The Face of 21st Century America: Can the GOP Capitalize?

The Obama Jokerizer has been fingered!

This is the face of 21st century America. He laughs at the Obama hype but wasn't much of a Bush fan, either, disagreeing with our adventurous foreign policy under the last president. He also seems socially conservative, but would vote for Dennis Kucinich.

"After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ," Alkhateeb said. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him."

Alkhateeb's assessment of Obama: "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."

The GOP should be seeking this young man's vote
True conservatism is chary of foreign entanglements as well as bloated government schemes at home. True conservatives also view cults of personality, even conservative ones, with skepticism.

This young man represents a generation that isn't hung up on 20th century terms. Socialism is not fraught with cold war baggage for them. After all, social networking is all the rage.

This is a generation with a keen sense of right and wrong. A generation with morals that largely (with exceptions) concord with our traditional Judeo-Christian heritage, although their morality may not be derived from Christianity.

How can the GOP attract young voters?
Stand for freedom. Let The Constitution be your guide. Stop preaching religion, but stand up for the rights of the religious and irreligious alike to peacefully practice their beliefs in the public square.

The GOP should stand for freedom to demand our politicians write bills that ordinary people can understand, not catalogs of legalese that benefit only state-favored corporate entities.

Freedom to be a freak, a garishly painted transvestite, a global warming denier with a gigantic carbon footprint, a global warming hypocrite with a gigantic carbon footprint, an atheist, a tree worshiper... People gotta be free, and as long as your freedom does not impede anyone else's, we're all good.

Could such a freedom message alienate religious folk? Consider this typically clueless twaddle from the El Lay Times:

A series of sex-related scandals over the last few years has undercut the party's assertions of moral authority and, worse, may serve to reinforce the doubts that many evangelical voters have traditionally harbored about the unholiness of the political realm

The unholiness of the political realm? I am not an evangelical, but I doubt many are looking to a political party for holiness and "moral authority." That would be like looking to Hollywood for patriotism. There is a natural affinity between the GOP and Christians--preaching freedom instead of morality won't imperil that.

Conservative Reconquista
Our morbidly obese feral government is on the verge of massive myocardial infarction. It has stuck its snout into every corner of society, and people are fed up. Including tuned in young people who see oldsters siphoning off their future. If this isn't a golden opportunity for conservative revanchists, I don't know what is.

Freedom Message Can Win It For Republicans
A Republican party that stands for liberty, as envisioned by our founders, could regain its mojo. A Republican party that vows to roll back government regulation could actually find itself in power again.

Jim DeMint, as quoted in a Cato article, has a pitch perfect campaign message based on freedom and states rights:

... the organizing principle and the crucial alternative to the Democrats — must be freedom. The federal government is too big, takes too much of our money, and makes too many of our decisions….

We can argue about how to rein in the federal Leviathan; but we should agree that centralized government infringes on individual liberty and that problems are best solved by the people or the government closest to them.

Moderate and liberal Republicans who think a South Carolina conservative like me has too much influence are right! I don’t want to make decisions for them. That’s why I’m working to reduce Washington’s grip on our lives and devolve power to the states, communities and individuals...

It’s the Democrats who want to impose a rigid, uniform agenda on all Americans. Freedom Republicanism is about choice — in education, health care, energy and more. It’s OK if those choices look different in South Carolina, Maine and California.

CATO rightly asks how DeMint can square this federalist philosophy with his support for an anti-gay marriage amendment to the US Constitution. Can states decide for themselves or not?

Issues like these are not easily resolved, but they provide much more productive debate than arguing over how to out-Democrat the Democrats. And intelligently addressing these issues may just attract a few voters who haven't yet sprouted gray hair.

Cato - DeMint
El Lay Times - Evangelicals
El Lay Times - Joker Unmasked
WSJ - Demint

Freedom and Failure

New Hampshire really does live free. Texas and Colorado still retain the wide-open freedoms of the old west.

Steve Malanga reports in City Journal on the results of a freedom survey conducted by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University. New York came in dead last, and Malanga's piece is an interesting study of this failure.

A new study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Freedom in the 50 States, is the most comprehensive effort to date to rank the states on how their public policies influence “individual freedom in the economic, social and personal spheres.” It includes dozens of variables, from social and personal freedoms (such as parents’ right to educate their own children) to regulatory freedom (such as the degree of occupational licensing requirements) to fiscal liberty (as measured, for instance, by states’ debt burdens, which represent a constraint on future generations).

