And Joe Miller can replicate this in Alaska as well.

Perhaps some elections cannot swing so fast among huge populations, but one of the many ways the Tea Party groups are showing superior sophistication to the political pros is understanding the dynamics of small voting populations. Small-population Delaware, Nevada, and Alaska have just as many senators as do New York and California, and these are prime places to take a stand for principled conservatism with unknown candidates.

Yet the siren call of name recognition, inside connections, and perceived electability endures among the formulaic party pros.

Never mind that Mike Castle simply joins other moderate and respectable “electable Republicans” on the ash heap of history like McCain, Charlie Crist, Bob Dole, Arlen Specter, latter-day Jack Kemp, and Lisa Murkowski. All were establishment favorites who have, for varying reasons and in varying ways, brought shame and defeat upon that very establishment’s party. Some even became official enemies of the party, proving that conservative doubts about them were justified all along.

But the Beltway arrogance is not deterred.

The long knives of establishment Washington — including the blades of Rove and Perino — were already slashing into O’Donnell last night. They mumbled about her personal problems and her inexperience and her unclear financial background as reasons she cannot win the general election.

Well let me clue these comfortable Beltway mavens in on something: many of us country-class peons out here in “non-government” land have had problems like O’Donnell’s because of the burden of supporting Washington, not to mention the rash of bureaucrats at every conceivable level of government. It is becoming damned near impossible to negotiate a life outside the Beltway without some problems. That’s exactly what the Tea Party movement and all of these elections are about. We are sick of it.

In fact, the Delaware seat up for grabs is “the Joe Biden seat,” a seat that for decades has included a private AMTRAK seat every morning and every night for Biden. Whatever O’Donnell’s personal and financial problems are, they may have something to do with the fact that the taxpayers weren’t subsidizing her every whim the way they have Biden’s and Castle’s for decades.

It is too early to know if Delaware’s voters will look at O’Donnell’s candidacy that way in the general election — but we do already know this: Washington insiders’ views of electability are deeply flawed, and Washington has never been so isolated from the rest of the country. If elected, O’Donnell nor Miller nor Angle nor Rubio will be a threat to “work with” the Obama agenda or, worse yet, jump parties.

The voters instinctively know this. That’s why they are voting for these people. And when you think about it, that’s what makes someone truly “electable,” isn’t it?

And that’s the takeaway from the amazing victory last night for Christine O’Donnell.

HT: American Thinker

Lloyd Marcus

9/12/2010 – Lloyd Marcus -

Here are two paradigms which evil, divisive Democrats have shamefully promoted and exploited for years: one, white men are burning the midnight oil thinking of ways to keep blacks down; and two, all rich white people are selfish, evil, and deserving of punishment.

No Democrat president has sold the “you have too little because the rich have too much” message better than Barack Obama, which led to angry protesters picketing the homes of corporate executives.

Democrats are masters at creating a hated “bad guy” to further their agenda.

As a black man, I wish to share a few of my life experiences which crush the paradigm that all whites are committed to keeping blacks down.

When I was 15, I wanted to attend art college on weekends. I wrote a letter to my (white) senator. When I arrived home from school one day, my mom said our senator stopped by, saw the sign I was painting for our teen dance, and decided to give me a scholarship.

I wrote a letter to then-Baltimore mayor William Donald Schaeffer for a scholarship. Imagine this nervous 15-year-old black kid from the ghetto, dressed in my Sunday best and my artwork between two pieces of cardboard as a portfolio, sitting in the mayor’s huge office. My artwork was spread over his massive carved oak desk. Schaeffer was kind and easy to talk to. He became annoyed by interruptions and instructed his secretary to hold his calls. We talked for an hour or so. A few weeks later, I received a scholarship to the Maryland Institute College of Art.

When I was a young man in the U.S. Army stationed at Ft. Bragg, NC, my pregnant wife and I were seeking a loan. The clerk said we needed a co-signer. A (white) captain, overhearing the conversation, said, “I’ll co-sign for you!” I said, “But sir, you don’t even know me.” He replied, “You seem like a nice enough feller.”

