A Different Time, But The Same Place
By: R.J. Moeller
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We're roughly a year away from the next Inauguration Day. At this time next year, one of three men will be sworn in as our president for the following 4 years. For all intents and purposes, it's between Mitt and Newt for the Republicans, and then obviously between Barack Obama and the winner of the GOP family feud.
It's a frustrating and nervous time for many voters - especially conservatives. Many people who share my worldview are disheartened by the prospect of having to vote in the primaries for someone they aren't thrilled about, followed by 6 months or more of wall-to-wall partisan quarreling. Added to this is the fact that all Americans are frustrated and nervous about things like the economy, education, and foreign policy time-bombs that appear on the verge of massive explosion.
The hard, bitter truth is this: all of those worries are legitimate and justified. No sense in denying it. Acceptance is the first step to recovery.
But alas, all is not lost. Not yet, anyway. I stumbled upon one of my all-time favorite YouTube clips this evening and it reminded me of something very important: This is a special place, our country.
The ideas, ideals, and values we have built our society and government on are different. They are special. We aren't individually special or better than the people of other countries. We're all God's children. We're all fallen men and women, no different than Americans of any other age. The times in which the Founders or Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan lived in weren't special.
The beliefs those men lived by, governed by, were special.
It's easy to grow nostalgic when you watch a clip like this one above. It's easy to grow discouraged when you step back and take an honest assessment of the political and cultural landscape of our time.
But I still believe that this is a special place, made so by our ideas, ideals, and values. The capstone of the American experiment in self-government - one which the progressive builders of a secular welfare state have rejected - is simply this: "endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights." That's it. That's everything. With it we may still fall, should it be God's will. Without it, we cannot help but fail.
Americans still claim a faith in God, however weak the beating pulse of true religion in this country may be. We still acknowledge the importance of family, even to the point where we have contentious on-going debates about how "family" (and its precursor "marriage") will be defined. We even still have huge swaths of young men and women who volunteer their lives to serve and protect their fellow citizens. (Thanks Brent and Matt!)
God, family, country: and in that order.
It may be a different time, but it's still the same place. We don't need another Reagan. We need an intellectual and spiritual revival - a moral resuscitation.
We need 300 million "Reagan's" who share in the vision articulated above. Or - and this is in closing - at the very least can agree on the moving words from a WWI soldier's diary that The Gipper quoted that cold, blustery Inauguration Day 21 years ago:
We are told that on Martin Treptow's body was found a diary. On the flyleaf under the heading, "My Pledge," he had written these words: "America must win this war. Therefore, I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone."
The Plumb Line: Immigration (Part 3)
By: Caitlin Doemner, Guest Contributor
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(For Part 2, click here)
Public Education: Right or Privilege?
[Update: As of December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Arizona’s appeal regarding its immigration law]
While doing my research on the new Alabama law, I discovered that as a result of a case called “Plyler v. Doe” in 1982, every child in the United States is entitled to public education from Kindergarten through 12th grade, regardless of legal status.
It seems that in 1981, Texas said the state would not provide funding for the education of children who were not “legally admitted” into the United States, thereby authorizing local schools to deny enrollment to such children.
Based on the Supreme Court’s statements, it seems that Texas’ two main arguments were as follows:
(1) Education is not a fundamental right, and therefore the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply.
Court’s response: Although education is not a fundamental right, it is not like the deprivation of “some other governmental benefit”; education serves “a pivotal role in maintaining the fabric of our society and in sustaining our political and cultural heritage.” These children should not have a lifetime of hardship imposed upon them because they are “not accountable for their disabling status. These children can neither affect their parents' conduct nor their own undocumented status.”
(2) Educating illegal immigrants does not serve the best interest of the State or its citizens, and therefore the State should not be responsible for funding.
Court’s response: Denying education to “undocumented children constitutes an ineffectual attempt to stem the tide of illegal immigration.” Evidence does not support the argument that excluding undocumented children improves the quality of education in the state, nor should these children be singled out because they are less likely to “remain within the State's boundaries and to put their education to productive social or political use within the State.”
Times must have changed, because twenty years later, Texas was the first state to allow undocumented residents to qualify for in-state tuition prices (saving them over $11,000 per semester in 2011). It was his signature on this 2001 bill that seriously hurt Governor Rick Perry’s chances at the Republican nomination this year (remember his “heartless” comment in the September 22 debate?).
Interestingly, federal law (Title 8, Chapter 14, Sec. 1623) states:
"an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State... for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit."
