Frogs in a Pot

We have more laws than we had 100 years ago, but we're less safe, less happy, and less free

Democrat and Republican Progressive rodents have nibbled away at our freedoms for over 100 years now.  John Stossel writes:

It's become easier to get into trouble. We've become a nation of a million rules. Not the kind of bottom-up rules that people generate through voluntary associations. Those are fine. I mean imposed, top-down rules formed in the brains of meddling bureaucrats who think they know better than we how to manage our lives.

Its always in the name of safety, security, equality, etc.  Meanwhile, Congress exempts itself from the laws it piles on us mere mortals while democratic voters cheer the trampling of our constitution.

It hit me a few months ago when the Supreme Court struck down Chicago dictator Daily’s unconstitutional gun ban.  Daily declared he would just rewrite the law.  I wrote a blog post featuring Ted Nugent declaring “Don’t.  Tread.  On.  Me.  Period!”

What Gives Them the Right?
What gives an elected official the right to tell a free man he can’t own a gun to protect himself and his family?  Seriously.  We should be asking our elected officials that at every turn.  

But no, we are all suspect, with hundreds of thousands of incomprehensible laws hanging over our heads, and it’s all for the betterment of society.  Progress!  That is their talking point.  “We don’t let you run with scissors, Little Kurt, because you may hurt yourself of someone else.”  

“Someone might get hurt.  We have policemen to handle the bad guys.”

Yeah right.  You can’t sue the police department when your house is robbed or, God forbid, a loved one is murdered.  So the state denies us a fundamental right but fails to step in and fill the void.  That is just one of the myriad logical inconsistencies of progressivism.  

Progressivism Kills
People in liberal victim societies like New York and Chicago are lambs to the slaughter because their governments have disarmed them while failing to do the same to the predators.

Too many have no retirement savings because the Social Security siren song has dashed them upon the rocks of fiscal insolvency, while government-sponsored inflation ate away their savings.

Education performance decreases as federal government intervention increases

“Stimulus” money bailed out irresponsible state governments, keeping the economy-killing bloat alive and allowing them to dodge the hard decisions needed to restore fiscal sanity.

This is progress?

Suicide Pacts

The US Constitution is not a Suicide Pact

... And thank God for that.  May He save us from the fate of Europe.  Angry Muslims are snuffing the light of reason on the old continent,.  Free speech and liberty are increasingly imperiled.


Now we have the Ground Zero mosque controversy.  I like David Harsanyi's observation in his article, Why is it bigoted to criticize religion?

Unlike many other faiths, ideological Islam has a poor track record of compatibility with liberal ideals. Surely, that's worth a discussion in a free society. Or is it a case of intolerance to bring it up?

And he exposes the American left as a four-flushing, incoherent rabble stumbling towards dhimmitude.  They rush to embrace all that is scorned and despised by normal Americans:

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

I've not heard those who make generalizations about Catholicism referred to as bigots in Time magazine. Nor have I heard those who regularly disparage evangelicals called intolerant.

It is dark comedy when secular liberalism attempts to accommodate a chauvinistic and violent religion that hates free speech and has no concept of women's or gay rights.
 
The inherently inconsistent routine goes something like this:  

Misogynist obscurantist agitators swoop down out of the dark ages like a cloud of ravenous bats, infest a liberal democracy, and then use that democracy's freedoms to snuff its classical liberalism and all its inherent freedom's forever.  Welcome to dhimmitude.

This puts a whole new twist on Voltaire:

I may not agree with your screaming hatred, your silencing of free speech and the beheading of infidels, but I will defend to my culture's death your right to hate and silence and behead...

Reminds me of an Onion Piece from 2003, ACLU Defends Nazi's Right to Burn Down ACLU Headquarters.  Go read it.  Laugh, and then cry because a 2003 parody has become reality just seven years later,

From Locke to Stalin

Actor Joseph C. Phillips is not just another pretty face. He is the rare Hollywood star who can think cogently and express himself well in print. I highly recommend his article, Who is John Locke?

Phillips asks...

Is totalitarianism the natural end of all forms of government, or are men capable of ruling themselves? Without the foundation of Locke, do American children have the philosophical foundation necessary to understand what is truly evil about Stalin and Marx and conversely, what is good and unique about America?

Many libertarian thinkers, and historical evidence, point to a definitive conclusion that, yes, totalitarianism is the natural end of all forms of government. Good governance that protects liberty requires a constant struggle between the government and the governed. There is no stasis. It is a constant tug of war.

One Evil Leads to Another
As Hayek and others have observed, if we merely say Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini were evil and leave it at that, we learn nothing. For Hitler, Stalin and Mao were particularly evil not because of their totalitarianism, but because of the over 100 million human beings they murdered.

But what drove them to it?
They had a plan, like all central-planning statists do, and they needed for everyone to follow it. When all else fails, try brutality.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.
-- H.L Menckin

Obama is not a murderous Stalin, and the Democrats are not the Chinese Poltburo purging society for a great leap forward. They and do-gooders like them are not cruel or genocidal. They want to improve society, remake it in their image, and that is their sin: No man has a right to remake another in his image. No person or group has the right to forcefully impose their narrow vision on others, no matter how wonderful or well-meaning it may be.

Questions for Obama and the Democrats
You want everyone to cooperate with your plans. What will you do if incentives and bribery fail to sway the citizenry? Will you throw the carrots away and reach for the stick of legislative coercion?

If we still fail to comply, then what? This is where things get ugly.

Further, what empirical evidence can these statist busybodies point to showing that a collectivist, centrally-planned society is superior to one of free people where each determines his or her own future?

Our Right Come From Nature
Our rights must come from God (or nature if you prefer), a source that transcends mankind. The alternative is too horrible to bear.