After college, I went job hunting for a position as a graphic designer. Upon viewing my portfolio, (white) businessman John Halechak did not offer me a job. Instantly, he gave me office space, a room in a high-rent office building, to start my own business.

So there you have it: a few personal anecdotes that are also antidotes to the Democrat narrative that white America tries to keep us blacks down and in our place.

As for the Democrats’ relentless attacks and insistence that we hate the rich, had Mr. Halechak not been well-off, he would not have been in a position to help me. Still, Democrats want to, as Obama said, “spread the wealth around” — which really means redistribution of other peoples’ hard-earned money. Then we will all be equally just barely getting by.

U.S. unemployment has risen to a postwar historical high, and our economy is diving downward. The Obama administration could turn things around by simply creating a friendlier atmosphere towards business and not raising taxes. Economics 101 says that the higher you tax an activity, the less people will indulge in that activity. Reagan proved that lowering taxes generates more activity, which generates more revenue for the government.

Obama and company are locked in their paradigm that the rich are selfish SOBs deserving of punishment. Obama plans to end the Bush tax cuts, spinning that they benefit only the rich.

A tax cut across the board for all Americans would tremendously boost our economy. Unfortunately, the Democrats’ insane hatred, demonization, and jealousy of the rich compels them to sink the entire ship of America rather than save one rich person.

These two evil Democrat-promoted paradigms — white men oppose black success and the rich are SOBs — are deeply ingrained in the psyche of many Americans.

However, I learned years ago, while serving in the U.S. Army, that good people and jerks come in all colors.

As for hating the rich, the Bible says, “Thou shall not covet.” With the exception of a few Ted Kennedys and John Kerrys in this world, most of the rich worked hard to get to where they are. Rather than hating them, I want to learn from them.

Once, a dear friend was in danger of losing his home. I was not in a financial position to help. All of my sympathy and good intentions could not help him — he needed cash. Wealth is a very good thing.

HT: American Thinker

Vladimir Lenin had a much simpler time of it. Following the October Revolution, he swiftly nationalized nearly all industry, commerce, and agriculture in the Soviet Union. Those who opposed the takeovers, such as those millions of small landowners known as the kulaks, were executed or sent to die in Siberia.

American leftists are far more civilized. Rather than send landowners and stockowners to Siberia, they simply raise federal and state taxes to combined marginal rates of 60% and subject the rest to estate taxes after the owner dies. If the owner fails to pay up, he is marched off to prison. Meanwhile, corporations are subject to another form of control: the tyranny of activists on government agencies that view the private sector as the means of social change.

The August 25 vote by the Security and Exchange Commission to allow large shareholders access to proxy nominations for board members is a perfect example. In effect, the new regulation encourages environmentalist and human rights groups, as well as institutional investors, labor unions, and hedge funds, to nominate their own representatives for corporate boards. If elected, many of these board members would promote activist agendas that conflict with the interests of the stockholders. Instead of voting to maximize profits, such representatives would support narrow ideological goals. How would it be possible for a representative of a coalition of Greenpeace and other environmentalist groups to serve on the board of Chevron or Massey Energy? Such a representative would probably not be aligned with shareholder interests.

Perhaps this is the intention of the SEC in passing the proxy ruling. After all, liberal Democrats have been trying for decades to seize the profits of the more successful American corporations. The Carter “windfall profits tax” was just one such attempt. The long-running Clinton-era lawsuit against Microsoft was another. In 2007, Hillary Clinton famously screeched that she’d “like to seize the profits of Exxon Mobil” and redistribute them to alternative energy companies. Now not even Google is safe.

Proxy reform is just one among scores of anti-business initiatives being carried out by unelected bureaucrats within government agencies. Thousands of other changes are buried in the fine print of the recently passed health care and financial regulation acts. By design, none of these policy changes have received an adequate public airing.

One example is an obscure rule appended to the financial regulation bill passed in July. With no discussion or public comment, Democrats slipped in a requirement that energy and mining companies disclose payments to foreign countries for oil or mineral rights. This requirement puts American companies at a disadvantage to others because it hampers their ability to bid competitively on foreign leases.

