Saving Liberalism from the Liberals

Walter Russell Mead asks, "Can the L-Word be saved?"

It's a good question, and one important to this nation, which was founded upon classical liberal ideals.  It's been all down hill since then for liberalism, with its path winding through Fabian Socialism, illiberal nationalism, elitist progressivism and ending up in the dark caverns of tribalism, identity politics, and because-we-say-so-ism.

I do not hate liberals. Some of those nearest and dearest to me are liberals.  I was saddened when a liberal coworker moved on to greener pastures, because he is a very intelligent man and we had some awesome conversations while leaning on our shovels.

The words liberal and libertarian both come from the word liberty, but they diverged long ago and we here in America have hopelessly tangled up our terms.  Mr. Mead explains...

Politically speaking, America may be the most confused country in the world.  Millions of people in this country are conservatives and even reactionaries who think they are liberals; we have millions more liberals and radicals who call themselves conservative.

It is an unholy mess and it needs to be cleared up.  It’s time for a language intervention.

Many find such conversations pedantic and insist that the terms are what they are in this country and who cares if we've got it backwards?  But if you are a thinker trying to get to the root of the matter, you must start by defining terms and tracing today's movements back to their philosophical roots.  Clarity demands it.

"Liberals" sneering at tea partiers who cite the constitution provides a clue that liberalism has gone off the rails; progressives voluntarily severed ties with such antiquities in the early 20th century, and liberals inexplicably fell in with them.  Progressive politicians greatly expanded the commerce clause and the general welfare clause, and progressive judges let them get away with it.  We were grappling with wars and economic crashes, you see, so the president and congress needed extraordinary powers.  And today's liberals, with a straight face, would have us believe George Bush's post-911 bureaucratic expansion and increased government powers was a singularly unprecedented even in our nation's history.  Sadly, it was just one more brick in the wall.

Know Yourself (Socrates).  Know Your Enemy (Sun-Tsu)
Most liberals cannot explain liberalism, because it is an incoherent hodgepodge of pollyanic aspirations, musty dogma and high dudgeon.  Worse for them though, is that they cannot explain conservatism, and they are blind to the evidence that the tea party has a strain of radical liberalism running through it, while they have become the entrenched fuddy duddies on so many issues.  I urge my fellow conservatives and libertarians to not make the same mistake.  You must understand the ideology you do battle with.

most of what passes for liberal and progressive politics is a conservative reaction against economic and social changes that the left doesn’t like.  The people who call themselves liberal in the United States today are fighting desperate rearguard actions to save policies and institutions that are old and established, that once served a noble purpose, but that now need fundamental reform (and perhaps in some cases abolition) ...

Liberals Started With Noble Ideals
I also urge everyone to study liberalism with charity in your heart.  Along the way you may find liberalism has some admirable qualities.  American liberalism is not communism after all.  Liberals and Progressives did not set out with the intent to enslave us.  They perceived real problems and set about trying to solve them:

The industrial revolution and associated phenomena (urbanization, mass immigration from non-English speaking, non-Protestant societies, the economic decline of small farmers and rural communities) presented liberals with new and very complicated problems. The problems of urbanization, class conflict (and the competition with socialism for the support of urban industrial workers), assimilation, and the regulation of a modern industrial economy gave 4.0 liberals new issues to worry about.

The development of a professional, bureaucratic civil service and the regulatory state were intended to preserve individual autonomy and dignity in a world dominated by large and predatory corporate interests – and split into classes with most industrial and agricultural workers subject to very low wages, long hours and poor working conditions.

At the same time the challenges of modernization and urbanization (public health, food safety, provision of newly necessary services like electricity and gas) could best be met through public services and, in some cases, heavily regulated private monopolies.  The professional and managerial classes were not just middle classes in the sense of standing between the rich and the poor in income and status; they were mediating classes who sought through the state, the universities and the learned professions to impose a balance between the interests of the wealthy and the workers.

Mead gives them their deserved props, but concludes that rather than take a revanchist approach, liberals need to move on, and realize that while their goals were noble, they snuffed human liberty and initiative in the process. Keep the goals but ditch the totalitarian tactics

Mead also looks forward to a new liberalism, which he calls Liberalism 5.0.  I recommend you go read the entire article.  He provides a concise history of American liberalism.  If the libs got their heads screwed on straight, they'd make common cause with the tea partiers.

Walter Russell Mead - Can the L-Word be Saved?

Populist Convergence

We on the right are waking up to some traditional liberal issues, and that's a good thing

I have often maintained that if the populists on the right and left ever realized they share common enemies, the jig will be up up for the DC-Wall Street-Big Business axis of evil.