Top 10 (Most Free) States - #1 to #10:
New Hampshire, Colorado, South Dakota, Idaho, Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, Arizona, Virginia, North Dakota

Bottom 10 (Least Free) States #41 to #50:
Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Washington, Hawaii, Maryland, California, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York

Data like this is good for poking a finger in the eye of liberalism, but that's not the main point. Studies like this show that conservatism works when it abandons its paternalism, and rampant liberalism is never the path to success.

Merctus.org - Freedom Study
CJ - Malanga
CJ - Gelinas

No Morals No Freedom, Know Morals ...

Two apparently unrelated bits of news:

Global despotism is on the rise and freedom take a beating around the world.

Free market ideals are taking a real beating as they are replaced by centrally planned, statist economies.

Actually, they are related. The champions of freedom have lost their moral authority. Yes, we had successes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, The Philippines and other more obscure places, and no, free market capitalism did not cause the economic debacle we now face.

But the Western press, resentful of the system that put them in their place of prosperity, want to bring it all down, man! "That'll teach those Bu$hies to try to free all those people!" They will never forgive Ronald Reagan for building the economic juggernaut that drove the decades-long global prosperity boom that enabled literally millions world-wide to pull themselves out of poverty. This model is still the envy and blueprint for successful economies worldwide.

Claudia Rosett writes in Forbes:

The basic cause for concern is not that there are more dictatorships than a few years ago, but that the global ethos has shifted. There is a growing swagger among despots.

since the wave of democratization that swept parts of Asia in the late 1980s and rolled on in 1991 to the Soviet collapse, despots have had a chance to rethink, regroup, and--like the opportunistic crowd they are--adapt. Where there is an opening, whenever the pressures come off, they tend to find and exploit it.

Freedom House notes the "continuation of a negative global trend with respect to freedom of expression, freedom of association and the rule of law." In Europe and the U.K., politically correct fear of giving offense has put a damper on free speech and honest discourse. This reaches even into the U.S., where open debate has come under attack by way of both the same political correctness...

Steven Malanga brings it all home the simple question: "Can free markets survive in a secularized world?" Weber's Protestant Work Ethic got us here, but we've abandoned it:

The gradual disappearance of the Protestant ethic has shifted the emphasis in our economy from work and production to work and consumption—but most of all to consumption. A culture of thrift has become a culture of debt, and in the process many people have blurred the line between the legitimate competitive activity that is so essential to capitalism and criminality.

Professor Gavin Kennedy of Edinburgh reminds us that Adam Smith first wrote on morals before penning his famous work, The Wealth of Nations.

That the discourse of public life is dominated by ideological assaults on the idea of freer markets, and the supposed blessings of ‘regulation’ by bureaucracies, instead of by the justice system, is a symptom of the misjudged tendency to blame markets, which are not free, for the failings from political interventions that are not capable.

Throwing good money after bad is a weakness of poor management; ever tighter regulation to cover the deficiencies of regulations that don’t work as intended is congenital to micro-regulators.

In business markets, incompetence is terminated by losses; in political regulation, incompetence is cushioned by the public purse.

The Founding Fathers knew it. Adam Smith Knew it: A free market or a free society without morals is like a structure without a foundation.

Can you feel the sand shifting beneath your feet?

http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/28/qaddafi-korea-dictators-opinions-columnists_0129_claudia_rosett.html?feed=rss_opinions

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/01/can_free_markets_survive_in_a.html
http://www.adamsmithslostlegacy.com/2009/01/markets-and-morals.html

The Evangelical atheist

Militant atheism was furthest from my mind this Christmas season, yet has been brought to the forefront by some recent comments on the post of "We had a Merry Christmas". It struck me as odd why such a benign post would elicit such a response, then it occurred to me that the response in and of itself was evangelical, so to speak... soliciting converts to 'the truth'.

Of course, as soon as I googled "Evangelical atheist" I was rolling on the floor, for the third hit down on the page was a link to Urban Dictionary which read:

"evangelical atheist - 2 definitions - See [asshole] An evangelical atheist is one who not only believes there is no god or other supreme being, but is obsessed with convincing everyone around them to become an atheist too, usually through hard-line intolerance (the kind they accuse other religions of). ." Don't believe me? Google it.

Ted Peters had this to say on the subject "It used to be that atheists didn’t bother anybody. They simply stayed home from church on Sunday and avoided praying. The social impact was minimal. "

Click here for the rest of a well reasoned article in response to Richard Dawkins: http://www.counterbalance.net/new-atheism/index-frame.html

It is not the argument that I find of interest, but the fanatical and zealous way in which it is delivered. This is not the calm and reasoned presentation of logic, but a vicious diatribe. It is the irrational extreme of Denis Diderot's "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest". It is the mindset of the soviets, that in 1918 summarily executed 10 orthodox hierarchs and founded The Society of the Godless (an actual organization, not a commentary on soviet society). It is this 'enlightened' viewpoint that resulted in the closing of hundreds of churches, the slaughter of 80 bishops, and a quick trip to the Gulag for thousands of clerics.