Most of the world’s large, undeveloped oil fields are controlled by the governments of developing countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. There is fierce competition between American oil companies and those of China, as well as those of Europe, India, and Latin America, for these prized lease rights. Why would Congress pass a law that puts our companies at a disadvantage when they negotiate for drilling rights? There is only one answer: the Democratic Congress does not really care about the success of American corporations. Or if it does care, it cares only about bringing them to heel.

It is not just energy companies that are the target of Washington’s activists. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission won a consent decree forcing Intel to pay a billion dollars in fines and potentially hampering that company’s competitiveness in the global technology market. Like Exxon and Massey Energy, Intel is one of America’s most successful corporations. That may well be the reason it was targeted by the left.

The irony is that even as the Obama administration has unleashed activist regulators on American corporations, that same administration is grumbling that corporations are not doing enough to spur economic growth. It’s like cutting someone’s throat and complaining when they don’t speak up.

The truth is that the current administration is not really interested in creating jobs, nor is it interested in promoting economic growth or the corporate profits upon which growth depends. The Obama administration is dominated by leftist ideologues whose obsession is regulation of the private sector. The ideologues who now manage the EPA, FTC, FCC, and SEC are guided by a single purpose: to establish state control of the entire U.S. economy, and to do so at whatever cost to the American people. In order to achieve this goal, they are willing to accept a 17% real unemployment rate as the “new normal.” They are willing to see foreign competitors, China in particular, overtake American leadership in the technology, health care, and energy sectors. They are not just willing to accept the decline of American power, but they are intent on bringing it about.

For those who fantasize about “one world” living in “harmony with nature,” the crippling of American business may seem like a good plan. In place of spacious suburban homes, they advocate densely packed urban dwellings. In place of cars and SUVs, they promote biking or walking. Instead of treating diseases with new drugs and surgical procedures, they endorse second-generation generics or just letting patients die. Instead of defending ourselves with modern weapons, they speak of negotiating with our enemies, as if North Korea or Iran has shown a genuine interest in negotiation. This, in essence, is the left’s vision of America in the 21st century.

The left cannot understand why the American people do not share their vision of national decline. Those who resist ObamaCare are labeled “obstructionists.” Those who resist Islamification are called “racists.” Those who question global warming are called “deniers,” as if opposition to the fiction of man-made global warming were somehow akin to denial of the historical fact of the Holocaust. The left believes that its own agenda — the eradication of private property and the destruction of America as a global superpower — is a moral crusade of overwhelming importance. This is why individuals such as Nancy Pelosi become practically apoplectic (“Are you serious?” she responded, when asked about the constitutionality of ObamaCare) when their behavior is questioned.

For conservatives, there is only one rational response to the current assault on American liberty. That is to remove all leftists from office and to guard against their return. Every American needs to understand that the left is not simply attempting to “reform” our institutions: it is swiftly transforming America from a capitalist democracy into a Marxist totalitarian state. Only a complete repudiation at the polls will stop them.

Dr. Jeffrey Folks taught for thirty years in universities in Europe, America, and Japan. He has published many books and articles on American culture and politics.

HT: American Thinker

Once — long ago — when I used to respond to leftist e-mails about my articles, I knew from the first few words of their e-mails what sort of people they were: angry, arrogant, and nasty.

Their e-mails always began with insults and went downhill from there. These people, who had never met me and who had only read one of my articles, had determined that whatever bile or venom they could fling on me was acceptable. These leftists had the manners of Nazis, their Siamese twins ideologically. I would respond, always, politely — much to their chagrin sometimes. I would also ask them, civilly, if there were any facts which I could present which would change their minds. In every single case, no facts, however well-documented, could sway their mind, which was marinated in noxious misology.

Conservatives have criticized my articles more often than leftists, but their critiques almost never have personal attacks. They discuss legislative votes, public statements, and philosophies of government and society. Conservatives are civil, even when they strongly disagree with me. Other conservatives, I am sure, encounter the same difference in manners between leftists and conservatives. Why is this so? I think for three reasons:

First, most conservatives are religious. They may be Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish, but within them burns real, living faith. Courtesy, kindness, and respect are ineradicably intertwined in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Treating people as you would like to be treated, among countless other rules the Blessed Creator has enjoined us to follow, simply prohibits the sort of savagery which pockmarks leftism.