Goldwater-Reagan conservatives have always despised DC (especially when we were the minority).  Recently we have awakened to the predations of Wall Street and Crony Crapitalists disguised as free marketeers.

Now if the libs could only see how government "help" mocks the rule of law and engenders corruption, inequality and unemployment.  If left and right could link up against this axis of evil, We The People could topple the established order, put government back on firm constitutional footing and strip corporations and banks of their taxpayer-funded government protections.

Daniel DiSalvo sums up the tea party view...

The movement's unifying belief is that government and special interests have created an interlocking directorate, to the detriment of average Americans. Washington colludes with Wall Street while state and local governments kowtow to public sector unions. Thus tea party activists, who are neither Goldman Sachs bankers nor public employees, see the system as rigged against them.

The only difference between the tea party view and the liberal view is that the liberal refuses to lump Uncle Sam in with the banksters and the fatcats.  These hopelessly naive dupes still see big government as the counter to big banks and big biz, ignoring the fact that these three very big pigs all publicly and noisily wallow in the same trough.

The tea partiers' energy springs from a suspicion of those on the receiving end of government largesse. This suspicion is rooted in the quintessentially American norms of independence and work, and especially in the belief that people should provide for themselves and live within their means. Tea party patriots believe many - from pin-stripped executives to double-dipping firefighters - are scheming with the government to gain an unfair advantage, often at their expense. Therefore, handing over more money to government - no matter its source - is anathema.

At some point the liberals must realize that one cannot worship big government while also calling oneself a populist. 

Where Left and Right Agree

Among the many possible explanations for the tea party movement's rise, Schoen and Rasmussen suggest that increased economic inequality is the taproot of its fury. On this point, their analysis chimes with that of many Democrats. While the American economy has grown well in recent decades, the fruits of that growth have been unevenly distributed.

Conservatives are waking up to your issues, lefties.  Will you shake our hand, or will you bite it?


The Populist Wave - Daniel DiSalvo

Gangs of Denver

How a working man in Denver lost his truck and his tools...

Mechanic Robin McAnally was driving to a work site in his GMC and needed a place to turn his rig around, so he went down a side street and as he was turning around, a woman opened the passenger side door, hopped in and offered him a Lewinski.  He turned her down, she got out and he headed back up the street.  Before he could get back onto the main thoroughfare, armed men came out of nowhere and forced him to stop and get out of his truck.

They took him to a warehouse where he realized he was not the only victim.  He was surrounded by others who had met a similar fate.  The armed men were taunting the victims as they made each man pose in front of his vehicle before it was towed away.

Criminal activity?  Depends. 
I just described a “reverse john” sting staged by the Denver Police Department.  Robin was found not guilty by a jury of his peers after only 15 minutes deliberation.

Now exonerated, Robin went down to the Denver impound yard to retrieve his truck, only to be subjected to further abuse by the City of Denver.  They informed him he must still pay $5,000 to get it back, even though he has done nothing wrong. 

Activists scream that Denver's new stricter impoundment law violates the rights of illegal immigrants since they often drive with no license, no plates, no insurance, no right to be in the country...  But not one of them stands up for a wrongly-charged man who needs his truck and tools to earn his bread.

It's about raising money, not stopping crime
Illegal immigrants rob and kill, gangs run rampant, even killing a Denver Bronco football player, but the Denver Police has nothing better to do than entrap innocent citizens trying to get through a work day?  And the city insists on collecting all fees even when they wrongly impounded the vehicle?  This is state-sponsored theft. 

These good little liberal sheeple deserve a progressive pat on the head from their statist overlords!

Local talk show host Peter Boyles featured this story on his morning show, and boy did the progressive statists come out of the woodwork to criticize this man and stand up for a tyrannical government:

One person said it served him right driving through that bad neighborhood and he should learn a lesson from it.

Many noted that the man said his truck wasn’t worth the $5,000 impound fee so he should just forget it.

Half the people in Colorado live in Denver, and the other half of us hope to hell they stay there.  Denver is now overrun with little liberal democrat minions.  All that party is left with are effete metrosexuals and shiftless welfare bums who don’t have the worries a working person does.  Tools and a vehicle are a working person’s lifeblood.  Take them away and you lose the ability to put food on the table.  That truck’s blue book value is nothing, but it would take thousands to replace it.  Liberals are out of touch with normal America.

Liberalism Destroys All It Touches

I lived in Denver when I was a young man.  It was a nice place, full of working class people, college students and downtown yuppies.  Now it’s a fetid sewer, homeless bums wandering downtown, gangs shooting it out nightly, illegal immigrants taking over whole neighborhoods and killing citizens with drunk driving and outright murder.

