By Michelle Malkin

Barack Obama’s new era of civility was over before it began. You wouldn’t know it from reading The New York Times, watching Katie Couric or listening to the Democratic manners police. But America has been overrun by foul-mouthed, fist-clenching wildebeests.

Yes, the tea party movement is responsible — for sending these liberal goons into an insane rage, that is. After enduring two years of false smears as sexist, racist, homophobic barbarians, it is grassroots conservatives and taxpayer advocates who have been ceaselessly subjected to rhetorical projectile vomit. It is Obama’s rank-and-file “community organizers” on the streets fomenting the hate against their political enemies. Not the other way around.

The trendy new epithet among Big Labor organizers who’ve been camping out at the Madison, Wis., Capitol building for more than a week to block GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s budget reform bill: “Koch whore.” Classy, huh? It’s a reference to the reviled Koch brothers, David and Charles, who have used their energy-industry wealth to support limited-government activism.

A left-wing agitator based in Buffalo who impersonated Koch in a prank phone call this week used the slur to headline his “gonzo journalism” report. (If a right-leaning activist had perpetrated such a stunt, he’d be labeled a radical, stalking fraudster. But that’s par for the media’s double-standards course.)

The 20-minute phone call undermined the grand Koch conspiracy by exposing that Walker didn’t know Koch at all. No matter. “Koch whore” is the new “Halliburton whore.” The Captains of Civility are sticking to it. And the sanctimonious “No Labels” crowd is missing in action — just like Wisconsin’s Fleebagger Democrats.

Sexual vulgarity is a common theme in the left’s self-styled “solidarity” movement. Among the Madison pro-union signs the national media chose not to show you: “Buttholes for Billionaires” (complete with a photo of Walker’s head placed in the middle of a graphic photo of someone’s posterior) and “If teabaggers are as hot as their Fox News anchors, then I’m here for the gang bang!!!”

Last month, GOP Lieutenant Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch was subjected to similar misogyny for her outreach efforts to private businesses. Liberal WTDY radio host John “Sly” Sylvester accused her of performing “fellatio on all the talk-show hosts in Milwaukee” and sneered that she had “pulled a train” (a crude phrase for group sex).

At an AFSCME rally in Providence, R.I., on Tuesday, an unhinged pro-union supporter picked an unprovoked fight with a citizen journalist taping the event for public access TV. His eyes bulging, the brawler yelled: “I’ll f**k you in the a**, you faggot!” After several unsuccessful minutes of trying to calm their furious ally down, the solidarity mob finally started chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, union-busting’s got to go” to drown out his intimidating vow to follow the cameraman outside the building. Criminal charges are now pending against him. None of the local media who covered the event thought to mention the disruption in their coverage.

In Columbus, Ohio, supporters of GOP Gov. John Kasich’s fiscal reforms were confronted with a fulminating union demonstrator who railed: “The tea party is a bunch of d**k-sucking corporate butt-lickers who want to crush the working people of this country.”

In Denver, Colo., Leland Robinson, a gay black tea party activist and entrepreneur who criticized teachers unions at a Capitol rally, was told by white labor supporters to “get behind that fence where you belong.” They called the 52-year-old limousine driver “son” and subjected him to this ugly, racially charged taunt: “Do you have any children? That you claim?”

Tea party favorite and former Godfather’s Pizza President Herman Cain is another outspoken black conservative businessman who has earned the civility mob’s lash. Two weeks ago, a cowardly liberal writer derided Cain as a “monkey in the window,” a “garbage pail kid” and a “minstrel” who performs for his “masters.” Monkey. Parrot. Puppet. Lawn jockey. Uncle Tom. Aunt Thomasina. Oreo. Coconut. Banana. We minority conservatives have heard it all.

