Teach Your Children

God gave us dominion.  Teach you kids to hunt tasty creatures

Blind Ideology is killing the Democrats.  It would have killed the GOP, if libertarian and free-thinking tea partiers had not infiltrated the ranks.

I decided long ago that my kids would not fall prey to the progressive indoctrination that infests every corner of society.  Teaching kids how to think, instilling in them a moral code, and giving them some historical context for evaluating events goes a long way towards raising an ideologically-bullet-proof person. 


Know how to think
Logical, critical thinking is the most important skill. An easy way to introduce yourself to logic is to do a sudoku. A simple explanation of the syllogism is also a good start. Add to that some examples of logical fallacies and you now at least have a logical framework to analyze what someone is telling you. There are on-line resources that can get you started.

Know what you believe
A person with no moral code is a fire. Could do good, could do bad, depending on which way the wind blows. Any religious person should start with their religious texts.  For Christians, that's The Holy Bible, Old Testament and New Testament. The Bible contains every note in the key of life. It starts with God creating mankind and quickly goes downhill from there. The story of God leading the ungrateful Hebrews out of bondage is a story of each ungrateful person's struggle with obeying Our Creator.

For those agnostics and atheists, there are many non-religious moral codes out there. Pick one.

The 'bible" of American government is The US Constitution.  You can't call yourself a good, patriotic American if you've never read it.  Go here to visit Silverfiddle's Constitutional Resource page.  Proposed legislation and government action should be evaluated against this document.

Read history and the classics
I think history is the best teacher. Read enough and you will learn that there is indeed nothing new under the sun. You will also see that whatever you are going through is not the superlative event of its kind in the history of man. Things have been better, and things have been worse. We're living in higher luxury now, but the basic human condition has not changed.

Churchill's The History of English Speaking Peoples, The Story of English, Gibbons' The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Bill Bennett's America, the Last Best Hope are good starters. Be sure to read things you think you will disagree with; it will stretch your brain and maybe change your mind.

Finally, a healthy dose of skepticism never hurt anyone.

See my List of Great Books Here

America Loko: Housing and Hangovers

This is the stupid state to which our society has fallen...

The aftermath of the party, at which police found students passed out all over the house and rushed nine to the hospital, has renewed calls for bans on the drink Four Loko, which combines as much alcohol as a six-pack of beer and the equivalent of one cup of coffee.

"One girl was sitting on a bench and she fainted, and my friend and I were like, 'Oh my god, oh my god.' We rushed out to help her and I gave her CPR," said one freshman who was at the Oct. 8 party but asked not to be identified. (ABC News - Four Loko)





College kids chug enough caffeinated booze to drop a horse, and people stand in slack-jawed amazement that some were hospitalized.  Dingbat college officials and government nannies pass up an opportunity to punish the kids and teach them a lesson.  Instead, they go after the manufacturer of a legal product.

What do the kids learn?

"I can get drunk and stupid without owning the consequences"

The kids should be arrested and prosecuted for underage drinking.  Parents should demand the firing of university officials who allow this to go on inside campus walls.  And dim bulb politicians like Governor Gregoire should be hounded from office for thinking a ban on Four Loko is a solution .  They've obviously never heard of Red Bull and vodka, Rum and Coke, or Irish Coffee.

The real "problem" here is that the drink is powerful and the alcohol taste is masked by other flavorings.  People get stupid and chug them, resulting in vomiting and passing out.  People did this before these drinks appeared on the market and they will continue doing it the old fashioned way now that the drinks are banned.  You can't fix stupid, on the individual level or at the government level.

I've got a housing hangover, let's get high again

It's no wonder "solutions" such as the four Loko ban are so popular.  These same "adults" cry and howl about those evil predatory lenders who shoved billions of dollars into the hands of irresponsible homebuyers.  These same dolts who decry the housing bubble are now trying to reinflate it.

The deleveraging by our households and businesses is not a pattern to be arrested, but good prudence to be celebrated.

Larger, more liquid corporate balance sheets and higher personal saving rates are the reasonable and right responses to massive government dissaving and unpredictable government policies.

The steep correction in housing markets, while painful, lays the foundation for recovery, far better than the countless programs that have sought to subsidize and temporize the inevitable repricing. (WSJ - Kevin W. Warsh)

Whether you're a clueless college kid or an irresponsible homebuyer, getting high has consequences.

