Monday, February 8, 2010
Respect For Life: After The Tebow Ad
It would appear, from some of the fusillades aimed at Focus on the Family's innocuous SuperBowl ad, that there are pro-abortion types so fervid that they believe that Pam Tebow should have aborted her son Tim -- that "doctor's advice" trumps a mother's discretion and the dictates of her conscience. Those same folks will drone your ear off about "a woman's right to choose."
Perhaps grasping that takes more capacity for doublethink than a mere Curmudgeon Emeritus can muster. All the same, your Curmudgeon is greatly entertained by the foofaurauw over the Tebows' pitch for the family and the sanctity of life. The hysteria of the pro-abortion crowd makes it perfectly plain that they don't believe in the power of their "choice" argument -- that even one dissenting voice, however gentle, is too threatening to be allowed. Beyond that, it would appear that there's only one choice they really respect.
Perhaps we should welcome those who actually "come out of the closet:"
There may be some pro-choice people who state that it should be infrequent, but others who don’t....I’m pro-choice and I don;t believe abortion should be infrequent. Quite the opposite, I think that it should happen as often as women want to have it happen. They should have as many abortions as they care to, and they should deal with the moral issues themselves, because it certainly isn’t any of your business. And I definitely doubt that the world is a significantly better place with this egotistical, over-paid enabler of the greatest distraction from our problems that we have. We’d be better off if a lot of people, including Tebow, hadn’t been born. We’d be better off if you had been aborted, and I bet, like Tebow, your poor mama considered it. I say these things to illustrate the rank stupidity of this argument. If there is reason to be elated that someone was born, then also we should wish that others hadn’t been. That is if you want to live your life fantasizing about processes over which you have no control in the past.
This gentleman is more honest than his colleagues; he's willing to state openly that he's in favor of legalized infanticide. His hostility toward the unborn is right out in front of God and everybody. More, he hates anyone who dares disagree with him, so greatly that he'll tell that person "We’d be better off if you had been aborted." A few more like him and the pro-life forces would sweep the field.
In truth, the masks have been off for a long time now. They started coming off when the horror of partial-birth abortion was publicized. They were torn in half when books such as LIME 5 showed us the inner workings of the abortion industry. When pro-abortion advocates attacked John Roberts and Samuel Alito because of their hostility to "women's health and safety" and "safe medical procedures," there could no longer be any doubt.
All that remains to the pro-abortion community is invective and insult.
In a way, the key document of the abortion wars is Mark Steyn's fabulous study America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. Steyn's survey of the demographic disappearance of the Western nations due to anti-natalist policies lit a lamp -- admittedly, a small and subtle one, about the intensity of a night light -- in many undecided minds. His unchallengeable projection of the bleak future likely from the "one designer baby at age thirty-nine" syndrome has awakened Americans to the consequences of present-tense self-indulgence, especially our immersion in the sex-for-pleasure-only ethic that's pervaded the West since the 1970s.
Allow your Curmudgeon to be candid: children are a burden. They cost money; they take work to raise; they get into scraps with the neighbors; they impede their parents' pursuit of adult pleasures and fulfillments. Anyone who's reared a couple will concede all of that without question.
Many a Boomer couple that averted child-bearing and child-rearing congratulated itself on being "childfree." In the present tense of early and middle adulthood, that probably looked pretty good: no encumbrances, no extra costs, and no responsibilities for barely controllable spratlings. But a nation that eschews child-bearing is a nation aging at the rate of a year per year. It will progressively lack workmen to do the strenuous and painful jobs older adults can't or won't do. It will lack the fire of innovation that emanates from younger workers. It will mow its own lawns and shovel its own driveways into its sixties, seventies, and eighties.
That progression is why Americans' resistance to illegal immigration is as low as it is. It's why Europe, whose native populations average 1.3 children per couple, has opened its doors to mass immigration from the Muslim Middle East, with all that implies.
But wait: there's more. What young people we allow to be born will progressively regard us, their aging and ever more needy progenitors, as an irritating and unwanted burden. They'll become ever more friendly toward such "solutions" as legalized euthanasia...perhaps, as has too often been the case in the Netherlands, whether or not the guest of honor concurs in the decision to euthanize him.
Can we lay all of this at the feet of abortion and its proponents? No, of course not. It's a component in a syndrome of wide embrace: the dismissal of the future in service to present-moment satisfactions and concerns. But families are specifically about the future. No one marries for present-moment satisfaction; no one bears children for the pleasures of parturition. Those are strictly forward-looking commitments.
If our immediate lusts and demands are to be fully satisfied, free of any and all encumbrances, the family has to go.
The most strident, best funded proponents of unlimited abortion on demand are its "business partners:" organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League, which have a pecuniary interest in the growth of abortion. Planned Parenthood operates abortion clinics; NARAL's money comes from pro-abortion fundraising and activism. Both stand to take serious hits to the pocketbook should abortion fall out of favor among young Americans.