Second, conservatives believe in markets. We usually — and carelessly — think of markets only in terms of the hurly-burly of financial markets of Wall Street. Yet we see the virtue and vitality of markets more clearly in the quiet sidewalks of Maple Street. Markets transcend money and economics. Treating our neighbors decently, treating strangers decently, watching our language when around children, ladies, or the elderly — these and countless other signal “transactions” in the marketplace of human interactions largely determine what sort of life we will lead.

The left dislikes all forms of markets and believes instead in coercion — the officious bureaucrat, the obnoxious teacher or professor, the monopolistic leftist media stalking the Palin family, the “comedians” and “entertainers” whose purpose for existence seems to be spiteful mockery of America and its culture — these people trust force and pressure more than liberty and choice.

Third, conservatives believe in truth. Leftists like Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Mussolini, Howard Dean, and Al Gore believe that ideology is truth. There is no point in really looking beyond ideology, and any facts which contradict their ideological reality must be false. So the real “progressives” (those who believe that the human condition can be improved through thoughtful and honest reflection) are invariably conservatives. Our problem with global warming, for example, is that it is a lie. Our problem with socialism is that it always fails and creates human misery. Our problem with leftism is that it is, more or less openly, based upon an utter absence of scruples, with honesty the first casualty.

Those who seek truth behave entirely differently from those who seek to crush truth. We listen to the left because we want to hear what they have to say. Most of us can state the arguments of the left better than Howard Dean or Barack Obama could ever recapitulate conservative positions. When the left has a point, as with the corruption of Nixon, we agree with them (Nixon resigned when Republican leaders, including Goldwater, told him he must — in stark contrast to Clinton when caught in a web of outlandish lies and perjury). Those who truly want the free flow of information do not invent “speech codes” for college campuses and do not try to create a climate in which the political or ideological impact of each word must be weighed before spoken. Conservatives, then, are like true Americans — plain-talking, really listening, open-minded, but independent-thinking people.

All of this means that conservatives want a civil society. So we behave decently. We believe that God connects us to every single human being, including leftists, so our reality has no Juden and no Kulaks, only fellow creatures of a loving God. We believe that the panorama of free markets enriches all human lives. And we grasp our finite knowledge, so the search for truth is serious and lifelong, which means we listen as well as speak. Civility is the mark of grownups seeking goodness. That is why conservatives are naturally, happily polite and respectful.

HT: American Thinker

President Ronald Reagan

From the archived pages of Imprimis, the monthly speech digest of Hillsdale College, President Ronald Reagan reminds us that economic freedom is an absolute necessity not only for political freedom, but for all freedom. That freedom must be fought for and protected in every generation. That the business community must join this fight and not remain passive.

“It all comes down to this basic premise: if you lose your economic freedom, you lose your political freedom and in fact all freedom. Freedom is something that cannot be passed on genetically. It is never more than one generation away from extinction. Every generation has to learn how to protect and defend it. Once freedom is gone, it’s gone for a long, long time. Already, too many of us, particularly those in business and industry, have chosen to switch rather than fight.”

President Reagan clearly understood that government action is the biggest threat to our economic freedom and personal freedom. He correctly identified the government as the problem, not the solution:

“During the presidential campaign last year, there was a great deal of talk about the seeming inability of our economic system to solve the problems of unemployment and inflation. Issues such as taxes and government power and costs were discussed, but always these things were discussed in the context of what government intended to do about it. May I suggest for your consideration that government has already done too much about it? That indeed, government, by going outside its proper province, has caused many if not most of the problems that vex us. How much are we to blame for what has happened?

Beginning with the traumatic experience of the Great Depression, we the people have turned more and more to government for answers that government has neither the right nor the capacity to provide. Unfortunately, government as an institution always tends to increase in size and power, and so government attempted to provide the answers.”

