A Voice in the Wilderness

The Drama Of Our Time

2010-04-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

There is a cultural, ideological, theological battle taking place for the heart and soul of this nation.

Wise up and get involved.

Oh, and read this!

This site has moved to rjmoeller.com.

We're Taking Country/Back

2010-04-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

Come read the call-to-arms for all Center-Right Americans (more than half of us) to engage the issues of our time and turn out to vote in November.

http://rjmoeller.com/2010/04/november-2010-countryback/

Watermelon Surprise at Copenhagen

2009-12-17T12:05:00.000-08:00

The climate summit in Denmark says a lot more about the Left's totalitarian instincts than it does about the weather.

Read my column here at rjmoeller.com.

Me in a tuxedo

2009-12-07T11:21:00.001-08:00

Find more at rjmoeller.com!

Mere Conservatism

2009-10-11T23:23:00.000-07:00

It is finally here: the first in a series in defense of Mere Conservatism.

But to find it, you have to travel to our new and improved site at rjmoeller.com. PLEASE come join us there and sign up for our RSS feed.

God bless.

Moving Day

2009-09-20T15:19:00.001-07:00

It's been two years coming, but I have finally constructed a REAL website (rjmoeller.com) and I would love for all of you who have faithfully been following my "Voice" here at blogspot to come join me at the new, improved A Voice in the Wilderness.

Sign up for the RSS feed at rjmoeller.com

God bless!

-RJM

Effect and Cause

2009-09-15T07:18:00.001-07:00

The White Stripes help me critique the president's most recent health care speech to Congress.

Read it at rjmoeller.com

One of the last posts

2009-09-11T00:30:00.000-07:00

Guys, I have officially moved over to rjmoeller.com, so if you are following me here, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE come and sign up for the same thing at my new, real website.

Here is my latest post over there on the brewing ACORN scandal.

Steyn on Obama

2009-09-07T22:04:00.000-07:00

Columnist of the world, Mark Steyn, has a new column featured at rjmoeller.com. Come read (and hear) more from Steyn yourself.

Green Czar is donzo

2009-09-06T13:06:00.000-07:00

Here is the full story on the resignation of Obama's "Green Czar".

This blog has officially moved to rjmoeller.com, so PLEASE come and visit us there. Also, sign up to follow us on RSS at the new site.

Ted Kennedy and the faith debate

2009-09-04T22:36:00.001-07:00

Please come visit us at rjmoeller.com and read more about the issues raised surrounding Ted Kennedy's funeral last weekend.

Update on the situation in Honduras

2009-09-03T22:36:00.000-07:00

You can find out more about what news broke today regarding the Obama administration's refusal to help a democratic nation out as influences such as Hugo Chavez attempt to tip the scales of tyranny in their favor in Central and South America.

Please come visit us over at rjmoeller.com, and sign up to stay on top of all the news thats fit to print.

Two stories that ought to alarm us all

2009-09-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

Obama is playing dangerous games with his power. No one can deny this, and the polls, I believe, reflect that nation's waning tolerance for all the over-the-top, self-indulgent rhetoric and showmanship from the White House.

Please follow the link here to read some of my thoughts and two of the most recent, glaring examples of what I'm talking about.

rjmoeller.com is the new place to find your "Voice" in the wilderness of political and cultural issues.

Sowell: We live in a "timid, civilized world"

2009-09-01T15:13:00.000-07:00

I know you want to find out all that Sowell has to say about America's (and the West's) weaknesses...so why don't you do yourself a favor and head on over to rjmoeller.com and find out.

Texas fishermen survive 8 grueling days

2009-08-31T11:14:00.000-07:00

Read more about this fascinating story from the Gulf of Mexico here at rjmoeller.com

Come read what Walter E. Williams has to say about American universities

2009-08-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

Click here to see what you are missing over at RJMoeller.com.....

An excerpt from the latest Walter E. Williams column on

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that only 31 percent of college graduates can read and understand a complex book. Employers complain that graduates of colleges lack the writing and analytical skills necessary to succeed in the workplace. A 2006 survey conducted by The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the Society for Human Resource Management found that only 24 percent of employers thought graduates of four-year colleges were "excellently prepared" for entry-level positions. College seniors perennially fail tests of their civic and historical knowledge.

Remember, in two weeks everything here at robbymoeller.blogspot.com will be moving over to rjmoeller.com.

Moving to a new site

2009-08-29T23:10:00.001-07:00

I have begun to construct a real website at rjmoeller.com, and in the next few weeks will be moving all my blogging and posting over to it.

Just a heads up.

Sign up for an RSS feed at rjmoeller.com and help make the transition seamless.

-RJM

Milton Friedman on History, Socialism, and Liberty

2009-08-29T08:39:00.001-07:00

Do yourself a favor today, take a few minutes of your precious time, and watch this first part of an interview with the visionary 20th century economist Milton Friedman.

One note: For those who aren't aware, when Friedman uses the term "collectivism", he is essentially referring to what you may know as "socialism".

America a "Hindu" nation?

2009-08-28T09:18:00.000-07:00

Dr. Albert Mohler of Southern Theological seminary is an accomplished writer, thinker, columnist, and radio talk show host...not to mention the president of one of the most respected Christian seminaries in the country. In his latest blog-post, Dr. Mohler breaks down a recent Newsweek article that claims America in 2009 has more in common with the Hindu faith than the Christian one so closely associated with its founding and history.

The Newsweek piece contends that since the Hindu faith is more relativistic and accepting of other religions, we would do well to move in their direction. Dr. Mohler has other thoughts.

An excerpt:

Without doubt, Americans have been growing more and more accepting of plural and relative understandings of truth. A tragically large number of those who identify as Christians have been drinking from the same wells of thought.
The exclusivity of the Gospel is not merely a facet of the church's message. Indeed, a Gospel that does not affirm that salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ alone is not the Gospel of Christ, but a false gospel. As Lisa Miller correctly recites, Jesus did say, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me." [John 14:6]

Another aspect of the story is this: Many Americans have such a doctrineless understanding of Christianity that they do not even know what the Gospel is -- not even remotely. A greater tragedy is that so many who consider themselves Christians seem to share in this confusion.
Many observers who trace these trends see this doctrinal shift among Christians as a good development. After all, if you hold to nothing more than a functional view of religion, this might seem to promise less conflict among religious believers. But, if you believe that truth is essential to Christian faith, there is every reason to see these trends as nothing less than catastrophic

The Death Ted Kennedy, a legend

2009-08-26T22:53:00.000-07:00

Ted Kennedy was a US Senator for more than 40 years. He was important, in the sense that he was influential, but I could not have disagreed more with almost everything the man stood for. Now is not the time for harsh criticisms, and my heart goes out to his family, one that has suffered so much in the past four-and-a-half decades. But make no mistake about it: I will not miss Ted Kennedy the politician.

Much has been said about him already on cable news, in print, and on-line, so I will keep my remarks here brief and instead let columnist George Will do the eulogizing.

An excerpt from Will's latest column:

There is the arithmetic of the Constitution and then there is the life of the institution. The Constitution makes a senator 1 percent of one-half of one of the three branches of the federal government. But the intangible and unquantifiable chemistry of personality in a little laboratory like the Senate made Ted Kennedy forceful.
In the Senate, as elsewhere, 80 percent of the important work is done by a talented 20 percent. And 95 percent of the work is done off the floor, away from committees, out of sight, where strong convictions leavened by good humor are the currency of accomplishment. There Ted Kennedy, who had the politics of the Boston Irish in his chromosomes, flourished. What Winston Churchill said about Franklin Roosevelt -- that meeting him was like opening a bottle of champagne, and knowing him was like drinking it -- was true of Ted Kennedy, too.

Virtues Gone Wild

2009-08-25T23:33:00.000-07:00

by: R.J. Moeller

“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues.” -GK Chesterton

This week I had the privilege of attending one of those much talked about town hall meetings regarding the President’s “public option” health care reform. It was hosted by my congressional representative, Mark Kirk (R-IL), and held in my suburban Chicago hometown. More than 800 passionate citizens came out; roughly double the amount of people Congressman Kirk’s office had predicted would show up. It was an exciting, lively afternoon, made better by the fact that my representative calmed many fears by clearly articulating both his disapproval of the president’s big-government option and the common sense alternative reforms he endorses.

As I stood on the steps of city hall, taking in the sights and sounds of nearly 1000 American citizens discharging their democratic rights (and duties), two important things occurred to me.

First, those people chanting and carrying signs in support of a “public option”, for the most part (and disregarding the nuts who show up on both sides), truly believe in their cause and genuinely desire to make health care cheap and readily accessible (specifically for the poorer, less fortunate among us). And second, those same people have, perhaps unwittingly, isolated one virtue, namely charity, from almost all the other virtues that give charity its full meaning and context; namely truth, justice, and prudence.

It seems to me that it is because they fail to acknowledge this second point that the Left perpetually fails to accomplish the first.

Famed early 20th century British writer and journalist GK Chesterton recognized this exact same problem in the England of his day. Writing in his classic work, Orthodoxy, Chesterton explains:

The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.
Context is everything, especially when it comes to socio-economic reform. The public option, a reform plan that is undoubtedly a designed “gateway bill” to the single-payer, socialized medicine that Barack Obama believes is a “right” owed to all Americans, is now being presented by the president himself as a “moral” issue. Charity, a term now synonymous with “social justice”, is supreme in the mind and rhetoric of the modern progressive liberal. But what moral issue is complete in and of itself? Even love, if not appropriately discharged, can ruin both the giver and recipient of it. Context is everything.

Truth is one virtue that must be added to our charity. The truth, the actual facts on the ground, matter a great deal. If someone has convinced him or herself that it is a moral imperative we charitably give free health care and/or health insurance to the roughly 45 million Americans currently uninsured, and has based that emotionally charged conviction on the number “45 million”, would it not be prudent to investigate those numbers to see who comprise them? Upon further review we find that more than half of those 45 million are either in the country illegally, or have the funds for insurance and recklessly choose to avoid purchasing it. This is truth you should believe in, and is necessary to consider and discuss when making drastic changes to the best health care system on the planet.

And what about justice? I have always liked the definition for justice that C.S. Lewis gives in Mere Christianity: “…it includes honesty, give and take, truthfulness, keeping promises, and all that side of life.” Liberal Democrats have for decades linked their social engineering plans, such as welfare, affirmative action, and now this public option plan, to the notion of charity, but have perpetually failed to apply justice to their charity. Sure they call it “social justice”, but would anyone actually attempt to make the case that the “justice” Lewis is talking about is exemplified in the type of federally-subsidized and orchestrated charity the Left promotes?

When you learn that between 7-10% of the costs for government-run Medicare and Medicaid is lost to fraud, while the private medical insurance and health care industry lose less than 0.05% to fraud, is “honesty” really the right word? When one side (“the rich”) is doing all the giving, while faceless bureaucrats and the constantly re-defined “poor” do all the taking, would anyone call that a healthy, moral relationship? Other than then-Senator Obama’s promise that he would do everything he could to re-shape the nation, what was the last meaningful promise made by any politician that was fully kept?

Prudence is yet another virtue needed to complement charity. Prudence is practical common sense. It is thinking through your actions and the probable consequences of them. I saw a number of signs, and heard a number of chants outside the town hall meeting I attended this week that proclaimed, “I am my brother’s keeper.” This being a direct allusion to teachings from the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, I do not hesitate to respond in turn with a few other things the Judeo-Christian value system has to say regarding the matter.

Writing later in Mere Christianity, C.S Lewis expounds on the topic of prudence by pointing out a gross misunderstanding of Christ’s call for us to come to Him “as little children.” He states:

In the first place, most children show plenty of ‘prudence’ about doing the things they are really interested in, and think them out quite sensibly. In the second place, as St. Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain children in intelligence; on the contrary. He wants a child’s heart, but a grown-up’s head. He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good children are; but He also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim.
No one, religious or otherwise, is off the hook intellectually because they mean well emotionally. Common sense matters, and, like our natural rights, is a gift from our Creator that can be lost when we stop using and protecting it. When your nation is in staggering debt, in part because of an over-reaching, over-spending federal government, it is wholly un-justifiable to spend $1 trillion on a public option plan that is unnecessary and almost guaranteed to fail. What President Obama has asked the American people to do is ignore history, math, the U.S. Constitution, and our own common sense and to just trust him that things will be better. Not very prudent if you ask me.

Please understand that no one is in favor of completely keeping the status quo in health care and health insurance. I recognize that supporters of the president’s public option want what is best for their country. I saw in their eyes the passion and devotion to helping poor people get affordable care, and to bringing down the costs for all Americans. I get that, and I commend their intentions.

But whether you know are wrong, or end up being wrong due to incorrect data or indoctrination – you’re still wrong. And in the public square, when it comes to political decisions with all their unintended consequences, what ultimately matters most is the “better way” of doing something like health care reform.

Charity cannot continue to be a battering ram with which liberals are allowed to knock down the walls of our “shining city on a hill”, no matter what their intentions may be. Charity without truth, justice, and prudence isn’t worth the cardboard sign it’s written on.

Compassion, Justice, and Scotland's Release of the Lockerbie Terrorist

2009-08-25T08:45:00.000-07:00

One story that might have been lost in your shuffle (not iPod) this past week came from Scotland and involved the release of a terrorist responsible for the murder of 270 people 21 years ago. Here is a re-cap of the events surrounding the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 for those too young to remember them.

Dennis Prager, as only Dennis can, explains why the Scottish government's decision to release the convicted killer because he is terminally ill with cancer is a shameful chapter in a proud nation's storied history.

An excerpt:

The Scottish government released Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the one person convicted in the mass murder of 270 people when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988.
As the Chicago Tribune noted in an editorial appropriately titled "Scotland's Shame," at al-Megrahi's 2001 trial, the Scottish prosecutor pointed out that "four hundred parents lost a child, 46 parents lost their only child, 65 women were widowed, 11 men lost their wives, 140 lost a parent, seven lost both parents."
But all these people and all their loved ones were not the recipients of Scotland's compassion; the murderer was.
What the Scottish government, its Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, and millions of others in the West do not understand is that, unlike justice, compassion cannot be given to everyone. If you show compassion to person X or group X, you cannot show it to person Y or group Y. Justice, by definition, is universal. Compassion, by definition, is selective.

Sinners in the hands of an angry Government

2009-08-24T17:38:00.000-07:00

"The idea that government officials can play God from Washington is not a new idea, but it is an idea that is being pushed with new audacity."

With that, Thomas Sowell starts his readers on a reality-check tour in his latest column. The pull from Washington is to take power, and sadly, more and more, there is a real push among otherwise free citizens to give it over to their leaders.

We must not let President Obama or any other politician, regardless of party, distract us with scapegoats and talking points.

"Like other magicians, Obama has chosen his distractions well. The insurance industry is currently his favorite distraction as scapegoats, after he has tried to demonize doctors without much success.
Saints are no more common in the insurance industry than in politics or even among paragons of virtue like economists. So there will always be horror stories, even if these are less numerous or less horrible than what is likely to happen if Obamacare gets passed into law.
Obama even gets away with saying things like having a system to "keep insurance companies honest"-- and many people may not see the painful irony in politicians trying to keep other people honest."

The nice thing about being an American is that we don't have to be dominated by party politics. We can (and should) point to the Constitution, the facts, and use our God-given common sense to solve the social ills that confront every generation.

Death Panels and Taxes

2009-08-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn's column this weekend is brilliant as always. In it, Steyn gets to the heart of the matter with Obama's spend-and-burn policies these past 9 months.

An excerpt:

That’s why the “stimulus” flopped. It didn’t just fail to stimulate, it actively deterred stimulation, because it was the first explicit signal to America and the world that the Democrats’ political priorities overrode everything else. If you’re a business owner, why take on extra employees when cap’n’trade is promising increased regulatory costs and health “reform” wants to stick you with an 8 percent tax for not having a company insurance plan?

Obama’s leviathan sends a consistent message to business and consumers alike: When he’s spending this crazy, maybe the smart thing for you to do is hunker down until the dust’s settled and you get a better sense of just how broke he’s going to make you. For this level of “community organization,” there aren’t enough of “the rich” to pay for it. That leaves you.

For Obama, government health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture in which all elections and most public discourse will be conducted on Democratic terms. It’s no surprise that the president can’t make a coherent economic or medical argument for Obamacare, because that’s not what it’s about — and for all his cool, he can’t quite disguise that.

I don't think I disagree with a single word Senor Steyn has to say here. Let's hear some of your thoughts.

What Ted Kennedy Wants, Ted Kennedy Gets

2009-08-21T22:15:00.001-07:00

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), the only sitting US Senator who has murdered someone, has sunk to a new low...even for him.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Senator Ted Kennedy, who is gravely ill with brain cancer, has sent a letter to Massachusetts lawmakers requesting a change in the state law that determines how his Senate seat would be filled if it became vacant before his eighth full term ends in 2012. Current law mandates that a special election be held at least 145 days after the seat becomes available. Mr. Kennedy is concerned that such a delay could leave his fellow Democrats in the Senate one vote short of a filibuster-proof majority for months while a special election takes place.

Harmless enough, right? Read on:

What Mr. Kennedy doesn't volunteer is that he orchestrated the 2004 succession law revision that now requires a special election, and for similarly partisan reasons. John Kerry, the other Senator from the state, was running for President in 2004, and Mr. Kennedy wanted the law changed so the Republican Governor at the time, Mitt Romney, could not name Mr. Kerry's replacement. "Prodded by a personal appeal from Senator Edward M. Kennedy," reported the Boston Globe in 2004, "Democratic legislative leaders have agreed to take up a stalled bill creating a special election process to replace U.S. Senator John F. Kerry if he wins the presidency." Now that the state has a Democratic Governor, Mr. Kennedy wants to revert to gubernatorial appointments.