In Washington, D.C., a multi-union protest at the offices of conservative activist group FreedomWorks resulted in one young female employee, Tabitha Hale, getting smacked with a sign by a barbarian wearing a Communications Workers of America T-shirt — and another FreedomWorks employee getting yelled at as a “bad Jew” for opposing public union monopolies and reckless spending.

In the wake of the Tucson massacre, Obama urged the nation “to do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.” He pushed for “a more civil and honest public discourse.”

As Big Labor-backing MoveOn.org (the same outfit that smeared Gen. David Petraeus as a traitor) prepares to march on all 50 state Capitols this weekend, where’s the Civility Chief now? AWOL.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2009).

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By Nancy Morgan

In the news recently was a story about a workshop being held for guys, to show them how to release their inner child. Step one: learn how to cry. Reading that article made me cry, from sheer frustration.

Listen up, guys. Despite what you hear from feminists and other assorted do-gooders, the majority of women most assuredly don’t want to see you break down and cry.

As a longtime single gal, I claim a little expertise in this matter. Tears are not what women want from you. You’ve been rooked by all the touchy feely so-called “experts” who seem intent on turning a whole generation of men into metrosexuals – teaching you to be sensitive and let your inner child reign. Yuk and gag.

Women want from men what we’ve wanted since time began. A strong protector, or the illusion thereof. A man who will treat a gal like a delicate flower, even if she isn’t. A man who opens doors and brings flowers. A strong man.

A man who radiates strength and confidence will beat out a metrosexual brimming with sensitivity any day of the week. At least with conservative women. Truth.

Please, keep your tears to yourself. At least until you ascertain for sure that your woman is turned on by tears. Some are….go figure. But most of us females on the right experience a shudder when a man reveals his weaknesses before we’re sure of his strengths.

Here’s another heads-up. Hold the nail polish and hairspray. Toupees also. I know, I know. Most men are overly sensitive about two things – their hair being one of them. Take it from me, women, most women, can spot a toupee and/or hair transplant a mile away. (Think Joe Biden) Instead of signaling virility, as you intend, it signals vanity and weakness. It signals that you place too much reliance on your looks. God made personal vanity pretty much the province of the female of the species for a reason.

Men are more visual than are women. Most (conservative) women understand that. We know looks are important to you. But please don’t make the mistake of thinking women place the same reliance on your looks as you do on theirs. When choosing a man, most women have five or six priorities that place higher than your looks. Concentrate on your strengths, not your weaknesses.

Here’s another tip: If you want to be attractive to the female sex, please don’t attend any sensitivity training or heed any advice from leftist women’s groups who claim to speak for all women. They don’t.

Example: Nothing is more off-putting to a woman than a man stopping in the middle of a “moment” and asking if he has permission to proceed to the next step. That is a clear indication that you have bought into feminist idiocy instead of having the confidence to decide for yourself what the “moment” requires. This may work with liberal babes, (is that an oxymoron?) but right-thinking women yearn for you to take charge.

Just do what comes natural – rely on body language. 80% of communication is non-verbal. Which is why tears issuing forth from a man are such a turnoff. At least to conservative women.

Protect us, adore us, chase after us, but please, please don’t think a big boo-hoo is going to do the trick. If you’re unsure of what we want, just keep your mouth shut awhile. Most women will tell you what they want, sooner rather than later. Better to be thought of as wise and mysterious than as a weak sap.

Last but not least: Women want you to explore their “inner child,” not your own. The same holds true for naval gazing.

Take charge, guys. Wear the pants. Don’t be afraid to play the role God assigned you. Most women understand how hard it is for you to risk rejection. And we know that being stuck with paying the tab isn’t fair. But even though leftists think they can mandate “equality,” we also know that life just isn’t fair. Get used to it. And if you’re interested in a conservative gal, please, hold the hankies.

Nancy Morgan is a columnist and news editor for RightBias.com and she lives in South Carolina.