One wonders if the fanaticism of the response would have been directed at the author had he "had a happy solstice"? Or if some underlying rage at either organized religion or Christianity is the root cause. I would like to point out to our secular friend a tenet of that most secular of documents, "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights": "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance." I might also point out that the founding document of our nation, in instituting the separation of church and state, says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

I might point out Mark Vuletic's (an atheist) words on the subject: Atheism has a comparatively small public voice, but it is a voice that many believers hear. However, when they listen to this voice, they often hear little more than slurs and insults. When interacting with atheists, believers are frequently met with the same arrogance and condescension, the same hatred and vitriol, the same bigotry and prejudice, as atheists so often receive from believers. In short, believers tend to encounter in atheists exactly what they have been taught to expect... If we wish to shatter once and for all the myth that atheism and immorality are inseparable, we must not deny believers the compassion, tolerance, patience, and understanding that humanists are supposed to extend to all.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/moral.html

One wonders why someone so obviously convinced of their own moral, logical, and scientific superiority needs to resort to such vile rhetoric in attempting to convince others of the superiority of their position. I have had many friends in my life who have been non-believers, and while the majority of them were more appropriately termed agnostic, I have found the atheists among them to be rather vain, based upon the supposed 'infallibility' of their beliefs. I generally find anyone with absolutist views, whether atheistic, scientific, or religious to be rather intolerable. Even that great philosopher of the Scottish enlightenment, David Hume, contended that meaningful statements about the universe are always qualified by some degree of doubt.

One often finds atheists who advance the argument that religion has been the cause of most of the evil one finds in the historical record, while overlooking the likes of Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot. They also overlook the great contributions to peace that science as brought, like Bows and Arrows, Guns, Bigger Guns, and that all encompassing advance of apocalyptic Biblical (or Bhagavad Gita) proportions, the H-Bomb. The argument that religion is evil overlooks the common factor in all evil, us. It is not the nature of religion that institutes such occurrences as the Spanish Inquisition, but the flawed nature of man. One might make the argument that evil stems from absolutism, for most if not all of the evil in our history has stemmed from absolute positions, be it fascist, communist, racist, or theist. It is the belief in one's absolute superiority that propagates throughout history as manifestations of absolute evil, horror, and inhumanity.

While a firm advocate of the separation of church and state, I have always believed that religion, in the form of comparative theology, should be taught in school. Separation of church and state seeks to prevent the establishment of a state religion (Establishment Clause), it was (IMHO) never intended to erase religion from society (Exercise Clause), and while it is possible to separate religion from state, it is virtually impossible to separate religion from culture. Religion, like art and science, is part of the cultural heritage of man, all men, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, or any number of other faiths. In a free public context such displays promote interaction and tolerance.

The 'Christmas Tree Controversy' is one that is particularly irksome. The public expression of faith should be something cherished in our society, the freedom of religion (not freedom from religion) being one of our great nations founding principles. It seems that far from offering religious freedom, we are in the foolishness of political correctness attempting to ban religion from the public space, as if it were something shameful in this enlightened age that should be hidden away like porn... it's okay, but only in the privacy of your own home. I would have no problem with a creche in the town square, any more that I would have a problem with a Jewish, Muslim, or any other display. Living overseas, I can say I took no offense to Buddha's Birthday celebrations and found them educational, and even fun. I take no offense at being greeted with "Īd mubārak" (Blessed Eid), nor would I take offense at being invited to have a Happy Ostara (Wiccan) . To take offense at the proffered good will of others, whatever the reason is petty and small.

What I do take offense at, although I would not prohibit them, are atheist displays such as the one in Olympia, Washington that read "At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds." I don't oppose the viewpoint, I don't believe it but I don't recommend banning it, but that the display is more of a negative assault than a profession of belief. It is no more acceptable than fundamentalists pointing out Jews as the killer of Jesus in a Hanukkah display or the protesting by the Westboro Baptist Church at the funerals of military members. By all means celebrate your beliefs, celebrate Galileo's Birthday (Feb 15) if it makes you happy, put a whole calendar of Scientific Holidays together, but a 'celebration' putting down other peoples beliefs and customs should be beneath you.