Thus, Texas’ law, as well as California’s DREAM Act, and other such measures now enacted in 13 states, seems to violate federal immigration policy. The California Supreme Court upheld the legitimacy of its DREAM Act, stating that since non-residents can meet the law’s requirements, the tuition discount is not based on residency and therefore does not conflict with the federal prohibition. In June 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the verdict, thereby upholding the California Court’s ruling and leaving the DREAM Act intact.
Federal DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Acts have been repeatedly presented to and voted down by Congress. The legislation was reintroduced in May 2011 and would enact two major changes to the law:
1.The DREAM Act would permit certain immigrant students who have grown up in the U.S. to apply for temporary legal status and to eventually obtain permanent legal status and become eligible for U.S. citizenship if they go to college or serve in the U.S. military; and
2. The DREAM Act would eliminate a federal provision that penalizes states that provide in-state tuition without regard to immigration status.
Arguments against a Federal DREAM Act
The DREAM Act is not popular. Last September, a Christian Science Monitor/TIPP poll indicated that the majority of Americans do NOT support providing public benefits to illegal immigrants. Only 18% supported the giving federal or state grants for college, which the DREAM Act would enable aliens to apply for and receive. Adding illegal immigrants to the pool of applicants for financial aid would reduce the help available to low-income U.S. citizens. It also penalizes foreign students applying to U.S. colleges for abiding by the law.
The Federal DREAM Act rewards illegal immigrants, first by providing a way to become U.S. citizens if they just stick around long enough, and second, by allowing them to receive in-state tuition rates, which were intended to provide a benefit to state taxpayers whose tax dollars support state colleges. Although the amnesty is retroactive (only applying to past, not future, immigrants), it sets a precedent that incentivizes future immigrants to move here illegally. The law absolves immigrant parents of their responsibility to do right by their children and violates our commitment to the rule of law.
Even if you are okay with the basic idea of the law, there are plenty of flaws in the bill as presented (in 2010): (1) it is not exclusively for children since applicants must be less than 30 years old, (2) applicants are safe from being removed or deported regardless of inaccurate information or criminal status, (3) applicants are allowed one felony or three misdemeanors, (4) completing a degree is not a qualification for amnesty, and (5) DREAM Act aliens will receive all the rights that legal immigrants receive, including the right to sponsor family members for immigration.
Arguments for a Federal DREAM Act
Regarding these undocumented students, there are three basic options: deport them, ignore them, or pass the DREAM Act. Deporting them would cost billions of dollars and return them to a homeland they don’t remember. Ignoring them accepts the system’s failure and consigns them to the unproductive margins of society. Passing the DREAM Act incentivizes these kids to work hard and earn the privilege of citizenship.
As stated by the Supreme Court, it is ethically irresponsible to punish children for their parents’ actions. Granting children primary and secondary education but denying them legal and financial access to college condemns them to second-rate careers, regardless of their academic potential. “The 1997 report ‘New Americans’ by the National Research Council found that immigrants -- both legal and undocumented -- with a college education save the government money, while those with just a high school diploma consume more in services than they contribute in taxes.”
According to the White House blog, the DREAM Act will (1) assist the military in its recruitment efforts, (2) bolster our competitiveness in the global economy by creating more college graduates, (3) increase government revenues by billions of dollars, and (4) allow immigration officials to dedicate their resources towards detaining and deporting criminals who pose a threat to our country.
When discussing the matter of providing public benefits to illegal immigrants, particularly education, there are many arguments for and against.
Which ones sway you?
Newt: At His Best When On His Feet
Putting the obvious drawbacks to Newt Gingrich being the GOP's presidential nominee aside, the man is brilliant, articulate, and would pose a formidable opponent to President Obama in a nationally-televised debate. I'll be writing more about Gingrich soon (and why I think he's the one to challenge Barack Obama in 2012), but for now enjoy some playfully combative remarks from Speaker Gingrich regarding his chances against Obama next year.
It's just Newt being Newt.
Meet Herman Cain: The Ultimate ‘Civil Disobedience’ Activist
By: The Good Friar, Guest Contributor
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Back in the 1960's and 1970's, at at time when America was overtly and institutionally racist in many respects, a young Herman Cain chose to perform the ultimate act of subversion by going inside the system and beating it at its own game.
Rather than launching his attack an unjust system from the outside by sitting down at lunch counters in North Carolina or marching across bridges in Alabama (which all were indeed extraordinary and needed acts of courage), Herman Cain chose to do something that would prove just as effective in shattering the glass ceiling of racism in America.
