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Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Lies In The News
PIQUING THE BLOGOSPHERE’S interest Monday include Dr. Rusty Shackleford’s discovery that, yes, the Obama campaign is playing by Chicago rules and American Thinker’s observation that the Left is engaged in a Gramscian Long March through the Institutions, which includes control over the dialectic.
Pardon me while I yawn.
Not that these things aren’t earth-shaking, but that they’ve been shaking the earth for almost a century, now. Been there, done that, came up with the idea of the commemorative t-shirt.
Obama?
Well, no. But he’s only the latest incarnation of the anima of a political machine that fairly defines corruption and bare-knuckle politics.
And the point is this isn’t news. Why should you be surprised? Outraged, perhaps, but not surprised.
Of course, you do want to fight them. That’s what they’re for—to be defeated.
The simplest way to fight this, I think, would be to reply with a drumbeat of our own, starting with the base (bass?) assumption that everything leftists say is a lie, including “a,” “an,” and “the.”
The second step is to engage. Somebody with the standing to do so needs to bring Logan Act complaints against Obama and Pelosi. Somebody with the standing to do so needs to bring corruption charges against Chris Dodd, Charles Rangel, Diane Feinstein, Harry Reid, and all the rest of the perfidious officials who enrich themselves and let the country go to Hell and fight them hard enough to make the charges stick. Somebody with the standing to do so needs to fire the ACLU ambulance chasers out of Justice Department and kickstart the investigation of ACORN et al for election fraud (specifically to include MoveOn and PAW).
Engagement doesn’t—shouldn’t—stop at the top level. We down at the roots of the turf have parts to play as well. We should not let go unchallenged the nonsensical assertions of the Left.
Some bullet points.
• Most watermelons wouldn’t know a fragile ecosystem if it bit them on the ass.
• We don’t know the temperature of the planet. That said, it’s pretty clear the globe isn’t warming. If it were, it wouldn’t mean much, and might even be a good thing. If we knew and could demonstrate that the planet were warming, and that it was necessarily a bad thing, we still know little or nothing about the causes—and no, mankind’s contribution is in no way significant. And even if we did know for sure, there’s nothing we could do about it. Yes, that’s right, kids, even the most rabid warmistas admit that the most draconian, economy-killing “solutions” to the “problem” won’t touch the outcome. Anyway, the planet has natural feedback cycles that keep these things within reasonable ranges. Several billion years of life on Earth demonstrate that most clearly. A thirty year trend—now reversed—in a hundred-fifty-year record is a blip—a flyspeck—and means exactly nothing. Panic merchants on this subject have ulterior motives and are not to be trusted.
• Last I’d heard, the need for stem cell research for—you know—actual medical advancement was no longer… um… needed. That being so (please check and make sure, now), the only possible reason for supporting stem cell research is that it ties directly to abortion—all abortion all the time on demand with public subsidies. And none dare call it infanticide.
• People. Do. Not. Vote. Against. Their. Own. Economic. Best. Interests. Learn it. Love it. Live it. The arrogance of the claim that they do rests in the assumption that one can discern from a centrally-located ivory tower just exactly what the economic best interests are of any given group or invididual. The twin facts that one cannot see and that it does not matter show at once the genius of free markets and the fundamental failing of centrally-planned command economies: arrogant ignorance coupled with overweening pride in power. Central-planning nostrusms will always eventually fail, bringing greater disaster in their wakes. They can only stave off failure so long as they can gull the unsuspecting and find new suckers to “contribute” to their risky schemes. Once people get wise to the pyramid-scam nature of the thing, it collapses. A house of cards has nothing on this edifice.
• If someone can pay the price of something, it’s affordable.
• Robin Hood stole from the rich. Period. Full stop. Of course he did. That’s who had the money. And even if he did give to the poor, that only tainted them with his crime. As Don Henley once famously sang, evil is still evil, in anybody’s name. And stealing is evil. You can trust me on this; it’s only a half-step removed from murder.
• Modern socialists are not Robin Hood, no matter how hard they try to make you believe they are. They are stealing from everyone in order to buy votes. They seek to create a dependency relationship in order to enhance their own power, prestige, and prosperity. If they really cared about people, they’d help them get a job. If you accept government largesse, you are receiving stolen goods. Show a little humility, would you?