Ronald Reagan’s timeless wisdom can be for us a beacon of hope and inspiration in the troubled economic and political times we now face. The Great Communicator took on the establishment and persevered in the face of massive opposition from the liberals and the mainstream media. Despite being belittled, insulted, and demonized, President Reagan stood his ground, acted on his conservative principles, and made good on his promises to restore America’s greatness. His vision and leadership rescued the country from disaster and history proved him right.

More than three decades ago President Reagan concluded his speech with an ominous warning and call to action. It is as appropriate and relevant today as it was in 1978:

Will we, before it is too late, use the vitality and the magic of the marketplace to save this way of life, or will we one day face our children, and our children’s children when they ask us where we were and what we were doing on the day that freedom was lost?

Will enough Americans still heed President Reagan’s call? Will more of today’s business leaders join this fight? Will we preserve our economic, political, and personal freedoms for the sake of this and future generations?

Originally posted at American Thinker Blog and Chris Banescu.com

An insufficient number of Republican leaders provide a message that appeals to a broad enough public. The Tea Party defines itself as in favor of more limited government, but the progressives are slandering it as a racist movement. Given the media’s acquiescence in the budding collective tyranny of the progressives’ New Regime, the opposition message is distorted, muffled, and too often unclear. The challenge for those of us who want America to continue as a nation of free people, with a free and robust economy, is to get across to people in the progressives’ targeted constituencies the idea that they are being and will continue to be exploited.

The self-styled progressive Democrats are oblivious to a multitude of personal liberties protected by the Constitution. Their core tactic is to say they seek only the ideal of “equality.” They then twist the ideal to put themselves in the position to define “equality,” regardless of the Constitution and the individual rights and immunities from government it preserves. Behind that fiendishly misleading banner, they would impose on us stifling uniformity and strict government control that will degrade all of our futures, whether we are rich or poor. They are willing to ditch the liberty of all for their government enforced visions. In so doing, they have warped the American and classic “liberal” concept of equality — namely, individual equality before the law and equality of opportunity.

The abuse of personal liberties that the New Regime is initiating threatens all Americans, of all colors, creeds, sexual orientations, and religious persuasions. Importantly, however, part of the power base of the New Regime comes from people who have been induced to see their personal liberties as threatened by Republicans, Tea Partiers, other self-styled conservatives, and capitalism. These are people caught up and motivated to vote as a group based on gay rights and other sexual preference issues, racial and ethnic discrimination issues, age, poverty, and abortion-related issues.

Most people in the special constituency groups miss the cynicism behind this elitist effort to acquire power in exchange for favors. To African-Americans, the false message is that there are jobs ahead in the new, government-directed economic future. To Latinos, it is to stick with us while we wink at immigration and cut you in on the swag. To the elderly, overtly, it is that we care about you, while covertly it is that we control your health care and income, so you had better cooperate. And to the poor and members of unions, it is the falsehood that government creates jobs. Each of these pitches is based on economic fantasies and denigration of traditional values of hard work, education, self-reliance, and honesty. In reality, they are making the individuals within each of these constituencies into modern-day serfs. Republicans and Tea Party candidates need to show members of these targeted groups that they will lose their individual self-respect and future of true personal freedom as Americans if they continue to follow the progressive design. They will only gain a new master: Big Government.

Republicans and Tea Partiers must clearly avow that we owe each other respect for our individuality and freedom to choose. Our liberty under law depends on this. Ronald Reagan himself, in explaining the core meaning of America to the Chinese in 1984, said,

We believe in the dignity of each man, woman, and child. Our entire system is founded on an appreciation of the special genius of each individual, and of his special right to make his own decisions and lead his own life[i].

Many Americans within the targeted constituencies understand the need for fiscal responsibility, strong defense, respect for the rule of law, and a lean and limited federal government. Even though they may not be “traditional” in their lifestyle, they can vote Republican or Tea Party without fear of losing their dignity or right to choose if their liberty is respected. Similarly, even poor people will vote for an economy that can grow and provide opportunity or competitive health costs instead of one that is bound to fail.

