Reagan and the Evil Empire
This week marks the 25th anniversary of the speech in which Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union precisely what it was: an evil empire. Speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals, President Reagan made his case for Judeo-Christian values and called God-fearing Americans to action in the struggle for moral clarity at home and abroad.
I think what is most shockingly refreshing about this speech is the candid, frank way a President of the United States used to be able to speak.
Enjoy:
To put the importance of this speech in to some proper, historical perspective, here is Newt Gingrich's presentation at the American Enterprise Institute.
Obamacare Is A Loser
You simply cannot explain the scope and breadth of the Obamacare debacle in one column...unless your last name is Krauthammer.
As an aspiring writer and commentator, I spend a great deal of time reading the books and articles and speeches of the people I feel effectively communicate the ideas I believe in better than anyone else.
Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post and Fox News Channel is one of those people.
Every night of the week, at roughly 6:40 p.m. (Eastern Time), Dr. Krauthammer is a member of the "All-Star Panel" on Special Report With Brett Baier. (You should be watching or DVR-ing this every day). And each Friday, his nationally syndicated column is read in newspapers all across the country.
Today he treated his reading audience to this gem on the current state of the Pelosi-Reid-Obama health care plan:
After 34 speeches, three sharp electoral rebukes (Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts) and a seven-hour seminar, the president announced Wednesday his determination to make one last push to pass his health care reform.
The final act was carefully choreographed. The rollout began a week earlier with a couple of shows of bipartisanship: a Feb. 25 Blair House "summit" with Republicans, followed five days later with a few concessions tossed the Republicans' way.
Show is the operative noun. Among the few Republican suggestions President Obama pretended to incorporate was tort reform. What did he suggest to address the plague of defensive medicine that a Massachusetts Medical Society study showed leads to about 25 percent of doctor referrals, tests and procedures being done for no medical reason? A few ridiculously insignificant demonstration projects amounting to one-half of one-hundredth of 1 percent of the cost of Obama's health care bill.
The Health Care Summit last week was a dog-and-pony show, meant to portray the Republicans as obstructionists and big old meanies. But the president was confronted by the likes of Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), and the fact-based disagreements conservatives have with Obama's brand of "reform." Republicans DO have ideas, and many key members of the GOP on the state and national level have been promoting them all year.
Unfortunately for Democrats, that seven-hour televised exercise had the unintended consequence of showing the Republicans to be not only highly informed on the subject, but also, as even Obama was forced to admit, possessed of principled objections -- contradicting the ubiquitous Democratic/media meme that Republican opposition was nothing but nihilistic partisanship.
Republicans did so well, in fact, that in his summation, Obama was reduced to suggesting that his health care reform was indeed popular because when you ask people about individual items (for example, eliminating exclusions for pre-existing conditions or capping individual out-of-pocket payments) they are in favor.
Yet mystifyingly they oppose the whole package. How can that be?
And now, in what can only be described as the most brilliant summation of the American peoples' opposition to Obamacare, please enjoy the wit and wisdom of Charles Krauthammer in its rarest of forms:
Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: A dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.
However (life is a vale of howevers) suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed -- say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak was to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?
Perhaps something like 3-1 against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry's feeling about the current Democratic health care bills.
Late last year, Democrats were marveling at how close they were to historic health care reform, noting how much agreement had been achieved among so many factions. The only remaining detail was how to pay for it.
Well, yes. That has generally been the problem with democratic governance: cost. The disagreeable absence of a free lunch.
That's it, folks. Everything the Left promises sounds nice on an individual level, which is how they present their collectivist policies. The problem is, of course, that all of their policies are implemented on a national level and cannot possibly succeed. This is the heart of the debate between Right and Left: can the few rule, and provide for, the many? Can "experts" in Washington "control" the expenses and costs of 300 million-plus liberty-loving Americans?
The good intentions of liberals are heart-warming and bone-chilling, all at the same time.
Chuck closes out his devastatingly informative column with the following:
The time for debate is over, declared the nation's seminar leader in chief. The man who vowed to undo Washington's wicked ways has directed the Congress to ram Obamacare through, by one vote if necessary, under the parliamentary device of "budget reconciliation." The man who ran as a post-partisan is determined to remake a sixth of the U.S. economy despite the absence of support from a single Republican in either house, the first time anything of this size and scope has been enacted by pure party-line vote.
Surprised? You can only be disillusioned if you were once illusioned.
A Day For G.K.