He went inside the system as a black man and succeeded.
In so doing Herman Cain did something neither Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or Louis Farakhan ever accomplished -- he made it to the top in the ranks of corporate America all on his own. With few legal safeguards or entitlements available to him at the time, he achieved the unachievable armed with nothing more than a determined work ethic, gifted business savvy, real intelligence and extraordinary people skills.
In other words, he beat "The Man" at his own game using his own rules.
Now that's subversive. In doing so he thus opened the door for millions of others to potentially do the same. Herman Cain has quietly proved that America for all its flawed racial attitudes, and its dark history of slavery and Jim Crow laws, still could not (and would not) suppress the gifts and instincts of a gifted black man willing to ignore barriers and press on until he reached the prize.
In so doing Cain has shattered the liberal mold of affirmative action, entitlement legislation and civil unrest as the only means of aggrieved minorities to rise and prosper in the American society.
Now, running for President, and quickly gaining the support of the majority of a party typically depicted by the liberal media as hopelessly racist and instinctively unfair (the same party of Lincoln and the abolitionists that is), Herman Cain is again undoing the system.
No wonder the liberal media is so apoplectic in their anger at him -- he has made it to the top without them.
Herman Cain has every right to use his gifted gospel voice to proudly sing, "We Shall Overcome." Why? Because he did. Perhaps Lawrence O'Donnell should join him in a duet.
George Will: Poor Economy Should = Fewer Speeches
Washington Post columnist George Will, a rabid baseball enthusiast, would appreciate this metaphor: Dude knocked it out of the park with this, his latest piece in the Post.
WASHINGTON — In societies governed by persuasion, politics is mostly talk, so liberals’ impoverishment of their vocabulary matters.
Having damaged liberalism’s reputation, they call themselves progressives. Having made the federal government’s pretensions absurd, they have resurrected the supposed synonym “federal family.” Having made federal spending suspect, they advocate “investments” — for “job creation,” a euphemism for stimulus, another word they have made toxic.
Barack Obama, a pitilessly rhetorical president, continues to grab the nation by its lapels but the nation is no longer listening. This matters because ominous portents are multiplying.
He continues:
For two years, there has been one constant: As events have refuted the Obama administration’s certitudes, it has retained its insufferable knowingness. It knew that the stimulus would hold unemployment below 8 percent. Oops. Unemployment has been at least 9 percent in 26 of the 30 months since the stimulus was passed. Michael Boskin of Stanford says that even if one charitably accepts the administration’s self-serving estimate of jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus, each job cost $280,000 — five times America’s median pay.
The economic policy the “federal family” should adopt can be expressed in five one-syllable words: Get. Out. Of. The. Way.
Instead, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose department has become a venture capital firm for crony capitalism and costly flops at creating “green jobs,” praises the policy of essentially banishing the incandescent light bulb as “taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money.”
Better to let the experts in his department and the rest of the federal family waste other people’s money.
Indeed.
Read the full column right here.
Steyn On Debt-Ceiling Debate
The debates in D.C. over how much more debt our government is to accrue are, sadly, necessary. Why are they necessary? Because those we've elected to represent us have (for far too long) spent money we don't have. They're forced to (finally) deal with this because our backs are to the wall.
What must not be lost in all of this is this fact: Not only have we let them, in most instances we've encouraged them. We've asked for this, even by all the things we didn't say. Perhaps, especially because of the things we didn't say to our congressmen, senators and presidents. At this point, most of us are so detached from the political process, from what it takes to run our country, that when serious fiscal matters like debt showdowns appear on our horizon we assume it can't be anything more than "politics as usual" in Washington.
I may be distilling the matter more than I should, but I believe it's truly that simple.
Mark Steyn, albeit it in a much more eloquently and informed way, agrees.
There is something surreal and unnerving about the so-called “debt ceiling” negotiations staggering on in Washington. In the real world, negotiations on an increase in one’s debt limit are conducted between the borrower and the lender. Only in Washington is a debt increase negotiated between two groups of borrowers.
Actually, it’s more accurate to call them two groups of spenders.
Steyn goes on to describe where each of the respective sides are coming from.
On the one side are Obama and the Democrats, who in a negotiation supposedly intended to reduce American indebtedness are (surprise!) proposing massive increasing in spending (an extra $33 billion for Pell Grants, for example). The Democrat position is: You guys always complain that we spend spend spend like there’s (what’s the phrase again?) no tomorrow, so be grateful that we’re now proposing to spend spend spend spend like there’s no this evening.