God bless 'em.

So much honor killing, so little time

2009-08-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

There are some stories we come across that we simply cannot ignore. This is one of those. A 17-year old girl, Rifqa Bary, converted from being a Muslim to being a Christian earlier this year and her devout Muslim father threatened her life. She ran away to Florida, but because she is not a naturalized citizen the courts will likely send her home to Ohio where her parents reside. She fears for her life. Many Muslim fathers and male relatives (even here in the West) have killed their own daughter/sister/cousin because of various "dishonors" she has supposedly brought to their family.

Please watch this brief video where in her own words, Rifqa explains her plight.

What a mess! Please be praying for this brave soul. For those of you who don't believe that values matter, and that all societies and countries and religions are the same, let this story be a wake up call.

Tough words on health care from Rich Lowry at National Review Online

2009-08-21T09:09:00.001-07:00

Rich Lowry is one of the editors over at National Review (the best conservative magazine on the planet), and although the "tone" on his latest piece might not resonate with the hyper-sensitive sensibilities of most Americans today, PLEASE take a look at the actual points he makes about Obama's push for a "public option".

The Obama team is saddled with a foundering health-care strategy. But it has a fallback plan — relying on the sheer dimwitted gullibility of the American public. How stupid do they think we are?

Remember Halliburton?

2009-08-20T09:02:00.001-07:00

I was at my breaking point about two years ago when if I had heard one more "Cheney took us to war for his buddies at Halliburton to make bank" I might have lost my mind.

But using the same line of "thinking" that angry liberals employed during the Bush administration to link any member of the president' cabinet with their former employer's bottom line, here is an interesting story from the White House of Hope and Change. Obama's "Karl Rove", David Axelrod, is in increasingly warmer water due to the fact that the marketing/advertising firm he used to own has recieved lucrative contracts to make television ads supporting Obama's "public option" plan.

Who knows if there is anything "fishy" going on here...but you can bet your bottom dollar this story would have been front-page fodder for the New York Times and Washington Post for months had it happened even just one year ago and a different administration was still in office.

Oh, but wait, White House Press Secretary, the prolific Robert Gibbs, reassured us yesterday when questioned about any possible link between Axelrod and the company he created now getting big bucks to help his new boss get his brand of health care reform through congress:

“That's ridiculous,” Gibbs said during a Tuesday afternoon briefing. “David has left his firm to join public service.”

Phew! Good enough for me. Public servants never exploit their position for financial gain, so can someone please tell Dick Cheney he's forever off the hook? Thanks.

Dick Durbin decides to "just say no"...to his constituents and a town hall

2009-08-20T08:33:00.000-07:00

Thankfully, both local and national news have picked up this very important story: Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) is refusing to hold town hall meetings in which he might be able to explain why it is he supports the public option health care "reform".

A)Dick Durbin is a tool. B)Durbin was in on the ground floor of mocking these town hall protesters in July so that he could have a full month of bashing/undermining them before he headed home for the August recess. C)This is part of the White House's overall strategy to marginalize the majority of Americans who do not want the "public option".

Both President Obama and Madame Speaker Pelosi promised transparency on a scale never seen before when they took power. Nothing says openness like refusing to confront the people you "represent".

Is Health Care a Right?

2009-08-18T22:57:00.000-07:00

by: R.J. Moeller

“Health care is right, not a privilege.”

-Barack Obama

“The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder…The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy.”

-Frederic Bastiat

The latest in the ever-changing news from the White House is that the administration will potentially be willing to concede their “public option” plan in any final health care reform bill. In the face of mounting disapproval, President Obama would be making the smart political move by backing away from the wildly unpopular idea. Americans should be excited by the fact that their voices were heard, but there are two important points that scream for our attention from this entire ordeal.

First, we must not let our elation over the possibly averted federal takeover of our health care cloud the fact that the most influential Democrats in this country actually wanted the plan to succeed. We never should have even come this close to the public option becoming a reality, and please note that the only bi-partisanship displayed this entire summer was between moderate Democrats in Congress and Center-Right Americans around the country who opposed the Obama-Pelosi plan. The public option was, and always has been, only overwhelmingly supported by progressive liberals.

Second, and in light of the first, Americans absolutely must learn from this teachable moment why it is Leftists like Barack Obama both believe in socialized medicine, and will never cease to fight to bring it to our shores.

Simply put, they deem it to be a right.

Now a right is a very serious thing. Perhaps unwittingly, Americans have cheapened the term, distorting the true meaning of “rights” through an ironic combination of over-use verbally and neglect intellectually, but that does not mean it cannot be reclaimed for a new generation. In fact, it must be re-claimed or we will soon find ourselves, this great experiment in republican democracy, on the same ash heap of history where lesser, inferior civilizations now lay. If America fails, it won’t be because of the ideas laid out in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution, but because her people confused and exploited the most basic precepts, values, and principles of their national inheritance.

Chief among the ideas currently under assault is the notion of “rights”.

As melodramatic as all this may sound, please understand that when the President of the United States publicly asserts that the service of health care provided by trained medical professionals is now a “right”, a divergent path from the republican one we’re supposed to be on has just been presented to you as a legitimate, alternate option. Walking down it will most certainly have real and definite repercussions, whether you embrace the president’s assertion or not. Ideas have consequences.

Practically speaking, a right is something that your government, your neighbor, owes to you no matter what. No if’s, and’s or but’s about it: if something is a right, then you cannot be kept from it.

The most important of rights are ones that involve something others cannot do to you, not what they must do for you.

Freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, the right to life (i.e. prohibitions against murder), and Habeas Corpus are rights. No one has a right to sleep with whomever they want, whenever they want, but we all have the right to tell someone they can't sleep with us any time we want.

Despite what you might have been misled to believe, health care and health insurance are goods; they are services; they are commodities. People work hard to produce and provide them. In the case of medical professionals, they have spent a massive amount of time and money, taken significant personal risks, to prepare to provide John Q. Customer with the strep test or brain surgery or hip replacement he needs. The United States became the medical system that people from countries all around the globe come to use in spite of the government’s involvement, not because of it.

For a quick mental exercise to help dramatize my concern over President Obama’s misguided claim that health care is a right, substitute “health care” with the words “car” or “washing machine”.

The moment you picture Nancy Pelosi standing at the podium of a press conference to announce the new “right" to a working automobile for every adult, or Harry Reid releasing a press statement ensuring that he and the Democrats will fight to put "a new washing machine in every family’s laundry room”, the preposterous nature of Obama’s statement ought to be readily evident.

Who will provide the car for someone who cannot work? For someone who refuses to work? For the person who wraps his or her car around a telephone pole after a MGD-64 bender at the local watering hole? Or for the person who would rather hand-wash their clothes and keep the washing machine funds in order to be able to take a family vacation or buy a purebred Lassie-looking collie?

Will this new “right” be enacted the way it is legally supposed to be, with an amendment to the Constitution? Or will we continue the time-honored, bi-partisan tradition of circumventing the “rule-book” we only like to point to when it helps us defend pet-issues such as Roe v. Wade or Gun rights?

Political foresight involves the ability to see down the road to the likely results of the words that come from the mouths of politicians. This is a difficult skill to master; especially as it pertains to people we may personally like or have voted for. Most Americans do in fact like Barack Obama, and that is not a bad thing. But from the man who has constantly reminded us that “words matter”, it is not reactionary or irrational to piece his together in order to form a general blueprint of the national designs that the president and leading Democrats in Washington claim to have for the country.

Health care, in the mind of the American Leftist, is a right that the federal government should ensure with the tax dollars of wealthier citizens. This is why they will never stop trying to get socialized medicine.

The fact that nearly 90% of Americans are happy with their current health care is of little consequence to a progressive liberal like Barack Obama precisely because he has already accepted the premise that “free” health care is a right. The fact that serious improvements can be immediately made to the cost of health care through measures such as Tort Reform legislation, and allowing American citizens to purchase their health insurance from any company in any state, matters little to the politician who long ago settled it in his or her heart that the elite-led State always knows better than the individual.

If in the consciences of our Commander-in-Chief, his administration and cabinet, and the ranking members of a Democrat-controlled congress, health care is a right, does anyone actually believe that their real intention is nothing more than a mere cost-effective alternative to private insurance? And if that is the case, if the current Leftist power brokers in Washington have no desire whatsoever to bring the health care system under their bureaucratic thumbs (should they be given the chance), then what sort of people are they? Have they no real convictions?

Have they been lying to their constituents for decades? Are those Americans who voted for Barack Obama because they desire Britain’s health care system not furious? Are the special interest groups and unions who rallied support and funds for then-Senator Obama not incensed that the promise of a public option leading to single-payer, State-run health care was all a ruse?

In one breath the Left tell us they believe in their heart of hearts that it is a right to have your government (via the coercively-taken fruits of more-successful people’s labors) provide you with “free” health insurance and care, and in the next, that we who disagree with their hypothesis and warn others about its potentially devastating effects on our nation’s economy (and soul) are fear-mongers who aren’t being honest about the “facts”.

Liberal Democrats have been trying for decades to get socialized medicine. They have specifically attempted to use the “public option” Trojan Horse numerous times. President Obama is on record as having said that the attempt at a public option would be his first legislative step towards a day when the federal government controlled the entire health care system.

In Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky’s seminal book on community organizing Barack Obama believed in so much that for more than a decade he taught classes to new activist recruits on its strategy and tactics from, the reformer-agitator is encouraged to use language that his or her audience is comfortable and familiar with in order to enact changes that the public would otherwise oppose.

Any of this ringing a bell?

I am open and honest regarding my ardent belief that health care is not a right: it is a privilege. Trimming down the size, scope, and waste of our government could more than help provide the funds needed to graciously aid those in the most desperate of needs. Private citizens and charities giving more of their time and money should be the rallying cry for all those who truly care for the disadvantaged. Specific, limited reforms, like the ones I mentioned earlier, can drastically decrease the costs of health care for everyone else.

Ignoring the reality of limited resources, our Constitution’s limits for what the federal government can do, and the inferior results of other nations’ State-controlled, single-payer health care systems is beyond foolish.

You know where I stand. If only our president was as forthcoming.

Obama "Joker" Culprit Found

2009-08-18T08:38:00.000-07:00

A 20 year-old college student from Chicago was the man behind the Obama Joker poster. He said he didn't come forward sooner because he's from the Windy City where people are "very, very liberal" and he feared being connected with anything negative about the president.

The dude who made this thing, Firas Alkhateeb, says he likes Barack better than W., but added:

"In terms of domestic policy, I don't think he's really doing much good for the country right now," he said. "We don't have to 'hero worship' the guy."

Will Grandma ever be plugged in to begin with?

2009-08-16T08:52:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn, as usual, offers the key insight many are missing in all the discussion about whether or not the government-run health care system President Obama envisions will "pull the plug on grandma" or not.

Anyway, there he (Obama) was, reassuring the crowd that the provision for mandatory "end-of-life counseling" has "gotten spun into this idea of 'death panels.' I am not in favor of that." Well, that's good to know. So good that a grateful audience applauded the president's pledge not to kill them. He has no plans, as he put it, to "pull the plug on Grandma."

The problem with government health systems is not that they pull the plug on Grandma. It's that Grandma has a hell of a time getting plugged in in the first place. The only way to "control costs" is to restrict access to treatment, and the easiest people to deny treatment to are the oldsters. Don't worry, it's all very scientific. In Britain, they use a "Quality-Adjusted Life Year" formula to decide that you don't really need that new knee because you're gonna die in a year or two, maybe a decade-and-a-half tops. So it's in the national interest for you to go around hobbling in pain rather than divert "finite resources" away from productive members of society to a useless old geezer like you.

Read the rest of Mark's column here.

I wonder why MSNBC has such low ratings?

2009-08-15T11:15:00.000-07:00

The prime time slot each night on MSNBC at 8pm (EST) is "filled" by the always level-headed Keith Olbermann. After watching this clip below it will become slightly clearer as to why NBC's cable news network is the least watched of the Big Three. Enjoy:

Play it cool Keith...real cool.

Liar, Lunatic, or Liberal

2009-08-14T11:50:00.000-07:00

There is a problem with so much of what the President is saying about his version of health care reform: it's flat-out wrong. One has to wonder why a man who ran on the promise that he would most certainly change "politics as usual" is employing the same old, tired liberal tactics of diversion and bait-and-switch. Either Barack Obama is insane when he promises that his plan will reduce costs, or his is lying through his teeth, or he is the die-in-the-wool far-Left liberal he ensured he wasn't.

Charles Krauthammer starts his latest column with this gem:

In the 48 hours of June 15-16, President Obama lost the health care debate. First, a letter from the Congressional Budget Office to Sen. Edward Kennedy reported that his health committee's reform bill would add $1 trillion in debt over the next decade. Then the CBO reported that the other Senate bill, being written by the Finance Committee, would add $1.6 trillion. The central contradiction of Obamacare was fatally exposed: From his first address to Congress, Obama insisted on the dire need for restructuring the health care system because out-of-control costs were bankrupting the Treasury and wrecking the U.S. economy -- yet the Democrats' plans would make the problem worse.

I'm literally speechless...

2009-08-13T21:28:00.000-07:00

This is what a public education will get you these days.

I don't mean to dump on this poor woman, but this is ridiculous. And hilarious. It's all real, nothing is staged, and she wanted to have her voice heard on a whole range of issues. Mission Accomplished.

Democrats Are Serious About Hearing Your Thoughts

2009-08-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

...unless they get a phone call during your question about the fate of your family's health care. This is one for the books:

Good Movies Galore

2009-08-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

Recently I made a list of 5 movies I consider "must-see's" and posted it here on AVITW. The nice people at a fantastic website called OnlyGoodMovies.com spotted my brief list, linked to it, and turned me on to their own various "must see" lists and movie reviews.

One big highlight from Only Good Movies was their "75 War Movies to See Before You Die" list. Check it out!

Spoiler alert: Their #1 is Patton

Who's left to blame?

2009-08-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

Syndicated columnist and host of ABC's 20/20 John Stossel gives a clear-headed refutation to the charges from Democrats and the liberal media that the protests at town hall meetings are fueled and funded by big, evil corporations. Turns out most of the big companies and industries being blamed for raining on the Left's Obamacare parade are in on the take themselves.

In light of all this, it's funny to watch Democrats and their activist allies panic over the protests at congressional town meetings around the country. Tools of the corporate interests! they cry. But anyone opposing "socialized medicine" at the meeting can't be a mouthpiece for big business because, as we've seen, big business supports government control. Conservative groups may be encouraging people to vent their anger at congressmen who pass burdensome legislation without even bothering to read it, but that's no reason to insult the protestors as pawns. What's wrong with organizations helping like-minded people to voice their opinions? Why do Democrats, such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, dismiss citizen participation as "AstroTurf" -- not real grassroots -- only when citizens oppose the kind of big government they favor?

Amateur Hour

2009-08-11T22:30:00.000-07:00

It would be difficult to find someone I fundamentally disagree with more than liberal feminist writer and professor Camille Paglia, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. Writing at Salon.com, Miss Paglia's latest column is a scathing condemnation of the amateurish way in which so many in the White House and Democrat-controlled Congress have handled the current health care debate.

A short excerpt:

Buyer's remorse? Not me. At the North American summit in Guadalajara this week, President Obama resumed the role he is best at -- representing the U.S. with dignity and authority abroad. This is why I, for one, voted for Obama and continue to support him. The damage done to U.S. prestige by the feckless, buffoonish George W. Bush will take years to repair. Obama has barely begun the crucial mission that he was elected to do.
Having said that, I must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? I was glad to see the White House counsel booted, as well as Michelle Obama's chief of staff, and hope it's a harbinger of things to come. Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.

Regardless your political views, or personal feelings about the health care issue, you really need to read the rest of this piece here. The condescending way in which the administration and so many among the leadership in Congress are treating the dissenters at townhall meetings will absolutely continue to come back to bite them.

The 2010 mid-term elections can't come soon enough!

Garbage In, Garbage Out

2009-08-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

Obama's current political troubles are the result of his misguided worldview, not GOP operatives
by:R.J. Moeller

As pundits and politicians scurry to explain, or explain away, the declining popularity and poll numbers for President Obama, the Democrat-dominated congress, and their Leftist policies intended to “re-make” America, many are missing the most obvious potential explanation. The ideas and pieces of legislation being suggested, from cap-and-trade to socialized medicine, are really bad ones and stem from a misguided worldview.

Perhaps it isn’t all the fault of Rush Limbaugh or evil insurance companies that Americans are voicing their disdain for the current Democratic leadership’s attempt to use an admittedly tumultuous and trying time for the nation to steam-roll every expansion of the federal government’s size, scope, and power that pops into their heads. Certainly there are contributing factors involved with the precipitous decline in the number of Americans who are in favor of the cost of the brand of change Obama promised. But the root cause for waning support may just be that the ideas and values our president and many currently in the highest reaches of power believe in are wrong and ineffective.

Let me be as clear as I can be: I do not reject Barack Obama the person. I do not question the fact that he believes he is doing what is best for this country. I do not believe he was born in Kenya. I do not believe he is a secret Muslim. He is by all accounts a loving father and good husband and provides an excellent role in this regard. God bless him for these and many other outstanding traits. My problem, and I believe his fundamental problem, is with the values and philosophies that shaped and influenced him prior to his becoming our Commander-in-Chief. My strong disagreement with him is at the level of values and convictions and world-view, not race or ethnicity.

Barack Obama and his administration are starting to suffer from the inevitable impact of years spent sitting at the feet of radical mentors who held distorted views of economics, politics, and morality.