Thursday's are "G.K. Chesterton Day" here at AVITW, where we share an excerpt from a beloved Chesterton book, essay, or article. It is our hope that a new generation of Americans will re-discover the wit, wisdom, and insights of a great man, thinker, and writer.
In the opening to The Everlasting Man (1925), Chesterton takes aim at the type of journalist or social commentator whose fall-back position on social issues is to blame the religious population of a nation:
The clergyman appears in person and could easily be kicked as he came out of church; the journalist concelas even his name so that nobody can kick him...[Anti-religious writers] will suddenly turn round and revile the Church for not having prevented World War I, which they themselves did not want to prevent; and which nobody had ever professed to be able to prevent, except some of that very school of progressive and cosmopolitan skeptics who are the chief enemies of the Church. It was the anti-clerical and agnostic world that was always prophesying the advent of universal peace; it is that world that was, or should have been, abashed and confounded by the advent of universal war.
As for the general view that the Church was discredited by World War I - they might as well say that the Ark was discredited by the Flood. When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right. The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do.
But that marks this type of modern anti-religious writer's mood about the whole religious tradition: they are in a state of reaction against it. It is well with the boy when he lives on his father's land; and it is well with him again when he is off on his own and far enough from it to look back and see it as a whole. But these people have got into an intermediate state, have fallen into an intervening valley from which they can see neither the heights beyond them nor the heights behind. They cannot get out from under the shadow of Christianity. They cannot be Christians and they cannot leave off being Anti-Christians.
Their whole atmosphere is the atmosphere of a reaction: sulks, perversity, petty criticism. They live in the shadow of the faith and have lost the light of the faith...
The worst judge of all is the man who these days is now most ready with his judgments; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard.
If you are up for an intellectual challenge (with a huge pay-off), get The Everlasting Man.
Happy Reading!
-RJM
Self-esteem, The Hard Way
Self-esteem is a grossly misunderstood term and concept. Feeling good about oneself is important, but too many people (mostly well-intentioned parents) have confused "showering my kids with unconditional love" with "praising them for accomplishments that they did not accomplish."
We hear the pleas from politicians and political pundits to "Remember the children!" when almost any social, cultural, or economic issue is publicly discussed, but might it be that we're focused on the wrong things when it comes to really helping the kids? Could it be that what children need more than Participation Award trophies, free government handouts, and Nancy Pelosi stumping for them is a good night's sleep, healthy competition in and out of school, and parents who teach them that it isn't the hand you're dealt, but the way you play the hand?
George Will thinks so, and in his nationally syndicated column today he uses the backdrop of a newly-released book, "NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, to discuss just that. Will cites the activities of a grade school in Massachusetts that has their students jump rope with no jump-rope:
Those Massachusetts children are jumping rope without ropes because of a self-esteem obsession. The assumption is that thinking highly of oneself is a prerequisite for high achievement. That is why some children's soccer teams stopped counting goals (think of the damaged psyches of children who rarely scored) and shower trophies on everyone. No child at that Massachusetts school suffers damaged self-esteem by tripping on the jump rope.
He continues:
But the theory that praise, self-esteem and accomplishment increase in tandem is false. Children incessantly praised for their intelligence (often by parents who are really praising themselves) often underrate the importance of effort. Children who open their lunchboxes and find mothers' handwritten notes telling them how amazingly bright they are tend to falter when they encounter academic difficulties. Also, Bronson and Merryman say that overpraised children are prone to cheating because they have not developed strategies for coping with failure.
It's been said many times, in many ways, but there really is no such thing as a "free lunch." You can love your kids (or nephews, granddaughters, etc.) without propping them up for a life of failure and moral confusion. Life is tough, and what a child wants to hear from the adults in their life isn't "You did good for being average", but "Your mother and I love you, and will always be here for you...even if and when you fail."
Will also highlights from the Bronson-Merryman book something that hits close to home for me: the need for rest (and adequate levels of it).
Only 5 percent of high school seniors get eight hours of sleep a night. Children get a hour less than they did 30 years ago, which subtracts IQ points and adds body weight. Until age 21, the circuitry of a child's brain is being completed. Bronson and Merryman report research on grade schoolers showing that "the performance gap caused by an hour's difference in sleep was bigger than the gap between a normal fourth-grader and a normal sixth-grader."
In high school there is a steep decline in sleep hours, and a striking correlation of sleep and grades. Tired children have trouble retaining learning "because neurons lose their plasticity, becoming incapable of forming the new synaptic connections necessary to encode a memory. ... The more you learned during the day, the more you need to sleep that night."
