The Party of Civil Rights

Kevin Williamson has a little history lesson for us today on the true party of civil rights:  the GOP.  Some little known history about that arch conservative Barry Goldwater:

[In Pheonix] Goldwater was a department-store proprietor and a member of the Phoenix city council. He was a very conservative Republican, something that was not at all at odds with his membership in the NAACP, which was, in the 1950s, an organization in which Republicans and conservatives still were very much welcome. The civil-rights community in Phoenix, such as it was, did not quite know what to make of Goldwater. It was already clear by then that he was to be a conservative’s conservative and a man skeptical of federal overreach; while he described himself as being unprejudiced on what was at the time referred to as “the race question,” the fact was that he did not talk much about it, at least in public. His family department stores were desegregated under his watch, though he was not known to hire blacks to work there. But when the Arizona legislature was considering making segregation voluntary in the public schools, Goldwater was lobbying for it behind the scenes.

Goldwater also worked behind the scenes, helping to fund a lawsuit that would eventually desegregate the schools in Arizona a full year before a unanimous decision was handed down in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.  Though Goldwater is unfortunately most known as a critic of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which he was wrong about), he nonetheless helped end segregation, much to the dismay of Lyndon Johnson and a majority of the Democratic Party.

It's amazing how much revisionism has been done in American history because it seems as though most Americans would think today that it was in fact the GOP that was the party trying to halt racial progress.  I blame Republicans as well because I don't see the current leadership of the GOP feeling the need to correct any of this either.

Madman

I haven't really wanted to ever bring this guy up, but a piece on NRO today takes a look at the conspiracy theory bete noire Alex Jones.  Jones is a proud 9/11 truther, and a day after the Boston bombing called it a "false flag" operation (in other words, the government was behind it in order to further ratchet up the police state).  A sample:

Jones isn’t so much a professor of conspiracy theory as he is an evangelist for conspiracy theology. And that’s probably what makes his oeuvre so compelling to so many — it’s bad news compounded by worse news compounded by news that’s even worse, but there’s always at the end a germ of hope.

The theories Jones and his followers spew are problematic at best because they almost always tend to follow this line of logic:  Every theory is accepted until proven otherwise, and anyone who discounts the theories are either willing dupes or are a part of the conspiracy.  This is the logic of a madman.

Problems? What Problems?!?!?

I have been busy working on plans for the fall, which is the cause for my more intermittent posts recently.  

Some news:  Here is John Hinderaker on the Gang of Eight's immigration proposal, which, if what I've been reading is accurate, will do nothing to solve the problems of illegal immigration or assimilation:

As we noted here, Numbers USA has estimated that if the Gang of Eight’s immigration proposal becomes law, at least 33 million immigrants will enter the United States, or be legalized here, over the next ten years. The overwhelming majority will be Mexicans, and most will enter the country as a result of our irrational policy of chain immigration, which will be unlimited as to the relatives of those covered by the bill. 

[...]

Where, exactly are we going to find jobs for 33 million people? How many of the 33 million will go directly onto welfare, without even looking for work? For that matter, where are we going to put them? These are a few of the many questions to which the Gang has no answers.

And it looks like the Gang wants to sweep all the problems associated with their proposal under the rug.

Rearing His Ugly Head

Think you've heard the last of former Rep. Ron Paul?  Think again.

On April 17, Paul announced the creation of a new think tank, the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, which, according to its website, “continues and expands Dr. Paul’s lifetime of public advocacy for a peaceful foreign policy and the protection of civil liberties at home.”

And it wouldn't be Ron Paul without his usual gang of associates:

A prominent defender of the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, [British writer John] Laughland penned a book on his Hague war-crimes trial titled Travesty (the “travesty” in question not being the Bosnian Serb genocide of Muslims, which Laughland deniesever took place, but the “kangaroo court” that brought Milosevic to justice and which Laughland blamed for his 2006 death). Laughland has also defended Ukraine’s Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych (whose attempt to steal the 2004 election sparked that country’s peaceful Orange Revolution) and lamented the fateof Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Europe’s last dictator, victim of “humiliating treatment” at the hands of a “propaganda campaign waged against” him “by the West.”

And:

Next on the list of Paul Institute board members are the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Most prominent among them is Judge Andrew Napolitano, a legal analyst for Fox News who has said that “It’s hard for me to believe that [7 World Trade Center] came down by itself” and that the 9/11 attacks “couldn’t possibly have been done the way the government told us.”

And:

[Judge Napolitano] is joined by Eric Margolis, who, despite an apparent lack of a Ph.D. or appointment at an institution of higher learning, is listed as a member of the organization’s “academic board.” Margolis says that “conclusive proof still lacks” connecting Osama bin Laden to the 9/11 attacks and has speculated that the events could have been “a plot by America’s far right or by Israel or a giant cover-up.”