NARAL in particular has been militant against crisis pregnancy centers, not-for-profit institutions that counsel unwillingly pregnant women and attempt to find them non-abortion options. Such centers have been strikingly effective at persuading mothers-to-be to spare their babies' lives. The proliferation of ultrasound equipment, the images from which make the unborn child visible and real to the mother, has been a particular blessing to their cause. NARAL has lobbied legislatures to regulate crisis pregnancy centers more stringently than abortion clinics, in particular to prohibit them from acquiring ultrasound equipment.
It's quite clear that unless the "choice" is for an abortion, the "pro-choice" groups will have nothing to do with it. There's too much money at stake.
The Tebows' ad, an utterly innocuous statement about family love and the possibilities inherent in every unborn child, has evoked the ugliest imaginable sentiments from pro-abortion activists, as the above should suffice to demonstrate. Comparisons of pro-lifers to the Taliban -- "you both want to control women's bodies" -- are frequent. Dismissals of the humanity of the unborn child -- "It's just a blob of tissue" -- are de rigueuer. And of course we have the endless flood of euphemisms for abortion: "women's health and safety," "safe medical procedures," and your Curmudgeon's favorite, "effecting fetal demise en utero."
The struggle is far from over. It could get uglier still.
When the ugliness gets to be too much for your Curmudgeon, he'll re-run Focus on the Family's Tebows commercial. Nothing dispels the irritation from pro-abortion activists' endless repetition and insult like the faces of happy people -- happy to have chosen life.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Gospel Truth: A Sunday Rumination
Sometimes I begin to wonder if reading other Web writers might be bad for me.
I know, I know: if you're going to orate, you have to know what's "in the air," and what others are saying about it. But when the subject is religion, the Nonsense Quotient (NQ) sometimes gets so high as to be unbearable.
Consider how those anxious to excuse religion X from criticism demand that we ignore the documented statements and deeds of its practitioners. There's a low-idiot NQ for you. Consider how many persons think their opinions about religion Y take precedence over what religion Y actually preaches. Their NQ is in four digits. Finally, we have persons so anxious to condemn religion Z that they deliberately misconstrue a single, metaphorical statement by its Founder, in a way that contradicts every explicit statement that Man ever made. That's not just a high NQ; that's a sign of a severe mental illness, a hatred of Godly things that puts its sufferer at odds with reality, not to mention much of the rest of Mankind.
In a way, I'm grateful to some of the above. It was from pondering their various deceits and deficiencies that I found my way back to Christ. The seminal event was my realization that I could no longer stand to hear a particular family member, who thinks he's a wit and, as is often the case with such, is only half right, make crude, derisive sexual jokes about priests and nuns. Things snowballed from there.
All the same, there's a war on. You have to know which side you're on. Neutrality is discouraged.
Today, courtesy of Vlad Tepes, we have the following:
“For too long religion has enjoyed the benefit of the doubt, taking all the benefit and allowing none of the doubt.With the rise of Islam and political correctness, the threat it now poses to our basic freedoms is beyond a joke.
Award-winning comedian Pat Condell gets serious and gives religion the kicking it deserves in his popular and controversial video monologues, sixty of which are collected here for the first time, including Welcome to Saudi Britain, Free Speech Is Sacred and Wake Up, America.”
Dig that, Gentle Readers? Spurred by "the rise of Islam and political correctness," Condell "gives religion the kicking it deserves." No differentiation; no attempt to draw critical distinctions. Just open, unabashed venom toward religion as such, toward faith as a category of human mentation.
Mr. Condell, I hope you ego-surf, because I have a challenge for you: Debate me on the subject of religion. I promise you a comeuppance you'll never forget. I expect that, if you live long enough to come to your senses, you'll thank me for it.
When I spoke of manning the battlements, I meant it.
At least Condell is honest about being opposed to all religions, dismissive of all creeds with a supernatural component. But would you imagine that he's in danger from Christian terrorists? Or Jewish or Zoroastrian ones? Do you think the Dalai Lama is prepping a suicide bomber to seek out Condell and detonate in his presence?
Yes, men have done terrible things to one another in the name of religion -- just about any religion you might name. But in some cases, those terrible things have been commanded by the religion, and in others they’ve been forbidden by the religion:
Islam:
Fighting is prescribed upon you, and you dislike it. But it may happen that you dislike a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. And Allah knows and you know not." [Qur'an, Sura 2:216]Those who believe fight in the way of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the way of the Shaitan. Fight therefore against the friends of the Shaitan; surely the strategy of the Shaitan is weak. [Sura 4:76]
"I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them." [Sura 8:12]
But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. [Sura 9:5] \
"Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, of the people of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued." [Sura 9:29]
"O Prophet! Struggle against the unbelievers and hypocrites and be harsh with them." [Sura 9:73]
Therefore, he who commits acts of violence in Islam's name is acting in accordance with its founder's direction.
Christianity:
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God." [Matthew 5:9]
"If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile." [Matthew, 5:39-41]
"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." [Matthew, 5:43-45]
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" [Matthew 22:37-40]
Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot call upon my Father and he will not provide me at this moment with more than twelve legions of angels? But then how would the scriptures be fulfilled which say that it must come to pass in this way? [Matthew 26:52-55]
And everyone went to his own house. But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Now early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him; and He sat down, and taught them. Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they say unto Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned. But what do You say?” This they said, testing Him, that they might have something to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down, and wrote on the ground with His finger , as though He did not hear. So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up, and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” And again He stooped down, and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the oldest, even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised himself up, and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” [John, 7:53 - 8:11]
Therefore, he who commits violence in the name of Christianity is contradicting the explicit commands of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, Redeemer of Mankind, and Supreme Authority over the Christian faith. That's the "gospel truth."