Liberalism twists a culture, causing a society to eat itself from the inside out like ants in a rotten log.

Denver can’t stop gangs from running rampant, and it has no will to stop illegal immigrants from bleeding the city dry, but it can sure go after law-abiding taxpayers to fund it all!  This dysfunction is not just confined to this once-great city.  This is a cancer that is progressively rotting the soul of this nation.
 
The heavy-handed state knows how to treat innocent citizens like criminals, but cannot stop the real criminals.  Over 3,000 people lost their lives on 9/11, but nobody lost their job.  Government officials who strip search us at airports can’t stop someone with a security clearance from harvesting a treasure trove of secrets and releasing them to the public.  Those charged with protecting us have failed, so they’ve turned on us, treating us all as criminals in the process.

Progressives dream of a Utopia America, while we realists dream of simple competence where lawbreakers are rolled up and law-abiding citizens are left to their liberties.

KDVR - Denver Scams

Liberalism is Intellectually Bankrupt

American liberalism may not be dead, but it has become a pathetic, laughable shell of its former self.  Responsible adults such as Hubert Humphrey, Barbara Jordan, and Scoop Jackson have left the building.  The movement is now chock full of Al Harptons bullhorn brigades, sputtering red-faced ranters like Ed Schultz and sleazo nutballs such as Alan Grayson.

Emmett Tyrell delivers liberalism's eulogy...

As a political movement liberalism is dead. They do not have the numbers. They do not have the policies. They have 23 seats in the Senate to defend in 2012 (against the Republicans' 10) and Republican control of state houses and legislatures will give them even more seats in the future. Liberalism R.I.P.

But more importantly, Tyrell points out that unlike conservatives, liberals have no intellectual source to draw from:

Conservatives have had Edmund Burke and the Founding Fathers as their cynosures. Sometimes they have provided discipline; sometimes conservatives have followed their own star.

The problem for liberals is they have been denied a cynosure. Some had looked to the British Fabian Socialists and some to Karl Marx, but since the late 1940s liberals became coy about their intellectual mentors.

We have liberty lovers Hayek and the founding fathers.  Liberals have racists Margaret Sanger and Woodrow Wilson.  It's no contest. 

R. Emmett Tyrell - Liberalism's Autopsy

Liberals Do Not Understand America

How to think like a liberal--Follow the staggering steps

Unwashed progressivel Michael Tomasky demonstrates what is wrong with statist liberalism.  He describes a dinner party he attended where they engaged in a discussion of communities and the role of government in them:

Then a woman I didn't know spoke up. She was southern. She was very friendly and chatty. She said she was all for beloved communities. But what was clear to her, the really important point, was that in the good old days, those communities had nothing to do with government. And when we started thinking it did was when it all went wrong.

It was a small group, so I was polite and didn't say anything, but what I thought was: you idiotic, irresponsible, egotistical cretin. Nothing to do with government? Let's go ask the black people of your age cohort and home town whether they felt part of a beloved community, and let's ask them whether they think government had anything to do with the change in their status in your community over the decades.

Because government had to step in and restore civil rights, it shall now hound these iniquitous communities for all eternity, dictating life down to the last detail? 

By his illogic, the US should now be ruling Europe since we put an end to bloody warfare and genocide there in WW II.  After the Democratic Congress’s Post Office and banking scandals caused the GOP takeover in 1994, the Democrats should have been forever banned from further majorities. See where liberal thinking leads? Right down the toilet of absurdity.


Next, he steps up with a fuzzy phrase:

I can assure you that in America, black people – yes, even today, when discrimination isn't remotely like it was – have little choice but to consider the big matters from the white point of view.

What exactly is a “white point of view?” 
And how is it distinct from a “black point of view?” I’ve had many black friends over the years, and we’ve shared many points of view, so was I considering things from a black point of view, or were they considering things from my white point of view?

His statement is absurd, especially coming from someone paid to comment publicly. In any society, the majority often sets the tone on “big matters,” but here in the US, people of all stripes and creeds have a voice, so this is a smear.  And why point to a "white" majority.  The following groups also form a majority in this country:  sports fans, people without a college degree, homeowners, the employed, and English speakers.

Does anyone with a brain really think that the "white point of view" is more prominent than the "liberal media-leftist academia-traditional values mocking Hollywood" point of  view?

More pernicious is his dividing us up by black and white, blithely assuming each group (diverse within itself) is mutually exclusive from the other. Nothing could be further from the truth. Geographic location, income, religion, occupation and education levels are all better predictors of opinion than race. Tomasky shows that liberals who think like this are the true racists

Next comes the strawman...