Of course, it wouldn't be a Ron Paul Institute without Lincoln haters and Lost Causers:

For that, there’s Walter Block, an anarcho-capitalist professor of economics and fellow at the Mises Institute. Like many in Rockwell’s neo-Confederate circle, Block believes that the wrong side won the “war against Southern succession” and blames most of America’s current problems on “the monster Lincoln.”

The curious irony of those who hate the state and who whitewash the crimes of the old European tyrannies of the former Soviet block:

In the Ron Paul Institute, we see a group of people supposedly prioritizing limited government and personal freedom shilling on behalf of regimes which have actually implemented the very sort of surveillance state policies these civil liberties obsessives routinely cry are being imposed on unsuspecting Americans by Democratic and Republican politicians alike.

I'm glad Paul is gone but his influence is certainly not waning.  Be afraid.

Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

Saw this headline in my Facebook newsfeed earlier today:  "Study finds belief in free market economics predicts rejection of science."

A sample:

Those who rejected climate change appeared to be more accepting of conspiracy theories in general. Belief that the moon landing was actually staged on Earth, that the government allowed the 9/11 terrorist attacks occur so they could invade the Middle East, and other conspiracy theories predicted rejection of climate change.

Oh, I see.  So those with beliefs that mostly typify the extreme left believe in free market economics and are rejecting science... .

I also thought up a similar headline: "Baseball player hits home run,  causes rain to fall."

The Sound and the Fury

Care of John Hinderaker is this piece in The Atlantic titled "The Boston Bombers Were Muslim:  So?" by Megan Garber that typifies the modern liberal mindset.  Hinderaker had this to say about the title:

Before taking a close look at Ms. Garber’s article, let’s advise The Atlantic not to put away that headline. It could come in handy so often. “The Cole Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The Embassy Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The First World Trade Center Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The September 11 Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The Madrid Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The London Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The Shoebomber Was Muslim: So?” The Underwear Bomber Was Muslim: So?” “The Fort Hood Shooter Was Muslim: So?” “The Beslan Child-Murderers Were Muslim: So?” “The Times Square Bomber Was Muslim: So?”

Here is a longer section that I will quote in full just to give a full flavor of the essay's overarching logic:

Here is what we know -- or what we think we know -- about Tamerlan Tsarnaev: He was a boxer and a "gifted athlete." He did not smoke or drink -- "God said no alcohol" -- and didn't take his shirt off in public "so girls don't get bad ideas." He was "very religious." He had a girlfriend who was half-Portuguese and half-Italian. In 2009, he was arrested after allegedly assaulting his girlfriend. He was "a nice guy." He was also a "cocky guy." He was also a "a normal guy." He loved the movie Borat. He wanted to become an engineer, but his first love was music: He studied it in school, playing the piano and the violin. He didn't have American friends, he said -- "I don't understand them" -- but he also professed to appreciate the U.S. ("America has a lot of jobs .... You have a chance to make money here if you are willing to work"). He was training, as a boxer, to represent the U.S. in the Olympics. 

We know, or we think we do, that Tamerlan's brother, Dzhokar, is "very quiet." Having graduated from the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School -- a public school known for its diverse student body -- he received a scholarship from the City of Cambridge. He went to his prom, with a date and in a tux. He had friends. He posed with them, smiling, at graduation. He tweeted pictures of cats. He skateboarded around his Cambridge neighborhood. His personal priorities, he has said, are "career and money." He is a second-year medical student at UMass Dartmouth. He is seemingly Chechan by birth and Muslim by religion, and has lived in the U.S. since 2002. He is "a true angel." He has uncles in Maryland. He called one of them yesterday and said, "Forgive me."

These are provisional facts. They are the products of the chaos of breaking news, and may well also be the products of people who stretch the truth -- or break it -- in order to play a role in the mayhem. They are very much subject to change. But they are also reminders of something it's so easy to forget right now, especially for the many, many members of the media -- professional and otherwise -- who currently find themselves under pressure of live air or deadline: Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev are not simply "the Marathon bombers," or "murderers," or "Chechens," or "immigrants," or "Muslims." They might turn out to be all of those things. They might not. The one thing we know for sure is that they are not only those things. They had friends and families and lives. They had YouTube accounts and Twitter feeds. They went to class. They went to work. They came home, and they left it again (emphasis added).

Just as Shakespeare said:  "...a tale told by an Idiot, all the sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Not Born but Made

At NRO, John O'Sullivan makes an important point about what the Boston bombings mean in regards to how we deal with immigration in this country.  Is the current trend of multiculturalism the answer or is assimilation -- assuredly a dirty word in today's lexicon -- the correct path?  The Founders thought the latter.  And as O'Sullivan argues, the current trend of multiculturalism has been steadily undermining any attachment -- Lincoln called it the electric cord -- to the principles of the regime, which the Founders thought was what truly made someone a citizen.  

Here is O'Sullivan:

Ten days ago the Hudson Institute published an important paper, “America’s Patriotic Immigrations System is Broken,” by John Fonte and Althea Nagai, which drew on a massive new Harris Interactive survey of native-born Americans and immigrants (which Fonte discussed on the Corner). 