TSA is a Joke - Privatize It

Thousands Standing Around has earned some new nicknames:


The Security Asshats
Touching and Scanning at Airports
Touching Sensitive Areas
The Sleazy Administration


Trust them, we're told.  They're professionals.  As if that were a legitimate excuse for having our 4th Amendment rights violated. 


Remember when a TSA slug in Florida got arrested for beating down a fellow TSA slug? 

Why?  They were trying out the full-body porn scanner on one another, and one guy's package was embarrassingly small.  The others teased him incessantly, leading to the subsequent parking lot beat-down.

Our idiotic, suicidal and apologetic government refuses to profile, or even deny citizenship to terrorists, so we all must now be treated as criminals and strip searched.  Welcome to progressive America!

This useless bureaucratic carbuncle known as TSA was the price George Bush had to pay to democrats in exchange for implementing real security measures like hunting terrorists down to their fetid hidey-holes, torturing them, and killing them.

Time to disburse the Thousands Standing Around
John Stossel relates a conversation he had with Israeli security consultant Rafi Sela.  Israel privatized airport security in 1995, and there has not been one hijacking.  Sela points out the inherent flaw in the TSA model:

"The problem in America is that from day one the US decided to hold the stick on both sides. Which means it's both the regulator and the operator, which is unheard of in [Israeli] security… [here it] is all done by private contractors.”

Get it?  Our government provides the "security" and also evaluates its compliance.  Wouldn't you love a gig like that?

According to a leaked 2004 TSA report obtained by USA Today, inspectors packed hidden bomb materials in everyday carry-ons to test security. Screeners at Los Angeles International Airport missed about 75% -- but San Francisco screeners, who work for a private company instead of the TSA, missed only 20%.

In their publicly available report, the TSA concluded that “privately screened airports have met the standard articulated in ATSA that contract screening operations perform at the same level or better than federally screened operations.”

Again, it’s because you can fire a bad contractor, but you can’t fire the government.

So a better model would be to privatize security operations and shrink TSA down to a small bureau of security professionals who set the standards contractors must follow and monitor and test them for compliance.

* - This is a repost from back in May.  I'm getting 200 hits per day on it (I think because of the picture) so I thought I'd "Front Page" it...

Links:
CNN - TSA Follies
Stossel - Privatize TSA

UN Panel of Rapists, Torturers and Murderers Criticizes US for not Doing it Right

Another stinking pantload from the International House of Rape and Corruption...

The United States will come under the spotlight at the UN's top human rights assembly's for the first time over the coming week along with other countries that face scrutiny by the Human Rights Council.

Some 300 US civil liberties and community groups in the US Human Rights Network on Monday called on the Obama administration to bring "substandard human rights practices" in the United States into line with international standards.

Whatever this group of petty potentates and pedophiles is for, I am against. Whatever they are against, I am for.

The most infamous group of thieves, torturers and murderers dare criticize the greatest and freest nation of God's green earth? Hah!

America should proudly wear this as a badge of honor.  And while we're at it, we should run the American quisling collaborators out on a rail.  Let them go live in Saudi Arabia or Cuba for awhile.  Maybe that will help them get their minds right.

Breitbart - United Nutsacks Criticizes Greatest Nation on God's Green Earth

Angry Islam Incompatible with European Liberalism

Europeans are increasingly unwilling to tolerate Muslim intolerance

The liberal media in this country are wringing their hands over increasing European intolerance. They worry that anti-Muslim sentiment is on the rise even in Sweden...





 

"...home of the Nobel Prize and known as the "conscience of the world" for aiding refugees and pioneering laws for women's equality and gay rights. Yet even here, the Swedish Democrats made it into the Rikstag by tapping into a surge of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment sweeping across many nations in Western Europe, propelling right-wing and nationalist parties to their biggest gains in years." (WaPo)

Are our ink-stained scribblers and enlightened cognoscenti really too dumb to realize that Islam is the greatest threat to Europe's famed and admirable liberalism? Muslims are not known for championing women's equality and gay rights.

A Swede put it simply:

"The Swedish are tired of walking around in their own neighborhoods and feeling like they're in Saudi Arabia," said Ekeroth, an intense 30-year-old and founder of the new Anti-Islamic Fund, which promotes criticism of radical Islam. "It is time for the Swedish to be comfortable again in their own country."