The two problems here are, first, that while they think they owe government nothing, they actually owe government a great deal. If they're small business people, they depend on the freight rails and the roadways and the utilities and the regulation of interstate commerce and the laws that keep their crooked competitors from undercutting them.

Wrong!  We don’t owe the government a “great deal.” We The People have charged the government with certain responsibilities stated in the US Constitution. Government owes us performance of those duties. Citizens have a duty to fulfill their part of the bargain, but government is subservient to the people, not the other way around.

More progressive twaddle...

The second problem is the one I saw manifest at that dinner that night. Everybody in this country isn't like you.

Precisely. It is for exactly this reason that one-size-fits-all statism does not work.  Individual citizens and communities have a natural right to craft their own cultures and solutions within the bounds of the law.

Here’s where he goes wacko...

Yes, you worked hard to get where you are. But the vast majority of people work hard. Some have good luck, some have bad. Some stay healthy, some get sick. Some make only wise decisions, some make an unwise one. Some benefit from free-market oddities and inequities, some lose.

And yes, some, because of history or birth circumstances, started the race at a starting line several paces back from the one where you started. Part of citizenship, a crucial part of citizenship, is standing in their shoes for a few moments – as they must stand in yours, and understand your point of view too.

No it’s not. He just made that up. Good citizenship is obeying the just laws, opposing the unjust ones, and not violating the God-given rights of others. Good citizenship is also keeping oneself informed and identifying liberal claptrap like this for what it is and warning others lest they fall into the tarpits of progressive ignorance.

The Mirage of Fairness


We all have equal rights, but we are not all equal in circumstance. Indeed, how would one set about making us all equal? God save us from such a project!  Hayek points out the inherent inconsistency of such "fairness" arguments:"  "to produce the same result for different people, it is necessary to treat them differently."  And who will be the enlightened ones who determine just what the desired outcomes are?  

Since heart disease hits black people disproportionately, should government randomly pick out non-blacks and force feed them bacon grease until they die of congestive heart failure?  Whites have higher rates of schizophrenia.  How do we even that out? 
 
Life is not fair. Unlike me, Teddy Kennedy’s kids were millionaires the day they were born, and I don’t begrudge them that. We all come from different circumstances with different skills and interests.

America was founded upon equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.

Michael Tomasky - Obama, Beck and America

Who Cares if The President is a Muslim?

Media-Crafted Controversy

This is traditionally a bad season for our sensationalistic, controversy driven 24/7 noise machine known as the "news" media. It's mid-August, and Americans are trying to enjoy what's left of summer.

We've unplugged for the summer, so media profits are sagging.  They respond by inventing stuff to get us back and basking in the glow of their corporate-sponsored cliffhangers.

So PEW conducts a poll and a news-hungry media is all over it like a pack of rabid jihadis on a cartoonist.

18% of Americans believe President Obama is a Muslim!

So what???

• The Same poll reports that only 46% of Democrats believe Obama is a Christian!  By their own standards, half of all Democrats are kooks!
• 20% of adults believe space aliens live among us in disguise
• 33% believe 911 was an inside job

"If Bush ran the car in the ditch, Obama and the Democrats went on a drunken joy ride and drove it the wrong way down I-70, caused a two-thousand car pileup."

Besides drumming up business for "news" organizations, this also provides a convenient distraction from the ongoing economic catastrophe that has been made worse by Obama and the Pelosicrats.

It also ties in nicely with the Ground Zero Mosque Controversy

Random Question:  How would Michael Bloomberg and our lefty friends feel if the people building this mosque were rabid, unabashed America-haters who openly bragged about receiving Iranian money to build this victory monument?  What if they hated homosexuality and spoke in favor of wife-beating and honor killings?  Would it still be OK for them to build the mosque?  (The answer is yes, the First Amendment doesn't just protect noncontroversial happy talk.)

68% of Americans are opposed to the Ground Zero Mosque

So are 2/3 of us bigots?  Not according to freedom-for-all libertarian David Harsanyi:

There are those who continue to make the facile claim that anyprotest over Park51 is a display in un-American intolerance andcontempt for the Constitution. This position treats criticism offaith—religious institutions and symbols included—as tantamount to"bigotry."

Even a newfound reverencefor religious liberty on the left does not negate our right toprotest and criticize the philosophical disposition of others. Andapplying public pressure in an effort to shut down a project is asAmerican as protesting the arrival of a new Wal-Mart. Religiousinstitutions, as far as I can tell, are not exempted from thesedisputes.

In 2008, thousands of gay-rights activists protested the Mormontemple in Westwood, Calif., for its role in passing Proposition8—the ban on same-sex marriage. This grew into a national protestto undermine the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ ofLatter-day Saints—even though not every Mormonwas involved.