This study shows beyond any doubt that, as John Fonte puts it, the patriotic attachment of naturalized citizens is much weaker than that of the native-born. For example, by 30 percentage points (67.3 percent to 37 percent) native-born citizens are more likely to believe that the U.S. Constitution should be a higher legal authority than international law if there is a conflict between the two. But that is only one example — the strength of Fonte-Nagai paper is the cumulative evidence that a relatively weak love of country persists across a large range of issues. But read the study for yourself. 

Into this moral and patriotic vacuum seeps what Orwell called “transferred nationalism.” In his day this was usually some variety of Marxism; today it often often a variation on radical Islam. But it is adopted and sparks violent thoughts in the minds of young men whom official America has shielded from the old Americanization. 

Getting patriotic assimilation right is as vital — perhaps more vital — than getting border security right. It is an essential part of any comprehensive immigration reform worth the name. To propose opening the country to millions of new immigrants until we have solved this problem is simply to invite more violence from more young men whom we have disoriented and left victim to the worse impulses.

In all of this, it is always important to remember that Americans are not born but made.

Rush to Judgement

Stephen Knott, a professor at the U.S. War Naval College, has a good column in the Washington Post on the rush to judgement made by historians on the record of President George W. Bush.  This column is a snapshot of his full length treatment of the subject in his book Rush to Judgement:  George W. Bush, the War of Terror, and His Critics.  Much like smearing of Calvin Coolidge by the New Deal historians, historians today have similarly trashed Bush--even when he was still in office.  A sample:

In April 2006, Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz published an essay in Rolling Stone titled “The Worst President in History?” Wilentz argued that “George W. Bush’s presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace” in part because he had “demonized the Democrats,” hurting the nation’s ability to wage war. No other U.S. president “failed to embrace the opposing political party” in wartime, Wilentz claimed, despite numerous examples to the contrary, such as whenFranklin D. Roosevelt compared his Republican opponents to fascists in 1944.

And:

Not to be outdone, in December of that year Columbia history professor Eric Foner proclaimed Bush “the worst president in U.S. history” and argued that Bush sought to “strip people accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta.” According to Foner, Warren Harding of Teapot Dome fame was something of a paragon of virtue next to Bush, whose administration was characterized by “even worse cronyism, corruption, and pro-business bias.”

Knott is not so much interested in giving the Bush presidency a sterling review, but he is instead calling out those historians who do not practice what they preach.

In their hasty, partisan-tinged assessments of Bush, far too many scholars breached their professional obligations, engaging in a form of scholarly malpractice, by failing to do what historians are trained to do before pronouncing judgment on a presidency: conduct tedious archival research, undertake oral history interviews, plow through memoirs, interview foreign leaders and wait for the release of classified information.

[...] 

George W. Bush’s low standing among academics reflects, in part, the rise of partisan scholarship: the use of history as ideology and as a political weapon, which means the corruption of history as history. Bush may not have been a great president; he may even be considered an average or below-average president, but he and — more important — the nation deserve better than this partisan rush to judgment.

Even more than the Marxists roots that most historians today share, they also tend to see history with a capital H--History that encapsulates men and their times in amber--much like dinosaur fossils.  Instead of right and wrong being always true no matter the time and place, historians tend to see right and wrong as bowing down to History (the phrase in politics of "being on the right side of history" comes to mind).  They reject the Lincolnian teaching that the principle that all men are created equal is a truth applicable to all men and all times.  Instead, we are marching towards something, but (with the influences of post-modernism) we are no longer sure of just what that place is.

Lessons from Boston

Reflecting before the capture of the second suspect in the Boston bombing, Victor Davis Hanson focuses his aim on how we as a country should go about dealing with domestic terrorism.  Since I am a big on using the right words in politics, I think this is some good advice:

I don’t think the therapeutic and euphemistic approach (the effort to change the language to win adherents by fantasies such as “workplace violence”/“overseas contingency operations”/ “man-caused disasters”) works. Avoidance of the word terrorism, especially in the context of Islam, or worry over the loss of the diversity in the military after the Hasan killing, is not the right way to drive home to would-be killers the image of a society collectively vigilant and unforgiving of terrorism. 

These Orwellian terms came from the easy caricaturing of the Bush-Cheney-era anti-terrorism protocols, an indulgence that became popular as Iraq heated up, 9/11 fears lessened, and politics returned with a vengeance. But those measures were in response to real threats about which we were initially both confused and unprepared, and soon had forgotten. The irony of the Patriot Act measures was that they largely worked and therefore gave some the luxury to insist that the measures were unnecessary all along.

The focus on diversity (in the sense that race, ethnicity, and gender somehow defines a person as a moral being) and the like really misses the forest for the trees and puts something on a pedestal that is only an accident of birth.