Angry Muslim replaces Ugly American as #1 Threat to Europe

There is disorder in the European house. Europeans were living comfortably and peaceably in the home they had built, settling upon a live-and-let-live liberalism that has kept the peace for 65 years.  Ugly Americans demanding everybody speak English used to be the main disturber of Europe's peaceful repose.

Now, denizens of the Olde Continent are shocked and horrified to see that the Muslims they generously invited in have become a pack of wild animals let loose in the house. The beasts have found high perches upon couch backs and china cabinets and bare their fangs at common European behaviors and customs.

Because of these newcomers, Europeans must change their behavior?

How is that right? A people have a right to their culture, and nobody has the right to forcibly change it from the outside. This is especially so when the culture is beneficial to mankind, not a threat to others, and has been decided upon by the people. Europe's culture meets all three criteria.

"It isn't racist to want to preserve your culture," said Leif Johansson, a 64-year-old carpenter. "I'm open to immigration, but these people come without a thought to integration, no interest in learning Swedish or being part of Swedish society."

Precisely. No nation should be compelled to commit national suicide. But what else could the agenda be of a people who move in and angrily demand conformance to their strange and violent politico-religious freak show?

Europe may finally be fed up. I pray they are, and I pray we learn a lesson here before it's too late.

TSA: Totally Scorning Americans

Tyner points out that every terrorist act on an airplane has been halted by passengers.

"It's time to stop treating passengers like criminals and start treating them as assets," he said.

John Tyner is the man who got ejected from a California airport for refusing to let TSA agents grope and fondle him.

Tyner responded "OK, I don't understand how a sexual assault can be made a condition of my flying."

"This is not considered a sexual assault," replied the supervisor, calmly.

"It would be if you were not the government," said Tyner.

"By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights," countered the TSA supervisor.

Read John Tyner's own words and see the YouTube viral at Lew Rockwell

Finally, for a refreshing antidote to this wasteful government BS, go read Art Carden's call to abolish the TSA or go read Jed Babbin's excellent piece.

TSA:  Touching Sensitive Areas

Source:  Sign On San Diego

Self Sufficiency

The GOP just took back the House of Representatives, and President Obama's Debt Commission has issued a preliminary report.  Serious talk of serious budget reform is breaking out all over, and progressives are panicking.


They say all the slash and burn is crazy talk...  Well, anyone who thinks we can continue down our current path of handing everything out to everyone is also crazy.  You can't raise taxes high enough to pay for it all, and there will come a day when the US government can no longer borrow more money.


The Wall Street Journal and  Bloomberg each have a good article on the debt panel recommendations.  As Alan Simpson says, they did indeed harpoon almost every whale.

Ethanol is Immoral.  Farm subsidies need to go.  Poor farmers with small plots of land don't qualify anyway; it's the corporate farms that get your tax money.  We also need to demand an end to the ethanol and flex fuel subsidies.  Government takes our money and starves people to feed cars, driving up the price of food in the process.  It's immoral.

I agree with cutting social security benefits, but that must be accompanied by a strong, stable dollar policy so our savings are not eaten up by inflation.  Additionally, interest and dividends should not be taxed.  If you want us to do for ourselves more in our old age, stop stealing our nest eggs by taxation and inflation.

I also agree with slashing government bureaucracy and programs, but that needs to be accompanied by lowering the bar to employment and new business creation.  A job is the key to self-sufficiency,but government regulation and taxation are chasing jobs overseas.

DoD Cannot Be Exempt

National defense is one of those rare government functions that is actually mentioned in the constitution.  Christopher Preble writes of a growing conservative rift over just what and how much our military should be doing overseas. An increasing cohort of conservatives argue that cutting back our overseas interventions and commitments will make our military stronger and the nation safer. 

Of course, cutting spending without a corresponding reduction in commitments is a recipe for overburdening service members taxed by too frequent deployments to far-flung places. But it is already obvious that most of what America spends on its military—often erroneously labeled "national defense"—really defends others who can and should defend themselves.

It's time for advocates of free markets and limited government to recognize that a vast military presence around the world is utterly inconsistent with those ideals. If we agree that government intervention domestically often has unintended, harmful consequences, we should recognize that the same principle holds true internationally, in spades.  (Christopher Preble - WSJ)

The budget battles and government downsizing skirmishes have barely gotten started, so strap it on troops!  We've just begun to fight.