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By Nancy Morgan

Dear Obama,

I’m  not a member of the elite. I’m not a millionaire and I don’t claim to have any power or influence. I’m just an average taxpayer who lives in fly-over country. On behalf of all the Suzy Homemaker’s and Joe Six-Pack’s who are my neighbors, I’d like to request a favor. Please, please, leave us alone.

With all due respect for your office Mr. Obama, you were not elected to tell me what to do. You were elected to protect and defend my right to do it, as long as it’s not illegal. (Please refer to the 10th amendment)

I left home years ago and have learned how to take care of myself. I don’t need, or want you dictating to me how much salt I can use, where I can smoke, what car I can drive, which light bulbs to use, what temperature I set my thermostat to, which religions and sexual preferences I should respect, and which thoughts I can express. I know you’re all in favor of choice, so please respect mine. Please, please just leave me alone.

I’d also appreciate if you could leave my doctor, insurance company, bank and employer alone. It seems that everything you do in my name just costs me more money. Money I can’t afford because I’m on a very tight budget for the next two years. And unlike you, I can’t just print some more. I would if I could. (Ha Ha, just kidding)

While we’re on the subject, could you please pass along a message to your wife? Please tell her that, even though I am no “expert,” I’d prefer if she quit trying to regulate the behavior of my kids. I know best what their diet, education and beliefs should be.

I know she’s spending a lot of our money on her good works, but I’m firmly convinced that if she just concentrated on Sasha and Malika -and her own garden – we would all be much better off.

I hope this doesn’t sound rude Mr President, but most of the stuff you and Michelle are doing up there in D.C. are things that are morally, legally, personally and constitutionally just none of your business. You are not my daddy. Sir.

On a more positive note: Here’s a big shout out for your handling of the Egypt crisis. Even though it took a week, you finally took a stand. You looked very presidential.

Personally, I’m not convinced you should have chosen sides so early, but, like you, I was pretty sure everything would die down after your call to Mubarak. What a coup – all it took was one phone call from you and he decides to resign. Kudos.

Again, I’m no “expert,” but I’m getting pretty mad at those darn Muslims, especially after all your “outreach.” You’d think they would be grateful. Go figure.

I’m sorry your signature health care legislation has been ruled unconstitutional. It’s a good thing that ruling won’t affect your own health care plan. I’ve been worried at how skinny you’re getting.

And speaking of health care, I don’t mean to nag, but could you please cut down on your smoking? And maybe you should cut down on your partying, too. I know, I know, who am I to tell you what to do? But I do worry about you, and I don’t think America is ready for a President Biden.

I know you’re a busy guy, what with all the stuff you’ve decided to take on, but I hope you have time to read this letter. Granted, I’m just a nobody, but I do have a second cousin who used to work for G.E. – and my best friend belongs to a union. Oh, and I still have a vote, too. Even though I’m not dead yet. (That’s a joke)

I hear you watched the Super Bowl with J Lo last weekend. How cool!

Take care and hang tight,

Nancy Morgan

Nancy Morgan is a columnist and news editor for RightBias.com and she lives in South Carolina.

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By Renee Taylor

The downhill spiral into an entitlement abyss has been so gradual, so subtle at times, it was difficult to see. We have gone from “those who do not work, do not eat” to “a chicken in every pot” to a mindset of entitlement. People wait for tax “refunds” of money they didn’t pay, or a food and rent subsidy paid “courtesy” of Uncle Sam, based merely on the fact they woke up this morning.

Having grown up in a household where we were taught to achieve through hard work and education, I have struggled for years with the mentality of the union worker whose job security is not based upon the ability of his mind and muscle, but upon his ability to pay his union dues. I have grown increasingly frustrated with parents and grandparents whose children and grandchildren are taught how to fill out an entitlement application, not a job application. The words “entitled”, “free” and “deserve” are my three most hated words in the English language. The phrase “there is no such thing as a free lunch” has lost its meaning as the hardworking taxpayer, home owner and parent are put through the mechanisms of guilt to provide the “free lunch” (substitute health care, education, transportation and housing).