Regardless of your opinion about whether Jesus really was the Son of God -- don't bother arguing with me about it; we'll both find out for certain soon enough -- is it intellectually honest to lay the violence men do at His feet? Is it just?
The Pat Condells, the Sam Harrises, the Richard Dawkinses, and the Eric Raymonds of the world have their position; I have mine. Choose according to your tastes.
One of my great pleasures of recent years has been to have Kate Dembinski for a friend, and more recently as a Co-Conspirator here at Eternity Road. Kate isn't just a pious young woman; she's also an excellent expositor of the foundations of Christian faith. More, she "walks it like she talks it." But most relevant to this tirade, just by existing, she helps me to dispel the doubts and uncertainties that every devout Christian must sometimes experience: the "you must be out of your mind" feeling that comes now and then despite all prayer, devotional rituals, and Christian charity. That's a benison worth its weight in rubies. (Kate's weight, not mine.)
Granted, even if I were alone in my faith -- if there were no other followers of Christ remaining on Earth -- if the last Bible had been burned and the executioner were approaching my stake with the torch -- it would not affect whether Christianity is true or false. The popularity of a faith is not dispositive; in the nature of things, it cannot be. But even if "any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one" (Thoreau), the knowledge that one is not alone is an important buttress to the psyche.
Today, with Christianity under assault from all sides, with governments bowing before Islam and clamping down on visible, audible expressions of Christian faith, helping one's fellow to dispel that lonely, I-must-be-crazy feeling is among the most important of charitable acts.
Do you know a "lonely Christian?" Perhaps, someone who's alienated from his family, like Rifqa Bary? Someone who's constantly surrounded by others who mock him for his faith? Or perhaps someone whose Earthly trials have dragged him near to the lip of despair?
Can you imagine a more charitable, more constructive thing you could do than to get together with such a person? Bring him a black-and-white and a cup of coffee? Pray with him and for him? Reassure him that, whatever the superficial signs might be, he's not alone, and most certainly not crazy?
The Mormons already understand this. They practice "home teaching," in which designated members of a congregation undertake to visit others at home, to guarantee that no member will come to feel isolated or apart. It's one of the great strengths of their community, which the rest of us would do well to emulate.
No, not everyone, however much he might need it, would be receptive to such a visit. Some would deem it unacceptably intrusive. That doesn't mean the attempt shouldn't be made.
No, there are no atheists in foxholes. But a man in a foxhole can get awfully lonely.
May God bless and keep you all.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Eric Holder. There’s a bus with his name on it.
Outside of predicting that the Yankees would win the World Series, and outside of writing an editorial months ago that the "public option" in ObamaCare would be D.O.A., I try to make it a habit to avoid doing too much prognosticating, especially in writing. After all, a girl must guard her credibility with much the same tenacity that she protects her reputation and virtue.
However, this Holder insight is too good not to bare. If it were a bet, I'd call it better than a sure thing.
I invite you to stroll down this thought path with me.
Seems to Rachel, the more people realize what an abominable mistake it is to try Khalid Shekkh Mohammed and the other terrorist monsters on U.S. soil, the more people will want to know the source of that determination. The more fingers will logically point at President Obama as the one who most likely fathered (or co-fathered) it.
Of course, Obama's people are saying the decision was pure Holder. And you don't hear Obama disagreeing.
Perhaps taking a page from the John Edward's play book of denunciations, I predict that Obama soon takes his up-to-now lack of parental responsibility a step farther.
I think that the anointed one will formally try to disown fatherhood; disclaim paternity absolutely. "It wasn't my idea" would be the 12 year old's way of saying it.
Of course, the question arises,"are the American people going to buy Obama's story?"
Naturally, the subject of convincing has to enter the Obama equation. How does Barack show that he wasn't the source of the idea to try the terrorists on U.S. soil? And, worst of all, under civilian law?
Will Obama do what he's done successfully before? (Done to, for example, Jeremy Wright, and Van Jones) Will Obama throw Mrs. Holder's boy under the bus? I'd say it's Barry, Barry likely.
Next question. Is the subterfuge likely to work?
Not so much.
As the trial gets under way, I think Obama's involvement in the New York venue decision will come under more and more scrutiny. If there were a paternity test, I say his DNA would be all over it.
This is too colossal a mistake to be swept under the rug. This girl believes that eschewing the Military Tribunal, the common sense solution, not only was Obama's brainchild, but just may prove to be Obama's undoing; his Waterloo; a river called the Rubicon with no return ticket.
If Eric Holder doesn't end up getting thrown under the bus, then I promise to hop on one leg all the way to work for a week.
Eventually, though, I predict that the vast preponderance of the American people will be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that it was President Barack Obama who, the evidence will show, took this shark and jumped it.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Cheerleaders
In her column of today, the incomparable Ann Coulter delineates one of the funniest, and yet most tragic, aspects of the current political scene: the cheerleading carried on throughout the Main Stream Media for Barack Hussein Obama. It's much too ludicrous for your Curmudgeon to excerpt; go hence and drink your fill.