To verify the truth of whether or not Barack Obama’s mentors and their ideas were indeed radical in nature, I turned not to the usual suspects for my information and proof. I don’t go to the pages of conservative magazines and Republican websites. Rather I sought out such self-avowed liberal sources as The New Republic Magazine, the New York Times, Barack Obama’s own published memoirs, and to the “bible” for all radical community organizers, Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals.

It was here I read for myself the very words of the very people that molded, shaped, influenced, and motivated the political worldview of our 44^th president. What I find is much more shocking and disturbing than some Sean Hannity diatribe, a Michael Steele scripted Republican National Committee press release, or a You Tube video forwarded by a wacky relative.

Barack Obama, the presidential candidate, was introduced to the nation as a community organizer from Chicago who represented a “new kind” of politician, one above the typical political fray. He presented himself as a consensus-builder, and talked frequently about reaching across the aisle to his Republican counterparts. He opined about a “common sense approach” and the need for our nation to move past “divisive” politics. The problem with his middle-of-the-road, even-Steven portrait of Obama, is that, in reality, it never existed.

How do we know that?

Let’s start with his Senate career. This 2-year period spent as a Senator, one in which he co-authored no more than a handful of meaningless bills, was by far the most “moderate” of his entire life. For such a term of moderation Barack Obama was rated the “most liberal" voting member of Congress. He stood to the Left of Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Joe Biden. During the 20 years before becoming the most liberal-voting Senator, he was known far and wide as a far-Left Chicago community organizer, one endowed with unusually effective rhetorical gifts.

So let’s turn next to his training as a community organizer. What is a community organizer?

It is at base a social agitator. At first I thought it might just be someone who organized block parties and helps to get out the vote? In fact, their primary goal according to Rules for Radicals, (and I quote) is to, “rub raw the wounds of discontent.” This is to be accomplished among primarily minority groups whose anger can be mobilized to bring about radical societal change. Saul Alinksy encourages tactics such as “overwhelming the system.” These tactics are designed to get the current system to collapse so a new collectivist, re-distributive form of social order can be erected in its place.

In other words, the community organizer’s political views, their "means" and "ends", are distinctly Marxist. (If you disagree, then you don’t know what Marxism is.) Their primary goal is to amass and centralize political power. Community organizers are left to decide what their own definitions of morality will be. This way, according to their dogma, anything standing in the way of doing what they have defined as the “right thing” becomes expendable. I’m not making this up. It’s in their literature, the very literature Obama embraced and taught classes on to new recruits during the 1980’s and 1990’s.

In one of the New Republic’s articles on the recent presidential campaign, journalist Ryan Lizza chronicled the ascendancy of Barack Obama. He takes us on the journey of a 24 year old agnostic who moved to Chicago after responding to an advertisement in the New York Times, to the United States Senator who would eventually become Commander-in-Chief. The details of that rise, of the people Obama worked for, and the things he believed in and taught others to believe in, are all at serious odds with the bi-partisan, non-radical, new type of politician President Obama insisted he was during the campaign.

For example, the organization that hired Obama after he graduated Columbia University was the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC). The men who ran it were primarily atheist and white males who realized that were being rejected by black pastors and community leaders because of their skin color and lack of religious faith. They hired Barack because he was black, well spoken, and believed in the radical ideology of Chicago’s own Saul Alinsky. Alinsky is ofen called the “father of community organizing” though he died in 1972. His influence lived on however, as he left behind him a number of organizations that trained future agitators under the guidance of his published magnum opus, Rules for Radicals.

Barack Obama was himself first turned away by the same Chicago pastors and leaders. Why? Because he was working for the same atheist white guys the group had previously rejected, and it was known that he was not a church-going man.

The turning point for Barack Obama’s career came when he was introduced to Reverend Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Hyde Park. He urged Obama to join his church in order to win over the confidence of the black community, which he did.It cannot be avoided that Barack Obama, the man who claims to be a moderate from the school of common sense, chose for his home church and pastor a mentor that a pro-Obama liberal magazine described like this:

Wright was a former Muslim and black nationalist who had studied at Howard and Chicago, and Trinity's guiding principles--what the church calls the "BlackValue System"--included a "Disavowal of the Pursuit of 'Middleclassness.'"

So who helped shape President Obama’s thinking? In addition to the self-avowed radicals who idolized the likes of Saul Alinsky, the next most important person was Jeremiah Wright. Wright taught his congregants that white people invented AIDS, America is an awful place that needs fundamental change, and that the purpose of the church body is to strive for the re-distribution of wealth. So what is the ideological formula that formed the political mindset of our 44^th President?

Leftist Social Agitation + Leftist Social Gospel + Corrupt Chicago Politics = Barack Obama.

The point here is this: the President and his policies are becoming increasingly unpopular because they are simply wrong. They are wrong because they emanate from ill-conceived, incorrect understandings of the world around us. They are based on a flawed view of economics, history, and Judeo-Christian inspired American ideals and values. Because his policies are based on wrong ideas, if he continues to follow this misguided course to re-shape America, they will fail and he will fail.

I consistently read men like Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman for a better understanding of economics. I turn to the likes of CS Lewis, GK Chesterton and Albert Mohler for matters of faith and worldview. The pastors of the churches I have attended in my life have undeniably impacted me in profound ways and have helped to shape the way I think about God. I am proud to be associated in any way with any of these men. Soaking up wisdom from others is an unavoidable reality of life and learning for all humans who begin that life knowing little of the world, of economics, of politics, etc.

Although I am not responsible for every word of every book or sermon these men have put out for public consumption, it has been impossible for me not to come away from the time I spend with them (or their thoughts) changed forever.

So who changed Obama? Who helped steer him in the direction he has now walked for decades as a public figure, first in Chicago and now in Washington? Could it be that the ideology and worldview Barack Obama was exposed to is what has led him, and now our country, to the point where handing over more than 1/6 of the American allegedly-free-market economy to the federal government is even on the table? Might more and more Americans be rejecting the president's plans not just because of a poor marketing strategy by the White House, but because more and more Americans are realizing that the radical community organizer persona that seemed trendy and hip last year was really just their "Obama goggles" talking?

Like any other loyal American I would rather have my President succeed than fail. So here’s my advice: You can still succeed, Mr. President, but only by radically changing course now. Become the moderate you ensured us you are. Prove to us that the distance you have attempted to put between you and your radical past is sincere.

Take the intellectual and ideological refuse you filled your head with for all those years out to the curb one last time and let history's garbageman place it upon the pile where it belongs.

Communism Kills

2009-08-10T11:20:00.000-07:00

A drunk guy in Belarus was killed by a statue of the infamous Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin that fell on top of him. Apart from the tragedy of the situation, I can't imagine a better metaphor of what Lenin and Marx's ideas did (and continue to do) to people all around the world the last century.

"Please Support Something I Haven't Read"

2009-08-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

Americans want reform in health care and health care insurance. They DO NOT want an overhaul, especially the kind envisioned by our current president and Congress. But never let the will of the people stop you when you have hope and change to spread among the non-elite masses, right?

Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas hits the nail on the head with his biting critique of the Democrats' rebuffed efforts to steamroll Obamacare right up and over the American people.

An excerpt:

Mrs. Sebelius and members of Congress are fanning out across the country, trying to defend a health care reform plan that is only partially written, unexplainable and still unread by many representatives and senators. In a joint appearance with Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Democrat, Mrs. Sebelius responded to shouts and catcalls from a skeptical audience at the Constitution Center in heavily Democratic Philadelphia. She said Mr. Specter shouldn't be criticized because the Senate's version of the bill has not yet been written. This takes hubris to a new level. It is one thing for a member of Congress to vote on legislation he hasn't read; it is quite another for government officials to ask for support of a bill that has not been written, at least in the Senate.

Let's see what respected Representative John Conyers (D-MI), an ardent supporter of the health care reform the president is proposing, has to say about all this...

Where's the harm in that?

2009-08-05T11:59:00.001-07:00

Professor Walter E. Williams of George Mason University consistently produces some of the most brilliant discourse on freedom, liberty, and economics available today. His latest column on what role government can, and should, play in deciding what is "harmful" is no exception.

An excerpt:

In a free society, many conflicting harms are settled through the institution of private property rights. Private property rights have to do with rights belonging to the person deemed owner of property to keep, acquire, use and dispose of property as he deems fit so long as he does not violate similar rights of another.

Let's say that you are offended, possibly harmed, by bars that play vulgar rap music and permit smoking. If you could use government to outlaw rap music and smoking in bars, you would be benefited and people who enjoyed rap music and smoking would be harmed. Again, there is no scientific or intelligent way to determine whose harm is more important.

In a free society, the question of who has the right to harm whom, by permitting rap music and smoking, is answered by the property rights question: Who owns the bar? In a socialistic society, such conflicting harms are resolved through government intimidation and coercion.

Mad About You (Actually Voicing Your Opinion)

2009-08-05T08:16:00.000-07:00

It seems that the White House is hopping mad about members of various communities organizing themselves to try and impede the march towards Obamacare. Strange coming from a president and administration that offered as their credibility during the campaign the fact that they were able to organize so many unhappy Americans to bring about change.

The White House said Tuesday that some of the anger that Democratic lawmakers have encountered at town hall meetings over the past several days is "manufactured."
"In fact, I think you've had groups today, Conservatives for Patients Rights, that have bragged about organizing and manufacturing that anger," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

This is literally the definition of community organizing, and almost verbatim a description of what Barack Obama spent his entire professional career doing in Chicago. From the liberal magazine The New Republic in 2007:

Yet Obama connects his past as a Chicago organizer to his presidential bid with surprising ease. Last month, during his first visit to South Carolina since his campaign announcement, we discussed his community-organizing days. He sat at the head of along table inside a dimly lit hotel conference room in Columbia and ate a chocolate energy bar. When I began to suggest links between his organizing work then and his current campaign, he interrupted:"I think there is. I don't think you need to strain for it." He was at home talking Alinskian jargon about "agitation," which he defined as "challenging people to scrape away habit," and he fondly recalled organizing workshops where he learned the concept of "being predisposed to other people's power."

Obama's self-conception as an organizer isn't just a campaign gimmick. Organizing remained central to Obama long after his stint on the South Side. In the 13 years between Obama's return to Chicago from law school and his Senate campaign, he was deeply involved with the city's constellation of community- organizing groups. He wrote about the subject. He attended organizing seminars. He served on the boards of foundations that support community organizing. He taught Alinsky's concepts and methods in workshops. When he first ran for office in 1996, he pledged to bring the spirit of community organizing to his job in the state Senate. And, after he was elected to the U.S. Senate, his wife, Michelle, told a reporter, "Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change." Recalling her remark in 2005, Obama wrote, "I take that observation as a compliment."
By defining himself as a "community organizer" above all else, Obama is linking himself to America's radical democratic tradition and presenting himself as an heir to a particular political style and methodology that, at least superficially, contrasts sharply with the candidate Obama has become. Community organizers see themselves as disciples of Thomas Paine and the colonists who dumped tea in Boston Harbor. Historically, they have revered the tactics of the labor militants of the 1930s, and they became famous in the '60s for the political theater championed by Alinsky, illustrated most memorably by his threat of a "fart-in" at a Rochester, New York, opera house to bring attention to the Kodak company's refusal to hire blacks.

Please understand that even if you support the president, what he and his people are doing to try and undermine those opposed to socialized medicine (via Obama's "public option" scam) is hypocritical on a scale seldom seen. Anyone has just as much right to organize themselves to complain about their government as anyone else. That isn't reserved only for demographics popular with the mainstream media and who agree with David Axelrod's vision to "re-make" America.

Quote of the Week

2009-08-04T20:44:00.000-07:00

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name - liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names - liberty and tyranny." -Abraham Lincoln 1864

Public option = Socialized Medicine

2009-08-03T12:23:00.000-07:00

It's not hard to understand why the leadership among the Democrats has gone to such great and exhaustive rhetorical lengths to "hide" the obvious fact about their push for health care "reform": they really desire universal care, run by the federal government (a.k.a. them).

But many of you will think or say that this is just "partisan politics as usual" and that the Dem's really just want to help out the little guy. I won't judge or impugn their motives, so I will let them speak for themselves about the deception they are engaged in. First off, Barney Frank, who has claimed that Obama's "public option" is not socialized medicine, and had this to say last week when asked about it:

Then there is the man himself, The One, President Barack Obama who has incessantly insisted this summer that his public insurance option is not a "Trojan horse" to universal, state-run health care.

At what point do we start believing that they really might be trying to take over the health care industry, and not simply offering a simple alternative in insurance?

But I am a conservative, so I must be posting something like this because of a deep, loyal love for John McCain, right?

Liberals want the government to run the private sector to the greatest possible extent. Is it really so hard to make the logical leap to the conclusion that this "public option" nonsense is an excuse to take control of more than 1/6 of our economy? Why can't the president just admit that this is what he wants? Why all the side-stepping and in some cases, bold-face lying?

Tell me how one is supposed to feel in light of these realities...What is the proper "tone" one should take with such out-right deceit?

Iran's Ready...Are We?

2009-08-02T22:34:00.000-07:00

From the Times of London: Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb, Western intelligence sources have told The Times of London.

The sources said that Iran completed a research programme to create weaponised uranium in the summer of 2003 and that it could feasibly make a bomb within a year of an order from its Supreme Leader.

You're move, President Obama. Israel won't wait much longer for gab-sessions with Iran.

The Cato Institute Says "Yes"

2009-08-02T12:37:00.001-07:00

Does Obama support socialized medicine? The libertarian Cato Institute's Michael F. Cannon has this to say:

Reasonable people can disagree over whether Obama’s health plan would be good or bad. But to suggest that it is not a step toward socialized medicine is absurd.

More from Sowell on Obama's Vision for America

2009-08-01T18:51:00.000-07:00

Amateur Hour in the White House

2009-07-31T08:56:00.000-07:00

I'm currently working on an upcoming piece about the real reasons President Obama's poll numbers and popularity (especially among the "moderates" who put him in office) have dropped this summer, but for now, enjoy the wisdom and insight of Thomas Sowell. His latest nationally syndicated column is sobering.

An excerpt:

Group identity politics has poisoned many other countries, including at various times Kenya, Czechoslovakia, Fiji, Guyana, Canada, Nigeria, India, and Rwanda. In some countries the polarization has gone as far as mass expulsions or civil war.

The desire of many Americans for a "post-racial" society is well-founded, though the belief that Barack Obama would move in that direction was extremely ill-advised, given the history of his actions and associations.

This is a president on a mission to remake American society in every aspect, by whatever means are necessary and available. That requires taking all kinds of decisions out of the hands of ordinary Americans and transferring them to Washington elites-- and ultimately the number one elite, Barack Obama himself.

Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the prospects of what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power. Often this has been accompanied by an ignorance of history, including the history of how many people before him have tried similar things with disastrous results.

Free Our Health Care...Now

2009-07-30T20:05:00.001-07:00

If you haven't signed the petition to "Free our health care", PLEASE do so. It takes 20 seconds to fill out, and it really can have an effect on the way our representatives vote this fall. There are more options out there than are being presented by the media who has posed this important debate as a "Obamacare or nothing" one...which is nonsense. Newt agrees with me:

The Sins of the Conservative Father

2009-07-28T23:32:00.000-07:00

A Sad Legacy of Conservative Indifference towards Minorities

by: R.J. Moeller

The prevailing lack of concern towards matters of race and ethnicity has been holding the conservative movement back from convincingly making its case to the entire American electorate for some time now. It is difficult to say it, especially in light of the fact that so much of the “racially insensitive” stigma that we on the Right remain shackled with has been purposely perpetuated and exaggerated by those who have vested interests in seeing certain opposing political parties and ideologies succeed. But where there is smoke there is fire, and our shameful track record of failing to care enough to genuinely reach across ethnic and cultural lines has been smoldering among supporters of conservative, libertarian, and Republican principles for decades

Understandably, few issues are more sensitive than those related to race. For this specific reason, my intent today is simply to offer some sober reflection on what I see as some of the root causes for the cultural and political chasm that unmistakably exists between the white religious conservative demographic (that I myself am apart of), and the black and Latino communities that exist all around this great nation of ours.

Why is it that when we agree on so many core moral and social issues with black and Latino voters, when we share so many common values, that the conservative movement has not made any serious in-roads with black and Latino voters? Why it is when people of color such as Condoleeza Rice, Thomas Sowell, or Alberto Gonzalez boldly proclaim their conservative beliefs, they are immediately lambasted by the race-obsessed media as near-traitors, or largely ignored among their own ethnic and racial ranks? Why are there no conservative think-tanks, or so few GOP offices, in the same neighborhoods where ACORN and Obama have community-organized their way to political victory?

My theory, in short: we’re suffering from the “sins of our (conservative) fathers.”

One of the best writers in history, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, deeply believed in the biblical idea of “generational sin.” In what I consider to be his finest work, The Possessed (a.k.a. The Devils), Dostoevsky goes to great detailed lengths to show how the moral decisions of one generation irrevocably alter the lives and culture of those in succeeding ones.

Through characters such as Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky and his son Peter we see how the offspring of intellectually and morally irresponsible people often suffer the unintended consequences of their forbearers. Stepan was a professor and intellectual who helped to promote among the youths of Russia the idea that to undermine and ignore authority, specifically in regards to the institutions of the Church and the traditional family, was an exciting and beneficial thing. Consequently his son, the depraved Peter Verhhovensky, decided to do his old man one better: He actively seeks to violently hack Russian society’s anchor away from its moral and cultural mooring in favor first of senseless and eventually atheistic communism.

Although The Possessed was a novel written in the 1860’s, Dostoyevsky correctly identified the cultural “sins” of his beloved country that would eventually, some 50 years later, lead Russia towards the devastation that is totalitarianism. He wasn’t Nostradamus; he simply saw the danger in the contemporary trends and ideologies of his time, and was discerning enough to be able to predict their consequences.

