Liberalism: Unsafe at Any Speed

Another day, another false dilemma churned up by a smirking smartass on the left...

Here is his attempt at ridiculing us simpletons who want to bring down gas prices by tapping more of our own energy resources here at home. 

He's imitating a game show to add to the comic effect...

Hello again, everyone! I'm Matt Miller. And welcome to "You Can't Handle the Truth," our weekly quest to see if Americans can face the facts needed to solve our most pressing problems

Matt [winking]: You see the dilemma. Today's rendezvous with truth? Gas prices. With Libya in chaos and Mideast jitters sending gas past $3.50 a gallon, we'll take on the most sacred cow in the entire bovine pantheon: the entitlement to cheap gas. 

In our pre-show poll, we asked our studio audience if they would support higher gas taxes (and thus even higher prices) to achieve a rare public policy trifecta. First, we'd reduce our dependence on oil. Second, we'd create market incentives to invest in clean energy. And third, we'd raise much-needed revenue to shrink our budget deficit. As a bonus, we might eventually stop sending young Americans to die for oil in the Persian Gulf, too!

Alas, 80 percent of you said "no,"

When has higher taxes ever achieved its purpose?
Taxes go up and so does the debt.  Why?  Because politicians can't stand the sight of money just laying around.  They've got to spend it on pet projects, dubious enterprises, and goodies they hand out to get reelected.  Money collected for Social Security goes into the general treasury to pay current bills, so what makes this naive fool think jacked-up gas taxes would go to "green energy?"

Going Green = Higher Energy Costs = More Jobs Lost

It is also a myth that increasing the price of fossil fuels will make green energy more viable.  In the microcosm of the United States, sure.  Just like if you jacked up the price of every cell phone except the iPhone, you would make the iPhone relatively cheaper, but it would still be expensive!  If it were just us in the world, this progressive economic nonsense might work, but we're not.

We compete with other nations on an economic battlefield, and increasing our energy costs would be like shooting ourselves in the face with a cannon.  The cost to industry would be crushing.  We couldn't compete.

Higher gas taxes take money from working people
What about those of us who have no alternative but to drive to work?  What about those of us whose job site is 20, 30 or more miles away?  Gas tax takes money from the pockets of working people and bread from our children's mouths, as do most liberal schemes.

Progressive Schemes:  The more complex, expensive and unworkable, the better...

Drill here, drill now just doesn't waste enough money or provide opportunities to grow government and lecture everyone, so that holds no attraction to the cognoscenti on the left.  Tapping our own cheap and available resources is just common sense, therefore unappealing the the pseudo-intellectual statists on the left.

The real agenda here is to jam us all into crowded city centers and sweaty tenement slums where government trains can herd us to and from work.  Of course, our social betters like Al Gore and the Obama's would live in sprawling estates in the country and uncrowded gated communities far from the teeming hordes, as befits their superior status.

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it."  -- H. L. Mencken

Tom Friedman, Un-American

Cosmopolitan Liberals are Un-American 

It's not just the statist policies that have discredited the Democrats.  It is their mindset, and Thomas Friedman is exhibit A for why we should pry their grimy mitts from the levers of power.

Citizen of the world Thomas Friedman writes breezily about sipping tea with third world potentates at his country manor, while advocating that we the unwashed be divested of our suburban homes to be herded into crowded city centers, all in the name of enviro-statism.

Regularly extoling the virtues of totalitarian regimes like China, this New York Times sophist represents the very worst America has to offer.  Last week, he posed a typical stupid question:

Can China balance Freedom and Prosperity?
(Friedman - NY Times)

It's a nonsensical question. You can't balance one against the other.  History shows they are inseparable.  Freedom and prosperity sit at the same end of the teeter totter. What China is really trying to do is to balance these noble aspirations against state-sponsored tyranny.

Progressives long for the Strong Man
Like too many progressives, Friedman displays an unabashed admiration of dictatorial power and statist governments.  Since the early 20th Century, progressives in this country have a long and enduring love affair with strong men and strong governments, personal liberties be damned.

Tom Friedman and his ilk are anti-American, and the mellifluous BS that flows from his pen is a threat to our nation and our way of life.

Strong Government = Weak People
Thanks to the Long March of Progressivism in this nation, many of us have forgotten that with freedom comes responsibility, and personal prosperity is not a birthright. It is something one earns through virtue and hard work.
 
Joel Kotkin, one of my favorite on-line professors, explodes Friedman's statist stupidity by pointing out that ...