Well, what did you think? Whose nose was most deeply buried in The Won's nether passage? More important, does it really matter, and to whom?
Actually, it does matter. It matters because of the character of the man who sits in the Oval Office.
There are any number of persons attempting to exercise influence over the president at any time. Some will always have more success than others. Given that one must think well of oneself to contend for the presidency in the first place, he who tells the president "what he wants to hear" -- that is, he who concurs emphatically with the president's own preferences -- will always have that as an edge. It might not be an insuperable edge, but were all other things held equal, it would carry the day more often than not.
The sole counteragent to such indirect praise is experience with the hard realities of life: regular abrasion against the laws that constrain human enterprise and innovation. He who has been sheltered against the practical necessities and limitations the common man must face will not possess enough such experience to resist groping for Utopia, according to whatever ideology he favors. He won't know to ask, when confronting a scheme for "improving society" or "solving" some "problem" much in the air, "If it could be done that way, why hasn't someone already done it?"
Inadequate real-life experience correlates very strongly with an excessively high opinion of oneself. Our Teleprompter-Reader-In-Chief is a case in point.
President Obama, if he's not merely a cleverly disguised villain who seeks to destroy the United States from his position of power, must believe himself and his circle to be a great distance above the rest of us in foresight, comprehension, and ability. He accepts every effulgence of flattery, without questioning whether it might be insincere. He grants no one who contradicts him the slightest respect. His repetitive, relentless, interminable speechmaking and world gallivanting suggests that he expects to talk his opponents and enemies into furling their banners. So either he's an enemy of the United States or the most self-exalted, utterly vain man ever to reach his office.
And the Main Stream Media have surrounded him with cheerleaders, perpetually ready to laud him to the heavens regardless of what he says or does.
There are ironies aplenty in this, starting with the number of things Obama has said and done for which a conservative officeholder would be publicly crucified. But the practical consequences are what matter most. Obama's public resolution to "fight even harder" for his agenda -- CO2 cap-and-trade, federalization of medical care, increased federal borrowing and tax increases, card-check for the unions, overall expansion of the federal government, and so forth -- in the face of undeniable popular reaction against it is sustained from below by the unceasing, unstinting flattery he receives from the media. He basks in adulation as a kitten will bask in the sun; he ignores both argument and evidence against his initiatives as irrelevant compared to the praises of persons he really respects.
Welcome to government of the cheerleaders, for the cheerleaders, and by the cheerleaders.
Given Obama's statements and actions in the aftermath of the Christie (NJ), McDonnell (VA) and Brown (MA) victories, your Curmudgeon is persuaded that nothing short of the "Mussolini cure" will deflect Obama from his course. His cheerleaders in the media will ensure that he never gives weight to the arguments against it. His henchmen are determined on it for reasons of their own, and will nudge him toward the reinforcements he needs as necessary.
Obamunism can only be stopped nonviolently by massive, nationwide electoral reversals...and even that might prove insufficient, as long as he remains at the levers of power.
Food for thought.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Kozmic Kop
Remus notices Sarah Palin has applied for and received a Junior Word Police badge. Seems Rahm Emanuel used the word retarded to describe members of his party who opposed ObamaCare. Ms. Palin, mother of a Down's Syndrome child, is appalled and demands an apology. Now, Mr. Emanuel is the kind of politician that needs attention by the Roto-Rooter people, but that isn't the point. Not only does she not get to decide what we say, she doesn't get to decide how we say it. If Ms. Palin believes her private sensibilities must be uppermost in our minds, that she somehow has a right not to be offended, then she is—you got it—retarded. And here's a time-saving hint for her, she shouldn't hang around her mailbox looking for an apology.
Sarah Palin is revealing herself as just another 'too precious to live' political hack who thinks the rest of us live to de-pea her mattress. What shall we hear from her next, a jaunty rendition of The Good Ship Lollipop—"c'mon, join in, it'll be fun." A Nancy Pelosi in the making. Politicians. From a distance they look like real people, even act like real people. Then they open their mouths and it's like being trapped in a Body Snatchers remake. Perhaps we should build a fence of electrified razor wire around DC, anybody's free to go in but nobody gets out. Ever. Let 'em hector each other and leave regular folks alone.
“We’re All In This Together”
Via the indispensable Nicki Fellenzer, we have this bit of verified obscenity:
This was a letter to the editor in the August 29th, 2009 Clarion Ledger, a Mississippi newspaper:Dear Sirs:During my last night's shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos, a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ringtone. Glancing over her chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid. She smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes per day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.
And our Congress expects me to pay for this woman's health care? Our nation's health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctiors, or nurses. It is a crisis of culture -- a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of oneself or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. A culture that thinks "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me." Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.
Don't you agree?