Recently, on an unusually chilly weekend, I curled up with “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. The book has been touted for years as a primer on rational, conservative thought. Settling in for what I thought would be a dry, outdated tome of philosophy dressed up as an out-dated, dark tale, what I got was “future fact disguised as fiction”.   The storyline of Dagny Taggart’s quest to find the designer of a motor, a stroke of genius that would save her railroad, laced with the romance between Taggart and d’Anconia and Taggart and Reardon, was one I could not pull away from. It was the entwined philosophy, the basis for which the story was wrapped around, that made a roller coaster of emotions and renewed understanding. It was frustrating and exhilarating, as it mirrored life in its current form, whether it is government handouts to other nations, government entitlements to its own citizens – designed to make them more dependent upon government, to the mindset of people I come across in my daily life. At one point, I threw the book at the wall.

Much like the government Rand characterized in “Atlas Shrugged”, the “public” has become a populace of mind-numbed robots unable to think for themselves. Government attempts to dictate our actions right down to how much salt to put on our baked potatoes. Free enterprise is collapsing under the weight of government regulations, union demands and taxes. Income is redistributed between the producers and the moochers via “taxes”, fees and fines.   The “free” government funded education system has created not independent-minded, industrious graduates, but a generation of “progressive” sheep, chanting the mantra of big government.

It is the absurdity and reality of what we have become on a national and industrial level that so many focus on when they read Atlas Shrugged. However, it was another facet of the story that sent the book hurling at breakneck speed towards the living room wall, sending my dachshund scrambling for cover. The book is filled with characters who are a product of the government, colleges, public schooling and media mind-numbing indoctrination.  Phillip Reardon believed, along with his mother, that he was entitled to his “fair share” of his successful brother’s income for no other reason than he felt “entitled” to Henry Reardon’s charity through guilt.

I recently read a letter from a young woman and mother of two, addressed to her father. She blamed him for her failures, which stemmed from being raised to believe she was “entitled” to cars and a weekly allowance because, like Phillip, she lacked the ambition to gain an education and she refused to work for “minimum wage”. The constant demands ruined two businesses before he finally closed and sealed the checkbook, walking away. Her failures in life stem not from failed efforts, but, in her own words – and those of her mother, grandmother and aunt – from not getting her “fair share” of everything her father worked for. It is a cradle to the grave mindset that “progressives” – from grandparents to your child’s university professor – have produced, creating a generation of non-producers who have no concept of a hard day’s work. These wait for their unearned “entitlement”, without a clue where the funds for the “entitlement” come from. Yes, parents, many of you are as responsible for this moocher mindset as professors and politicians.

In today’s guilt-ridden society, nothing is anyone’s fault and everyone should pay for the theoretical injustices done to them. Think you are a descendent of a slave – a normal practice of the day? Demand your check. Live an irresponsible lifestyle that produced children you cannot provide for? Demand your check. Digging ditches and washing dishes “cramp your style”? Find a disability and demand your check.   Government programs pay more than any job you are qualified to fill? Demand your check. Government coffers running dry? Demand that those working pay more and the industries pay more until the entire entitlement system is turned upside down and collapses upon itself.

With a compelling philosophy and gripping story that not only captivates and entertains, Rand provokes individual thought. There is a light at the end of the train tunnel for the Dagney Taggarts, the Hank Reardons and the Francisco d’Anconias of the world. There is a glimpse into the dismal future that awaits the looters and moochers and the answer to the most quoted question of the last seventy years: “Who is John Galt?”

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Renee Taylor is a licensed private investigator with The Taylor Company, an investigations and research company based in Warren, Bradley County, Arkansas, as well as an Arkansas licensed bailbond agent for Bryce’s Bailbonding, Inc.