• If you can keep doing something, it’s sustainable. Can. Not “should” or “want to.” Can.
• What everyone owns, nobody owns. The first “owns” as in “takes possession of” and the second as in “takes responsibility for.” The tragedy of the commons is a tragedy of the commons. That is, it is inherent in the concept of manifold ownership. That this needs to be said at this late date speaks more of a tragedy of ignorance than of any economic fact.
• The state corrupts. The more powerful the state, the more corrupt the society. This is inescapable truth.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But it should also be understood that power attracts the corruptible. In this, money, power, and sex are inextricably intertwined. The only way to get money out of politics is to get the power out of government. Not military might to defend the realm, or the legitimate legal authority to judge disputes between and among citizens, but the power over the lives of individual citizens. Limits to freedom are always—always—lose-lose-lose. There is no honest countervailing example. None. For any case you may care to name in which the so-called “greater good” was or is putatively served, what you do not see is the greater evil also done, and I submit, when weighed in the balance, the ill is always greater than the good.
• It is worth noting that 90% or more of what the Federal Government does today is forbidden it by the Constitution. That is to say, the government and those in it refuse to play the game according to the rules. They cheat. If someone who claims to deserve your support cheats in order to maintain his position and privilege, if that person enters elected office with the intent on Day One of violating his oath of office, what makes you think he’s going to deliver on the promises he makes to you, promises he made to get your support?
No Democrat I’ve ever heard honestly claimed to want to rein in the out-of-control government. Seriously. I think you can see where I’m headed, here.
• The reductio ad absurdam of Affirmative Action delivers us a Barack Obama—a candidate with an onionskin resume, a character and associations that will not bear naked-eye scrutiny from a thousand yards let alone anything even resembling close, and policy prescriptions that—when you can nail them down at all—sound all too much like the dorm room bull session witterings of C and D students who didn’t do the reading and are trying to fast-talk their way out of a failing grade. The only things worthwhile in life are those things that have been earned. Leftists, having a poor grasp of the basic facts of economics, seem to have trouble understanding this point, so they confuse handouts and earnings—unable to come to grips with the difference.
• The Great Society destroyed the black family. Ironic, as it wasn’t aimed at blacks, but at Appalachian whites. Go figure. More of the Same is the name of one of a chain of university degrees that starts with BS and ends with PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper.) Doing it again only harder won’t fix what’s broken.
• Arms control and general citizen disarmament have never been followed by increases in either liberty and / or public order and safety. Never. The opposite, however, has occurred repeatedly down through history—armed societies tend to be freer societies, and disarmed societies have often (if not always) descended to tyranny and worse. Do not deceive yourself that we are not on that curve because you can only see what you can see from your seat on a particular data point.
• Democrats, liberals, leftists lie. They are not to be trusted.
• You have voice, use it. You have a tongue, speak.
Cross-posted at BabyTrollBlog
Comments
Can anyone name a Democratic program that wasn’t an economic and cultural disaster????
The only half-successful program I can think of was the Space Program in the 60’s, but the rush to the Moon left us with no permanent presence in orbit or on the Moon, so the whole thing was more a publicity stunt than a real breakthrough.
(cross-posted at Baby Troll Blog)
Posted by on 09/23/2008 at 11:43 AMRobin Hood stole from tax collectors, and returned the money to the people it had been stolen from originally.
The stories aren’t about socialist “justice” in taking from those to have and giving to those who need, the stories are about Lockean “life, liberty and property” justice in returning wealth that had been unjustly taken in the first place.
Everything else was pretty much dead on, though.
Posted by on 09/27/2008 at 04:32 PMPlease consider referring to stem cell research in terms of either ESC, ASC, or USC:
Embryonic Stem Cell
Adult Stem Cell
Umbilical Stem CellASC and USC research breakthroughs are occurring, and private money is rushing to that research. ESC breakthroughs are not occurring - as, so far, no one can prevent ESCs from causing tumors. Private money is largely avoiding ESC research at this time. You are 100% correct that widespread, publicized political and Hollywood support for ESC research is all about abortion.
Posted by gcotharn on 10/02/2008 at 11:55 AM
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