STARNER JONES, MD
Jackson, MSOn 6 September 2009, the Clarion Ledger published a follow-up letter from another reader under the title "Health Care Reform Is Not 'Us vs. Them'":
I've been stewing about an Aug. 23 letter to the editor ("Why pay for the care of the careless?") in which Dr. Starner Jones questioned the worth of a patient to receive Medicaid because of her gold tooth, tattoos, R&B ring tone on a new cell phone, cigarette-smoking and beer-drinking.This kind of personal attack is nothing new with the hateful rhetoric of late. But it's a real slippery slope when one questions whether another human being merits support for health care because of appearances and choices. There are a lot of folks in this state who make less-than-perfect choices about finances and health. We are the poorest, fattest state, after all.
We need to turn off our TVs and radios and do our own research on health care reform. All the Fox-fed and MSNBC-led masses are out spewing the same language the pundits are using.
Look at entities who, bottom line, want to raise their ratings and celebrity, not facilitate a meaningful or productive discourse.
This country deserves more. Read the health care reform bill. And learn the real issues of our entire community. We're all Americans.
This is no "us vs. them" issue. We are all in this together.
Jennifer Sigrest
Clinton
Unpacking Miss Sigrest's tirade in detail would deprive your Curmudgeon of 100% of his stomach lining. The low points alone are nausea-inducing:
- "This kind of personal attack:" Who attacked whom? Dr. Jones noted that the unnamed patient obviously put a far higher priority on various frivolities and vices than on paying for her own medical care: an accurate assessment from the evidence at hand.
- "Less-than-perfect choices about finances and health:" So if your Curmudgeon were to blow his next year's salary on "fast women and slow horses," or go on a sugar binge that precipitates his Type II diabetes into the real thing, Miss Sigrest would approve compelling others to pay for his medical care?
- "Learn the real issues of our entire community:" Such "real community issues" as exist derive from "public goods:" assets none of us can have without providing them to all of us, such as national defense. But what one person can provide to himself without providing it to others is not a "community issue," but a matter of choices and priorities.
The "we're all in this together" canard is one of the oldest and easiest to refute. The most telling refutation in print comes from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged:
"We're all one big family, they told us, we're all in this together. But you don't stand working an acetylene torch ten hours a day -- together, and you don't all get a bellyache -- together. Whose ability and which of whose needs comes first? When it's all one pot, you can't let any man decide what his own needs are, can you? If you did, he might claim he needs a yacht -- and if his feelings is all you have to go by, he might prove it, too. Why not? If it's not right for me to own a car until I've worked myself into a hospital ward, earning a car for every loafer and every naked savage on Earth -- why can't he demand a yacht from me, too, if I still have the ability not to have collapsed?"
For "yacht" in the above, feel free to substitute "very expensive tennis shoes," or "cell phone," or "gold tooth"... or "medical care."
Money is infinitely fungible. The unnamed Medicaid patient in Dr. Jones's ER expressed her priorities for her money's deployment through her purchases...and by allowing the Mississippi state government, and through it, Mississippi's taxpayers, to pick up the tab for her medical care.
That brings us to a central point about State-controlled medical care, one that Miss Sigrest is either too stupid or too blinded by faux-compassion to see. When a private matter such as medical care is made into a "community issue," the "community" acquires not merely the responsibility for dealing with it but the authority to enforce relevant norms. Dr. Jones's unnamed Medicaid patient is but a Senate vote away from federal regimentation of her entire life: deprivation of her cigarettes, her beer, her trips to the tattoo parlor, and many other things, in the name of health care cost control.
Numerous commentators have noted that Europe's luxuriant welfare states are made possible by the American military presence there. Our expenditure of roughly $150 billion per year (1988 dollars) on our contribution to NATO has made it possible for the Europeans to forgo comparable levels of defense spending. The money they saved at our expense was poured into such programs as government old-age pensions and socialized medicine. Had we not facilitated that transfer of resources from a genuine public good (defense against external threats) to state-run charity, Europe could not have afforded its folly.
America certainly won't be able to afford it. No one picks up our bills.
But the ultimate point here is moral. It is absolutely wrong, as a matter of unchallengeable moral principle, to impose a burden upon another person against his will. When some persons, however selected, are permitted to do so, there are always repercussions. The ant won't support the grasshopper indefinitely. Eventually, Atlas will shrug...or collapse from exhaustion.
We can learn this from other nations' example, or we can learn it on our own hides. The time to choose is here.
Guest Post: From Rachel Peepers
[FWP: Miss Peepers is a regular commenter at Pajamas Media. Having been impressed by some of her emissions there, I've invited her to submit a few pieces here for Eternity Road's Gentle Readers to ponder. Let me know if we might have a new Co-Conspirator!]
Omaha Beach, yes. Obama facts, no.
If, on the dawn of June 6, 1944, you were bobbing up and down inside an LST , a hundred or so yards off Omaha Beach, holding your helmet like an air sickness bag, and carrying an M-1 wrapped in plastic, nobody was surprised if your breakfast was shooting projectile-like food bullets almost as fast as the MG-34 German machine guns were spitting out real ones.
In that initial wave of the First Infantry Division, within 30 minutes of hitting the beach, more than half were dead. By day's dusk, the Ranger group, members of the 29th ID and First ID soldiers, all told, suffered 2,400 casualties. If it were an honor to sacrifice one's life on the altar of freedom, the memory of their courage and sacrifice does not dim with time.