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By Frank Salvato

Throughout the debate over the extension of the tax rates, aka the Bush tax cuts, we have witnessed a concerted effort by Democrats and Progressives to demonize the wealthy. This demonization has crossed over into the on-going argument over the Estate Tax, aka the Death Tax. At every turn we are made to feel that the wealthy have no right to “monopolize” all of their riches when government could use a goodly portion of that wealth to “help” the down-trodden, the disenfranchised and the less fortunate. Truth be told, the government can’t do anything equal to what the wealthy in the private sector do to “help” those individuals.

Before we get into the issue of the rich and their wealth, let’s dispense with the myth that government can create jobs. Oh sure, the government can create employment through expanding the reach of government; by expanding government as an entity, but those jobs require an increase in taxation on the rank-and-file citizenry in order to cover the paychecks issued to those government workers. Government – aside from the blood-money interest produced by TARP and the ill-gotten gains of government through the hostile takeover of General Motors – cannot create wealth, ergo; it does not have the ability to amass wealth in order to expand; in order to create jobs. Simply put, when government creates a job, that employee is paid by the taxpayer, not the government; that employee is paid by the private sector.

Which brings me back to the wealthy and their riches.

If we are to believe Progressive activists like Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who say, “…Does it make sense that people who get, who make a million or a billion dollars in income should get tax cuts and Social Security recipients shouldn’t get a cost of living adjustment,” then we would have to believe that an individual’s earnings – not just the wealthy, but anyone – are subject to an arbitrary and ever-changing threshold that determines who is wealthy and who is a common man. This threshold, consequently, is set by politicians who today do a damn fine job of using taxpayer dollars to grease the handles in the voting booths, if you get my drift.

With all due respect to Congressman Weiner – and he is due very little – the problem is not a matter of lost tax revenue, the problem is out-of-control government spending. The reason Social Security recipients aren’t getting a cost of living increase is because: a) politicians have unethically borrowed against the total of the Social Security funds surrendered by Americans throughout the existence of the Social Security program, and b) politicians thought it a wise use of taxpayer dollars – via the first stimulus debacle – to construct highway tunnels for sea turtles and sanctuaries for the San Francisco salt marsh mouse, among other things not covered under the “General Welfare” provision of the US Constitution. So, American seniors, when you have to eat ramen noodles instead of vermicelli be sure to thank each and every spendthrift politician who just had to gorge at the taxpayer funded special interest feed trough. They are the ones who screwed you out of a Social Security COLA, not the wealthy.

Which leads me to a critical point; just what do Progressives and Democrats think that the wealthy people do with their money once they make it? Do they believe that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, Peter Lewis and George Soros, convert their money into gold coins and wallow in the massive piles of sparkling decadence? Well, they probably do – or at least they would like you to believe they do.

In reality, the wealthy always – always – deposit their earnings, their wealth, their riches, in a bank. They might take a portion of their earnings and buy stocks or bonds. The point is this; the money that the wealthy earn is literally reinvested into the private sector through their deposits and investments. Banks take the deposits and turn them into loans for the private sector, both for individuals and entrepreneurs. The money that the wealthy invest in stocks and bonds go to finance small and large businesses and corporations alike, and sometimes those corporations, especially the small businesses, use that capital to expand. And what does the expansion of small business mean? Jobs.

Conversely, when the government confiscates wealth from the wealthy it is not spent on the needs of those on Social Security (no COLA this year, again) or those on Medicare (cuts are already taking place), those funds go to establish behemoth, destined to fail programs like Obamacare or to extend, yet again, unemployment benefits and misappropriated benefits for illegal immigrants who shouldn’t have a seat at the US taxpayer’s teat.

“But Frank, how can you say such things about the unemployed?”

To those who ask that question I say this; which is better, to give a man a fish so that he can eat today, or to teach a man to fish so he will never go hungry again? Of course, to the thinking men and women of America, learning to fish is the only correct answer.