Culturally speaking, the last 50 years in America have seen some remarkable changes for the better. Civil Rights legislation in the 1960’s finally put a legal end to institutional racism. There is today a black President sitting in the Oval Office, and black celebrities from Oprah to Will Smith to Tiger Woods are appropriately in the nation’s headlines given their talents and success.

Before Tiger and Will there was a man, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who challenged the conscience of a nation with his compelling and prolific speeches and writings. He and so many others, whites and blacks, worked tirelessly to see a day when the standard for judging another human would be the “content of their character” instead of the color of their skin. The Civil Rights pioneers used deliberately, unapologetically religious terminology and understood that hatred and bigotry are written on the sinful human heart. They also understood that while it was so important for all Americans to be equal under the law, true social harmony and acceptance is an on-going process that can incrementally improve but will never be entirely completed “in this world, but the next.”

The pleas from abolitionists, from Civil Rights activists, were appeals to the distinctly American value system. They were appeals to a standard envisioned and articulated by our Founders: free men and women living in the type of true freedom that emanates from the recognition that their rights are Creator-endowed, not State-endowed.

As a Christian and a conservative, someone who identifies with the politics, faith and worldview of great men such as John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan, I look back on the racial sins of my nation, my ancestral fathers and mothers, with astonishment, grief, and even horror. I experience the same type of sorrow and moral outrage one feels when you hear of the nightmares that were the Holocaust or the more recent Rwandan genocide.

The idea that men and women could (and did) treat other human beings with such cruelty, inhumanity, and degradation, including the and lynching that took place, is repulsive to the sensibilities of any sane person. It is so at odds with the common desire for simple human decency most Americans have today that stories of past violent from -filled eras become surreal, other-worldly historical events and perhaps unavoidably little more.

This disassociation with our past, something all humans in the modern, civilized world seem to struggle against, is also a real problem among many white conservatives today. The past is either too distant from our busy, self-obsessed lives, or in many instances simply too painful to accept given how we wish to see ourselves (and our proud history as a generous, courageous nation otherwise). Therefore we so often instinctively consign all recognition of our racist legacy to a small corner of our collective and individual consciousness.

In other words, we live as if it never happened.

This emotional detachment from the shocking realities of the sins of are, I believe, perhaps the primary factor explaining the great divide specifically between white traditional, conservative Americans and their black (and Hispanic) brethren.

Few Americans in 2009, regardless their skin color, can actually claim to know what it felt like to have been a slave. But many continue to feel the enduring hurt and pain of bigotry. Many are still mistreated because of the way they look and for no other reason. Sadly, some will be refused consideration as a viable political candidate because of the perpetually destructive climate of race-infused “identity politics” that so tes our cultural landscape these days.

Yet, despite these grim present day realities, it is also wrong to paint any entire demographic, whether it is Caucasian conservatives or inner-city blacks, with one giant bigoted brush. While there are definitely still those among us who readily drink from the racial toxins of the past, the overwhelming majority of the people I know across the color spectrum are anything but racists.

In my own life, what I am far more familiar with are the loving, kind, and caring conservatives that raised me; that surround me at my church; or that write the books and articles that further inform me about my faith and brand of politics. They struggle, as I struggle, with the indisputable fact of America’s troubled racial history, but are often unsure as to how best to deal with those facts. Therefore the mainstream media’s popular script that all conservatives are bigots (or closet ones) who personally care little for blacks and Latinos is not true, any more than the erroneous claim that all liberals are innately free of .

But the fact that we’re not all bigots can by no means get “my people” off the hook when it comes to the causes of current racial tensions. As I said, the most glaring failure of (predominantly Republican-voting) white religious conservatives these past five decades has been the almost entirely hands-off approach we’ve taken to in dealing with minority groups. This separation from engagement in the lives and concerns of minority groups can be explained (not excused) by a number of potential causes.

Part of the problem is that white conservatives feel brow-beaten by the media, Hollywood, and Democratic Party strategists and end up accepting the premise that only liberals love the “little guy” and aggrieved minorities. It’s also partly because minority groups have so completely and openly aligned themselves with the liberal Democratic policies and programs that conservatives find unacceptable.

But the most serious cause of our unfortunate retreat from serious and sustained bridge-building efforts between our communities and theirs is that we simply haven’t cared enough to try.

Perhaps we have been too filled with apprehension or fear of failure, or perhaps too self-assured that we could win the political day without the support of minorities, or perhaps we have been just too absorbed in our lives and personal agendas. In any case we have failed to reach outside of our familiar voting blocks to those in other ethnic circles. One clear consequence of this sin of omission is that we conservatives have dug ourselves into a demographic pit which we may not climb out of for a generation. Not unless there is a serious, heartfelt, altruistic, and unselfish effort to build personal relationships and genuine coalitions with members of the black and Hispanic community will we see a shift in voting patterns, demographics, and big-government policies at the local, state, and federal levels.

The traditional, conservative movement is not going to change course until we as individual white conservatives change course and actively begin building individual friendships person to person – rather than only just voter to voter – with those who are different in skin color and cultural background than we are. Things won’t change until we have credibility among groups of people who largely feel white conservatives don’t care.

The fact that the Republican Party was created primarily over the moral imperative to free the slaves is one of the great historical ironies of our time. How is it that the party that stood up to such a monstrous institutional evil of slavery is today the same party identified with racial polarization and isolation? How is it that the same party which produced the first black Senators and Congressmen during Reconstruction today struggles to find candidates of color to serve as standard-bearers for the conservative movement? Why can’t the same values and principles that spurred the white conservatives who led the abolitionist movement be a force for good and truth in minority communities today?

Though we can take some solace (even pride) in our origins as conservative Republicans, the real question comes back to this: What are we doing today to connect with the lives and needs of our fellow black and Latino citizens? Sure it is historically accurate to note that it was Republicans, and not the Southern Democrats, who helped President Lyndon Johnson pass the historic Civil Rights legislation in 1964. But how many black and Hispanic families can point to white conservatives today and say, “They are genuinely interested in me as a person. They reach out to me at work, at church, in politics. They want to learn my life’s story and build a friendship for friendship’s sake.”

Let me put it another way: All of the economic or social good white conservatives may have attempted for minorities, for all Americans, in the past 50 years has been too easily negated by the failure to instill in this next generation a genuine desire to personally connect with people of different skin color and socio-economic background.

Please understand that I don’t have the audacity to think I know exactly how to best bring people together. I leave such self-important thinking to community organizers from the Southside of Chicago. In all honesty, I can only claim one black person in my life that qualifies as a true personal friend. He and I are connected not through a government cultural sensitivity training program, but through our shared values and mutual interests.

But if we’re talking about the beginnings of a real shift in the relationship between white conservative Americans, and the minority communities around us, we’re going to have to think bigger. We’ll have to do more than just sit around hoping for a black or Hispanic person to catch our eye at Starbucks and ask what our Milton Friedman book is about. I’m not entirely sure how to go about it all, but I do know this much – we need to change course and do so now. We need to start talking about this issue with a real urgency. Not primarily to regain some future political demographic high ground, for that would be using relationships simply as a utilitarian means to an end – and such bald insincerity would be sniffed out for what it is in a moment.

Rather, as conservatives we should focus on building friendships across ethnic lines and accepting others into our lives with cultural differences because it is the right (dare I say biblical) thing to do.

Yet, politics impacts people’s lives for good or ill so we must not dismiss it entirely from the issue at hand. Votes matter and in no way is it wrong or immoral to try and persuade members of any ethnic community that the conservative philosophy of life holds much more promise for lasting advancement and prosperity than does the liberal one. But again, what we truly struggle with is that the sins of indifference from our past have caught up with modern conservatives. Liberals have seized upon our largely apathetic legacy and now set the terms of the debate by being proactive with their bad ideas.

We have the better, more American ideas, ideas that could absolutely change the entire socio-economic landscape for blacks and Latinos, yet our idea on the Right of engaging minorities in the political realm is sitting back to wait and see who Colin Powell will vote for. At that point, you’ve lost the minority vote.

The tragic paradox in this is that as a white, evangelical, conservative American I likely share more in common when it comes to family values and Judeo-Christian beliefs with the typical black and Hispanic voter than does a secular-progressive liberal such as Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). But what good does our common ground do if I choose never to set foot on it and extend my hand? In practical, political terms, when is the GOP going to set up offices in inner-city neighborhoods and go door to door with their message of genuine empowerment and hope with even half of the same zealotry that ACORN did in 2008?

The fact that our first black president was not a conservative Republican, but a far-Left, pro-choice, Euro-socialist is disappointing, but it isn’t a surprise. Ignore any group long enough and they will go elsewhere looking for friends – even if those friends prove to be radicals whose policies perpetuate the problems minorities face.

One can only wonder what would have happened if white, evangelical conservatives had reached out to Barack’s single mother and the young Obama in those difficult and lonely days they were literally on their own? What if instead of feeling that he needed to prove his black identity by joining radically Leftist activists, Barack had been attracted to the multiple organizations comprised of black and white conservatives working on the Southside of Chicago to bring messages of entrepreneurship, personal responsibility, job training, and all the other things that could really change these impoverished neighborhoods?

While there are undoubtedly other reasons I’m not aware of, reasons I intend to seek out and learn more about, I do understand in part why many black and Hispanic people feel alienated from white conservatives. We’ve not seriously pursued a relationship with them. We’ve not made our case directly to them. We’ve not been genuinely interested in being friends for friendship’s sake, nor have we attempted to get any feedback from them.

Until we do, until we change the dynamics of this largely non-existent relationship, until we begin to seriously make amends for past sins of indifference and ambivalence, and do so with the solemn intent to build lasting relationships across cultural lines, we can expect only more of the same. The economically-crippling, socially-destructive, morally-incoherent liberal worldview that currently tes our politics, media, and academia will continue to push us away from the ideals and values that the majority of Americans, regardless their skin color, still hold dear.

We can blame our parents no longer. As Civil Rights marchers in the 1960’s used to chant, “Do right, white man. Do right.” The time is now, and much more than a political election here-or-there is at stake.

What Iran Thinks

2009-07-28T12:16:00.000-07:00

I realize there is a slew of legitimate things to be concerned about in our own country, what with socialized medicine and angry Harvard professors taking up most of our time and patience, but please don't forget about the dangerous regime in Iran which is intent on developing nuclear capabilities in the not-too-distant future.

Amir Taheri, writing in today's NY Post, offers some sober reminders about the murderous mullahs in Tehran.

Here's what the bad guys think of us over there:

According to the newspaper Kayhan, which reflects the views of the leadership in Tehran, the United States is "in a state of strategic desperation" in the Middle East and has no stomach for a serious confrontation with Iran.

Follow up from Steyn

2009-07-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

I like to refortify my positions with the wisdom of wiser conservatives than myself, so take a gander at what columnist-of-the-world Mark Steyn has to say about the racially-charged controversy surrounding President Obama, his Harvard friend Professor Gates, and a local cop in Cambridge, MA. This is the single best column on the matter that I've come across to-date.

An excerpt:

By common consent, the most memorable moment of Barack Obama’s otherwise listless press conference on “health care” were his robust remarks on the “racist” incident involving Prof. Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge police. The latter “acted stupidly,” pronounced the chief of state. The president of the United States may be reluctant to condemn Ayatollah Khamenei or Hugo Chávez or that guy in Honduras without examining all the nuances and footnotes, but sometimes there are outrages so heinous that even the famously nuanced must step up to the plate and speak truth to power. And thank God the leader of the free world had the guts to stand up and speak truth to municipal police sergeant James Crowley.

For everyone other than the president, what happened at Professor Gates’s house is not entirely clear. The Harvard prof returned home without his keys and, as Obama put it, “jimmied his way into the house.” Someone witnessing the “break-in” called the cops, and things, ah, escalated from there. Professor Gates is now saying that, if Sergeant Crowley publicly apologizes for his racism, the prof will graciously agree to “educate him about the history of racism in America.” Which is a helluva deal. I mean, Ivy League parents re-mortgage their homes to pay Gates for the privilege of lecturing their kids, and here he is offering to hector it away to some no-name lunkhead for free.

There appears to be a foot in your mouth, Mr. President

2009-07-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

President Obama held a press conference this week to try and win over the hearts and minds of Americans to his "public option" health insurance plan. Well, not only did that sale-pitch appear to ring as hollow as it actually is, but the Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America also made sure to find time at the end of his remarks to castigate the Cambridge Police Department for arresting a friend of his, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. (pictured left)

Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department arrested Professor Gates the other night when a neighbor of Gates' called in to report what she thought was a robbery taking place. Turns out it was actually just Gates having to work hard to open a door on his house that was broken. Keep in mind that the police have been called out to this same residence before for a break in. When Sgt. Crowley showed up and asked to see some ID from the good professor, Gates did what all liberal intellectuals would do and played the "race card". Read more of the story here, it's a doozy!

Well now the Cambridge police are rightly asking for an apology from the President who, without knowing the full report and relying on his community organizer's intuition of any matters involving white policemen, called their actions "stupid".

But all our fearless leader can muster is a comment via his press secretary that Obama regrets "the obsession" over his comments. Not that he is sorry for saying what he did about a situation he knew nothing about, siding against his own employees in the police force, but sorry that we non-Harvard educated dopes care so much about what the most important office-holder, a man who promised to bring unity to this nation, foolishly said in condemnation of appropriate actions by civil servants.

This is pathetic and embarrassing. It won't "sink" Obama's presidency or anything, but please recognize that while the president maintains we can't be so quick to make moral pronouncements about evil empires such as Iran and North Korea, he is all-too-ready to accuse and alienate our own citizens because a buddy of his made a fool of himself and was arrested.

The Five Movies You Need To See Before You Die

2009-07-22T22:34:00.001-07:00

I was raised by my dad to love and appreciate great pieces of cinematic history. I've often felt like I was born in the wrong generation in regards to the type of movies, music, and literature I prefer. But trust me when I say that the movies I've listed here below are worth the time of any person at any time and of any age. I saw all of these movies before the age of 12, and dozens of times since.

These are classics that actually had story and plot-lines, fantastic acting, thrilling musical scores, and cinematography that didn't require "green screens" or CGI effects.

I've not listed them in any particular order, but I will start things off with my favorite movie of all time first:

1. Ben-Hur (1959) Starring the incomparable Charlton Heston

2. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) Based on the autobiography of legendary British soldier T.E. Lawrence who helped lead the Arab Revolt against the Turks during WWI

3. Doctor Zhivago (1965) Epic and exciting tale of the Russian Communist Revolution, told through the eyes of a mild-mannered doctor and the women he loved. Based on the Nobel prize winning novel of the same name.

4. Patton (1970) The definitive film on the definitive American general of the last 100 years. This movie won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actor (George C. Scott)

5. The Bridge Over the River Kwai (1957) British soldiers sent to blow up a bridge built by British soldiers held captive in a Japanese POW camp during WWII

Watch these films and you'll be a better person.

We Should Support Honduras, Liberty

2009-07-20T22:34:00.000-07:00

by: R.J. Moeller

“This isn’t about the process, it’s about results.”
-David Axelrod

Even for all the “ends justify the means” proponents out there, that is some kind of daunting gauntlet for the president’s chief strategist and policy adviser to so publicly lie down. Of course Mr. Axelrod, a man who sharpened his political fangs in the most corrupt political system in the nation (Chicago), was in this quote specifically referring to the attitude the administration and congress have in regards to their bringing of Nanny-State socialized medicine to the Land of Liberty.

But if this really is the accepted mentality in the White House these days, one has to wonder why it is that Axelrod’s own boss is so disinterested in applying the same standard to situations that legitimately cry out for a “big picture” view?

I am speaking of the compelling plight of the people in the tiny Central American nation of Honduras.

A few weeks back here at A Voice in the Wilderness, I wrote about the misplaced moral priorities that result after years, perhaps a lifetime, of treating the “good bad and the bad good.” Specifically, I mentioned the disproportionate moral outrage shown to conservatives such as Sarah Palin, and the relatively non-existent moral outrage directed at the tyrannical theocratic regime in Iran who recently rigged their country’s presidential election. President Obama had none of the same dazzling rhetoric to offer in support of the courageous protesters who were defying a murderous oligarchy in the name of democracy and increase freedom.

Caution and discretion were required, or so we were told.

Yet it was only a matter of days after the protests broke out in Iran, as we were holding our national tongue in regards to other country’ affairs, that our president’s own vow-of-foreign-policy-silence was broken.

The Supreme Court of Honduras ordered the general of the military to forcibly remove the sitting president for attempting to forcibly bypass the national constitution and implement himself as a Castro-like ruler-for-life. Because of the not-too-distant horrors of a military dictatorship that existed for more than 20 years in the Western hemisphere’s 3rd poorest nation, the now-democratic nation has a constitutional condition that no leader is allowed to legally serve more than one term in office. Their ousted president had been trying to amend the Honduran constitution for months as his one-and-only term, which officially was supposed to end this fall, drew to a close.

The congress of Honduras opposed him. The Supreme Court opposed him. The military opposed him. And more importantly, the people (and the constitution) of Honduras overwhelmingly opposed him.

Guess who denounced the removal of the wannabe monarch, misleadingly calling what transpired a “military coup”? Hugo Chavez. The Castro brothers. The United Nations.

Oh, and Barack Obama.

The same day this story broke from Central America, our commander-in-chief publicly and roundly condemned the ousting. Never mind that it was a last resort for a nation desperate to avoid the tyranny from its own past. Never mind that it was completely legal under Honduran law. Never mind that a “coup” means that an independent and rouge militia takes over an entire government, which absolutely did not happen. Never mind that the president of Honduras’ own party, the same one which currently controls the congress, opposed his power-grab attempts and agreed with his forcible removal.