Fast forward to January 27, 2010.
If you were in the audience and heard President Obama reciting the first few paragraphs of his State of the Union Address, you heard him say, "when the Allies first landed at Omaha Beach, victory was very much in doubt."
Hold on, President Obama, just a cotton pickn' second, it wasn't the ALLIES who hit the bullet infested piece of real estate called Omaha Beach that long day.
It might be Obama's desire to give the Allies credit in some kind of global kumbaya-we're-all-in-this-together-fact-changing way. But political correctness doesn't live here anymore.
It was American blood that poured out on that sand. When it comes to Omaha Beach, they get the credit. American sons and daughters lost their fathers. I won't let Obama muddy the memory.
Some might say this is but a small mistake. A little quibble. I say hogwash.
To begin with, nothing Obama does during a speech like this happens without much thought. I'm sure most everyone realizes that every word in this speech was poured over with an ocean full of political correctness, and left leaning spin.
If Obama is capable of shading the meaning of something as arguably insignificant as choosing the word, "allies" over Americans, then it's 99% likely that he intended to shade the meanings of, say, ObamaCare. When Barack said ObamaCare would reduce insurance premiums along with the deficit, did he have a clown in his belly? My gut says he did.
Just as damning, I believe that this is all part of pattern Obama: withholding credit and demeaning the United States every chance he gets. Even on foreign soil, President Obama has consistently apologized on behalf of America to tyrants; lowlifes who run countries with the same disdain for human rights that beach front property owners have for oil spills.
When all is said and done, I've given one major example of the disingenuousness of Obama that sent my anger needle off the charts. When Obama style is to talk about the history of Omaha Beach with such a cavalier, PC attitude, I'll figuratively attack him with two truth guns blazing.
As you probably noticed, I haven't talked about the President's more discussed abominations: Trying terrorist killers under American civilian law and on American soil. I haven't asked why the Philadelphia voter intimidating Black Panthers were released without so much as a slap on the wrists. I haven't inquired as to why a President would insult the Supreme Court during a big speech and then speak untruthfully about the reason he did it.
But I could.
And I will.
Because there are still too many Americans out there who think the brown eyed handsome man is that great orator/ statesmen from Chicago.
The Americans on Omaha Beach were many things, including heroes.
The Obama that I've gotten to know, I'm not afraid to say, is just another bum from the neighborhood.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The budget will split the House caucus
Some polls registered an uptick in Obama’s approval rating following the State of the Union address. It was a typical Obama speech and was covered mostly in light of its promise to reduce the deficit.
So much for that. A few days ago, Obama gave a press conference unveiling a near $4 trillion budget that is set to run a deficit of $1.6 trillion. Because those numbers assume revenues from the defunct cap-and-trade bill and its nearly dead cousin Obamacare and also throw in spending cuts unlikely to materialize, I expect the actual number is somewhere near $2 trillion. For reference, the last time the Republicans had control of Congress (2006), the budget deficit was $248 billion. At the end of the Clinton administration, we were actually running a surplus.
Is it just me, or have the Democrats gone completely mad? Have the Tea Parties, the 2009 elections, Scott Brown, and other recent events not taught Obama anything?
That is easy for me to say. The real problem is that last year’s budget and the stimulus bill locked in massive increases in federal and state spending that rested on 2 questionable assumptions:
1) The economy would recover shortly, and tax receipts would increase
2) Gigantic revenue raising monsters like cap and trade would pass before 2010
Now, the Democrats are in a terrific hole. Reducing spending in any climate, much less a recession is anathema to them. Liberals in the House and Senate have already threatened to derail the minimal cuts to discretionary spending that Obama has outlined. On the other hand, if they continue to rack up deficits of this magnitude, they may find their ability to put their spending spree on the nation’s credit card suddenly cut off by problems in the bond markets or massive inflation. Finally, if they raise taxes to the level necessary to finance the proposed level of spending, they will almost certainly choke off whatever recovery that is coming in the future.
Obama apparently intends to keep punting, hoping that economic recovery will be more robust than his own CBO predicts so that he can avoid the hard choices he is bringing upon himself. The bad news for Obama and for us is that he may achieve the effective bankruptcy of the nation before 2012, when he must stand for reelection.
During the New Deal, Roosevelt’s deficit spending, which was quite large for the time, required him to effectively seize the gold of private citizens to keep the dollar from putting a gun to its head and pulling the trigger. Back then, of course, the United States was on the gold standard and had substantial savings, so Roosevelt’s crude solution was at least workable. Obama’s deficits dwarf Roosevelt’s, and now we have a fiat currency and negative savings. What will we do if our currency is again threatened? Down that road lie Zimbabwe, Chile, and any number of other banana republics.
That is enough economic speculation, however. The more immediate question is whether the budget has a chance in the House. Believe it or not, last year’s budget actually passed with the widest margin since 1997 - 233 yea votes. Budget bills are treated as yearly formalities, but they are not entirely uncontroversial. Moreover, Jay Cost provides this extremely interesting chart:
Those are the vote tallies from last year’s House roll calls that saw high numbers of Democratic defections. We can see the usual suspects - Obamacare and cap and trade - clearly, but look also to the appropriations votes. They are consistently the most controversial within the Democratic caucus, and even the motion to adjourn in Decemeber garnered 29 Democratic defections! For those keeping score, 39 is the maximum number of Democrats that Nancy Pelosi can afford before she must either pick up Republicans or lose the vote.