Your body is more than just the physical, but it isn't only the emotional either. Sleep, a healthy diet (see: not my diet), and regular exercise can be the things that turn a kid's mental and emotional well-being around.
So will raising them to believe, as our Declaration of Independence proclaims, that they are uniquely-formed, Creator-endowed human beings with inherent value and worth. Between that and your offer to always love and be there for them, your kids will absolutely have the best chance of achieving something more important than grades, sports, or getting into the "right" college: They'll become good people.
Walter says Bill isn’t your biggest problem
There is a real, palpable disdain for the "rich" in this country. I think that disdain is to our own detriment.
So does economist Walter E. Williams. As he points out in his latest column, the "rich", like Bill Gates, is not the person to fear or direct your ire at. Politicians, even small-time local ones, have much more control over your life.
Bill Gates is the world's richest person, but what kind of power does he have over you? Can he force your kid to go to a school you do not want him to attend? Can he deny you the right to braid hair in your home for a living? It turns out that a local politician, who might deny us the right to earn a living and dictates which school our kid attends, has far greater power over our lives than any rich person. Rich people can gain power over us, but to do so, they must get permission from our elected representatives at the federal, state or local levels.
...
Politicians love pitting us against the rich. All by themselves, the rich have absolutely no power over us. To rip us off, they need the might of Congress to rig the economic game. It's a slick political sleight-of-hand where politicians and their allies amongst the intellectuals, talking heads and the news media get us caught up in the politics of envy as part of their agenda for greater control over our lives.
Can't say it better than that. Read the rest of the piece here.
Dr. Williams is an equal-opportunity mis-truster of politicians:
Responsibility is for losers
Greece is bankrupt and counting on Germany to bail them out. Sound familiar? The United States is moving closer to European-style socialism with every government annexation of power. THIS is why something like the health care debate matters.
Mark Steyn, writing for National Review Online, breaks down the broken-down economy (and collective mentality) of the Greeks.
While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand-new, even-more-unsustainable entitlement at the health-care “summit,” thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen — because they’re part of the same story. It’s just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They’re at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is farther upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided instead that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter Twenty (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter Seventeen or Eighteen.
He continues:
We hard-hearted small-government guys are often damned as selfish types who care nothing for the general welfare. But, as the Greek protests make plain, nothing makes an individual more selfish than the socially equitable communitarianism of big government: Once a chap’s enjoying the fruits of government health care, government-paid vacation, government-funded early retirement, and all the rest, he couldn’t give a hoot about the general societal interest; he’s got his, and to hell with everyone else. People’s sense of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make sense.
Read the rest of his latest column here, and ask yourself this: "What worth having in this life does not come with sacrifice?" There really is no such thing as a free lunch, and we're going to have to make the tough, unpopular decisions if we want to preserve economic, personal, political, and religious liberty.
What are you willing to do for those things?
Steyn closes his piece with a wake-up call to those who think "It can't happen here."
Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one of the less profligate, still-just-about-functioning corners of America such as my own state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn’t pay. You’ll wind up bailing out anyway.
The problem is there are never enough of “the rich” to fund the entitlement state, because in the end it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. In Greece, they’ve run out Greeks, so they’ll stick it to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they stick their defense tab to the Americans. And in America, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are saying we need to paddle faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans.
What could go wrong?
A Wiser Mohler Than I Reflects On Tiger
Dr. Albert Mohler is the president of Southern Theological Seminary and consistently offers the wisest commentary on behalf of evangelical Christians in America. I haven't posted much Tiger Woods-related material on this website, but Dr. Mohler is far too eloquent to deny his take on the Tiger Woods "confession" that took place last Friday (as if you didn't already know).
Mohler begins by praising Woods for owning up to what he did to his family:
The public confession made by Tiger Woods and watched by millions of viewers last Friday was, in the main, much like the confessions made by others, ranging from former President Bill Clinton to evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. Woods was clear in making his public admission of wrongdoing, and he spoke directly and candidly of his personal responsibility...Woods was forthright and he used the right words. He did not speak of adultery, but he left no doubt about his numerous adulterous affairs.
Woods then went on to identify himself as a Buddhist, and specifically talked about what his faith has to say about the sins he committed:
"Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint."