I don't recall anti-Mormon protesters being referred to asbigots for targeting religion; it appeared to be just the opposite,in fact.

The left rediscovers religious liberty

So welcome!  Welcome, my lefty friends to the cause of religious freedom!  I assume you will now be crossing the battle lines and locking arms with beleaguered Mormons who have been targeted by leftwing bigots.

Che Guevara Logo: The Red Badge of Stupidity

Conservative Pushback happens in the most unexpected places...

Those conservatives who despair that all is lost need to go here and read the comments criticizing the Che Guevara ring tone this Apple iPhone site is offering. This has to be the best pushback against liberal ignorance I have seen in a long time.

Here some of my favorite comments:

Mickey: Che was a murderer and a terrorist, and if alive today, if he had his way would have probably executed Apple executives. Ironic, the consummate Anti-Capitalist, is today a Commercial icon. “Hasta la victoria siempre” indeed!

Juandos: What sort of clueless, libtard asshole would want the rantings of this homicidal bastard on their iphone?

Fuckche: Ironically enough, the same rebellious youths who wear Che Guevara shirts most likely would’ve been targeted by Guevara had they grown up in Cuba. Guevara considered anyone who listened to rock and roll music, who wore his hair long, or who spoke up against him a delinquent. His very goal was to, “make individualism disappear from the nation!” He considered it, “criminal to think of individuals!” 

Perhaps these young American individualists should think twice before brandishing the picture of a man who persecuted “hippies, homosexuals, free-thinkers and poets,” and who employed constant surveillance, control, and repression.

I love it! Here are some actual Che Guevara quotes, proving once again that liberals in this country are ignorant dingbats for using this dogmatic sociopathic murderer as their symbol...

“The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities and booze, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent.”

“My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood… Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any surrendered enemy that falls in my hands! With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!”

“Hatred as the central element of our struggle… Hatred that is intransigent… Hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him violent and cold- blooded killing machine… We reject any peaceful approach. Violence is inevitable. To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow. The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”

“The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind! Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination! If the nuclear missiles had remained (in Cuba) we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City!”

“Mexicans are a rabble of illiterate Indians.”

The left needs to apologize to Pat Buchanan.

Humberto Fontova has written a great piece on liberal ignorance at Canada Free Press Go read it!

Liberal Lies about Taxes

What is it with liberals and taxes?  
Despite all real-world evidence to the contrary, liberals see higher taxes as the solution to every fiscal problem.  The chart at the bottom of the post refutes this.  States with the highest levels of taxation have the worst economies and the greatest debt.  Low taxation states have healthier economies and less debt.

It Takes a Crime-Ridden Village...
The New York Times, in detailing Illinois’s budget crisis, steers clear of facts and instead plucks the liberal heartstrings by focusing on community organizer agencies...

...holding together poor and working-class neighborhoods. With an annual budget of $16 million, the agency tends to families torn by crime and violence as well as people who are psychologically stressed and abusing drugs.

Jail the violent criminals and the drug pushers and you won’t have “families torn by crime” and “people psychologically stressed and abusing drugs.”  There you go!  $16 million saved, and these counselors and their helpless wards are now free to pursue real jobs!

Of course, you need a good business climate in order to put people to work.  Last time I checked, businesses and the rich people who own them are where the jobs come from, and the data shows that a low tax environment creates jobs.  

New York Times:  Fueling Liberal Ignorance
The Times ignores all reality and repeats that tired liberal refrain that calls for more taxes.  They state:

“The state’s income tax burden is not terribly high — Illinois ranks in the bottom half of states”   

True statement.  Personal Income Taxes are not terribly high, but every other conceivable tax is!!! ranking Illinois right around the 14th highest in the nation for overall tax burden.

News articles like this serve only to confuse the issue and add to the economic ignorance of the liberal reader.    

Here is the overall taxation chart, courtesy of The Tax Foundation.  Higher number means more taxation, lower number less.

It's the Statism, Stupid!

The whole barracks was in the state of filth and chaos to which the militia reduced every building they occupied and which seems to be one of the by-products of revolution.  (George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia)

Everybody to the right of national embarrassment Jimmy Carter has been smeared and declared out of bounds by propagandists in the media and the craven clot of liberals who eagerly await their daily marching orders.

The left must trash everything in order to advance their twisted progressive agenda

All conservative thinking is a thought crime.

All conservative and libertarian speech emanating from the tea parties is hate speech.

Recent gun rallies produced no violence, but the fevered left insists against all evidence that we are irresponsible and murderous.

Liberal Agitprop:  Have you heard the one about the powerful woman, the homosexual and the black man?