To put it another way, which is better, having a person cultivate a dependency on a government hand-out, or creating an environment where that same person would otherwise be employed? Creating a dependent does not pay into the tax base, in fact, it creates a societal burden for all the taxpayers. But creating an environment where the private sector – not the government, but the private sector – can create jobs so that there are employment opportunities, those jobs, those new workers do pay into the tax base. Theoretically, the more people contributing to the tax base the more funding for the purpose of government. I say theoretically for the simple fact that politicians would find a way to turn Midas into a government dependent given the chance.

And what of the greedy wealthy people with hearts of stone and their contemptuous manners? That’s the picture that people like Congressman Weiner want people to paint of the wealthy, isn’t it? The rich, the wealthy, the privileged are people unwilling to “pay their fair share”; people who always look down on those “less fortunate.” Isn’t that the class warfare rhetoric that we continuously hear from the Progressives and the Liberal Left?

True story. I know a couple that most people would consider rather well off; wealthy, in fact. They have more than one home and both are quite nice. They are able to travel when they like and they enjoy the finer things in life. The man worked very hard to make a success of a family business and has reached a plateau that few realize in life. Bottom line, he worked very hard for his success and that hard work came complete with the sacrifices that one has to make in order to achieve that success: issues that affected family, issues that found him working long hours and even hours that encroached on special occasions and holidays. But with that hard work and sacrifice and over a lifetime, they arrived at their station, and deservedly so.

Now, Congressman Weiner would have you believe that not only should my friends pay more in taxes than everyone else, seeing as they surpass Mr. Weiner’s threshold for being wealthy, but, and this is by Mr. Weiner’s own admission, they should pay more even after they die. When asked recently by FOX News’ Megan Kelly whether the Death Tax – the Estate Tax – was fair, whether it was immoral to tax a person’s wealth twice, Mr. Weiner callously exclaimed, “You aren’t paying anything in that case because you’ll be dead.” Wow!

Far from being the coldhearted cretins Congressman Weiner would have you believe rich people are, those who have achieved wealth – the American dream, by the way – are the ones who engage in philanthropy; they give to charities, to religious institutions, to private sector programs and sometimes, out of the goodness of their hearts, to other individuals, just because they see someone in need.

To continue the story about my friends…

Every now and again – and it is more often than one would suspect – this husband and wife, this wealthy couple, these “coldhearted” millionaires, go to the bank and take out a sizeable amount of cash (at least to you and me) in $20 bills. They then go down to the USO at the international airport in their city and hand out all of the money to the soldiers who are in transit so that they can get themselves a meal, use the local Internet café, call their loved ones while they are on layover, etc., each time thanking each and every soldier for their service, their sacrifice and the sacrifices made by their families.

In addition, they help to fund organizations that provide medical care for sick children and organizations that quest to educate the public on Americanism and the threats to our country.

These are who the “wealthy” people in America are; patriots, job creators, philanthropists, Mothers and Fathers; excellent human beings who want what is best, not only for their children but for everyone’s children; honest hard-working people who would rather help someone by providing them the wherewithal to make a living than to see them sucked into the government abyss of cyclical dependency.

So, the next time you hear a Progressive like Anthony Weiner pompously spouting off about how the wealthy are evil and how the only savior for the down-trodden is government, ask yourself this question: who took money that could have created a private sector job for someone who is unemployed and, instead, spent it on sea turtle tunnels and salt marsh mouse sanctuaries?

Then think about how our soldiers feel when complete strangers come up to them in airports – perhaps during the Christmas season when they are far from their loved ones – and say, “Thank you for your service and your sacrifices…please, have lunch on me.”

Who, I ask you, uses the money more appropriately?

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Frank Salvato is the managing editor for The New Media Journal. He serves at the Executive Director of the Basics Project, a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative.

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By Alan Caruba

On November 22, 1963 I was in the office of a human rights organization in downtown Miami, Florida, fresh from service in the U.S. Army.