Some more advice on what should be done regarding immigration policy:

If we are intent on accepting persecuted “refugees” from religious-based conflict in the Islamic world — whether Chechens to Boston or Somalis to Minnesota — then it is probably not a wise idea to grant, without close scrutiny, those without citizenship periodic visas to return to their supposedly dangerous countries of origin. If their homeland was so perilous to begin with, why would a resident alien risk going back to a place whose danger was the primary reason for his original request for asylum in the U.S.? Assembling anti-personnel IEDs is not the sort of skill that one acquires without first-hand mentoring — it cannot not simply be learned by downloading plans from the Internet, at least not without a lot of personal risk.

And the ultimate irony of our immigration policies in light of what just transpired in Boston:

Finally, why is it so easy to enter the United States and so hard to be deported from it, especially after being arrested or violating its laws?

Shameful

Jacob Sullum at Reason calls out President Obama for his demagogic approach in his push for heightened gun control:

"This is about doing the right thing for all the families who are here that have been torn apart by gun violence," President Obama declared on Monday, promoting his "common-sense gun safety reforms" in a speech at the University of Hartford, where the audience included parents of children who were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in nearby Newtown last December. "This is not about politics."

Two days after the Sandy Hook attack, at a memorial service for the 20 children and six adults killed by Adam Lanza, Obama said people who don't support his gun control agenda are in effect saying "we're powerless in the face of such carnage" because "the politics are too hard." Since then he has repeatedly cited the Newtown massacre as a reason to enact the same gun controls he has always supported—including "universal background checks," a renewed "assault weapon" ban, and a 10-round limit on magazines—even though these policies could not possibly have prevented that horrific attack. He calls this "common sense." 

Unless you disagree with him. "There is only one thing that can stand in the way of change," Obama said, "and that's politics in Washington." Members of Congress have a simple choice to make, he explained: "What's more important to you—our children, or an A grade from the gun lobby?" This crass attempt at moral intimidation, contrasting Obama's benevolent motives with his opponents' child-endangering partisanship, is the essence of his case for new gun restrictions, which relies on emotional manipulation rather than logical argument. 

Obama cites the careless, confusing gun control bills hastily enacted in New York, Colorado, Connecticut, and Maryland as models for Congress to follow. "We can't stand by and keep letting these tragedies happen," he said on Monday, as if strong resolve is all that's needed to stop mass shootings. "If there is just one thing we can do to keep one father from having to bury his child, isn't that worth fighting for?" 

Contrary to Obama's implication, the question is not whether preventing the murder of children is desirable but whether the policies he supports would do that. Instead of explaining, for example, how background checks can thwart mass killers, who typically do not have disqualifying criminal or psychiatric records and who in any event can use guns purchased by someone else (as Lanza did), Obama simply assumes his plan will work and insinuates that anyone who opposes it does not care about children as much as he does.
Even as he claims to be troubled by a lack of empathy in the gun control debate, Obama refuses to entertain the possibility that his opponents, like him, are doing what they believe to be right. On Monday he described them as "powerful interests that are very good at confusing the subject, that are good at amplifying conflict and extremes, that are good at drowning out rational debate, good at ginning up irrational fears." 

This from a man who says mass shootings, which remain thankfully rare, are becoming "routine"; who falsely asserts that Lanza used a "fully automatic weapon" and habituallyconflates military-style semi-automatics with machine guns; and who claims background checks have "prevented more than 2 million dangerous people from getting their hands on a gun," when in fact we don't know how many of those people were actually dangerous or how many were actually prevented from obtaining firearms. Obama's idea of "rational debate" involves trotting out grieving parents and presenting their pain as if it were an argument. 

"There are good people on both sides of this thing," Obama said in Denver last week, "but we have to be able to put ourselves in the other person's shoes." He worried that "both sides of the debate sometimes don't listen to each other" and wondered, "How do you build trust?" Here's one way: Stop trying to claim the moral high ground by clambering onto the bloody corpses of children.

This was written prior to the failure of the gun control compromises to pass out of the Senate.  Yesterday, in response to this, Obama again stoked the fires, implictly accusing Republicans of not caring about stopping school shootings.  A sample:

There were no coherent arguments as to why we wouldn’t do this. It came down to politics—the worry that that vocal minority of gun owners would come after them in future elections….They caved to pressure, and they started looking for an excuse—any excuse—to vote no….This was a pretty shameful day for Washington.

Yes, it was a pretty shameful day in Washington.

Tax Truths

If any single thing can destroy the common liberal myth that raising taxes necessarily leads to more revenue it is this graph:

Liberal Hypocrisy and the Limits of the Right to Choose

Steve Hayward has some thoughts on the liberal hypocrisy in regards to the case of abrtionist Kermit Gosnell and how, ala Newt Gingrich, Republicans should turn the tables on questions from the MSM designed to carry water for the pro-choice side:

Liberals and the media are still dining out on Rep. Todd Akin’s famous face-plant about “legitimate rape” that, in conjunction with Richard Mourdoch’s similar mis-step in Indiana, didn’t just cost the GOP two winnable Senate seats, but might have cost them the Senate and the presidential election as well. The competent answer to that question in a political campaign, of course, would have been to go on the attack, with a line of reasoning that goes something like this: “I notice that you pro-abortion reporters so in the bag for the abortion industry that you have to default to the most extreme case in order to defend your friends, and never ask ‘pro-choice’ politicians about the extreme cases on their side. Please tell me how many times you or anyone else in the media has ever asked Barack Obama why he voted in favor of infanticide when he voted against Illinois’s ‘Infants Born Alive Protection Act,’ the same kind of statute that is at the root of the prosecution of Dr. Gosnell in Philadelphia that you’re also ignoring right now.”