And from the Right?
On the other side are the Republicans, who are the closest anybody gets to representing, albeit somewhat tentatively and less than fullthroatedly, the actual borrowers — that’s to say, you and your children and grandchildren. But in essence the spenders are negotiating among themselves how much debt they’re going to burden you with. It’s like you and your missus announcing you’ve set your new credit limit at $1.3 million, and then telling the bank to send demands for repayment to Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s kindergartner next door.
He continues:
Nothing good is going to come from these ludicrously protracted negotiations over laughably meaningless accounting sleights-of-hand scheduled to kick in circa 2020. All the charade does is confirm to prudent analysts around the world that the depraved ruling class of the United States cannot self-correct, and, indeed, has no desire to.
You can read the full column here, and I highly recommend you do.
We may in fact have to end up raising the debt level. The cost of decades of horrifically irresponsible governance, call it. But when does the madness end? Republicans aren't saints in all of this, but one political party has as one of its core tenets the perpetual increasing of debt, size of government, and likelihood that the whole thing comes crashing down. If the people (Republicans) who promise to be fiscally responsible can be lured into spending money we don't have, what serious hope is there that the party promising to spend-and-tax more can be trusted with the governing of this nation?
Elections of consequences. Perhaps it's time for a voters revolution, but this one doesn't require violence or protests or a war.
Merely an acceptance of the truth: it's not working, and "we the people" are the root cause. Our selfishness, our indifference, and our "hands off", "eat, drink, and be merry" approach to self-government and the protection of our fragile liberties has caught up with us.
Time to get involved, folks.
A View From the Left
By: R.J. Moeller
Bill Maher: It’s Sarah Palin’s birthday today – do you have any special wishes for her?
[Sarcastic laughter and snickering from the audience and Real Time with Bill Maher panel]
Hooman Majd: I don’t think we can say it. Even on HBO.
Matthew Perry: Do you think she even understands that it’s her birthday?
[Raucous laughter from the audience, grins from the panel]
Bill Maher: I don’t. I think they said, ‘Sarah, it’s your birthday,’ and she thought her water broke.
[More approving laughter]
And thus began the “Ask the Panel” portion of the most recent episode of HBO’s political talk-show Real Time with Bill Maher. Straddling the same “It’s a comedy show when I want laughter and applause (or when I get in trouble for going too far), but I really want to subversively promote an ideological agenda the rest of the time” line that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert walk every night on Comedy Central, Real Time offers the hard-hitting analysis one can only find anywhere two or more liberals are gathered in President Obama’s name.
To say that the banter I printed above is childish and petty is a slight against all children and petty people everywhere.
But it’s a “comedy” show, dude. Why take it so seriously?
It is my belief that politically-involved public figures are who they really are when no one is voting – when elections are not imminent, politicians and pundits become increasingly loose-lipped.
I am a student of the culture, as we all should be, and I know (as we all do) that there is more than a hint of truth in any joke. More people under the age of 40 get their information about current events from fake news and political talk shows like Real Time and The Daily Show than anywhere else. The opinions offered on these mediums matter. It wasn’t my decision to make these shows and these comedians the gatekeepers of information in this country, but for (far too) many they are.
And I think it more than fair to say that after watching the clips I’ve included in this column, you will see that the smokescreen-like attempts by people on the Left to dismiss the importance of these shows simply because comedians host them is either misguided or purposely misleading. The Left want students and young adults to watch these shows and lap up the ideas and values streaming off their television and computer screens. They want parents to remain where (far too) many of them are: oblivious, out of the picture, and utterly disengaged from the ideological development of their child’s worldview.
Now, if a show like Maher’s Real Time or Stewart’s Daily Show simply had actors, actresses and entertainers on as their guests, they might be able to get away with the “We’re just joking around, bro” excuse. But the cavalcade of intellectuals, politicians, and influential members of the mainstream media that grace the sets of these shows reveals the deeper intent: they want to promote a specific, progressive, liberal-Democratic understanding of everything from foreign policy to the abortion debate.
Alright, enough with the (valid) generalizations. Let me show you what I mean when I say that not only are these types of shows actively pursuing the hearts and minds of as many Americans as they can, but that what you hear on such shows is typically how the guests and their host truly feel about the matter being discussed.