Cost wonders whether the numbers in that chart represent a nascent backbencher revolt:
These were all partisan votes in that Republicans mostly voted against the Democratic leadership. Two of the bills - HR 2454 (cap and trade) and HR 3962 (health care reform) - were high profile pieces of legislation that attracted a lot of attention. But the rest did not garner nearly as much focus, and several of them are downright obscure. And yet the number of defectors was still high.
It’s striking to see 29 Democrats defect on a concurrent resolution providing for the adjornment of Congress. Or how about 39 Democrats defecting on a bill “to permit continued financing of government operations.” That’s an increase of the debt limit. How could so many vote against it? After all, the House voted through all the spending that required an increase in the debt limit. Yet Pelosi could only muster 218 Democrats to do what absolutely, positively had to be done!
The budget votes will be our key clue to the answer. The Democrats have been mostly mum about the proposal so far, but my guess is that a $2 trillion deficit is dead on arrival at Capitol Hill. Too many Democrats, and not just those in McCain/Bush districts, will have to fall on their swords to vote for it.
Budget fights can be among the nastiest, as the continued operations of the federal government are at stake. The 1995 “government shutdown” is the most recent example, but if we get a repeat of that this time it will be because Democrats will be cannibalizing each other in an attempt to run for the exits. At this point, such an outcome might even be likely.
At this press conference, Obama laughably stated that the government must not treat taxpayer money as “Monopoly money” before blaming his deficits on a “decade of profligacy.” If the Democrats shut down Congress squabbling over this year’s budget, that decade will begin to look awfully good.
Transportation (Non) Security
In one of his previous lives (the law enforcement one) your humble blogster participated in several “covert” operations. That is the main reason that he finds the saga of the underwear bomber of Christmas day especially intriguing.
As “luck” would have it and much to the chagrin of our political masters, a material witness to the events concerning flight 253 happened to be an individual trained in both logic and evidence evaluation. Unless this witness can be either discredited or intimidated into silence, the entire bureaucratic farce designated “transportation security” and erected by the government will stand revealed for the sham that in fact it is.
The witness, an attorney by the name of Kurt Haskell who was a passenger aboard flight 253 avails himself of his legal training in opening his “case” by posing seven questions :
1. Who is the Man in Orange?
2. Did Mutallab know the Sharp Dressed Man?
3. Was it intended that the bomb explode?
4. Did the U.S. Government know that Mutallab had a bomb when it allowed him to board Flight 253?
5. Why is the U.S. Government seeking a plea deal for Mutallab?
6. Why did a fellow passenger call me to discuss changing my story?
7. Why are the important questions being ignored by the mainstream media?
I hope that you, dear reader, will follow Mr. Haskell’s discussion of these seven questions at the link provided above and supply your reactions in the comments at the end of this post.
Public perception of the workings of covert government operations have been severely distorted by the entertainment media. In other words: what one views on the entertaining episodes of “24” is so far from reality as to enter the realm of the absurd. In the real world and almost universally, those charged with supervising these operations have little to no hands on experience working “under cover”. The skills required of successful operatives are not necessarily congruent with supervisory abilities. The “bosses” have been promoted/appointed/elected into their supervisory positions on the basis of a variation of the Peter Principal which rewards those skilled in sycophancy and bureaucratic political maneuvering. The “supervisors” almost invariably experience difficulty in managing the often complicated operations. These difficulties arise chiefly from an inability to resist tendencies toward micro management. Political corruption is also an occasional factor. First hand examples of this theory will doubtless supply subject matter for future posts.
In classic Platonic fashion, Mr. Haskell discusses the implications of the possible answers to his seven questions and invites us to; (using an overworked cliche) “connect the dots”. Suddenly, Ms Napolitano’s apparently nonsensical statement that “the system worked” acquires the ring of perverse if partial truth.
In any event, the concept that ultimate transportation security can be achieved if only we surrender more liberty is revealed for the nonsensical fairy tale it has always been.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
cross posted at: Fighting in the Shade™
Respect For The Law
In a recent exchange of views about abortion, your Curmudgeon opined that even though all abortions are morally reprehensible, a law that bans all abortions would be a mistake, being unenforceable. He didn't trouble to explain why. He was immediately taken to task by a gibbering idiot -- if we can go by the volume of gibbering, there've been a lot of them around, lately -- who claimed that that was equivalent to saying that the law against murder should be repealed, being "unenforceable." Apparently, said idiot thinks a law is "unenforceable" if there's anyone who dares to violate it.
That's not what makes a law unenforceable.
In a polity that respects, or claims to respect, certain individual rights, a law is unenforceable if its enforcement requires the violation of those rights. For example, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
...would forbid government to compel individuals to accept monitoring devices in their bodies, except for those who had been convicted of a crime for which such an intrusion is part of the prescribed penalty. Clearly, that would make it impossible to enforce a law against the earliest-term abortions: Who, other than the woman going for her "menstrual extraction," could know that an embryo is growing within her?