You would think the media would be a little curious in knowing just when the other side thinks the right to choose ends and life begins.  The third trimester?  A few hours after birth?  In the car on the way home?  Or do they believe in infanticide like then-state senator Obama who, in 2003, said that once abortion was decided upon, that that constitutional right trumped all other considerations, even if the baby was born alive?

Does Obama at Play Keep the Government Away?

Saw this on The Weekly Standard blog:  "Obama Golfs--Third Weekend in a Row."

I used to indulge in the standard conservative critique that it was bad, unseemly even, that President Obama golfs so much, but because of the influence of Jay Nordlinger, my mind has been changed on the subject.  There is no mistaking that the president likes the game of golf and spends a lot of time on the links.  However, I seem to remember when President Bush golfed, the press made a big deal about it (Bush actually stopped golfing in 2003 because the Iraq War, etc.).  With Obama, naturally, this not a big deal to them.  I think President Bush showed prudence when he stopped playing.  With President Obama, it means that he is spending less time doing damage to the country (although, considering existence of the administrative state, this point may be moot).

Bait and Switch

Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute recounts the promises Obama and his administration made regarding Obamacare (remember when the use of that word by someone meant that person was racist?) and what will actually happen now that full implementation is looming.  Some of the major promises that will go unkept:

Rising health-care costs are already beginning to show up as higher premiums. California health insurers are proposing increases for some customers of 20% or more: 26% by Blue Cross, 22% by Aetna and 20% by Blue Shield. 

In New York, the Department of Financial Services has limited insurers to a 7.5% increase this year, better but still substantial. And, according to The Wall Street Journal, insurers are warning that premiums in the individual and small group markets could double in the next few years. While these are worst-case scenarios — and it would be unfair to attribute all the premium rise directly to ObamaCare — there is no doubt that the new health-care law will drive premiums up.

And:

In addition, ObamaCare requires all insurance plans to offer new and more expensive benefits. Remember President Obama’s promise that “If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period?” Well, a recent study of more than 11,000 plans on the individual market found that less than 2% of existing plans are fully in compliance with the law’s benefit requirements. While current plans are technically grandfathered in, allowing people to keep them for now, any change in the plans requires that their coverage be brought into compliance.

Finally:

The IRS recently estimated that in 2016, for a family of five, a policy available through the exchange would cost roughly $20,000. At the same time, the IRS has decided that subsidy eligibility will be based on whether one’s employer offers an “affordable” individual plan (meaning the premium is less than 9.5% of the worker’s income), whatever the cost of a family plan might be. As a result, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 3.9 million family dependents could be left unable to afford either employer-provided family coverage or insurance offered through an exchange.

Wow, what a shocker.

National Disgrace

Kristen Powers has a column in yesterday's U.S.A. Today that deserves to be screamed from the rooftops.  The column  is on the on-going trial of "Dr." Kermit Gosnell, who, over a period of 17 years at his clinic in Philadephia, murdered babies that were born.  Haven't heard of this?  Well, the media hasn't seen the need to report it because, for most of them, the issue is a local crime story.

Here is how Powers begins, with an opening that should shock the reader (warning:  the opening paragraphs are very graphic in nature):

Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A childscreaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven't heard about these sickening accusations?

[...] 

NBC-10 Philadelphia reported that, Stephen Massof, a former Gosnell worker, "described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, 'literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body." One former worker, Adrienne Moton,testified that Gosnell taught her his "snipping" technique to use on infants born alive. 

Massof, who, like other witnesses, has himself pleaded guilty to serious crimes, testified "It would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place." Here is the headline the Associated Press put on a story about his testimony that he saw 100 babies born and then snipped: "Staffer describes chaos at PA abortion clinic."

And the sad truth of MSM malfeasance:

A Lexis-Nexis search shows none of the news shows on the three major national television networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months. The exception is when Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan hijacked a segmenton Meet the Press meant to foment outrage over an anti-abortion rights law in some backward red state. 

The Washington Post has not published original reporting on this during the trial andThe New York Times saw fit to run one original story on A-17 on the trial's first day. They've been silent ever since, despite headline-worthy testimony.

This is so sad.  It makes you want to scream.

What Does Bowdoin Teach?