What is important is that “the world” now allegedly loves us more, right? Trading our support of liberty and freedom around the globe for the approval of the United Nations and Raul Castro is more important in the long run, don’t you think?

Folks, this is a travesty of epic proportions. If not reversed, our refusal to stand with Israel and Taiwan, the only two nations coming to Honduras’ defense on the world stage, will be a blight and shame on the history and honor of the United States of America.

It will rank up there with our abandoning of millions of allies in Southeast Asia after Vietnam who was subsequently massacred by the communists after our cowardly departure. It will rank up there with our abandoning of the Kurds in northern Iraq at the end of the first Gulf War, who were then systematically targeted and murdered on a mass scale by Saddam Hussein.

It will rank up there with the missed opportunity in Iran last month to side with people opposed to the people currently building nuclear weapons to destroy Israel and hold the world hostage.

The frustration one feels as they begin to assess the situation in Honduras, a situation unmistakably clear as to what position one should take on it, is almost too much to bear. These are the times when I have to ask those committed to Obama's vision of change: how can we sit so idly by? The United States government has now cut off military aid to the impoverished nation. Further economic sanctions from countries like Venezuela, the main supplier of oil to Honduras, are already taking a heavy toll on the economy and lives of the Honduran people.

And for what? Because they followed their own laws and stopped a president form taking unprecedented and illegal powers?

What is happening here? How can we tolerate such morally confused behavior from our leaders? Fellow citizens, please for a moment put all partisan nonsense to the side and search your hearts and consciences: why in the world can we not speak for freedom’s sake in Iran, but then speak out against it in Honduras?

I realize the diplomatic and economic stakes are much higher when it comes to a near-nuclear, fanatical power like Iran, but our own nation was built on ideas and values and natural laws that are supposed to supercede both our leaders and electorate.

Can we not even offer up verbal or, if necessary, monetary support for people who yearn to be free from the same enemies we are threatened by ideologically and in some cases, militarily? Of course there are wonderful, concerned Americans who are voicing their support for Honduras, including radio talk show host Dennis Prager who actually traveled to Central America last week, broadcasting live from Honduras...but where our elected leaders and officials?

Make no mistake about it: the world is watching the United States. We know that many government heads hate us around the globe, but millions more of the actual citizens of those same countries love America and what we stand for. They immigrate here every day. They swim through shark-infested waters to arrive at our shores. Sure we have issues with illegal immigration, but the reason we have been blessed with greatness is first, our values (i.e. liberty, e pluribus unum, “In God We Trust”), and second, the great people who come assimilate here and take hold of their destiny in the “land of opportunity.”

Not everyone can come to the birthplace of freedom to live and work, and the people around the planet who choose to stay and adopt the values that America did not create, but uniquely identified and implemented, deserve our support. Obama said that part of his rationale in keeping silent in Iran was that we should not meddle in the affairs of other nations when it comes to their elections and political procedures.

Why then the turning of the proverbial back on Honduras, a nation who in following their laws, were forced to force their power-hungry, over-reaching leader out of office and the country? Why publicly side with the likes of Chavez and the Castro’s, especially when they are so clearly wrong and manipulating the rhetoric of democracy to condemn a people brave enough to stand up to their brand of political thuggery and strong-arming?

The process of removing threats to liberty is not always pleasant, and certainly offers no comfort to the weak-of-heart. But when has it ever been easy to maintain freedom even in a free country like our own? Who said it had to be “by the book” when bad people are opposed and prevented from dominating others? When we remain silent, evil triumphs. Hugo Chavez won’t stop trying to implement disciples of his socialist totalitarianism in countries in Central and South America. Consequently, we must never stop promoting and supporting those who oppose such soul-crushing authoritarianism, even if only with words. Just because we can’t send troops doesn’t mean we can’t help change the course of history for other freedom-loving people.

Let us pray that our leaders begin to put a higher premium on principles and values than on popularity and moral compromise. Let us pray that Obama and Axelrod begin to treat tyranny and oppression with even a fraction of the same cut-throat tenacity they do the uninhibited spending of our tax dollars.

Sad Beyond Words

2009-07-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

I don't really know what to even say about this story from the Jerusalem Post entitled "I Wed Iranian Girls Before Their Execution". Mark Steyn had his brief reaction to it here, but the terror that many women face every day of their lives in Sharia-ruled nations is a chilling reality.

An excerpt from the JP story:

In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband."

My Kind of Town (for jihad) Chicago Is...

2009-07-19T10:25:00.000-07:00

Apparently my hometown was the most attractive spot for an Al Qaeda-linked group to hold their national "Fall of Capitalism & Rise of Islam" conference this weekend.

"Hizb ut-Tahrir is one of the oldest, largest indoctrinating organizations for the ideology known as jihadism," Walid Phares, director of the Future of Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told FOXNews.com.
Phares said that Hizb ut-Tahrir, rather than training members to carry out terrorist acts like Al Qaeda, focuses instead on indoctrinating youths between ages of 9 and 18 to absorb the ideology that calls for the formation of an empire — or "khilafah" — that will rule according to Islamic law and condones any means to achieve it, including militant jihad.

Hizb ut-Tahrir often says that its indoctrination "prepares the infantry" that groups like Al Qaeda take into battle, Phares said.

"It's like a middle school that prepares them to be recruited by the high school, which is Al Qaeda," he said. "One would compare them to Hitler youth. ... It's an extremely dangerous organization."

Phares said Hizb ut-Tahrir has strongholds in Western countries, including Britain, France and Spain, and clearly is looking to strengthen its base in the U.S.

"The aim of this conference is to recruit within the Muslim community in America," he said. "The Middle East governments go after them, but in the U.S. they are protected, so having a base here is going to help their cells around the world."

Representatives of Hizb ut-Tahrir declined to comment when contacted by FOXNews.com

I have no problem with groups from various religions or worldviews congregating on our free shores to discuss their beliefs. But what I do have a problem with, where we all should logically draw the line, is when those groups are promoting, or in any way linked to, groups and ideologies that would not return the same favor should me and my band of merry conservative evangelical free-market advocates decide to hold our next "Capitalism Rules, Islam Drools" conference in Tehran or the West Bank.

The radical, irreconcilable wing of Islam has no interest in liberty, the dignity of human life, or religious tolerance. There will always be a tension between freedom of speech and security. We can't ignore the latter, or we'll lose the former.

Giddy Up

2009-07-19T10:05:00.000-07:00

America is, in many ways, being put out to pasture by the far-Left contingency currently spending our children's children's inheritances in Washington like their ship was sinking. There is nothing we can't fix with a little tax increase on the "rich", right?

Well Mark Steyn sees things differently, and in his latest equestrian-themed column he takes to task the idea being perpetuated by the likes of VP Biden that we can simply adopt the Euro-Swedish style of Nanny State collectivism and things won't change for the worse for the average American...or any American for that matter. (Even the mean, old "rich" who spoil everything by creating jobs and paying the overwhelming majority of our taxes.)

The Old West has been succeeded by the new California, in which a bloated government bureaucracy rides herd on the ever more emaciated workhorses of the private sector. And as California goes – and it's going, going, gone – so goes the nation.
There aren't enough of us to pay for all this – for government health care, government banks, government mortgages, government automobiles, government horses, government burros, for cap-and-trade, for stimulating phony-baloney nonjobs like Deputy Executive Associated Assistant Stimulus Resources Manager on the Stimulus Co-ordination & Compliance Commission. The wealthiest 1 percent already pay 40 percent of all taxes, the top 10 percent pay 70 percent of taxes – and there simply are too few of them – or, more to the point, of you: You'll be surprised what percentage of you fall into "the top 2 percent" by the time Obama is through with you.
This isn't merely Swedenization. As that insouciant 19-million acre annexation suggests, when America Swedenizes, it does it on supersized scale. The salient point of that 1,200-page cap-and-trade monstrosity was that, in its final form, it was so huge that at the time the House voted it into law there was no written version of the bill, because Congressional typists were unable to type as fast as Congress can spend: They're legislating on such a scale that the poor bleeding typing fingers of the House stenographers can't keep up. Which means you can't keep up the payments on it all.
If you've got a small business, you're wasting your time. You're going to be taxed and regulated into the ground because you're the designated sucker. Tell your kids to forget about the private sector and sign up with the Equine Census Bureau: Jobs for life, early retirement. Government is where it's at. When in ROAM do as the ROAMens do.
In 1971, the United States Congress recognized mustangs as "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West." And surely nothing captures the essence of the "pioneer spirit" than living on welfare in a federal care facility while being showered with government contraceptives. Welcome to America in the gelded age.

Joe Biden: Wrong (and weird)

2009-07-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

The Vice President told old people today at an AARP event that unless he and Barack spend more of our money, the nation will go broke. This is Keynesian economics gone wild. When you are out of money in your personal life, the first thing to do, the first thing any economic planner or accountant would tell you to do would be to cut costs. Not our current leadership.

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”

If you don't know who John Maynard Keynes was, please take a minute to watch this:

What goes around...

2009-07-16T15:50:00.000-07:00

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has a track-record of pretentiousness and smuggery, best exhibited by her dressing-down of a US General in a hearing on Capitol Hill last month. The General's crime? Following military protocol in addressing Boxer as "ma'am". Barbara was quick to remind the General that she had "worked hard" for her title of Senator.

Well, as conservative luck would have it, Senator Boxer found herself at the business-end of a verbal lashing today in an Environment and Public Works hearing. She posed a question regarding the atrocious Cap-and-Trade bill/abomination to Harry C. Alford, the president & CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. Senator Boxer didn't like the response she got from Mr. Alford, tried to pit his condemning appraisal of the Cap-and-Trade bill against the opinion of another black leader, and Mr. Alford, shall we say, let her have it.

Enjoy this clip...I will be, for some time.

You MUST See This Movie

2009-07-15T20:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my brother and my friend and I went to see The Stoning of Soraya M. It was a powerful film from the same producers of Passion of the Christ. The story is of a woman in Iran more than a decade ago who is executed for nothing more than a rumor. It deals with the harsh treatment of women in countries ruled by Sharia Law.

This is honestly one of the most important movies you'll ever see. In case you needed an extra motivation to spend the time and money on Soraya M, just know that the government in Iran has condemned this film.

Dennis Prager wrote an exceptional column on the film and the reasons why we need to support it.

An excerpt:

How many politically incorrect movies has Hollywood made in the last generation? How many films, for instance, have depicted communist evil? Given that Communism murdered more than 100 million innocents -- in peacetime! -- and enslaved about 1 billion more, one would think that Hollywood would have made a fair number of movies depicting the horrors of communism. But aside from "Dr. Zhivago" and "The Killing Fields," I cannot think of any. There are, of course, innumerable films depicting Nazi evil -- as well there should be -- but it takes no courage to make films depicting Nazis as evil.

Likewise, given Sept. 11, the slaughter of innocents around the world, and the atrocities within the Muslim world committed by “Islamists,” “Islamic fundamentalists,” “jihadists,” “Muslim radicals” “Islamofascists” -- or whatever other term one prefers -- one would think that Hollywood would have made many films on this subject. But it hasn't.
Yet, now, released as if by Providence the week after the fraudulent elections in Iran and the suppression and murder of Iranian dissidents, is a film about the nature of the radical Muslims who govern Iran. Titled "The Stoning of Soraya M.," the film depicts events based on the true story of a woman stoned to death in a rural village in Iran in 1986 for allegedly committing adultery.
If you want to understand the type of people who run Iran, see this film. If you want to understand why men and women risk their lives to demonstrate against the fascist theocracy that rules Iran, see this film.

Stories the American press just won't report on

2009-07-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

In England, if you've got arthritis, you've got a long wait ahead of you for treatment. The "free" health care provided by the British government is rationed...meaning: if you have an ailment or disease that the bureaucrats deem less important in light of the reality of limited resources (i.e. skilled doctors, available space), you either are out of luck or will be out even more money when you have to pay to see a private physician (the kind those same bureaucrats seem themselves). This Daily Mail article divulges more on the matter.

People, PLEASE follow this link here and sign the petition to "Free Our Health Care Now". Every signature matters.

The new administration and congress are pushing through legislation at a break-neck speed. Congressmen and women are not even reading the entirety of the bills being put forth before they vote on them. Things are spiraling out of control, and the centerpiece of it all as far as Obama and Pelosi are concerned is health care. They want control of it, and they want it now. Take a moment and sign this petition. We need reform, but NOT the kind being proposed. The option should not be "bad reform or no reform." We're better than this. If nothing else convinces those of you on the Center-Left side of things, just ask yourself this: how can we pay for all this change? The "rich" only have so much.

Socialized Medicine, By Any Other Name

2009-07-13T21:39:00.000-07:00

by: R.J. Moeller

The disconnect between what President Obama is saying he hopes to do about health insurance, and the reality of what will actually happen to our health care, could not be more profoundly misleading.

In plain English: the president is either knowingly deceiving American taxpayers about the inevitability of socialized medicine should his “public option” plan ever be signed into law, or he and his top advisers are unfamiliar with in’s and out’s of how numbers are added and subtracted on a balance sheet.

If you hear otherwise, the person spreading such nonsense either does not understand what is going on, or it is Joe Biden with whom you are speaking. If it is Joe Biden, tell him to tell President Obama to please refrain from socializing America’s health care.

To start, let me quickly summarize what the Obama “public option” plan entails.

Basically, the president wants to use federal resources to offer an insurance plan to “compete” with the ones private insurance companies offer. Obama, exposing even his teleprompter’s recognition that Americans still are uncomfortable with the idea of the same people who run their DMV and oversaw FEMA taking charge of their health care, continues to promote his idea in distinctly free market vernacular.

As if this public option was in anyway in keeping with the competitive characteristics of a capitalist economy. We’re led to envision the public option as just one choice out of many others, and more than this: that it will actually help facilitate competition in the health insurance marketplace with the inference being lower costs and better care for everyone.

He might as well have promised to bring Michael Jackson back from the grave.

No one is arguing with the notion that our health care system is in drastic need of reform, or “change”, if you are so inclined. But the reform required, the single most important, fundamental change needed, is a sweeping dislodgment of the federal government’s firm chokehold around the throat of the health care and insurance industry.

This fact, the need for the government to phase out their financial involvement, as you might have guessed, poses a serious tension between what is truly needed and what is misguidedly being proposed.

Money, in one way or another, is at the heart of our health care and insurance problems. Tax dollars, insurance premiums, the significant costs of medical procedures, fraud, waste, exploitation, and subsidized care for the uninsured (both legal citizens and illegal aliens) are all contributing factors to a system that has led to the mounting frustrations Americans are feeling about health care. Private citizens are upset about the high costs. Public lawmakers in Washington D.C. are upset that more of the system, with all of its increased tax dollars and bureaucratic control, isn’t already under their supervision.

Currently our federal government spends more on health care, via programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, than on any other single expenditure. More than national defense, more than education, more than anything else and the disparity between health care costs and all other expenditures increases every year.

Notably, at least $60 billion, roughly 10% of what our government spends on health care each year, is lost to fraud and waste. In 2006, the state of New York alone suffered losses of more than $4.4 billion to fraud and waste. A primary cause for such rampant fraud is that the government-run bureaucracies have little personal incentive, a minimal vested interest, in keeping better records and vigorously following up on abnormal claims.

Fraud can never be completely eliminated from any system of anything, but you can bet your “Obama-Biden” Nalgene carabiner that private insurance companies would not settle for such staggering losses due to incompetence or laziness. Heads would roll, or the company would go under.

But not so with Uncle Sam footing the bill. The federal government is a black-hole of spending, funded by other people’s money and promised away by “experts” in health care such as lawyers with names like Barney Frank and Harry Reid. The federal government can outspend, under-cut, and thoroughly confuse the price signals of a normal, functioning market better than any other entity.

President Obama is claiming to be merely offering nothing more than another insurance “option” to cover people who either currently can’t afford a plan or want some relief from their current costly one. That sounds nice, right? Who is against “choice” or “options”?

One thing that is conveniently never divulged is that only about 10% of Americans don’t have insurance. Everyone can get care, including illegal immigrants. Certainly the fact anyone can walk in to an emergency room and get care is one of the most significant contributing factors to the rising overall costs in health care, and needs serious consideration and examination. But of that uninsured 10%, the majority is comprised of those who willfully choose to not buy health insurance.

Such as young morons who think they'll live forever, and that their money would be better spent on extreme sports and Red Bulls.

Making health insurance compulsory like car insurance might seem to be an entirely easier and more sensible option if, as the president purports, making certain that people were insured is his only concern. But even this idea has produced less than thrilling results.

Of course insurance isn’t his only or even primary concern. Money is the issue. Money is spent on care. Health insurance is being used by Democrats as the front-man for control of the health care system, which in turn leads to money. Your money. Do the math, people. The discussion of “insuring national health” is largely a meaningless and misleading one. The issue is centrally a question of: “Who is going to pay for care?”

Now I would never dare impugn the motives of a compassionate liberal Democrat in congress. Might I simply suggest that it seems entirely expedient that a party and ideology which hold “government control over anything we can get our hands on” as a core value would propose more government intervention as a solution to a problem largely created by government intervention. I’m just saying.

Are insurance companies innocent bystanders in the car-wreck that is health care? Certainly not. Is there corruption and ethically questionable decision-making in the private sector of health care? Absolutely. But the driver behind the wheel of that crashed car is Big Brother, who should have been at home doing his constitutionally appointed job of enforcing laws to curtail corruption in the private sector.

In placed where the government has offered a public insurance option, employers have instantly dropped their employees’ coverage and the government de facto becomes the overseer of the people's health care. This is unavoidable and, “surprisingly”, happens more rapidly than the governments involved were ready for. Obama’s promise that “most” Americans will be able to keep their current health insurance plan is preposterous. No sane business will pay for something that Nancy Pelosi offers to cover for “free”.