I was happy that President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev had not gone to war in October 1962 over Soviet missiles in Cuba. My battalion, part of the Second Infantry Division, had been put on alert to invade. A U.S. naval blockade had stopped any new missiles from being delivered and those that had been were withdrawn.

The Cold War had been going on since 1945 and tensions between the U.S. and Russia had briefly and dangerously reached a tipping point. Fortunately, the leaders of both nations pulled back. Elsewhere a relatively small, backwater conflict was going on in Vietnam, but few were paying it any attention.

John F. Kennedy was incredibly popular. He said that the torch of freedom had passed to a new generation and, at age 26, I was convinced his generation and mine were going to solve all of the world’s problems. I was unaware that JFK had so failed to impress Krushchev when they had met in Vienna in 1961 that the Soviet leader had felt emboldened to put missiles in Castro’s Cuba.

On November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, Lee Oswald, a leftist malcontent who had spent some time in Russia, shot and killed the President. Within days I had packed and returned home where I would take up a career in journalism.

Anyone who was alive on that day can probably tell you where they were when they got the news. For later generations, it is just a date in the history books.

After Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn into office to serve out JFK’s term and won election on his own, history took a turn for the worse when he escalated the Vietnam War. Some 58,000 young men died in that conflict and President Johnson, after a huge election victory in 1964, announced on March 21, 1968 that he would not run for a second full term. He had served from 1963 to 1969.

Johnson had unleashed a tidal wave of liberal programs such as “the Great Society” and “the war on poverty”, signed the Civil Rights Act into law, initiated Public Broadcasting, instituted Medicare and Medicaid, and increased aid to education.

The nation turned away from liberalism and elected Richard M. Nixon who would serve from 1969 until forced to resign from the presidency in 1974 as the result of the Watergate scandal. The nation swung back toward liberalism and elected a little known governor from Georgia, Jimmy Carter. He lasted one term and the nation swung back toward conservatism and elected Ronald Reagan. Twelve years later, after Bush 41, it would swing back again and elect Bill Clinton.

For nearly fifty years, America has been seesawing back and forth between conservatism and liberalism without seeming to learn the lessons of the experience.

Liberalism and its many entitlement programs, the expansion of the federal government, the debasement of our educational system, congressional raids on the Social Security fund, and the failure to rein in the “government sponsored entities”, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have brought us to a point of economic collapse not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s..

After November 22, 1963 everything that followed began with a single bullet. It sent the nation careening off on a spending spree that by 2008 took an infusion of billions of public dollars to avoid a banking industry catastrophe. It would be followed by an increase of two trillion in the national debt under a new, young, and briefly popular president.

Did we learn anything from those previous decades? Apparently not.

In 2008, the voters elected a virtually unknown U.S. Senator from Illinois who had barely spent a few months in the Senate before setting out to become the 44th president. Like JFK he was young, charismatic, and eloquent so long as Teleprompters fed him the words to say.

President Barack Obama did not bring a “brain trust” into office with him like FDR or “the best and the brightest” as Kennedy did. Instead, he installed a large group of “czars”, men and women, dedicated socialists and loony environmentalists who mostly bypassed the Congressional vetting process, but who have wielded great power behind the scenes.

Obama’s popularity, like Carter’s, disappeared in less than two years. The recent midterm elections were historic. The Republicans will control of the House and Democrats will have a narrow control of the Senate when a new Congress returns in January. Until then, the political chess game is astonishing as the nation races toward deadlines that include extending the Bush tax cuts and the continued funding of the government.

A remarkable movement, the Tea Party, emerged; leaderless, but composed of millions of Americans determined to take back the power that had been taken from them by a Congress indifferent to their wishes. The damage of the first two years of Obama’s term will take time to repair, but it will be repaired.

History might have been very different had it not been for November 22, 1963, but we shall never know how different.

What we do know is that liberalism, socialism, does not work. It debases fiscal prudence, spreads poverty, and subverts the Founder’s intention of a small central government while shackling the States with unfunded mandates.