Pelosi and a diverse gang of liberal democrats marched through a tea party crowd in DC, trying their damnedest to provoke a hateful outburst.  A powerful woman, a gay chairman and a black man, oh my!  All they were missing was a Muslim Mufti and and a she-male in a leather thong.

"The banjo playing morons can't resist this bait!" they imagined.

Despite the plethora of cameras trained on this left-wing agitprop, no evidence of hate or racism was produced.  A skittles bowl of patriotic Americans show up at tea parties, but we're still called racist.  The conservative bastion known as the US Military continues to be the nation's preeminent showpiece of racial, gender and cultural egalitarianism, but it is scorned by much of the left.

Meanwhile, angry diaper rash ranters like Randi Rhodes, Keith Olbermann, and Ed Schultz are held up as heroes by the left... 

This is not left versus right.  It is Liberty versus Tyranny
Their aim is to protect and defend a collapsing statist model.  It has steamrollered our liberties for over 100 years and now has us on the brink of bankruptcy.  The collapse is not just financial.  The State suffers an  intellectual and moral rot as well.

Watchdogs or Horndogs? Where's the real greed? A race to the bottom...

Progressives say more government is the remedy.  Oh really?  You mean like the SEC watchdogs who were really porn-surfing horndogs?  How about the government unions angrily demanding more money when 10% of the country is unemployed?  A teacher's union that has driven our kids' academic performance to third-world toilet status?  That kind of government? 
 
Danger!  People are waking up and talking about the constitution!

Have you noticed something?  We talk about the constitution, the founders, first principles.

The statists and their patsies on the left talk about racism, hate, and what morons we are.

See the difference?  We want a debate.  They smear us to avoid the debate because they cannot win.  They don't have the intellectual firepower.  They have deconstructionism, angry grievances, Plouffian propaganda, and Sunstein's buggerish nudgery. 

We have The Founding Fathers, natural law, free market capitalism and the US Constitution on our side.  It's no contest.  No wonder they smear and scream.  They cannot win the debate, so they try to shut it down.  Like all bullies who hijack the state to impose their will on the masses, at their core they are cowards.

They have reduced themselves and everything they've touched to a state of filth and chaos.  It's a natural by-product of the progressive revolution.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Statistics are great for getting to down to brass tacks and weeding the BS out of a debate, but they are not the nail that closes the lid on a case.  Consider Major League Baseball, a realm awash in statistics.  Experts still argue over who was the best hitter or second baseman.

Bill Quigley at Common Dreams wrote a piece entitled "Nine Myths about Socialism in the United States."

His argument is that those on the right who accuse the government of creeping socialism are engaging in hysteria. He argues that we do not have socialism in this country by plucking statistics from an OECD study, favoring categories that we lag behind in.  We are not socialist, he argues, because we are embarrassingly behind in areas like mandatory maternity leave, worker and family support (whatever that means), and education spending.

First off, he's tilting at straw men, probably in an attempt to lampoon conservatives who have overused the "S word."  We do have some Western European-style socialistic ideas creeping in, but few rightwingers are raising the specter of Soviet tanks rolling into the town square.

I find it funny that implicit in his argument is that if we were socialist we would rank high in these categories.  So while he chastises conservatives for indiscriminate use of the socialist smear, he tacitly argues that more of it would be a good thing.  Also, ridiculously, his argument presumes there is a socialist Valhalla somewhere out there where everyone is taken care of, and if we only provided more social services like the Europeans do all would be Nirvana here. 

Yes, the European safety net is more generous than ours, but they suffer chronic double-digit unemployment, high rates of permanent disability, and have less living space.  Which would you prefer? 

Common sense makes you scratch your head and think "Somethin' ain't right...  How can Cuba have a better health care system than the US?  Why aren't heads of state flocking there (or to Finland) instead of the US?  Why did Cuba's communist dictator call for Spanish doctors when he fell ill?

A statistic without context is just a sterile number.  Placing it in context and relating it to relevant facts, unwinding it, is where we actually learn something useful. 

Consider these three facts about life in These United States:

• Women make less than men 
• Life expectancy is lower and infant mortality is higher than in other developed nations
• Young women pay more than young men for health insurance

Not fair?  Let's investigate!

Why Women get paid less than men 

Dr. Thomas Sowell shows how one can aggregate or disaggregate sample data to make a point. 

A good example is pay inequality.  Men make more than women.  Stated technically, the male cohort in the Unites states makes more than the female cohort, on a per person basis.  Sounds bad, doesn't it?  Well, women take time off to have babies and care for sick friends and relatives more than men do, causing them as a group to have more interruptions in work history.  Some professions place a premium on that.  

But put that aside and look at education.  Are men more educated?  No.  Aha!  But wait.   