After bravely mocking Sarah Palin’s intellect, raising the level of civil discourse in this country by complaining that the Republican Party is merely the party of “insane people,” claiming that Abraham Lincoln would not be a Republican if he were alive today, and insisting that the French and Russian revolutions were each hijacked by “right-wingers,” Bill Maher opened a discussion with his panel of experts on the topic of Barack Obama’s personal and religious convictions:
So much to say about what you just saw, but let me quickly introduce the players involved in this little drama. First there is Bill Maher himself. Most of you are familiar with him, but for those who aren’t, all you need to know is that stand-up comedian Maher is an outspoken far-Left atheist who despises religion, Judeo-Christian morality, conservative politics, and not being able to use profanity and coarse sexual humor (which is why he had to leave network television for HBO).
Going from right to left on the panel you had MSNBC political correspondent Norah O’Donnell, Iranian-born author Hooman Majd, and Professor Cornel West of Princeton University. Oh, and next to Maher was, of course, actor Matthew Perry (aka Chandler, from Friends). O’Donnell works for MSNBC, so I’ll let you do the math on where she’s coming from politically. Mr. Majd writes books and articles for publications like The New York Times and Huffington Post, and loves playing the moral equivalency “they’re bad, but we’re not great either” game between the dictatorial regime in his native Iran and the republican democracy known as the United States of America.
Last, but certainly not least, is Professor Cornel West. A practicing Christian, and outspoken Socialist, West is an “expert” on racial issues in this country. He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. This group’s founder, and someone West holds in high regard, Catholic-turned-atheist Michael Harrington, once explained the organization’s political ideology like this:
“Put it this way. Marx was a democrat with a small d. The Democratic Socialists envision a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning...and racial equality. I share an immediate program with liberals in this country because the best liberalism leads toward socialism.... I want to be on the left wing of the possible.”
Nice.
With the introductions out of the way, let’s tackle the actual words spoken – and valuable insights revealed – in the YouTube clip above.
Commenting on the president’s insistence that he is a “Centrist” politically, Maher said, “I think [Obama] is a Centrist the way he is a Christian…He’s pretending to be a Centrist.”
I applaud Mr. Maher for his candor in recognizing what any casual observer ought to clearly see in our president (and, to be fair, a large number of politicians): an unnatural comfort-level with presenting yourself as one thing, when you really you are nothing of the kind. To the issue of his politics, it is without a doubt true that the president often tries to cover up his true ideological leanings. We on the Right see right through this and are disappointed, both by the fact that he is a progressive liberal to begin with, and also by the fact that so many people buy the moderate rhetoric he has peppered throughout a decidedly far-Left political career.
As to his faith in God – no one can know another man’s heart, and it is not my place to speak to the nature of a personal relationship one has (or does not have) with their Maker. We generally take someone at their word about such matters.
But Bill Maher is insinuating what we all know to be true: actions speak louder than words. What about the president’s actions since taking office point to a real, energetic faith in God? We all knew George W. Bush was a Christian, in large part because the media never shut up about it. They mocked President Bush for being honest and direct about his prayer life and faith in Jesus Christ. With President Obama, in between the times it is convenient to reassure Americans that he is a Christian, the media goes out of its way to downplay the man’s faith.
The only way someone would know President Obama is a Christ-follower is if he or she has read either of his two memoirs. But those are the books that also tell us about the radical nature of the president’s political ideology and worldview, as well as his deep affection for (and connection to) people like Jeremiah Wright. If we’re supposed to look at the president’s own words about his own beliefs, we find an affinity for the Marxist rabble-rouser Saul Alinsky and his radicalizing manifesto Rules for Radicals (which Obama believed so much in that he took action and taught classes on the text to up-and-coming community organizers in Chicago for more than a decade).
Please hear me: I do not stand in judgment of President Obama’s heart. Only his actions. In this case, however, even Bill Maher can read through these lines.
The conversation continued:
Bill Maher: His mother was a secular-humanist, and I think he is too…It’s like when he (Obama) says ‘I struggle with the issue of gay marriage.’ You don’t struggle with it. You’re fine with it.
Professor West: He supports gay marriage, of course.
Maher: No, he says he struggles with it…that he doesn’t like it.
West: Yeah, but that’s the political answer…
[Panel concurs with knowing glances]
Hmm.
When a conservative or Republican, say, Rush Limbaugh, for example, attempts to analyze the president’s track-record and make pronouncements about his actual stance on the issues they are scoffed at and accused of having partisan blinders on. When one of the most respected liberal professors in the country comes to the same conclusion that Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity have about the president’s disingenuous position on the redefinition of marriage, it is affirmed as a fact that everyone ought to already know.