The National Association of Scholars has just issued a report on Bowdoin College (based in Brunswick, Maine) aptly entitled What Does Bowdoin Teach?  It is a must read as, like William F. Buckley's famous God and Man at Yale, it details--painfully in many instances--what really goes on at Bowdoin.  (The report should immediately signal to the reader that the things going on at Bowdoin are not merely limited to that college but are instead indicative of most modern liberal arts universities and ivy league schools.)

If you may not know the back story, this all began when the Chairman of the Claremont Institute, Thomas Klingenstein, golfed with Bowdoin President Barry Mills.  Mills attacked Klingenstein for being against the diversity agenda that is a main driving force behind most of the academic policies at Bowdoin.  Mills of course acted as though Klingenstein was a relic from the Stone Age and proceeded to walk off the course with "despair and deep concern."  Klingenstein published a corrective to Mills' interpretation of what had taken place and in the process, continued to make the case of the intellectual and moral lethargy of liberal arts college around the U.S., with a perfect example being what was going on at Bowdoin.   

Perez and the Prez

Ken Masugi has a post on what the approval of Thomas Perez as Secretary of Labor could mean:

As Secretary of Labor, Perez would have full discretion to regulate the hiring practices of virtually all employers who have federal contracts. This means companies as large as Lockheed Martin and as small as a Denver cheese maker—which are in every congressional district in the country. Note the prominent businesses among the top 200 contractors of well over 141,000, divvying up over $533 billion in federal contracts.[ii] The struggle over the Perez nomination is not only about how civil rights enforcement is to proceed but about our general attitude toward bureaucratic government. Should the laudable goal of civil rights be enforced by a despotic bureaucracy?

It is becoming distressingly clear that Perez would apply the Chicago-style politics of President Obama to not only the regulatory but the social agenda as well. Perez would achieve these radical aims through the obscure Office of Federal Contract Compliance and Programs (OFCCP), headed by a deputy assistant secretary-level Director who does not require Senate confirmation. [iii] The new Secretary of Labor will shape policy directly, as the OFCCP as of November 2009 now reports directly to his Office.

More on the OFCCP:

Unfortunately, we already know what a willful OFCCP can do. In a July 1996 article for theAmerican Spectator, “Here Comes the Goon Squad,” James Bovard provided an appalling picture of how a small federal agency abuses its powers in order to “intimidate and browbeat businesses.” The OFCCP, he declares, “is now symbolic of the corruption and deception at the heart of affirmative action.” Compliance officers’ vices range from incompetence and illiteracy to dishonesty and deception about what the laws require. Their agenda is a socialist or redistributionist of corporate money to pay people for work they never did.

This doesn't look good.

Moral Judgement at the Movies

Shocking that the following movie review of The Evil Dead, the remake the Sam Raimi 1981 gorefest, appeared in the Washington Times:

As director of "Oz the Great and Powerful" and the original "Spider-Man" trilogy, Sam Raimi would seem to be a modern-day heir to Steven Spielberg and Walt Disney. But he started his career more than 30 years ago by making one of the most notoriously gruesome horror films of all time. 

"The Evil Dead" (1981), Mr. Raimi's first full-length feature, was so mercilessly violent that it was unrated upon its U.S. release and eventually branded NC-17, banned for 20 years in Germany, sliced to pieces by editors in Finland and virtually created the need for the "video nasty" list of films deemed too violent to be distributed in England.
One might expect that with 30 more years of life experience, mainstream acceptance and a longtime marriage with five children, Mr. Raimi would look back on that movie as an early aberration. Instead, he is an executive producer and the driving force behind the big-budget remake "Evil Dead," which opens Friday. 

About 90 percent of the new film's running time consists of finding brutal and bloody ways to kill a person, including shotgun blasts, nail guns, broken mirror shards, strangulations, drowning, electrocution, burning and live burial. I haven't even mentioned the dungeon full of rotting cat corpses hanging from the ceiling, the dog that has its throat slashed, the moving tree branches that violate a woman (don't ask), and the numerous forced or accidental amputations along the way. 

The more blood spewed, the more the audience at a Tuesday night preview screening applauded and cheered. It leads me to wonder more than ever whether we're just a degree of separation away from being as callously dehumanized in our sense of what is entertainment as the ancient Romans were. 

What does it say about us as a people that such depictions of hatred and suffering are considered acceptable for an R rating — and, thus, wide theatrical release — by the Motion Picture Association of America, upon which many rely to give warning of objectionable content? And it's fair to ask Mr. Raimi why, as a father — and, by past media accounts, a patriotic American — he would want to pollute the culture with the kind of material that could drive the next James Holmes or Adam Lanza over the edge.
The movie has a $14 million budget, a whopping 400 times larger than the original's $350,000 shoestring. It is also about 40 times more bloody than any other film to come down the pike in ages. 