All college degrees are not deemed equal in the marketplace.  Men tend to get the degrees that earn high income, while women tend more towards liberal arts and social sciences, which do not make as much money.  Compare profession by profession, and the pay disparity disappears.

Life Expectancy and Infant Mortality

BigGovHealth breaks this one down, as does David Hogberg.  Life expectancy is lower here, but not because of our health care system.  We are an adventurous and violent people.  Control for murders and accidents, and our life expectancy actually beats everybody.  Dying from a drive-by shooting or losing your grip while cliff climbing is not the fault of the greatest health care system in the world. 

Infant Mortality numbers are affected by how a country defines and reports it.  We use a broader definition than Canada and European countries, which increases our numbers.

WebMD notes that a higher incidence of premature births in the US contributes to our high numbers, and BigGovHealth shows that Europe and Canada don't even report certain categories of preemie deaths.

Teen pregnancies and women over 40 giving birth are higher risk categories, and we have more of those.  Add in octo-mom scenarios caused by fertility drugs, where it is rare for all babies to survive, and we have a more complete picture.

Studies and anecdotal data have shown that some communities lack access to adequate pre-natal care, but is that a valid reason to reorder the nation's entire health care system?  And why play games to make things look worse than they are?  It must be to manipulate the masses.

Why young women pay more for health insurance than young men

Consider this simple fact:  Young women pay more for health insurance than young men.  Unfair, right?

The reason is that women in their childbearing years consume more health care, and more expensive care, than men.  Also, as people age, it flips:  Men over 50 pay more for health insurance than women in the same age category.  Still unfair? 

It's not fair!

We can argue whether all of this is "fair," as liberals are wont to do, but let's establish facts first before the jousting begins.  A logical next step for the liberal would be to set up laws that make an employer not consider work experience or degree discipline, and to demand insurance companies charge everybody the same rate.  I'll leave it to you to consider the consequences...

The life expectancy and infant mortality information, placed in context, shuts down the "inadequate health care is killing Americans" argument.  Do people lack health care in this country?  You betcha!  But you need to find another line of argumentation, this one has been disproved.

The next time you see anyone spouting statistics, go and search for an opposing (or corroborating) point of view.

Liberalism is a Bankrupt Monster

Conservatism is a shining city on the hill. Liberalism is the cold, clanking monster that threatens to destroy it.

Who's out of touch? Liberals or Conservatives? I think the Democrats' shameless bribery, vote buying and outright legislative fraud answers the question.  Christopher Chantrill gave us his take last year in his brilliant piece, Who's Out of Touch.

Here is an excerpt that neatly summarizes his thesis:

The awful truth about liberalism is its central delusion, the notion that life can be neatly organized into rational bureaucratic programs. It turns everything it touches into a soulless clanking monster.

The glorious truth about conservatism is its love of life. Before princes, principalities and powers comes life and love, mothers and babies, children and families, struggle and sacrifice, a city on a hill.

Proof? Look at the Democratic Approach to Health Care "Reform"

Democrats are stuck in the past, spending like it's 1939 and churning out turgid tons of bureaucratic sludge. Diversity is suddenly out the window. One size fits all because they say so!

Here are two gimmicks they shamelessly employ to enact their ponzi scheme into law

Gimmick # 1: "This plan is deficit neutral" intones the Professor in Chief. Yeah, because it collects 10 years of taxes to pay for only 6-8 year of coverage.

Gimmick # 2: Put a huge reduction in medicare reimbursements in the bill and get the CBO to score it. Then, pass a separate bill to cancel the cuts in the first bill.  From CNN:

Ryan correctly stated that the bill projects that Medicare will lower reimbursements to doctors by $371 billion over the next 10 years, yet Congress would cancel those cuts in a separate bill, all part of an attempt to mask the true size of future deficits through "gimmicks and smoke and mirrors."

Obama steered the discussion away from Ryan's numbers, and the White House hasn't challenged his analysis. (CNN-Money)

Bernie Madoff went to jail for less than this. His only crime was that he was unelected...

Republican Advantage: Liberalism is Too Expensive

A burgeoning national debt looms over the political environment

We may be able to go on five more years like this, or even 10 or 20.  But we are certain to one day hit the tipping point where our government bonds are considered junk, driving interest rates into the stratosphere and making the dollar good only for toilet paper.

These are not feverish Pat Buchanan rants or Glenn Beck apocalyptic nightmares.  Read respected economists and commentators like Steve Forbes, Robert Samuelson, or anybody writing in finance magazines.  They all agree the situation is not pretty and that we can't continue on like this forever.  Even uber lib Matthew Yglesias says we can't afford more government.  Sooner or later, The Crash will come, dumping us into the third world toilet.