...it’s  fashionable today  in some circles to toast autocracy – particularly among our  growing ranks of  Sinophiles on both right and left. But the Legatum study suggests that democracy, not top-down dictatorship,  remains the surest way to build a prosperous society.

The Legatum Prosperity Index found that all the more prosperous places – not only by income, but by quality of life, environment, education and health care – almost exclusively are democratic states. “Prosperity,” the report concludes, “is found in entrepreneurial democracies that have strong social fabrics.”  (Forbes - Joel Kotkin)

Reason magazine does humanity a great service by regularly publishing cogent rebuttals to this one-world, statist's bumper sticker philosophy.  You can inoculate yourself here:  Reason - Thomas Freidman

Fight The Power!

The Power is now with the Progressive Statists.  "The Oppressed" have become the oppressors...


Molly Worthen at New Republic is exhibit A for what’s wrong with progressivism. Progressives just hate "outmoded" concepts like democracy and will of the people.  It's all so noisy and messy.

Here's how she describes the "problem:"

"the problem of democracy’s ignorant priesthood of believers, and the destructive feedback loop between culture warrior politicians and the self-appointed citizens defending inviolable but ill-considered first principles."

There are several things wrong with this ignorant, liberty-hating statement

1) Ill-considered first principles?  Like a good little deconstructionist, Worthen takes a jackhammer directly to the foundation of American liberty, hoping to cause a complete collapse of the structure. Progressives, like their ideological father and racist in chief Woody Wilson, hate our founding fathers, their founding principles and especially Lockean natural law.  They loath the constitution, and want to render it useless as a restraint on government power.

2) “Ignorant priesthood of believers” and “self-appointed citizens” is a direct slap and you and me. And the second phrase in particular is just ridiculous: We are citizens by birth or naturalization, not self-appointment. It rankles progressives that we the great unwashed don’t know how to shut up and obey our superiors. Their attitude is what brought to power the Mussolinis and Chavez’s of the world.

3) The feedback loop she calls “destructive” could just as easily describe the mechanics of progressive liberal thought.  It has leached into society, academe, and government,corroding personal initiative and traditional societal norms.  So it’s OK when they do it, but not when caveman conservative who believe in first principles do it.  What lazy and arrogant thinking...

Tea Parties and Town Hall Meetings?  Just Ignorant Rabble!

"democracies in general, and perhaps the United States in particular, are not very good at managing public conversations about complex issues."

"They demonstrated that the populist strain in American politics, newly revived, means that cluelessness in defense of delusions of liberty is no vice." 

"the most striking feature of the town hall meetings: the gross ignorance and anti-elitism of voters whose influence, while failing to halt the healthcare bill, did radically reshape it."

We may be ignorant ( I doubt it) but citizens understand that every decision made for us by a klatch of elitists is one more piece of freedom gone. Maybe we don't "understand the benefits," because the arrogant overlords who crafted the healthcare monstrosity are unable to explain it. Hell, they didn't even read it! How ignorant is that, defending something you haven't even read? No wonder we have no faith in the District of Criminals.

It’s not left versus right. It’s one-size-fits-all statism versus personal freedom

The real danger—and the real cunning—of “incivility” such as Palin’s is that it exempts her from dealing with complicated issues head-on. Her healthcare rhetoric shut down serious debate of the issue before it could begin, and implanted in her followers’ minds an immutable image of a threat that does not exist

But a threat does exist; it’s the threat of a zealous progressivism on the march, trampling all in its path as the parade of fools marches towards the utopian promised land. We precieve it, many can’t explain it, but we don’t like it.

Horrors!  Christian Conservatives are Indoctrinating Their Children!

"In recent decades, conservative evangelicals in particular have begun to stress the presuppositions undergirding their “biblical worldview,” and to encourage a defensive, intellectually self-conscious stance in their children. In this age of culture war and values voting, the Georgia study may suggest that families of all persuasions are doing the same."

Hell Yes!!! That’s exactly what I’m doing! I’ll be damned if I’m going to send pliant mush brains out into the world to be fodder for the progressive statist machine.

I have taught my kids to show respect to others, but to also question authority and to logically evaluate information presented to them.   It may be finally paying off.  My kids, in a backwards way, paid me a compliment the other day when they were talking about how it was sometimes difficult to discuss current issues with their grandparents.

“It’s just generational,” my teens concluded. “They come from a time when you were just supposed to shut up and listen to whatever your elders told you, no discussion.”

“You’re still supposed to do that,” I reflexively replied.

“Not us Dad. You raised free thinkers!”

There may be hope after all...