This, of course, says something less-than-favorable about President Obama’s character, but it also speaks to the minimal importance that modern liberalism puts on the subject of character and integrity in its leaders. Neither Right nor Left, Republicans nor Democrats, hold the moral high ground in the sense that one side or the other are literally “better” people. We’re all sinners. But the comfort-level that the Left has with morally-questionable (or out-right immoral) behavior on the part of their leaders is worth noting.
To the majority of Americans, traditional marriage is held up and recognized as a sacred institution – the building block of society. It is a massively important issue. In order to garner votes in 2008, the president and vice president claimed to be on the side of history, biology, 6,000 years of religious teaching, and the will of the American people when it came to keeping marriage one man-one woman. But again I ask: what actions have these men taken to solidify and strengthen the institution of marriage? Heck, what words have we heard from either of them in 2 years on the matter (other than their enthusiastic support for the repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy)? With a heavy heart, I must admit that I think Professor West speaks the truth in this matter.
Admittedly, one episode of Bill Maher’s show is not a comprehensive or exhaustive representation of all Center-Left thought – but it is a fair one. It is fair because it is common. You can hear such things any night of the week on everything from The Daily Show to The Rachel Maddow Show to TBS re-runs of The Steve Harvey Show.
If you only get your news and information about politicians and the issues they represent from skimming newspaper headlines or Katie Couric’s nightly reports on CBS, you will assume that Maher and his panel are joking. With even a minimal effort to investigate the people you lend power to, and the issues that are impacting your jobs, schools, and families, you will learn that the joke has only been on you. (And that the Left has been laughing us all the way to Western Europe for 40 years.)
It is said that a nation gets the leaders it deserves. If West and Maher are correct in their appraisals of President Obama, what does that say about us?
Spreading The Nuclear Wealth Around
President Obama, the Feel-Good-In-Chief, has recently signed a meaningless "reduce your nukes" agreement with a corrupt regime in Russia. But that hope-filled gesture to the Russians was just the political face to the bigger change the Obama administration announced last week. The Nuclear Posture Review, or NPR for short, states that the United States will no longer even threaten countries with nuclear retaliation if they don't have nukes themselves.
There are two voices of reason and sanity that you must hear on this issue.
The first is from Charles Krauthammer.
Under President Obama's new policy, however, if the state that has just attacked us with biological or chemical weapons is "in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)," explained Gates, then "the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it."
Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker is up-to-date with its latest IAEA inspections, well, it gets immunity from nuclear retaliation. (Our response is then restricted to bullets, bombs and other conventional munitions.)
However, if the lawyers tell the president that the attacking state is NPT noncompliant, we are free to blow the bastards to nuclear kingdom come.
This is quite insane. It's like saying that if a terrorist deliberately uses his car to mow down a hundred people waiting at a bus stop, the decision as to whether he gets (a) hanged or (b) 100 hours of community service hinges entirely on whether his car had passed emissions inspections.
The other is from Chuck Colson's daily "Breakpoint" commentary that can be heard on radio stations all across the nation every day. Listen to it here.
An excerpt from Colson:
The administration’s new Nuclear Posture Review states that the United States will not use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have nuclear weapons and that comply with the UN treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Now, that may sound good on paper, but what would happen if a country, or terrorist organization based in a certain country, launched a massive attack on the United States with biological or chemical weapons? Or even a cyber attack that could paralyze America for weeks or months, leading to massive starvation?
Well, astonishingly enough, the Nuclear Posture Review specifically renounces a U.S. nuclear response to a mass biological or chemical attack. The administration took this position as a “carrot” approach to convince non-nuclear nations to give up their dreams of obtaining nukes.
But folks, you can offer a rat a carrot, and he’ll eat it. The problem is, he remains a rat.
As you’ve heard me say before, the role of government is to preserve order, do justice, and restrain evil. Well, this of course presupposes that there is such a thing as evil, and that humans do evil things. Obviously, we Christians know the root of this evil is original sin; it’s part of our fallen human nature. And we see it displayed on our TV screens every single night.
Any nuclear policy that fails to recognize the human propensity for evil endangers the country and flies in the face of a biblical worldview—not to mention common sense. It is, plain and simple, utopian thinking. And Christianity, recognizing man’s fallenness, always rejects utopianism—the idea that mankind can build a paradise on earth. It inevitably leads to tyranny.
I don't want to be someone who only sees the negative in what President Obama does, but he's making it very hard on those of us who care about the safety, security, and stability of the country more than what sounds good in a University of Chicago faculty meeting.
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.
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?
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