Like the original, the new movie's plot is simple: A group of 20-somethings heads to an old, run-down cabin in the woods. This time, they have assembled because one of the women is desperate to kick her heroin habit after overdosing and they hope that the woods will keep her away from drugs. Her friends and her brother make a pact behind her back to lock her down and hold her in the woods no matter how hard she begs to leave. The problem is that she really has a good reason to want out: One of the guys on the trip has found an ancient witchcraft book and unleashed a demon, leading to all manner of mayhem as the friends take turns being possessed and attempting to kill one another.
As in the original, Raimi-directed "Dead," the deaths are so over the top that they often are played for laughs. This film is a textbook example of the cliche "buckets of blood." Writer-director Fede Alvarez has people spew, vomit and drip blood all over one another and the scenery. 

The fact that the new version is going out in wide release with an R rating is an example of just how far our society has gone off the rails and come to accept bloodletting as entertainment. 

This unending assault on the senses is skillfully shot and decently acted by performers who seem to be playing it all for laughs about half the time, but Sam Raimi and his cohorts should be ashamed for laughing all the way to the bank.

Oh no, this seems to resemble something like what's now called a "value judgement."  This kind of thing has no place in a society such as ours....

But then I read comments to the review like this one and it brings everything back home:

it's so funny that people will complain about violent entertainment and harken back to the good old days, well, i hate to break it to you but the people raised on i love lucy, leave it to beaver and all those other shows are the ones who have created the most war, destruction and misery for other people and countries in this world.

Oh ok, so everyone in the 1950s were evil, sadistic butchers.  Enlightening.

Was TR a Conservative?

In the newest issue of the Claremont Review, in a review of Jean Yarborough's Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition, Ronald Pestritto offers a corrective to those conservatives who look to Teddy Roosevelt as a model for their politics:

Roosevelt is, at least superficially, a much more sympathetic figure than his progressive counterpart, Woodrow Wilson. When he was shot in the chest at the outset of a campaign speech in 1912, T.R. manfully insisted on sticking around to give the entire 90-minute speech before he would seek medical attention. No one would mistake Wilson for such a man, and it is unsurprising that Roosevelt's larger-than-life personality captivated the American mind in a way no other Progressive ever did. He was also known for unapologetically sticking up for American national interest abroad, for attacking what he thought was an out-of-control judiciary, and for a strong dose of moral seriousness—all things that conservatives admire. Yet these relatively superficial points pale in comparison to the fundamentals of Roosevelt's principles and politics: fundamentals that show a deep antipathy to limited government, individual liberty, property rights, the free market, and just about anything else at the heart of the American constitutional order.

Conservatives should instead look to this man.

 

Why Are We Funding Lies?

Veteran "journalist" Bill Moyers opened his March 29th show on PBS with a monologue about the Pledge of Allegiance, calling it "a lie, a whopper of a lie."  He went on:

We coax it from the mouths of babes for the same reason our politicians wear those flag pins in their lapels – it makes the hypocrisy go down easier, the way aspirin helps a headache go away.

And:

’Justice for all’ is a line item in the budget – sequestered now by the Paul Ryans of Congress and the Fix the Debt gang of plutocratic CEOs who, with a wink-wink from our president, claim, ‘Oh, we can’t afford that!’

Of course it must be remembered that the public dollars partially fund PBS.  The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the company created in 1967 by Congress for the purpose to oversee public broadcasting, receives substantial amounts of funding in the federal budget (CPB then distributes the money to PBS, NPR, and other public television stations).   In 2010 alone, the CPB received $510 million.

And this from PBS's own website on how influential it is across America:

Public television is America’s largest classroom, the nation’s largest stage for the arts and a trusted window to the world....

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

Via John Hinderaker, Barack Obama said the following at a fundraiser last night in San Fransisco on Newtown and what must be done to combate further mass shootings:

Now, over the next couple of months, we’ve got a couple of issues: gun control. (Applause.) I just came from Denver, where the issue of gun violence is something that has haunted families for way too long, and it is possible for us to create common-sense gun safety measures that respect the traditions of gun ownership in this country and hunters and sportsmen, but also make sure that we don’t have another 20 children in a classroom gunned down by a semiautomatic weapon — by a fully automatic weapon in that case, sadly.   (Emphasis added.)

Of course, the shooter did not use a "fully automatic weapon."  Instead it was a Bushmaster AR-15, which is a semi-automatic weapon.  Fully automatic weapons were banned in 1934 with the passage of the National Firearms Act.  Currently, there are approximately 250,000 automatic weapons in private ownership, which is heavily regulated by the ATF.

It's amazing that the very people who are wanting to pass laws that would enact a ban on "assault" weapons or reduce magazine capacities know absolutely nothing about which they speak.  And here I thought that it was the GOP who go on faith as opposed to the straight facts....

Born of the Fourth of July

Peter Schramm of the Ashbrook Center (who is retiring soon as Executive Director) writes on that great forgotten president of the last century, Calvin Coolidge.  Fortunately, in the last few years, Coolidge's presidency has begun to be restored, with thanks to a series of books that have contributed to the restoration of his good name, which was trampled by the New Deal historians.