Rights do not come from a ruling body or a document. We possess certain natural rights by virtue of our humanness. To believe otherwise is the ultimate human rights abuse. If our rights come from a document, then whatever that document says is valid: Slavery, rape, genocide... Whatever the drafters have written, shall be done.

No, you say? Then to what authority do you appeal with your objections to the ruling document? Another human being? What if she reaffirms what the document says, then what?

For this reason, our human rights of life, liberty and property must be an untouchable bedrock, inviolable.

The Founders knew it and they enshrined this ideal in the Declaration of Independence, but more importantly, in The US Constitution.

It's Not About The Women

Kirsten Powers is right. Afghanistan is not about womens rights

Yes, George W. Bush and others trotted out the “we need to help the women” argument to justify the invasion of foreign lands. But did anyone really take that seriously? Prior to the attacks of 9/11, we heard nary a peep from our government about human-rights abuses against women in Afghanistan.

And when has the United States ever engaged in military action with even the subsidiary purpose of freeing women under misogynist oppression? Let’s not forget that Saudi Arabia—a country where women are segregated from men, cannot vote or travel without the explicit approval of a male guardian, and are often harassed by baton-wielding religious police who ensure they are covered—is a key ally of the U.S.

She goes after President Obama as well:

The Obama administration has hardly been a profile in courage on the international women-rights front. Shockingly, the issue that has animated Obama is the important “right” of women to cover themselves. In his Cairo speech, Obama bragged that the “U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it.”

The women of the world thank you.

I hate piling on, but if we value intellectual honesty, we must admit she’s got a point.

Yes, our forces created space for girls to go to school and women to work and express themselves where the opportunity presented itself. But we must also admit that upending societal and tribal norms (even misogynist 7th century ones) is detrimental to “winning hearts and minds.”

The Sun Also Sets

The Decline and Fall of the America Empire
Niall Ferguson provides a scary glimpse into a not too distant future where the US faces a precipitous decline. He’s no America-hater, but rather a Jeremiah warning us off the path to self-destruction.

Empires exhibit many of the characteristics of other complex adaptive systems, including the tendency to move from stability to instability quite suddenly.

The Bourbon monarchy in France passed from triumph to terror with astonishing rapidity. The sun set on the British Empire almost as suddenly.

The Suez crisis in 1956 proved that Britain could not act in defiance of the US in the Middle East, setting the seal on the end of empire.

What are the implications for the US today? The most obvious point is that imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises: sharp imbalances between revenues and expenditures, and the mounting cost of servicing a mountain of public debt.

Alarm bells should therefore be ringing very loudly indeed in Washington, as the US contemplates a deficit for 2010 of more than $US1.47 trillion ($1.64 trillion), about 10 per cent of GDP, for the second year running.

Since 2001, in the space of just 10 years, the federal debt in public hands has doubled as a share of GDP from 32 per cent to a projected 66 per cent next year. According to the Congressional Budget Office's latest projections, the debt could rise above 90 per cent of GDP by 2020 and reach 146 per cent by 2030 and 344 per cent by 2050.

Even more frightening, Craig Robets paints a bleak dystopia too dark for even Glen Beck ..

The Year America Dissolved, by Craig Roberts

It was 2017. Clans were governing America.  The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.

As society broke down, the police became warlords... (Read More)

Think it can't happen here?  Economically powerful Argentines of 100 years ago didn't think so either.  Or ponder the dramatic but dignified decline of Great Britain...

It can happen here.

God is Intolerant

Anne Rice has quit organized religion, writes Kirsten Powers in The Daily Beast.

In 1998, the legendary author had returned to her childhood faith of Catholicism, announcing she would no longer pen vampire novels but instead "write to glorify God." Last week, she announced she had "quit Christianity."

Christianity is Intolerant
Powers points a finger of condemnation at organized religion, evangelicals in particular, by citing research showing...

“...people between the ages of 16 and 29 see Christianity as "anti-homosexual, judgmental, hypocritical, and too political in alarming numbers."

Well, yes! Finally, someone bashing Christianity gets it right! God, as understood by Jewish as well as Christian followers, is against homosexual acts. God also frowns upon adultery, prostitution, drunkenness, coveting your neighbor’s wife and possessions, or even lusting after a woman in your heart.

God also wants us to help our neighbor, give alms to the poor and care for widows and orphans.

God is also judgmental--Remember that whole heaven or hell thing?

He laid down rules and he expects us to follow them. His prophets and apostles have also admonished all followers to be judgmental as well. Yes, he said “judge not, lest ye be judged” and Jesus admonished us to not criticize the speck in our brother’s eye while ignoring the beam in our own eye, for God will judge us by the same standards we hold others to.

He wants us to get our own house in order, but then he wants us to also test the spirits and make judgements of the rightness or wrongness of the actions of others.  The Bible is full of stories about people trying to correct wayward brothers and sisters. Peter even stared a couple to death for lying about their contribution to the church, so those who haven’t even read The Bible should spare us the indignation over our being judgmental.

We are All Hypocrites
Anyone who holds ideals that are higher than their actual state would be considered a hypocrite by these people’s reasoning. My favorite is when some liberal slobbers on about the founders being hypocrites. My response? Would it have been better if they just codified into law slavery and all other immoral things going on at the time? Christians, like the founders or anyone looking to better themselves and society, hold high ideals that they often fail to meet.

Finally, why should religious people butt out of politics? Everyone else, from Hollywood celebutards to angry Muslims and illegal aliens are in the arena, so why not Christians?

John Wayne: "What I Want for My Daughter"

It was a different world back then.  John Wayne tells Dean Martin what he wants for his baby daughter.  And don't let Dean-o fool you, he was great in "Five Card Stud."

Network TV would censor this today...