This means that the bureaucratic quagmire in Washington, the one conservatives are trying to warn against in the matter of health care and liberals are insisting has no desire to run health care, will indeed run health care. Whether Democrats know their plan will lead to socialized medicine, the type Canadians drive to the United States to compensate for, or they are oblivious to the mountain of evidence (and common sense) pointing to the inevitability of socialized medicine should their own plan be implemented, the result is the same. This reality of socialized medicine via Obama’s “public option” plan must be understood and debated in the public square.

There is so much more to discuss regarding the health care issue. I will be writing a series of columns on the topic in coming weeks. Please understand that this piece today is in no way to be understood as a comprehensive, end-all summation of the matter. All that matters, for now, is that you, the American taxpayer, clearly understand that the president’s current “public option” plan will without a doubt bring about the same type of government-run health care seen in Canada, Great Britain, and the like.

The federal annexation of health care forever and fundamentally changes the relationship between a citizen and their government. Barring another revolution to depose elitist control in foreign power-centers, crossing the collectivist socialized medicine line that Western Europe nations already have is as close to a “point of no return” decision that a nation can make.

We’re all going to die. The question on the table for members of this freest society in human history is how will we choose to live?

Prince Charles Fever

2009-07-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

The next-in-line for the British monarch, Prince Charles, has officially put the world on notice: we haven't much time. Global warming will end things as we know it, according to the Prince of Wales, in 96 months. Pretty precise number if you ask me.

Writing in his column this week, former subject of the British crown Mark Steyn offers some perspective on the dire warnings coming from His Highness.

An excerpt:

Beginning with FDR, wily statists justified the massive expansion of federal power under ever more elastic definitions of the commerce clause. For Obama-era control freaks, the environment and health care are the commerce clause supersized. They establish the pretext for the regulation of everything: If the government is obligated to cure you of illness, it has an interest in preventing you getting ill in the first place – by regulating what you eat, how you live, the choices you make from the moment you get up in the morning.

Likewise, if everything you do impacts “the environment”, then the environment is an all-purpose umbrella for regulating everything you do. It’s the most convenient and romantic justification for what the title of Paul Rahe’s new book rightly identifies as “Soft Despotism”.

The good news is that, at this week’s G8 summit, America’s allies would commit only to the fuzziest and most meaningless of environmental goals. Europe has been hit far harder by the economic downturn. When your unemployment rate is 17 per cent (as in Spain), “unsustainable growth” is no longer your most pressing problem.

The environmental cult is itself a product of what the Prince calls the “Age of Convenience”: it’s what you worry about it when you don’t have to worry about jobs or falling house prices or collapsed retirement accounts. Today, as European prime ministers are beginning to figure out, a strategic goal of making things worse when they’re already worse is a much tougher sell.

More Words of Wisdom From Dennis

2009-07-11T19:51:00.001-07:00

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and columnist, renowned author, and all-around wise man. His Prager University clips on YouTube are brief videos on various topics that pertain to life and politics. PLEASE watch the latest effort from Mr. Prager on the issue of "Happiness":

Misplaced Moral Priorities

2009-07-07T23:06:00.000-07:00

by: R.J. Moeller

I doubt that I will find myself alone in acknowledging a deep regret for the inappropriate way in which I treated my parents (pictured below, from 1988) and other influential adults during my teen years. I was never an explicitly devious kid, but to my shame I treated the good people in my life, the people who cared about me more than anything in this world, with frequent disrespect and animosity.

Conversely, I had little problem showing my admiration for the most delinquent of characters from my neighborhood, school and church. I treated troublemaking older kids who convinced me to do things like throw rocks through the windows of a local warehouse with more kindness and deference than I did my own mother who was at that same moment likely at home trying to get meatball stains out of my Ninja Turtles sweatpants.

In retrospect, I am convinced that as a direct result of my improperly organized affections, I spent many years of my life an angry, confused kid. I can see so much more clearly now the wisdom contained in the old axiom: “Those who are good to the bad will be bad to the good.” Or as I’ve also heard it: “Those who are tough to the good will be good to the tough.”

The internal moral compass each of us lives and dies by is similar to a real, directional compass in that it can be thrown off its proper bearings. A defective compass out in the woods is worse than useless, and once it has been compromised, you must either identify the root cause for its defection or obtain an entirely new one. Likewise, possessing a defective moral compass when attempting to navigate through life’s dense terrain is equally worthless. The way we live, the way we treat people, the way we think about things are not wholly separate things that take place inside of individual vacuums. Our thoughts, attitudes and actions have ripple effects.

Perhaps it’s because I’m more conscious of the need for moral clarity and consistency in my own personal life now, but when I hear American leaders and government officials rationalize away the evil deeds of evil people in the world, or as is more frequently the case, remain silent in the face of evil, I feel a twinge of self-recognition in light of their morally inverted shortsightedness.

There is in fact no contradiction between personally showing kindness to someone who doesn’t deserve it, to “turning the other cheek” when personally slighted or offended, and the identification and denouncement of immoral, illegal or depraved actions (or people). There is also, of course, a legitimate need for our foreign policy leaders to conduct themselves with an appropriate level of diplomatic decorum when interacting with national figureheads around the globe.

But just as in the case of an individual who make a regular habit of reserving their vitriol for the decent people in their lives, and civility for the indecent people, a nation too can lose its moral bearings by constantly misusing their emotional capital.

When time after time, year after year, a citizenry hears from some of its most prominent and influential voices that we ought to treat murderous foreign enemies abroad better than we do our political rivals at home, new generations of citizens can’t help but grow up morally stunted and confused.

A nation that raises children to excuse the hate-filled threats of murderous dictators around the globe more readily than the taunts from an opposing baseball team’s fans is in crisis.

Truly, our problem as a nation and people isn’t that we don’t care enough, that we aren’t capable of showing enough compassion. It’s that we care about the wrong things and in the wrong ways. We show compassion to the wrong people and show it in the wrong ways.

The most recent example of what I’m alluding to is the difference in the public statements from the current administration regarding, on the one hand, the courageous protesters in Iran last month, and on the other, conservatives such as George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin.

For 30 years, fanatical Islamic terrorists have run a repressive theocratic state in Iran. Until 9/11 and Al Qaeda, no single entity had killed as many American citizens in recent history as the regime in Tehran. For the past 5 years that same regime has fueled insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of US soldiers. Iran has been accruing the technology, and producing the material, to build nuclear weapons. Iranian leaders, regardless the party that happens to be running Congress or the White House, have consistently and openly preached “Death to America”, “Death to Great Britain”, and “Death to Israel” on national television. It is the stated goal of the mullahs in Iran to “wipe Israel off the map” in the near future, and to then come for the “Great Satan.” (Great Satan = us.)

In such an inhospitable, dangerous environment, and in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, tens of thousands of Iranian citizens marched in open defiance of their dictatorial government to protest the corrupt results of their nation’s presidential election. The seedlings of an organic revolution, one that if followed far enough could have potentially ensured our ability to avoid military conflict with Iran, weren’t offered a single drop of the much-needed rhetorical water President Obama has been sprinkling on Americans looking for “change” since 2007.

The man who, with nothing more than his talent for reading scripted speeches well, possesses a supposed ability to change the lives of people and fates of entire nations remained silent when even the French were compelled to speak out in support of the Iranian dissidents.

The same Sharia government that currently subjugates women as second-class citizens, executes homosexuals, murders political dissenters, and has no interest in “going green” with cap-and-trade legislation could not rouse the ire of modern liberals. The Left’s visible and vocal moral indignation, it seems, is reserved solely for the values and elected representatives of those dangerous soccer moms driving around Red State America with a Jesus-fish and “Bush-Cheney ‘04” bumper sticker on their minivan.

The likes of Barack Obama, Paul Krugman, and Keith Olbermann apparently end up running their “righteous anger” wells so bone-dry castigating conservatives with funny accents during election seasons that the Left has little, if anything, of substance to offer when we need them to make even the most rudimentary condemnations of a legitimate enemy. Or in the case of the Iranian protestors, similar to the freedom-loving dissidents in the gulags of the former USSR during the Cold War, when we need them to lend vocal and moral support to people yearning (and dying) for liberty’s sake.

Many in the media and congress were so sure President Bush and Dick Cheney were the epitome of evil that they felt entirely comfortable and justified in using some of the most degrading, disrespectful, and undermining rhetoric any administration has ever faced. Such outspoken critics clearly knew the power contained in their own words. They knew the world was watching and listening to what the United States and her leaders did and said about the Bush administration.

The American media, with an explicit intent to help sway voters’ opinions, never stopped telling us how unpopular President Bush was in Paris, London, Buenos Aires and everywhere in between. The message was clear: conservatives aren’t simply wrong; they are evil and dangerous and we should listen to the folks in Belgium and Crete who are confirming it.

Such misplaced, misapplied anger and hostility unhinges one’s moral compass. It has to.

As a result, we find ourselves in a time and place where the American president has convinced himself, and sadly millions of Americans, that the only real problem between the irreconcilable wing of Islam (embodied by the murderous rulers in Iran) and the United States (the freest, most prosperous, most honorable nation in human history) is that we haven’t been nice enough yet. As if the main thing we’ve bee missing in our attempts to peaceably resolve the differences between our two countries is a public display of moral ambivalence towards the latest heinous acts the Iranian government perpetually commits against its own people.

Real compassion is compassion that comes to the defense of the defenseless. Real change, in a place like Iran, would be a regime change. The genocide in Darfur that celebrities like George Clooney have raised awareness about would end tomorrow if we razed the strongholds of the Muslim murderers who are slaughtering their own fellow countrymen, women and children. Iran and North Korea act with hostile, reckless abandon not because we’ve been mean, but because they are.

Of course the world is a complicated place, and no political party or ideology has a monopoly on the mishandling of important foreign policy matters. But if our leaders, from either side of the political aisle, continue to misdirect our strongest collective moral outrage (and subsequent actions) at shaming, humiliating, and demonizing political foes here at home, we will have no real hope of mustering the quality and quantity of moral fortitude required to defeat enemies abroad.

When personalities and polls, instead of principles, are the driving force behind our politics everyone loses.

Barack Obama isn’t evil for failing to speak out against the mullahs in Iran with the same gusto he did against George W. Bush, John McCain and Sarah Palin. He’s just wrong.

Has Iraqi Freedom Stirred Iranian Dissent?

2009-07-07T10:57:00.000-07:00

Writing for Slate.com, Christopher Hitchens (best known for his outspoken atheism) makes the case that perhaps what has been accomplished in Iraq is rousing Iranian dissidents to action. Hitchens, a liberal, has had the intellectual honesty to consistently report the "good" that has come out of Iraq the past 3 years.

An excerpt:

Did the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the subsequent holding of competitive elections in which many rival Iraqi Shiite parties took part, have any germinal influence on the astonishing events in Iran? Certainly when I interviewed Sayeed Khomeini in Qum some years ago, where he spoke openly about "the liberation of Iraq," he seemed to hope and believe that the example would spread. One swallow does not make a summer. But consider this: Many Iranians go as religious pilgrims to the holy sites of Najaf and Kerbala in southern Iraq. They have seen the way in which national and local elections have been held, more or less fairly and openly, with different Iraqi Shiite parties having to bid for votes (and with those parties aligned with Iran's regime doing less and less well). They have seen an often turbulent Iraqi Parliament holding genuine debates that are reported with reasonable fairness in the Iraqi media.

Meanwhile, an Iranian mullah caste that classifies its own people as children who are mere wards of the state puts on a "let's pretend" election and even then tries to fix the outcome. Iranians by no means like to take their tune from Arabs—perhaps least of all from Iraqis—but watching something like the real thing next door may well have increased the appetite for the genuine article in Iran itself.
There are, no doubt, other determining factors as well. Contrary to the simplistic distinction between the "liberal urban" and the "conservative rural" that is made by so many glib commentators, Iran is a country where very rapid urbanization of a formerly rural population is being undergone, and all good Marxists ought to know that historically this has always been a moment pregnant with revolutionary discontent. In Saddam's Iraq, the possession of a satellite dish was punishable by death; everybody knows that the mullahs in Iran cannot enforce their own ban on informal media and unofficial transmission. And yet, precisely because they are so dense and so fanatical, they doom themselves to keep on trying. Every Iranian I know is now convinced that if this is not the end for the Khamenei system, it is at least the harbinger of the beginning of the end.

What A Guy Wants

2009-07-06T22:53:00.000-07:00

I'll let Lt. Dangle from the Reno Sheriff's Department do my talking for me. Here's what this blogger is looking for. ;)

RENO 911!

Wednesdays 10:30pm / 9:30c

Date a Cop - Jim Dangle

www.comedycentral.com

Joe Lo Truglio

Funny Cop Videos

On Palin: Erratic Decision, Not a Fatal One

2009-07-06T12:26:00.002-07:00

I defer to the expertise of Charles Krauthammer on many matters of politics and state, and yet again he has hit the nail on the head with his assessment of Palin's surprising announcement last Friday that she would be resigning as governor of Alaska at the end of the month.

If she has a calculation for the future, I would say that it has to be 2016 or beyond. It's not going to be in 2012. You have to remember, she is extremely young. In 2016, she will be only 52. In 2020, she will be a young presidential candidate.

I think if she has a strategy, and here I'm not sure, it would be to become a national figure, a conservative figure, work on the movement, educate herself, get boned up on national issues—which you are distracted from if you're in Alaska—and look at the long run.

So I think it can work out in the future, but in the short run, for 2012, I think this is utterly leaving her out of the picture.

Two other trusted conservative commentators, Karl Rove and Mike Huckabee, had some additional thoughts on the Palin resignation this weekend on Fox News Sunday. It's worth your time to check this segment out.

The Meaning of the 4th

2009-07-05T08:38:00.001-07:00

The Heritage Foundation's Dr. Matthew Spalding has written a powerful article on the reason for the Independence Season each 4th of July. Take a read and let me know what you think of the piece.

An excerpt:

The Fourth of July is a great opportunity to renew our dedication to the principles of liberty and equality enshrined in what Thomas Jefferson called “the declaratory charter of our rights.”

As a practical matter, the Declaration of Independence publicly announced to the world the unanimous decision of the American colonies to declare themselves free and independent states, absolved from any allegiance to Great Britain. But its greater meaning—then as well as now—is as a statement of the conditions of legitimate political authority and the proper ends of government, and its proclamation of a new ground of political rule in the sovereignty of the people. “If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence,” wrote the great historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, “it would have been worthwhile.”

Born of a Creed

2009-07-03T08:31:00.000-07:00

Chuck Colson is one of the country's leading Christian conservative voices, and produces a daily commentary (both in print and audio form) called Breakpoint that is heard and read all over the world. Today's was uniquely special, and in it Colson reminds us of the precious, blessed nature of our republic. He also quotes my main man G.K. Chesterton, a Brit, who understood full well the gift that is "liberty."

Below is the entire transcript from "The American Creed", and I'd simply ask that you read it and pass it along to friends and family this holiday weekend.

BREAKPOINT DAILY TRANSCRIPT
***************************
The American Creed ‘We Hold These Truths . . .’
July 3, 2009

The great British intellectual G. K. Chesterton wrote that “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on [a] creed.” Think about that for a moment. Other nations were founded on the basis of race, or by the power of kings or emperors who accumulated lands and the peasants who inhabited those lands.

But America was -- and is to this day -- different. It was founded on a shared belief. Or, as Chesterton said, on a creed. And what is that creed that sets us apart? It is the eloquent, profound, and simple statement penned by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

I’ll never forget when I graduated from Brown University during the Korean War. I couldn’t wait to become a Marine officer, to give my life if necessary, to defend that creed. To defend the idea that our rights come from God Himself and are not subject to whims of governments or tyrants. That humans ought to be free to pursue their most treasured hopes and aspirations. Perhaps some 230 years later, we take these words for granted. But in 1776, they were earth-shaking -- indeed, revolutionary.

Yet today, they are in danger of being forgotten altogether. According to Gallup, 66 percent of American s have no idea that the words, “We hold these truths . . .” come from the Declaration of Independence. Even worse, only 45 percent of college seniors know that the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are proclaimed in the Declaration. As America grows more and more diverse culturally, religiously, ethnically, it is critical that we re-embrace the American creed.

America has always been a “melting pot.” But what is the pot that holds our multicultural stew together? Chesterton said the pot’s “original shape was traced on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy.” A democracy founded on those self-evident truths expressed in the Declaration of Independence. And as Chesterton remarked, “The pot must not melt.”

Abraham Lincoln understood this so very well. For him, the notion that all men are created equal was “the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.” So tomorrow, go to the Fourth of July parade. Go to the neighborhood barbecue and enjoy the hot dogs and apple pie.

But here’s an idea for you. Why not take time out at the picnic to read the Declaration of Independence aloud with your friends and your neighbors. Listen -- and thrill -- to those words that bind us together as a nation of freedom-loving people: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

These are the words Americans live for and, if necessary, die for.

Summer Reading

2009-07-02T12:27:00.001-07:00

The most important decision I made in the last 5 years was to start reading again. If you aren't reading a book every month, you aren't really living.

Here are 5 books for the summer that I recommend to every serious human being:

5) Napoleon and Wellington: The Battle of Waterloo---And The Great Commanders Who Fought It

4) Liberty and Tyranny (By: Mark Levin...catch this great interview Mark did with Rush Limbaugh about his fantastic new book)

3) Atlas Shrugged (By: Ayn Rand...an incredible novel that will feel eerily familiar to 2009 America)

2) Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem (By: Dr. Jay Richards...great interview with the book's author here.)

1) Heretics (By: G.K. Chesterton...read it!)