A law can be also be unenforceable because it simply isn't enforced. Laws against adultery, sodomy, and fornication are excellent examples, though they're also unenforceable because of Fourth Amendment considerations. If the organs of law enforcement refuse to dedicate the necessary resources to enforcing a particular law, it will fall into desuetude.
Finally, a law can be unenforceable because of Objection One. A sufficiently large number of persons willing to break the law and risk the legal penalty will produce a situation wherein, no matter how much enforcement power is brought to bear, selective enforcement will result. Selective enforcement is death for a polity that upholds the rule of law...which should give persons interested in America's prospects pause, when you think about it.
Quite a number of persons will nevertheless back an unenforceable law, for example the laws we collectively call the War on Drugs, because it "sends a message." But to create unenforceable laws to "send a message" is to subordinate the principal function of the law -- deterring predation by punishing predators -- to a desire to express disapproval of some practice. As pundits too numerous to mention have said, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union."
Every unenforceable law weakens respect for law in general. A sufficient number of such laws destroys law as a stabilizing force.
Rose Wilder Lane noted in her book The Discovery Of Freedom that it's not law that protects Americans' persons and property, but rather the near-to-unanimous respect for person and property that Americans feel. In that sense, laws against murder, theft, and so forth are merely codifications of a sentiment shared by all but a very few of us. Without the overwhelming concurrence in their rightness, they would be as impotent, and as widely disrespected, as the War on Drugs.
Note that about 90% of Americans "support" the War on Drugs. That is, they would enthusiastically concur in its rightness and cooperate in its enforcement...unless a family member, or a close friend, were accused. That degree of support is far from enough to make the drug laws enforceable. Comparable majorities supported alcohol Prohibition and military conscription, which came near to undoing the fabric of the Republic before they were repealed.
When several million persons are willing to violate a law despite the risks, the law is unenforceable. People come to understand that through experience and anecdote. They respond, subconsciously, by drawing lines: lines through the law, to divide those statutes that uphold their bedrock conceptions of right and wrong from those that, however wholesome of aspect, strike them as "nice, but not essential." Thus we get the dominance of the personal ethic over the dictates of formal law: a condition that guarantees that law as such will be relegated to "nice, but not essential" status.
Many persons would react to this by saying, "So what? If our personal ethics are consistent around basic principles of right and wrong, we'll be okay." This, to be gentle about it, is not the case. Formal law exists to stabilize society: to create conditions within which individuals can predict what consequences will flow from what decisions and actions. One aspect of that stability is the suppression of mob justice and the regulation of punishments. If one thief is punished merely by being shamed before his neighbors, but another is set swinging by the neck from the bough of a maple tree, deterrence has been disserved. Persons who might be tempted to steal will confront a confusing set of possibilities. Given criminals' characteristic optimism -- believe it or not, no criminal ever expects to be caught and punished -- the trend will be toward more theft, not less.
Perhaps the most important legal development in human history was the lex talionis, most commonly phrased as "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Talionic justice is often castigated as unthinkably harsh; yet before the talionic principle was articulated, the retribution for a crime was dictated by the emotions of whoever undertook to punish it. Those emotions can run very high, even when the objective damage suffered by the violated party is small. In classical and pre-classical history, many a protracted, bloody tribal feud, and no few wars, were precipitated by the disproportionate punishment of deeds that all parties recognized as criminal.
Even though we no longer inflict corporal punishment on criminals, the talionic principle lurks beneath our penal codes. Crimes of a defined category have a statutorily defined range of applicable penalties. Death for capital murder; life imprisonment for second-degree murder; so many years in prison for armed robbery; so large a fine for this or that kind of fraud. At least, that's how it's supposed to be, though the discretion routinely accorded to trial judges and parole boards has undermined the concept.
When the penalty for a crime is fixed in advance and bears some relation to the damage done by the offense, the deterrent effect of the law is strongest.
Some persons would react by saying, "Well, if deterrence is the goal, why not fix the punishment for every sort of crime at death? Wouldn't that scare us all into behaving properly?" Fortunately, no: It would be far more likely to result in the non-enforcement of all law. Our innate recognition of a scale of justice -- that to treat widely varying offenses as all equally heinous is inherently unjust -- would recoil against it. Also, despite Mankind's supposed bloodthirstiness, we are extremely reluctant to pronounce the sentence of death. Otherwise, the battles over the acceptability of capital punishment would hardly rage as fiercely as they have these past fifty years. It's not just because too many liberals sit on the benches of appellate courts.
The above limitations on human lawmaking and law enforcement have been well established by experience. As the centuries have rolled past, we've learned, often with great reluctance, that we cannot preserve respect for the law without attending to the law's limits: what it must and must not address, and what lies within its power to enforce. Every dismissal of those limits has damaged both the general respect for the law and the well-being of the society that made it. The laws of nature, which no legislature can repeal nor modify, remain forever prior and superior to our notions of proper deportment:
This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain to build or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Res nolunt diu male administrari. Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist, and will appear. If the government is cruel, the governor's life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will not convict. If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in. [Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Compensation"]