All of this serves to illustrate one main point, that extremism is not the sole domain of religion, one can find extremists of all points of view from religion, to science, to politics, to sociology. The only rational approach is one of cautious restraint and dialogue. No one has ever advanced their own position by attacking the beliefs of others, unless that advance came solely from intimidation.

Until you come to the table with something positive to offer, you just come across as vulgar, barbaric, and mean...

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

~Finntann~

Virtue Rewarded

Kosovo Names Street For President Bush

(AFP) Kosovo decided Wednesday to name a central street of its capital Pristina after outgoing US President George W. Bush for his support of the territory's split from Serbia.

Backed unanimously by Kosovo's cabinet, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said the move was "a sign of the huge state and national respect and appreciation" for the United States' contribution to independence, declared earlier this year.

Located in Pristina's downtown area, Bush Street is to be linked to the main thoroughfare named after Mother Teresa, the 1979 Nobel Peace Laureate of Albanian origin.

Fans of Michael Totten will not be surprised by this. His raw reports from Iraq gave us the often brutal truth, but never in a sneering, NY Times way. He was also the first to herald the good news of the Sunni Awakening and the positive results from the surge. He has written of Kosovo:

Most of its citizens are Muslim, an oddity in Europe; further, unlike most Muslim-majority nations, Kosovo is overwhelmingly pro-American, and its relations with Israel are excellent as well.

Totten has also written of Albania, Kosovo's neighboring country, which is also majority Muslim:

Albania is fanatically pro-American, which is perhaps a bit counterintuitive to many Americans since it is at least nominally a Muslim-majority country. The conventional assumption that Muslims hate Americans everywhere isn't true.

“You should have seen President Bush’s face when he came to Albania,” an ethnic Albanian man later said to me in Kosovo. “All over Western Europe he was met by protests, but the entire country of Albania turned out to welcome him. He was so happy. You could see it on his face.”

Albanian pro-Americanism resembles that of both Poland and Iraqi Kurdistan. The unspeakably oppressive communist regime pushed Albanians strongly into the U.S.-led Western camp, and the humanitarian rescue of Albanians in Kosovo from Slobodan Milosevic's tyrannical despotism bolstered that sentiment even more.

Albania, Kosovo, Kurdistan, and to a lesser extent the newly-free countries of Eastern Europe: Nations with memories of brutal tyranny still fresh in their collective minds, greatly appreciate what the US has done for them. Indeed, even the radically anti-US newspaper, Britain's Guardian headlined their story saying he received a hero's welcome.

So, take a moment to feel good about your country and your president. We've freed a lot of people.

Gun Grabbers?

Chicago Sun Times reports that President-elect Obama is playing snake charmer to gun owners:

"I believe in common-sense gun safety laws, and I believe in the second amendment," Obama said at a news conference. "Lawful gun owners have nothing to fear. I said that throughout the campaign. I haven't indicated anything different during the transition. I think people can take me at my word."

I take the president-elect at his word. I just have a few questions about the meaning of some of those words. Like a famous man once said, "It depends on what the meaning of the word is is.

How does Mr. Obama define "common sense?" Does he have any plans to redefine what "lawful" means? Don't hold your breath waiting for some metrosexual reporter who thinks hunting is murder to ask those questions.

As to his comment that lawful gun owners have nothing to fear, I couldn't help recalling a Thomas Jefferson quote:

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Brady Campaign against Gun Violence, had this to say about a spike in post-election gun purchases:

"We think they are people who already have more than enough guns at their homes to protect themselves and are buying more."

Who is Peter Hamm to decide someone has "more than enough" guns? To some of us, too many guns is like too much fun. And like Daryle Singletary, I ain't never had too much fun.

Therein lies the problem with trying to restrict God-given freedoms: How does a bureaucrat decide how many guns (how much freedom) is "enough?"

Leave law-abiding citizens alone. There are more than enough criminals running loose to keep our law enforcement busy without creating a new class of criminal out of some do-gooder's paranoid fantasy.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1318968,obama-gun-sales-up-120808.article

Move On Mom: America's Worst

Once again, MoveOn.org brings us the very worst of America: A woman who wants all of America's benefits with none of the sacrifice.

This is a well-crafted piece of propaganda that is sure to resonate with the soft-headed in this country. No parent relishes the thought of a child of any age fighting and dying in a war, but we must also consider this sad but true quote by Thomas Jefferson:

"The tree of Liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Not Alex

Don't worry lady: This is America! You can enjoy all this beautiful country has to offer, and we won't require any sacrifice of you. There is a long, unbroken line of patriotic men and women who have kept this country safe and will continue to keep you and your baby safe whether you like it or not.

Got Freedom? Thank a Soldier!