50 Ways To Leave Your Freedoms

2009-07-02T09:53:00.001-07:00

National Review has done a great service by listing the Top 50 things wrong with the recent cap-and-trade legislation that our "distinguished" Representatives in the House passed last Friday. Take a look through this list and tell me where you see the seeds of economic growth and recovery being planted.

Oh, and keep in mind, this bill has been presented by Nancy Pelosi as being "all about jobs." I believe the woman means well, but is in fact delusional.

An excerpt:

Two main things to understand about Waxman-Markey: First, it will not reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, at least not at any point in the near future. The inclusion of carbon offsets, which can be manufactured out of thin air and political imagination, will eliminate most of the demands that the legislation puts on industry, though in doing so it will manage to drive up the prices consumers pay for every product that requires energy for its manufacture — which is to say, for everything.

Second, it represents a worse abuse of the public trust and purse than the stimulus and the bailouts put together. Waxman-Markey creates a permanent new regime in which environmental romanticism and corporate welfare are mixed together to form political poison. From comic bureaucratic power grabs (check out the section of the bill on candelabras) to the creation of new welfare programs for Democratic constituencies to, above all, massive giveaways for every financial, industrial, and political lobby imaginable, this bill would permanently deform American politics and economic life.

The House of Representatives, famously, did not read this bill before passing it, which is testament to either Nancy Pelosi’s managerial incompetency or her political wile, or possibly both. If you take the time to read the legislation, you’ll discover four major themes: special-interest giveaways, regulatory mandates unrelated to climate change, fanciful technological programs worthy of The Jetsons, and assorted left-wing wish fulfillment.

PLEASE read the rest of the list here!!!

My Week With Acton

2009-06-30T14:06:00.000-07:00

by: R.J. Moeller

“No man ought to write at all, or even to speak at all, unless he thinks that he is in truth and the other man in error.” -G.K. Chesterton (Heretics)

I realize that the challenge here from Mr. Chesterton may sound unnecessarily confrontational to the fragile sensibilities of the modern American reader. But I believe it is precisely because we’ve lost our stomachs for defending truth that we are losing our country (and minds).

For a moment, drown out the empty, hollow calls for “unity”, “open-mindedness” and “bi-partisanship” that dominate the rhetoric of our politics, media, and academic institutions. These calls for harmonization, regardless of what party or ideology is making the plea, invariably amount to nothing more than an appeal for all others to join their “side”. Unity, as it is so carelessly defined by the secular world today, equates to unquestioned conformity.

The reality of life is that we all believe in something. For better or worse, we all have worldviews and philosophies of life that are used as navigation systems through life’s murky waters. Whether it is in regards to what baseball team we will root for or in deciding whom to cast our precious ballot for come every other November, each of us make decisions, take positions, and accrue perspectives that enable us to function as normal human beings.

In every facet and area of life, from economic policy to gourmet cooking, there are “better ways” of doing things, and the divulgence and defense of the better ways we discover is a moral imperative for members of a free society. Freedom isn’t free, and one of the prices we are privileged to pay in America is the personal and collective engagement with the world around us. This presumes you have lived enough to learn, and that you care enough to contribute your experience, knowledge, and values to the melting pot that is the Unites States.

The Acton Institute, a visionary organization and energetic think-tank located in Grand Rapids, MI named after British historian and political philosopher Lord Acton, is exactly the type of place where G.K. Chesterton’s mandate is accepted and cultivated.

Even in the face of rampant moral relativism and cultural apathy towards “that politics stuff”, not all have given up hope for a freer and more virtuous society. Not everyone is disinterested in preserving the ideas and values Abraham Lincoln rightly labeled, “the last, best hope of earth” nearly 150 years ago. There are still those who believe that debate and disagreement is not to be avoided, and that the citizen who does not genuinely believe in (or understand) the things they say, do, or vote for is exactly the type of citizen who unravels civilizations from within.

Founded in 1990 by Father Robert Sirico, the Acton Institute offers an intellectual harbor in the secular-progressive tempest where truth-seeking, freedom-loving people can shed the myth of moral relativism, embrace the challenges of informed discourse, and seriously debate the issues affecting our world today.

Acton does this with the acknowledged intention of actually discovering and advancing those “better ways” I mentioned. In short, they think they are right about something like free enterprise being a good thing worth preserving, and, for example, that Nancy Pelosi’s vision of a top-down bureaucratically controlled economy is wrong.

Acton’s stated purpose is the “Integrating Judeo-Christian truths with Free Market principles”, and they are refreshingly unapologetic about their mission. Bringing together students, professors, and professionals of faith, Acton is purposefully religious at its core and decidedly ecumenical in its approach to the topics and issues it involves itself with.

Two weeks ago I had the distinct privilege of attending their annual “Acton University” four-day conference held on the campus of Grand Valley State University. More than 300 private citizens, primarily college and graduate students, came from all across the country (and some from as far as Italy and Venezuela) to attend lectures, ask questions of experts in everything from economics to theology, and explore the intellectual foundations of liberty and free markets.

As anyone from Acton will tell you, their goal is not to robotically program minds, but challenge them from the perspective of certain, defined values, principles and facts.

In all honesty, I would need 10 blogs to articulate all that Acton does, and has done to inspire me personally. They offer conferences like the one in Grand Rapids I attended. They have a fantastic website and blog that serves as a useful reference point for those interested in hearing a defense of conservative ideas from actual conservatives for a change. The various films they have produced are stirring, covering topics such as "The Birth of Freedom" and “The Call of the Entrepreneur.” They publish journals, host public debates for their scholars, and sponsor charities and faith-based initiatives.

Because of my admitted inability to thoroughly pay homage to all the things Acton does, I want to focus like a laser beam on what I believe to be the most important service they provide: an articulation and defense of traditional, Judeo-Christian, conservative values and principles in the economic, political, and cultural realm.
At the heart of everything Acton does there is a convergence of faith, reason, ideas, facts, and the practicality any ideology, belief system, or solution must display for it to even be considered as a legitimate option.

The people associated with Acton are not monolithic in their thinking on each and every issue. Theologically, there are predominantly Protestants and Catholics represented. Politically, while there is no affiliation with any political party, I think it fair (and necessary for disclosure’s sake) to say that the socio-political ties that bind Acton employees, speakers and event attendees together are unmistakably and unashamedly Center-Right. You can’t take a stand on issues as a group if there are not some basic, commonly held values and beliefs

I suppose it is a sad commentary about the lack of real and meaningful education regarding topics like liberty and economic freedom that takes place in our nation that a group like the Acton Institute appropriately feels so rare. Or, that each time I sat in a lecture hall during “Acton U”, and a professor or lecturer made a compelling, fact-based point about why something like Keynesian economics has been such a monumental and perpetual failure, I winced in anticipation for outcries of “bigotry” and “intolerance,” that thankfully never came.

Instead, people who might not all agree on the answer, but at least agree on the existence of an answer, discussed topics as diverse as social justice, universal health care, and the causes of the Great Depression in a civil and thoughtful manner.

Almost as if they were truly interested in solving problems, and not just inconsiderately throwing their votes, dollars, and support behind fads or catchy slogans.

Almost as if they realized that ideas have consequences; real, practical, often unintended consequences and thusly decisions we and our leaders make cannot be based purely on feelings and YouTube music videos from Will I Am and Scarlett Johansson.

For “real change” to come to America, we each must begin to shed the cumbersome shackles of moral relativism and intellectual indifference towards the world around us. Truth is real, and it matters. The way we live, the things we do, the politicians we vote for, it all matters. There must be debate, rigorous, vigorous debate over the direction our nation is heading, and no longer can we allow the weak-willed and easily-offended among us to dictate the terms by which we discuss the alternatives in front of us. We all need thicker skins and softer hearts when we enter the combative arena of public discourse.

The people at and involved with Acton understand this. They have rightly seen through the disingenuous calls for the re-defined “unity” and “tolerance” that currently are the clichés-de-jour among the liberal Democrat-dominated power structure in Washington, in the media, and on college campuses from Berkley to Boston.

As if Joe Biden, Keith Olbermann, or Professor Howard Zinn have any interest in conceding their positions in favor of traditional, conservative, or libertarian ones.

Such a self-indulgent insistence upon unity is wrongly presuming that Americans are not capable of both holding deep-rooted ideological, theological, and political differences with their fellow man, and then being kind neighbors and trustworthy business partners at the same time. I think they called this “projection” in the Psych department when I was in college.

No one is a true relativist, and subsequently, everyone believes in something, in certain things. Let’s agree that to disagree is an agreeable privilege for free people. Let’s concede that we all have opinions about the issues we’re faced with in our personal-daily and collective-national lives, and that those opinions matter to us.

And if they matter to us, if we as fallen creatures can find “better ways” of surviving and thriving as individuals and as a nation, let’s get busy sharing them with others. Not in the hopes of making some pie-in-the-sky utopia here on earth, but with a focused, obtainable goal of making a freer, safer, more prosperous, more virtuous republic.

It’s reassuring to know a place like the Acton Institute already is.

Heritage Foundation on Cap-and-Trade Legislation

2009-06-27T21:25:00.001-07:00

Friday saw the US House of Representatives passing the largest tax increase in American history with the 219-212 victory of the cap-and-trade bill. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE watch the Heritage Foundation's YouTube video explaining what is actually going on in this piece of (crap) legislation.

Mark Sanford...creepy and weird

2009-06-27T17:01:00.000-07:00

So the governor of South Carolina ran off to Argentina last week, to cry in the arms of his South American mistress, and returned Wednesday to give one of the more bizarre press conferences of all time. The story is as tragic (for his family) as it is utterly strange.

Mark Steyn's latest effort at National Review is one of the funnier articles I've read in a while, and in it he explains why it is so many weirdos seem to get elected in this country these days.

An excerpt:

Of course, being nominally a republic of citizen-legislators, we have inaugurated the post-modern pseudo-breakout from “the bubble,” in which the president and his family sally forth to an ice-cream parlor in Alexandria, Va., accompanied only by 200 of their most adoring sycophants from the press corps. These trips, explained the New York Times, enable the Obamas to “stay connected” with ordinary people, like White House reporters.

The real bubble is a consequence of big government. The more the citizenry expect from the state, the more our political class will depend on ever more swollen Gulf Emir–sized retinues of staffers hovering at the elbow to steer you from one corner of the fishbowl to another 24/7. “Why are politicians so weird?” a reader asked me after the Sanford press conference. But the majority of people willing to live like this will, almost by definition, be deeply weird. So big government more or less guarantees rule by creeps and misfits. It’s just a question of how well they disguise it.

Writing about Michael Jackson a few years ago, I suggested that today’s A-list celebs were the equivalent of Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria or the loopier Ottoman sultans, the ones it wasn’t safe to leave alone with sharp implements. But, as Christopher Hitchens says, politics is showbusiness for ugly people. And a celebrified political culture will inevitably throw up its share of tatty karaoke versions of Britney and Jacko.

A Bad Thing

2009-06-27T07:35:00.000-07:00

I realize that no one wants to be on the opposite side of anything "green" sounding these days, but the climate-change bill passed last night by the House is an utter disgrace. The legislation has little to do with global warming, cooling or anything in between. What will happen, if this passes in the Senate and is signed in to law by The One, is that our federal government will have effectively put political power ahead of economic prosperity, common sense, and the Constitution.

The sad thing is that even though more than 30 Democrats voted against this monstrosity, 7 RINO's (Republicans In Name Only) jumped ship and endorsed what will become the biggest tax increase in American history. My own Republican congressman, Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois, was among those. Their 7 votes were the difference in a 219-212 "victory" for the Dem's.

Here's the most important thing for you to know: the Democrats are pushing this stuff through under the guise of economic reform and stimulus, saying that new jobs will be created...it is categorically false, and actually, impossible. This is absolutely and entirely about paying for liberal social programs. Not only is it a tax on families and the price of their heating/cooling bills, it annexes to the federal government more control over who gets to use the carbon credits Al Gore has convinced us matter in the least. Think: indulgences the Church used to make people pay to absolve them of their sins.

On the plus side, maybe Dan Brown will write a cool conspiracy thriller about the evils of centralized power in the hands of Nancy Pelosi.

PLEASE read this summary of what went down last night from the Wall Street Journal.

Inverse Relationship

2009-06-23T09:25:00.000-07:00

The more a country relies on its government, the worse off it becomes. Economically. Culturally. And yes, even spiritually.

The numbers don't lie, according to a recent Wall Street Journal column. Christian commentator and author Chuck Colson gives additional insight to the WSJ piece here.

An excerpt from Colson:

In his classic book, Democracy in America, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at how Americans could accomplish almost anything through voluntary associations—especially churches. They built schools, hospitals, sent missionaries all over the world. He wrote, “I frequently admired the boundless skill of Americans in setting large numbers of people a common goal and inducing them to strive toward that goal voluntarily.”

De Tocqueville doubted that government could ever accomplish all that American citizens could do through their associations. But he also warned that if government should supplant the good work of these associations, the American people would ultimately end up dependent upon government. And this, he said, would imperil not only American democracy, but “civilization itself.”

In times of trouble, it’s natural to echo the question of the Psalmist: Whence cometh my help?

Sadly, it seems that more and more Americans these days would answer, “It cometh from Uncle Sam.”

Day after Father's Day Thoughts

2009-06-22T14:15:00.001-07:00

Dr. Albert Mohler offers some perspective on the distorted version of fatherhood our culture and the academic elites attempt to create. As is the case with most "contentious" issues today that our media try to misrepresent to favor their progressively-informed opinions, the traditional understanding of a father's role in the lives of the people in his family is still widely held and honored among Americans.

Happy Father's Day

2009-06-21T11:32:00.000-07:00

For those of us blessed with amazing fathers, today is not just another "Hallmark Holiday": it should be a special time to celebrate the most important men in our lives.

Thanks for all you do, fathers.

And a special thanks to my dad, Dr. Robert Moeller, for teaching your kids to love God, and for always putting the needs of your family ahead of your own.

Happy Father's Day!

Conservative in Grand Rapids

2009-06-18T19:27:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, I'm sorry for no posts this week, but I am attending The Acton Institute's "Acton University" in Grand Rapids, MI and won't be blogging until Sunday.

Some of the best Christian thinkers in the country have congregated here in Michigan to discuss the intersection of Religion and Liberty. More to follow with a report back from yours truly next week.

Told You So

2009-06-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

I wrote a piece a while back entitled "Is it really that close?" in which I made the statistical argument that, in fact, America remains a Center-Right nation. This past weekend a Gallup Poll re-confirmed this.

Despite the recent ascension of The One, this country holds at its core conservative values. Republicans, the party conservatives favor (for now), would do well to remember this come the mid-term elections in 2010.

Stay Classy, Letterman

2009-06-11T11:30:00.001-07:00

I've been a big fan of David Letterman for as long as I can remember. But during the 2008 election season he took a decidedly political turn, and went from funny to whenever it pertained to Republicans. I obviously have strong feelings when it comes to politics, but I've always appreciated Letterman and Leno and Conan and the rest of the late night comedians for being places of comedy, not ideologically-driven, personal, attacks.

This time Letterman has gone too far, with his disgusting remarks about Sarah Palin's daughters. Check it out for here yourself.

Obama = Carter

2009-06-11T08:41:00.000-07:00

Columnist Ann Coulter's latest piece is a gem. She comments on Obama's Cairo speech and the false idea that the war on terror is somehow a "war of choice."

An excerpt:

Obama bravely told the Cairo audience that 9/11 was a very nasty thing for Muslims to do to us, but on the other hand, they are victims of colonization. Except we didn't colonize them. The French and the British did. So why are Arabs flying planes into our buildings and not the Arc de Triomphe? (And gosh, haven't the Arabs done a lot with the Middle East since the French and the British left!)
In another sharks-to-kittens comparison, Obama said, "Now let me be clear, issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam." No, he said, "the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life."
So on one hand, 12-year-old girls are stoned to death for the crime of being raped in Muslim countries. But on the other hand, we still don't have enough female firefighters here in America.

A Whole Lotta Nothin' Going On

2009-06-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

Dr. Thomas Sowell of Stanford's famed Hoover Institute consistently pens the wisest columns around. Today's is no different. In it he explains why doing nothing is not always the best, and not always the worst, idea.

An excerpt:

People who say that we should learn from other countries seem to have in mind that we should imitate those countries. But some of the most valuable lessons from other countries can be had from seeing the disasters their policies have produced-- especially when our own intelligentsia are pushing ideas that have already been tried and failed elsewhere.
We need to pay attention to these sneak previews of coming attractions, even if they consist of doing nothing. Whether in the United States or in other countries, the purpose of all this nothing is of course to pacify public opinion by pretending to be doing something.

America fakes Left, World swerves Right

2009-06-08T12:35:00.000-07:00

The "change" many in Europe can believe in is the kind that will lead them away from the failed socialist democracies they've been living in for the past 50-60 years. In elections this past week many countries solidified or further strengthened their conservative leadership structures.

But dont' sweat it, we have things figured out over here with the most liberal administration in U.S. history. Wonder why the mainstream media that votes 80-20 liberal to conservative has largely ignored the slew of recent conservative victories on the continent we're supposed to want to be more like? Isn't the definition of insanity "doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results"?

Summer Reading from a Wise Soul

2009-06-07T23:14:00.000-07:00

Dr. Albert Mohler is the president of Southern Theological Seminary, a syndicated radio talk show host, a syndicated columnist, and for my money the clearest thinker among evangelicals when it comes to political-cultural issues. The guy reads multiple books every week and his base of knowledge and wisdom is broad and dense. For the summer months, Dr. Mohler has comprised a list of the books he recommends for all Americans to read, religious or otherwise.

Check out the ten books and a brief description of each right here on his fantastic blog.