Ashbrook’s own Steven Hayward gave Coolidge an A+ for his “principled constitutionalism” in the recently published volume,The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents from Wilson to Obama. Last month the accomplished Amity Shlaes published a biography, Coolidge, to worthy reviews. And this month Why Coolidge Matters: Leadership Lessons from America’s Most Underrated President appeared from the young scholar Charles C. Johnson. 

All of these books demonstrate that Calvin Coolidge was one of our more learned and cultured, and thoughtful and eloquent, presidents. They also make evident that Coolidge revered the Constitution and our institutions and habits of self-government. Coolidge said of the Constitution, “no other document devised by the hand of man ever brought so much progress and happiness to humanity. The good it has wrought can never be measured.” And he understood that a good civic education was the necessary condition of freedom: ”If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it.” In other words, we must think as our Founding Fathers thought.

And what Coolidge shared with Abraham Lincoln:

He also knew, as his hero Abraham Lincoln knew, that the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence was the solid ground upon which our constitutional government rests. We were not only establishing a new nation in 1776, but a new nation based on new principles of justice and liberty. Coolidge was eloquent on this point. There is a finality to the truths of the Declaration that is exceedingly restful, he said on the 150th anniversary of the great charter. Those progressives who want to move away from these principles, “are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.” In short, those who do not believe in natural rights are the real reactionaries.

This is not hyperbole to say that, next to Lincoln, Coolidge was the greatest interpreter of the natural rights philosophy which forms the bedrock of our nation.

The Train is Still A-Rollin'

Recently back from suffering a stroke, Sen. Mark Kirk today came out in support of gay marriage.  He is the second Republican, along with Sen. Rob Portman, to publicly support gay marriage.  Here is the reason for his switch:

“When I climbed the Capitol steps in January, I promised myself that I would return to the Senate with an open mind and greater respect for others,” Kirk said in a statement. “Same-sex couples should have the right to civil marriage. Our time on this earth is limited, I know that better than most. Life comes down to who you love and who loves you back — government has no place in the middle.”

Other then the above making absolutely zero sense (and approving of far more than just gay marriage), I guess it's just a plausible as anything else I have heard on the matter.  At least he didn't cite his "faith tradition."

Justly Revered

As I have said many times before, Jay Nordlinger is a national treasure.  His Impromtus column today is typically brilliant and touches on a topic that is close to me:  the treatment of Justice Clarence Thomas by the media:

We are all familiar with slurs on Clarence Thomas, including the one that goes, “He’s just a puppet of Scalia, you know. He has no ideas or opinions of his own, he just follows what Scalia and the other conservatives do.” Anyone who knows anything knows this is nonsense, of course. But a lot of people know nothing — and spout off regardless. 

In a 2003 Impromptus, I wrote about a disgusting cartoon in the Palm Beach Post. It depicted Thomas as a puppet on Scalia’s hand. Scalia made some pronouncement, to which Thomas replied, “Oh, yeah! Say what?” 

There is nothing a conservative can say or do that will not be described as racist. There is nothing a liberal can say or do — no matter how racist, no matter how vile — that will be described as racist. 

I thought of this last week when reading a column in the Washington Post. The writer said, “Early in the oral argument, the conservatives — Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts (a silent Clarence Thomas can be assumed to be their tacit tagalong) — explored the idea that . . .” 

What would happen is a conservative writer described a liberal black justice as the “tacit tagalong” of others?

The assessment that Thomas is a Scalia clone and follows whatever he does is frankly a pathetic argument that has been justly skewered in the past years (read here for starters).  The smears of Thomas by some in the media (Jeffery Toobin, I am talking to you) show that they haven't bothered to read a single sentence Thomas has written and instead report whatever his detractors say about him as fact.

Mirages

Paul Mirengoff has the low down on the new Ron Paul of the House, Rep. Justin Amash:

Amash was one of only of only six congressmen to vote against imposing tougher sanctions on Iran last year. Dennis Kucinich joined Amish in that vote. So did Ron Paul. 

But I doubt that even Paul took offense at John McCain’s little joke at the expense of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Citing a headline about Iran launching a monkey into space, McCain tweeted: “So Ahmadinejad wants to be first Iranian in space – wasn’t he just there last week?” 

Amash, a Palestinian-American, purported to find McCain’s comment racist. He tweeted: “Maybe you should wise[] up & not make racist jokes.” 

I would have thought that the only the whiniest, most PC leftist could deem McCain’s comment racist. But apparently, it did not occur to Amash that there are reasons jokingly to compare Ahmadinejinad to a monkey that have nothing to do with his ethnicity. Perhaps sympathy for the Iranian regime or some of its foreign policy objectives caused him to miss this. 

Politico reports that Amash is considering a run for the Senate in 2014, but may pass so that he can become a leader in the House. Amash must be dreaming. He has virtually no chance of winning a Senate seat in liberal Michigan. And having been booted him off the Budget Committee in December, the 32 year-old Amash won’t be in leadership any time soon. 

Maybe when he grows up, if ever does.

Great, someone had to fill the void.