On race relations, Republicans — and their party principles that declared slavery unacceptable — should have the upper hand. Until handouts became the tools of Democrat vote-getting, African-Americans voted mostly Republican. To this day, Republicans speak to each other — black, brown, yellow, and white alike — in terms of government providing fair opportunity to succeed to individuals. We need to do a more vigorous job of that, denouncing the plantation politics of the big-city Democrats that have put poor blacks into dependency and fear for their daily safety on the city streets. Plainer and more outspoken rededication of the Republicans to civil rights will start attracting thoughtful black voters. Add to that a hard-nosed effort to end the tolerance of gangs and violence in the inner cities. Demand freedom for all to have and choose a quality education and couple with it creative efforts to reduce the “underclass” and unemployed by serious job training, and a surprising number of people of color will start voting Republican to end their dependency status.

A broader point is that in some respects, civil rights regarding race have a common foundation with privacy and property rights: the right to be respected and “pursue happiness” as an individual. While one’s race is not a choice, outlawing race discrimination is not sufficient to prevent government from indiscriminate interference in everyone’s life. It is essential to a free people that individual choices in a variety of subjects be kept free and given meaningful room.

We cannot risk imposing our moral choices on someone through government without risking the imposition of choices by a tyrannical majority upon ourselves. It is dangerous for a conservative, a liberal, or any other American not to insist on a zone of private liberty from the United States or other government.

Too many conservatives have unwittingly developed a serious blind spot regarding the importance of personal liberty in the Constitution. Personal space and freedom is essential to liberty in modern society. The Founders believed this fervently. A zone of freedom from government intrusion enables each of us to enjoy our individual versions of the pursuit of happiness. Whether they involve use and sale of property, rights of contract, decisions of lifestyle, sex partner and residence, choice of friends and physicians, pursuit of learning or career, or many other choices we make, our personal right to decide for ourselves must be protected in order for our nation to remain the great free land that it is.

Indifference to these unspecified but preserved rights by the progressives should alarm every thinking American. These “natural rights” are fundamental. James Wilson, one of the key Founders, said that “there are very few who understand the whole of these rights … nor can you find … complete enumeration[ii]. In 1798, a Supreme Court Justice wrote that “there are certain vital principles in our free republican governments which will determine and overrule an apparent and flagrant abuse of legislative power … to take away that security of personal liberty, for the protection whereof the government was established” (Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. 386, 388). Ensuring the preservation of these rights by the Bill of Rights was a condition to the adoption of the Constitution by most of the thirteen original states.

In a nation of over 300 million, I would much rather let some many thousands make a poor moral choice themselves than cede to government the role of imposing its will on intimate questions. If we have unalienable rights, they include the right to make mistakes, provided public health and safety are not threatened.

In short, Republican and Tea Party candidates need to retune their message so that individual rights and freedoms are as prominent and important to preserve as market freedom and property rights. By doing that, they will recover an important part of their heritage. They will also get through to more thinking Democrats and independents among the special constituencies the progressive ruling class rewards and manipulates. After making their dedication to an individual’s zone of freedom clear, they can then more effectively ask questions like: Do you really trust the government to look after you? Is dependency the kind of future you seek for your children? Don’t you want to exercise your personal freedom in a safe community and a successful economy?

HT: American Thinker

Aliza Davidovit

6/30/2010 – Aliza Davidovit –

The other day I incidentally drove by the Apple store in Manhattan and was really amused and disheartened by the long line of thousands of people waiting to pick up their iphone 4Gs. As this country is falling apart, it becomes evermore clear to me why: We are still living in La La Land. I questioned when the last time was New Yorkers formed such a queue to protest a government wrongdoing and lined up outside their congressman’s door.

Undoubtedly, these hoarders of high-tech phones have seen a news flash or two and are aware that times are no good and are spiraling quickly downward. So why don’t they get it? Why don’t they realize that they are standing in the “wrong” line? And it dawned on me: It’s because we are a society and a generation reared on Hollywood endings. Things will be OK; things will work out; America will bounce back.

But, my dear readers, as the president and his administration proceed to fundamentally transform America as he promised, the floor under our feet, the one we were hoping to bounce back from, is being shattered. There is a dark deep abyss beneath, an unknown that those not blinded by the happy-ending syndrome believe is a socialist agenda at best, one that will destroy the United States of America.