A stunning admission from the New York Times detailing just how dire our fiscal situation has become:

Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors.

Bribing Voters with Free Stuff is Expensive
Think about it.  Everything on the Democratic menu costs money:  Health care, college tuition assistance, food stamps, welfare...  Or it relies on economy-crushing taxing and regulating (taxes on "the rich," cap and trade).  They get elected by promising people free stuff and then robbing innocent citizens to pay for what they can't borrow.  In fairness, Republicans have abandoned conservative principles and eagerly jumped on this shameful vote-buying bandwagon.

Conservatism Costs Nothing
Conservatism steeped in the more libertarian philosophy of our founders costs nothing.  And Americans are hungy for it.  A rugged individualism backed by our traditional generosity towards charities could win elections in the country.  Separating traditional banking from Wall Street casinos would gain independents.  Telling Wall Street to shove it, that we won't pay off their gambling debts anymore, will pick off many working class traditional values democrats.

People are not stupid:  We know we can't keep running deficits forever
America is ready to hear the truth about our fiscal cancer that threatens to destroy us.  John McCain missed his chance to crap in the punchbowl back in 2008.  He was just the crabby old man to do deliver the message that the federal government must be slashed.  

Can the GOP man up and deliver the message in 2010?  We'll see...

The Liberal View: Voters are Childish and Ignorant

Liberal government nannyism encourages childishness, so it's no wonder liberals compare us to children

Jacob Weisberg at Slate has written an article calling American voters childish and ignorant.  Read the article and it's clear he's tacitly hurling the charge at rightwing tea partiers.  We rail against Big Government while we collect our Social Security checks.  Oh, the hypocrisy!

Meanwhile, the Global Warming Fairy Tale Continues to Unravel...

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.


And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.(Daily Mail)

Get that?  The arrogant "scientist" who powered the entire global warming scam, including the hockey stick, has just admitted that there has been no global warming in the past 15 years. 

Add to that the Himalaya Glacier Fraud, Chinese temperature stations fraud, and countless other international swindles stacked upon this junk science dung heap.  Regardless, liberals in this country refuse to let go of the myth. 

So tell me again who the childish and ignorant are?

Big Government: Overpromised, Undersold

The End of Big Government

It's not just us.  Governments around the world have overpromised and undersold.  They had dreams of wiping away every tear, free health care for all, generous old age pensions...  The only thing they completely accomplished was racking up trillions of dollars of debt.

Liberals call it noble, trying to take care of everybody by forced redistribution; spreading it around, as President Obama would say...  But the scheme has collapsed.  There's no way to continue paying for it.  Bernard Palmer sums it up nicely:

bernardpalmer wrote:

Feb 11th 2010 4:21 GMT

World wide Socialism is really dying. We should get ready to celebrate and say goodbye to the huge governments and their armies of parasites who have fed themselves fat for so very long. Hopefully Copenhagen was their last big romp.

It's the Economic Uncertainty, Stupid!

The Economist, a highly-respected British magazine, is an excellent source of dispassionate, unbiased news.  Studiously apolitical, they are a trusted source around the world.  They don't go quite as far as Bernard Palmer in condemning big government, but the solution they proffer looks a lot like Reaganism:

That points to a renewed focus on freeing trade, cutting spending rather than raising taxes and agreeing on new financial regulations.

Some of today’s nervousness comes from “policy risk”. Nobody—neither firms, banks nor individuals—is quite sure where government policy is going. The more that governments can do to reduce such uncertainty, the stronger the recovery is likely to be.

If the Federal Government merely froze spending and announced a moratorium on government regulation and taxes, our economy would grow as a result.  Uncertainty is killing us.

Evan Bayh: The Man Who Refused to Sell His Soul

We are looking at one of the few politicians who values his soul more than power

God bless Evan Bayh.  The man refused to eat the crap sandwich that is the Obama Agenda.  Six more years of trying to defend the indefensible?  Six years defending socialism that he doesn't agree with anyway?  Forget it.  He's gone.  Another sensible Democrat run off by the Chicago Syndicate.

Bayh reminds me of a young Senator named Al Gore.  Before Gore hooked up with the Clintons he was pro-life, pro-gun, pro-tobacco, and a defense hawk.  Had he won the 1988 Democratic nomination I would have voted for him over George H.W. Bush.

I'm glad I didn't because his U-turn on so many core issues was frightening.  Then he went on to lose the 2000 election, while trying to suppress the military vote, became completely unhinged and the rest is a tawdry tale of an enviro-evangelist...

Anyway, Congratulations Senator Bayh!  You are still too liberal for me, but you're a principled man, and that is rare for a politician nowadays.