A spot of political gossip

2009-06-05T10:23:00.000-07:00

I typically abhor celebrity gossip, considering it the most menial usage of the English language, but when it involves politicians and presidents, I can't resist. The Times of London is reporting that Barack and Michelle have turned down French President Nicholas Sarkozy's dinner invite this weekend, even though the Obama's are staying a block away while in Paris.

Oh, snap! Read more here.

Are you "green with guilt"?

2009-06-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

Washington Post syndicated columnist George Will discusses "ecology as psychology" in his latest piece about the intensity of the "going green" movement sweeping our culture.

An excerpt:

In "The Green Bubble: Why Environmentalism Keeps Imploding" (The New Republic, May 20), Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of "Break Through: Why We Can't Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists," say that a few years ago, being green "moved beyond politics." Gestures -- bringing reusable grocery bags to the store, purchasing a $4 heirloom tomato, inflating tires, weatherizing windows -- "gained fresh urgency" and "were suddenly infused with grand significance."
Green consumption became "positional consumption" that identified the consumer as a member of a moral and intellectual elite. A 2007 survey found that 57 percent of Prius purchasers said they bought their car because "it makes a statement about me." Honda, alert to the bull market in status effects, reshaped its 2009 Insight hybrid to look like a Prius.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger note the telling "insignificance," as environmental measures, of planting gardens or using fluorescent bulbs. Their significance is therapeutic, but not for the planet. They make people feel better:
"After all, we can't escape the fact that we depend on an infrastructure -- roads, buildings, sewage systems, power plants, electrical grids, etc. -- that requires huge quantities of fossil fuels. But the ecological irrelevance of these practices was beside the point."
The point of "utopian environmentalism" was to reduce guilt. During the green bubble, many Americans became "captivated by the twin thoughts that human civilization could soon come crashing down -- and that we are on the cusp of a sudden leap forward in consciousness, one that will allow us to heal ourselves, our society, and our planet. Apocalyptic fears meld seamlessly into utopian hopes." Suddenly, commonplace acts -- e.g., buying light bulbs -- infused pedestrian lives with cosmic importance. But:
"Greens often note that the changing global climate will have the greatest impact on the world's poor; they neglect to mention that the poor also have the most to gain from development fueled by cheap fossil fuels like coal. For the poor, the climate is already dangerous."
Now, say Nordhaus and Shellenberger, "the green bubble" has burst, ed by Americans' intensified reluctance to pursue greenness at a cost to economic growth. The dark side of utopianism is "escapism and a disengagement from reality that marks all bubbles, green or financial." Re-engagement with reality is among the recession's benefits.

Men vs. Wild

2009-06-03T07:57:00.001-07:00

The best show on TV (not named LOST or Mad Men) is hands-down Man vs. Wild with the legendary Bear Grylls. This week Bear battled the elements in the Arctic regions of Sweden...oh, and Will Ferrell came with him. If you missed it last night, and you're a sucker if you did, check out the preview clip here and find a time it's replaying on Discovery.

Tragedy in Kansas

2009-06-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday a deranged lunatic shot and killed Dr. George Tiller, infamously known as "Tiller the Killer" for his willingness to perform late-term abortions that few other doctors would. It was a murder, done in cold-blood, by an un-named man who thought he was meting our "justice" for the lives of innocent babies that Dr. Tiller has taken through the years.

I am pro-life, conservative, and God-fearing...and what this man did in shooting Dr. Tiller was unconscionable, evil, and wrong. Please note that every leading pro-life group, every prominent evangelical Christian, every visible conservative has rightly and roundly denounced what this murderer did. That is important to remember, because you will be hearing more and more from rabid pro-choicers that this is some sort of common practice, that it is "Christian terrorism", like they tried to label the Oklahoma City bombings more than a decade ago.

Christians, conservatives, and the pro-life movement DO NOT celebrate the loss of another life, even if it is the life of a man who needlessly took so many others' away.

PLEASE read Dr. Albert Mohler's thoughtful piece on this tragic tale from Kansas.

An excerpt:

Proponents of abortion rights often charge that the rhetoric of the pro-life movement leads to violence. After all, we describe abortion as murder and point to the business of abortion as the murder of the unborn. We make clear that abortion is the taking of innocent human life and that what goes on in abortion clinics is the business of death.

We make these arguments because we know they are true. Abortion is murder. What goes on in those clinics is institutionalized homicide, often for financial profit. Abortion is a moral scandal and a national tragedy and a blight upon the American conscience.

But violence in the name of protesting abortion is immoral, unjustified, and horribly harmful to the pro-life cause. Now, the premeditated murder of Dr. George Tiller in the foyer of his church is the headline scandal -- not the abortions he performed and the cause he represented.

We have no right to take the law into our own hands in an act of criminal violence. We are not given the right to take this power into our own hands, for God has granted this power to governing authorities. The horror of abortion cannot be rightly confronted, much less corrected, by means of violence and acts outside the law and lawful means of remedy. This is not merely a legal technicality -- it is a vital test of the morality of the pro-life movement.

Meghan McCain: Pretty, and Pretty Wrong

2009-05-30T10:22:00.001-07:00

Senator John McCain's 24 year old daughter/blogger, Meghan McCain, was recently a guest on the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. Before I give my thoughts on her appearance, please watch the brief interview below:

There are many things racing through my head right now after watching that...

First off, Meghan McCain is really good looking. I'll give her that. I know it's superfluous to some, but not to me. Although I'm a man who craves substance in another human being, it helps to have someone in the public limelight who calls herself a Republican that looks like she does. It'd be nice to pretend we live in a society where looks don't matter, but they do.

She did make some good points, actually, some very good points, about the GOP needing to avoid the mindset that Twitter and Facebook will magically win them votes with the under-30 crowd. While all of us under the Center-Right umbrella (conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, etc.) must utilize any and all technology in getting our messages of limited government, fiscal responsibility, and strong national security out..."poking" people on Facebook, or "tweeting" on Twitter isn't an ends, but merely a means. We will ultimately win with our ideas and values.

Ms. McCain also correctly identified the need for better candidates to be put forward in 2010 and 2012 for the Republican Party. Candidates, like, oh, I don't know, ones NOT named McCain perhaps? Your dad, Meghan, was, frankly, a disaster.

He's an honorable guy. He served his country. He's one of the only people in Congress the past 20+ years that practices what he preaches when it comes to spending and pork-barrel projects, and I thoroughly praise him for that. But he was too old, too ornery, too moderate and seemed to spend more of his time trying to "make nice" with the oppositional media than fighting for the issues and causes that Republican voters made him their candidate to champion.

And here I come to the first of my criticisms regarding what Meghan McCain had to say on Stephen Colbert's show: Despite being spot-on in her assessment that we need newer, fresher, more exciting candidates in the future, she foolishly and unnecessarily alluded to "those people" who are trying to "hijack" the GOP and make it "more extreme."

This is PRECISELY what the Left wants, for us to be fighting amongst ourselves, and more specifically, for the GOP moderates (whose don't win national elections) to attack the GOP conservatives (who won in 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2004). I hate to reduce things to an "us vs. them" mentality, but we're dealing with a president, congress, and media that wants NOTHING to do with people who aren't on-board for the secular-progressive, Euro-style "change" currently taking place in Washington. We're quickly approaching a "line in the sand" moment where Americans of any party or ideology are going to have to band together along core Constitutional principles and ideas if there is to be any hope of side-tracking our current double-time's pace upon the road to serfdom.

Those of us who do recognize the disastrous path our nation is currently on, a group that includes the McCain's, need to stick together, and there are some issues more important than others. For the time being, and because of the mistakes those in power the past 8 years (including Obama's first 5 months), we need to show people why government is the problem instead of the solution more than we need to take cheap shots at fellow Republicans just to get a pat on the back from Chris Matthews or the venomous vixens on The View. The Left in this country want a different America, and they are currently running the show. "Know they enemy" in this case means that Meghan McCain needs to realize that, loosely speaking, the enemy of her enemy is her friend.

Meghan's own father, and his best friend in congress (Senator Joe Lieberman, formerly a Democrat, now an Independent from CT), have prided themselves for years as being two of the most bi-partisan, reach-across-the-aisle, politicians in Washington. But when push came to shove, a liberal like Lieberman (the 2000 VP Nominee for the Democrats) was booted in 2006 from his own party for supporting the troops (and their mission), and a moderate like your dad was shunned in 2008 and labeled "too extreme" and "too far to the Right" by the same people who cheered him when he would undermine and oppose fellow Republicans during the previous 8 years.

Senator McCain was constantly praised for being a "maverick" before 2007, and incessantly mocked and ridiculed for being one during the campaign of 2008. In both cases, the liberal Democrats in this country were setting the agenda. Conservatives ending up voting for McCain. Moderates and Left-of-Center "independents" did not.

When Ms. McCain references "those people" who are allegedly trying to make the GOP "more extreme", she is talking about the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin. But there is a problem with assuming that these people are the problem. THEY REPRESENT THE BASE! Conservatism is the fuel that drives the GOP engine. Conservatism is comprised overwhelmingly by the religious, fiscally-minded, social-issues voters that actually show up on election day.

Married, religious service-going, law-abiding Americans are predominantly conservative and consequently tend to vote Republican. These people give more of their time and money to charity than any other demographic. These people also happen to like Rush, Newt and Sarah. Of course not all of us love them, and "these people" in the head-lines aren't infallible and don't speak for all of us individually, but who cares? Vote for someone else. Nominate another candidate at the ballot box. Turn your radio dial to whatever "Adult Contemp" radio programming replaced Air America when it went belly-up.

I don't understand why so many people on the Right who share vitally important values and ideals for their government and society think it necessary to spend their time "hating on" those ideologically closer to them, instead of rallying the troops to defeat the people who stand in direct opposition to their correct and necessary vision for the United States?

People like Meghan McCain are saying that they can't stand the "extremist" conservatives for standing on the same principles that have won us elections in the past. They are saying that conservatives are "hi-jacking" the party, and that it is selfish to do so. But then their solution is to "hi-jack" the party themselves and turn it in to something that it has never been and has never won for us in the past. Democrats who voted for Ronald Reagan did so not because he told them he was "pro-sex", or because he compromised the conservative ideology that got him elected twice governor of California, but because his ideas were better, and better articulated, than Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale's. Conservatives and Republicans won the war of ideas, not just some morally-questionable popularity contest.

Ms. McCain wants us to "reach out" to her age group by being more like the party and ideology that the under-30 crowd just voted for in November. But the under-30 crowd largely voted for Obama because of his "hug-a-tree" environmental policies, his "hug-a-thug" terrorist interrogation policies, and his "stab-a-CEO" economic policies. They want to be able to tell people they are green, politically correct, and egalitarian more than they want to be good stewards, intellectually honest, and personally responsible. Those of our generation, Meghan, who have swallowed the Left's distortions of capitalism and perversions of federalism will not suddenly begin to understand and appreciate the ingenuity of the Constitution or the magnificence of a free market economy because Republicans contradict Obama's own stance on an issue like gay marriage.

What really needs to change if we're ever to woo younger voters back to the Right is how, going forward, we educate ourselves and our children, and what values we collectively deem as foundational to the continuance of the American experiment in democracy. Are we going to keep letting government employees and cynical entertainers indoctrinate our kids, or will we care enough to learn the history, economics, and theology needed to properly groom future voters and taxpayers? Will we stand on the values of the "American Trinity" that Dennis Prager masterfully disseminated above, or will we succumb to petty in-fighting and look for guidance to a continent (Europe) that has adopted bureaucracies, lifestyles, and birthrates that are unsustainable?

The old saying goes: "If you're 20 and not a liberal, you don't have a heart; if you're 40 and not a conservative, you don't have a brain." So now we should make the 40 year old's look and act like the 20-somethings?

Parents (and any adults) who value liberty, limited government, economic freedom, personal responsibility, civic duty, and keeping this country safe with a strong military and intelligence gathering capabilities should be teaching their kids, relatives and neighbors the real-world practicality of conservatism. And more than this, they must themselves begin holding wishy-washy Republicans (that give us all a bad name and push moderates to the Left), Democrats, and Independents accountable for over-spending and legislative power-grabbing.

Meghan McCain is implying that unapologetic conservative public figures like Gov. Bobby Jindal (wildly popular governor of Louisiana) and Rush Limbaugh (30 million weekly listeners) and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (the smartest conservative alive today) should take a backseat to moderates like her and her dad. We're supposed to look for leadership from the RINO's (Republicans in Name Only, i.e. Senator Arlen Specter) who blur the lines so much between the opposing sides each election that more and more voters decide they might as well vote for the "cool liberal guy who swears he is a moderate despite his clear far-Left public track record" because that liberal community organizer has a great teleprompter...I mean, is rhetorical genius...and he starts to sound more and more like our our moderate candidate.

We need men and women of substance, with real, concrete ideas, clearly explained and passionately pursued. Any ideas, Newt?

I'm ALL FOR a big-tent Republican Party. Everyone is welcome, and actually, most surveys and polls confirm that the nation is still a Center-Right one in many ways. But politicians won't save this nation, and neither will catchy slogans or cool iPhone applications. (We just say "apps".) The American people, deciding that they've had enough of the corruption, ineffectiveness, liberal indoctrination of their children in public schools, and un-Constitutional annexation of power in to the hands of the few, they will be the ones to re-direct the nation towards the Right. Cities like Detroit and New Orleans have been controlled by Democrats for half a century, with nothing to show but precipitous decreases in the standard of living and quality of education.

We need to make our case to these entrenched voters, and you can rest assured that they won't be swayed to break a nasty 50-year habit simply because you ripped Sarah Palin on Comedy Central, Ms. McCain.

Finally, and in response to Ms. McCain's "pro-sex" tour that she's been on lately, all I will say is that she is absolutely being used by the liberal media. They want to attack and belittle Bristol Palin and the traditional-conservative parents who don't want education employees of the state teaching their kids about sex and sexual identity. Bristol Palin made a mistake, and contrary to what the NOW ladies would suggest kept the child. Lately she has been speaking to un-married teens about the health and emotional benefits of abstinence, and the potential repercussions of risky behavior (see: her infant child). So of course now that the media has on their side the daughter of the man who brought Bristol's mom on to the GOP presidential ticket 9 months ago joining in the chorus of "Palin haters", they're having a tasteless field day with it.

You're better than this, Meghan. Class isn't only something your father (and regrettably, I) rarely attended in college.

It was also tacky of her in the Colbert interview to "accidentally" bring up that she "practices what she preaches" when it comes to safe sex and using condoms. She then compounded her off-color remark by "acting" embarrassed that her dad would see her saying those things later on television. All this does is make someone look desperate for attention. Whatever happened to discretion and a lady's honor?

But I digress for now, and will ease up on Ms. McCain. I have no ill will towards her, and think that what you see in this interview is a 24 year old girl who means well but hasn't fully thought through what it means to be a public figure. Especially when you are a public figure who calls herself a Republican. Ascribing to yourself a label like that means you've now got a target on your back, and no matter how nice you are, no matter how many things you insist you agree with liberals on, they'll get you in the end. She hasn't caught on yet to the fact that the Left is laughing at her, not with her.

More importantly, and what you need to remember is this: Conservatism can win again, and Republicans can certainly use the input of people like Meghan McCain, but let's leave the out-of-their-league-young-people-saying-silly-things to the Left. They have much more experience in such matters.

We should be raising the bar, not placating to the lowest common denominator.

Chuck on Soto

2009-05-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

I know I already posted a clip of Charles Krauthammer giving his take on the Obama nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, but I would be remiss if I didn't include his weekly column from today's Washington Post on the very same subject.

Make the case for individual vs. group rights, for justice vs. empathy. Then vote to confirm Sotomayor solely on the grounds -- consistently violated by the Democrats, including Sen. Obama -- that a president is entitled to deference on his Supreme Court nominees, particularly one who so thoroughly reflects the mainstream views of the winning party. Elections have consequences.

Vote Democratic and you get mainstream liberalism: A judicially mandated racial spoils system and a jurisprudence of empathy that hinges on which litigant is less "advantaged."

A teaching moment, as liberals like to say. Clarifying and politically potent. Seize it.

Cause for concern?

2009-05-28T07:47:00.001-07:00

A couple in San Diego were told by local county officials that the Bible Study they were holding in their home was unlawful. I'm not trying to be an alarmist, and I cherish the true freedom we have in this blessed nation, but we do need to aware of such stories and regardless of the religion in question, protect the rights of all people of faith. Please take a minute to read this story and leave a comment as to whether or not this should be a cause for concern in your opinion.

Memorial Day Thoughts From Harvest

2009-05-27T08:49:00.000-07:00

Pastor James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel in Rolling Meadows, IL posted this thoughtful reflection on his blog Monday in celebration and remembrance of Memorial Day. While those in the clergy are well-advised to stay away from preaching politics from the pulpit on a Sunday morning, I appreciate Pastor James' willingness to speak his mind on the issue of military service and sacrifice. A must-read!

Predictable, and Predictably Bad

2009-05-26T15:57:00.000-07:00

President Obama has nominated a judge for the Supreme Court, and used race/gender as his litmus test. PLEASE watch this clip in which Charles Krauthammer explains all.

California, Dennis, and Me

2009-05-23T00:06:00.000-07:00

For those of you checking in to see new posts here at AVITW, I'm in Los Angeles all week until Memorial Day so I won't have anything new up until then. Thursday morning I was privileged to be invited to spend three hours with Dennis Prager in his studio here in California, and needless to say it was the thrill of a lifetime. I will be writing more about my time with Dennis next week. For now, enjoy your weekend and have a wonderful Memorial Day. If you know anyone who has served in the military, call them and say thanks.

p.s. If you podcast The Dennis Prager Show, check out Hour Two from Thursday's show (entitled "Obama on Gitmo, Part 2") and fast-forward about 17 minutes in. You might hear a familiar name mentioned...