Please tell me, if the president doesn’t believe in exceptionalism for our country, which succeeded in being great because of its freedoms and unparalleled system, why does he believe in personal exceptionalism? Why did he rise to the top and become a president and not remain a community organizer? Is he the only one allowed to reach for the top, to be exceptional, while the rest of us peons have to wait until he and his mammoth and ever-growing government doles us out what they think we deserve?

We all know the numbers. The stimulus and bailouts, punishing the rich and businesses with higher tax burdens, the universal health-care bill and cap-and-trade are all means of overtaxing the system and redistributing the wealth. In addition to the unsustainable stress on our economy, let’s not pretend redistribution is governmental philanthropy – it is plain-outgovernment theft. If it is my body that’s in the gym every morning at 6 a.m., is it fair that you should be accruing the muscles that I’m working so hard for?

The second step after controlling the purse strings is controlling the masses, which then leaves little surprise that this administration is so accommodating to illegal immigrants, even criminal ones. There is power in numbers.

Sometimes I wonder if Obama is trying so hard to implode the system that maybe, just maybe, there will never be a 2012 election. Maybe a revolution is already in place, but it is starting from the top down instead of by the people.

Yes, this country, the leader of the free world, has gone through deep crises in the past, but the one factor that gave us optimism and hope was the integrity of the structure, i.e., our Constitution and the certainty that this was a democratic and capitalistic country that was respected by its allies and respected them in turn. Even our fallings and failings were surefooted because America would always be America. Don’t count on that anymore.

My friends, as you show off your new iPhones with more applications than you could ever use in a lifetime, I urge you to tune into its built-in alarm clock and WAKE UP. The challenges we now face are unprecedented. I cannot help but think of the biblical story of Pinchas, where one sole man saw the threat to his nation and alone took action to save the day. Of course, I’m not calling for violence, but I am calling for action. Are you doing all you can do, my fellow Americans, to save this great nation? Which line are you standing in? Are you a lawyer? A writer? A speaker? A singer?

Whatever you are, take the talent God gave you and use it to fight to save this great country right now before it’s too late and they lay the yellow tape around the map of America to demarcate the greatest crime scene and slaughtering of liberty the world has ever known.

HT: WND

Let us remember another day. Health care was all the rage (at least in the press), and leading “conservatives” were leading the third way. Newt Gingrich was working with Hillary Clinton on a more gradual route to universal health care, according to the New York Times and other sources.

“Conservative” Mitt Romney was building the Massachusetts universal health care along “business” principles fresh from saving the Olympics.

Now what? Well, Obama, the Tea Party, and Sarah Palin have lit a fire in the country, and every politician of every stripe has taken notice. And guess what: Newt Gingrich is all about repealing universal health care. Mitt Romney is all about anything other than what happened in Massachusetts.

Another example? Take Karl Rove. We now hear him every week on Fox News talking about the minutiae of how Obama has overreached. His book is titled Courage and Consequence. Again, let us hearken back a few years.

Karl Rove and George Bush gave us Obama and Democratic majorities in both houses. They rolled the conservatives by touting George Bush as a “compassionate conservative.” Has anyone forgotten the greatest spending spree until Obama? Has anyone forgotten the prescription drug benefit — pushed through Congress with muscle foretelling what was later to come from Rahm and Obama?

What courage? Just look at the consequences — and conservatives are buying that book?

Remember the “no new taxes” George Bush, sold as the “conservative” successor to President Reagan. One recalls “a kinder, gentler” conservative. Conservatives got rolled again.

Conservatives always get rolled with modifiers.

Well, here we are again.

We movement conservatives and the Tea Party are about to get rolled. We are going to get sucked in by candidates like Huckabee, who just realized the error of his ways in pardoning a criminal who murdered four Seattle police officers; Romney, who is a perfect reflection of whatever is going on in the body politic; and Gingrich, who uses every technical buzzword to convince people he is some kind of new idea machine.

Yet each, when the winds came in from the west, was quite different. Moderate, perhaps? Or nonpartisan? Or just a reflection of what they thought might get them elected.