Dr. Mohler sees this as an opportunity, not to heap on Woods or bash his religion, but to clarify a distinct distinction between Christianity and Buddhism:
A Christian looking at the words in Woods' statement sees just how distant they are from the Gospel. The distinction between the Christian and Buddhist worldviews is laid bare for all to see. Tiger Woods should be taken at his word when he grounds his apology and confession in Buddhism. Evangelical Christians should see this as further reason to pray for Tiger Woods. We should respect the integrity and honesty of his statement, but hope and pray that he will one day come to know the salvation and forgiveness of sin that comes only through faith in Christ. We believe that he will not find salvation in renouncing all desire. We would hope instead that he might hear the Gospel and desire Christ.
I couldn't agree more. I know not all do. At the very least I hope we can all agree that it is a good thing we live in a society that still recognizes Woods' actions as painfully wrong. There isn't a faith on earth that condones such reckless, adulterous behavior.
That is a very good thing.
President’s Day Thoughts
The Heritage Foundation is one of the most important organizations in the country. The work they do analyzing and promoting economic, social, and political policies is indispensable, and if you aren't very familiar with Heritage yet...get in the game, and get informed.
Today, in honor of President's Day, Heritage posted two separate blogs: one on Lincoln and one on Washington.
An excerpt for Abe:
Lincoln wanted freedom for the slaves, but he was no progressive. He was a prudent statesman, as Allen C. Guelzo points out in a First Principles essay, and in this prudence lies the essence of his conservatism. He recognized the inherent flaws and limitations of human nature. He did not want to somehow “supersede” or “go beyond” the Constitution, as progressives do. He instead wanted to see his beloved country live up to its founding principles, while upholding the Constitution.
We are not alone in the fight to preserve the self-evident truths that are the foundations of this nation. Nor is our fight new, or unique. We are but the newest carriers of the torch of American liberty in the midst of the darkness of despotism. It is a sometimes daunting but always honorable duty, one in which we have Honest Abe as a most shining example. So let us act as he did, with the goal “that neither picture, or apple shall ever be blurred, or bruised or broken.”
And another for George:
This season’s snow falls and Snowpocalypse presents a great opportunity to remember our president who also suffered through the cold to save the Republic.
Happy William Henry Harrison Day! No wait. That is not right. Failing to wear a coat in cold weather is not the same as defeating the British during a blizzard.
The third Monday in February has come to be known—wrongly—as President’s Day. But, this is not a day to celebrate every president in our Nation’s history: like one who served only a month in office. This is the day that we celebrate the man who led America to victory in the War for Independence, who was instrumental in the creation of our Constitution, and whose character forever shaped the executive branch. We celebrate George Washington. That’s why it’s Washington’s Birthday; not President’s day.
Hear, hear! We're not celebrating Barack Obama, or even Ronald Reagan: this is a day for George and Abe (and truthfully, both should each get their own day...especially in light of the fact that Martin Luther King Jr. does).
Does it bug anyone else that we can hardly point to any great movies about the life, faith, courage and sacrifice of Presidents Lincoln and Washington? If Andy Warhol deserves a dozen flicks, these men should be able to look down from heaven and see bio-epics about their lives every summer.
What is “Mere Conservatism”?
The basic ideas, ideals, and values that generally define and characterize the central tenets of what today might be termed "modern conservative thought."
We believe that a proper understanding of history, economics, and theology leads to certain conclusions. Many of these are the same conclusions our Founding Fathers arrived at in constructing a "more perfect union."
All ideas and opinions are welcome; not all are correct.
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A View From The Left
As one of my intellectual mentors Dennis Prager likes to say, "Clarity over unity." In other words, we don't have to all agree...but we would do well to know what it is we disagree about, and why. I've made it a goal to frequently post the columns of thinkers and writers on the Left here at AVITW.
She's not too happy with Dick Cheney going on different Sunday Morning Talk Shows to point out the current president's less-than-inspiring policies when it comes to terrorism, and has created a fictional, hypothetical dialogue between Obama, Sec. of Defense Robert Gates, and Cheney to vent out her frustrations.
It continues on from there, which you can read here, but I suppose you get the gist of it. Bush was/is dumb; Cheney is insensitive and "batty"; Obama is patient and non-ideological in his pragmatic benevolence. (Note: If you just threw up a little bit in your mouth, don't worry...me too.)
Just like Howard Dean claiming after Scott Brown's election in MA last month that it was really a signal from the electorate to get socialized medicine passed even quicker, liberal columnists like Dowd seem incapable of accepting the fact that this is still a Center-Right nation.
This last quote from her piece sums up the mantra we will continue to hear for decades after Barack Obama fails to win re-election in 2012.