Critical thinking demands that we remember these people in their milieu — what were they in different times? When times were liberal, they were, well, less conservative. When the press said people demanded less partisanship, Newt and Hillary traveled and spoke together, almost holding hands.

It is time we realize that there are “movement conservatives” and there are opportunistic conservatives. Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and a host of emerging new candidates are movement conservatives.

What is different about them is they are conservative in their core, not in their clothing. When times get tough for conservatives, nothing changes. So when times get better, they aren’t likely to compromise.

People amazingly recall Reagan today as a “great president.” Not Bush, not Nixon, just Reagan. Well, let us recall why — he was the only movement conservative elected in the last fifty years. Reagan was great because he was a movement conservative; he never did anything just to get along or get elected.

The changes needed in America today are not a matter of degree; they are a matter of kind. The entire American mindset must fundamentally change away from democratic socialism and toward individual self-reliance.

That mindset is changing. The political class, however, is not.

The changes needed in America require saying “no” in a big way and being vilified in the press. Our leaders need to be able to stand up to massive left-wing media resistance and not compromise the core.

This can be done only by a movement conservative.

Repeal ObamaCare, not reduce it. Stop long-term welfare dependency, not alleviate it. Change the tax system so everyone participates, not just reduce top rates. Embrace free enterprise, not just regulate it less. End the dominance of the NEA. Vouchers everywhere, not just in Cleveland. Get rid of the Departments of Energy, Education, and Commerce, and then get started reducing government.

Gingrich, Romney, Rove, and Huckabee are trying to seduce the conservative movement into another dance with a newly found conservatism. If any of their ilk get elected, we will have “socialism, more slowly.”

We will lose the greatest opportunity in a political lifetime to change the direction of the country.

Palin, the Tea Party, Bachmann are the real deal.

We must always remember how we got here — looking at national bankruptcy. It was with “compassionate,” “kinder, gentler” modifier conservatives who found conservatism when the wind blew that way.

HT: American Thinker

5/24/2010 – Michael van der Galien -
It’s popular these days for conservatives to criticize the defender of the poor and the oppressed, Robin Hood. Hood, they say, is nothing more than a socialist pretending to be a hero. He is, if you will, Karl Marx with a bow and couple of arrows. He steels from the wealthy and gives to the poor. It’s socialism in action, or so many contemporary conservative commentators argue.

Although I understand it that conservatives automatically oppose all those who dare “redistribute wealth” (or appear to), they are sorely mistaken to do so with Hood. Dismissing him as a Marxist is ludicrous and counterproductive; the former because he is actually a very American (classically liberal and conservative) hero, the latter because the audience will sympathize with him regardless of the criticism.

Hood’s anger is directed at ruthless oppressors, who came to power not because the people voted them into office, but because they were of noble blood. There is no democracy and no freedom in Hood’s Britain. These people can do whatever they want to, because they are not accountable for their deeds.

Furthermore, their wealth isn’t based on hard work, entrepreneurship and innovation, but on theft. They didn’t work for it, nor did they earn it. They simply stole it from the people, all of whom are poor and oppressed, and who are trying to raise themselves up by their bootstraps only to be pushed down time and again by those in power.

One of the ways these oppressors steal from the citizenry is by levying high taxes. If that’s not a conservative and libertarian outlook on (the dangers of high) taxes, I don’t know what is. Progressives, on the other hand, have no problem with high taxes. Better yet, they believe that every single penny one earns actually belongs to the state. It is only by the grace of God that one is allowed to keep a specific amount (enough to live on).

If you look at these circumstances, Hood is quite right to take back the money these undemocratic rulers stole from their oppressed subjects. In effect, he’s not “robbing” anyone, as Big Hollywood’s Dan Gifford would have us believe, but simply giving back to the people that which was rightfully theirs in the first place.

By criticizing Hood conservatives are not turning the audience against the hero, but against themselves and their ideology. This while he actually embodies many of our beloved conservative ideals. Instead of attacking him, then, we have to claim him as one of ours – which he is.

HT: NewsReal Blog