For an older generation of Americans, we have lived through a lot of history and, 47 years ago, a single bullet set it in motion.

© Alan Caruba, 2010   Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs . An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center.

By

Nancy Morgan

As more and more Americans identify themselves through their sexual orientation, I’d like to weigh in on the side of heterosexuality. There, I said it. I’m straight. Sexually speaking, this means that I don’t sleep with members of my own sex.

Of course, whom I sleep with is no-one’s business. Unless I’m a health hazard or something. And, of course, what I do in my own bedroom used to be confined to my bedroom. The key word is “used to be.”

Call me an old fuddy duddy, but I just can’t wrap my mind around gleefully advertising my most personal sexual practices. Call it modesty, or plain old good manners, but I believe that my privates were meant to be private.

In an era that increasingly promotes gender as being an optional life-style choice, I want to be one of the first to say I like plain old fashioned sex with members of the opposite sex. And being, gasp, Christian, I believe love and respect are pre-requisites to jumping in the sack. Color me outdated.

One’s sexuality is pretty much fair game these days. It’s one of the few ways left to garner one’s 15-minutes of fame. After all, how many ways are left to push the envelope – to show how “with it” one is? I fully expect that we’ll soon have a new reality show designed around contestant’s sexual practices. The sex lives of pathetic attention seekers will be scrutinized and commented on for all the world to see. Peeping Toms, instead of being arrested, will be crucial in determining which sex act is the most outrageous. Sexual Survivor?

The left has legitimized the art of self-absorption. Naval gazing and “personal truths” have replaced modesty and restraint. Hooking up with strangers has replaced dating. And if you prefer to keep the details of your sex life private, you might just be branded a homophobe.

Sadism, gay sex, and bondage are just a few of the sexual practices that are now considered legitimate. In fact, anything to do with sex is now applauded as being the product of introspection and heightened personal awareness. Today it’s almost mandatory to affect a cavalier attitude about what many consider a sacred act.

Before it becomes a hate-crime, I’d like to weigh in with my own opinion:

Many (not all) gay people make me uneasy. Not because they’re gay, but because they make their sexuality the focus of their whole lives and demand that I not only accept their homosexuality, but condone it. Anything less is labeled homophobia.

I don’t hate gays, I just resent having their bedroom habits pushed into my face on a daily basis. I consider that rude. It’s also none of my business. I believe a person is more than a sexual identity.

I’m one of those old-fashioned prudes who believes in modesty and discretion in all things sexual. According to the left, this makes me a hater. They’re half right – I do hate being forced to conform to someone else’s idea of what sexuality is.

The whole gay pride movement leaves me confused. If, as many gays assert, being homosexual is a function of genetics, then why should one take pride in it? That would be like me taking pride in being born with two arms. Which, of course, comes with the implicit assumption that being born with one arm is somehow “lesser than.” Couldn’t I be sued under ADA? Sigh.

I’m a straight, heterosexual woman. Not that this is anyone’s business. I could write volumes about the joys of traditional sex, but I choose not to. I prefer to keep my sexual proclivities a private matter. I just wish everyone else would do the same.

Nancy Morgan is a columnist and news editor for RightBias.com and she lives in South Carolina.

Read more from Nancy Morgan at Right Bias

By Alan Caruba

It started with a haircut in the morning. I sat in a barber chair I had sat in initially around the age of five. In those days, the 1940s, four Italian gentlemen cut hair and it cost 25 cents for a kid and $1.25 for an adult. Same shop, but my haircut cost $16.00 not counting the tip. Except for the owner, some lovely gals cut hair there these days.

When my parents moved to an upscale suburb of Newark, New Jersey in 1942, they paid $11,000 for a three-bedroom home with a stand-alone garage. I sold it for many multiples of that and it was essentially the same house with a few improvements. I sold because, in 2000, the town had reevaluated the property and literally doubled the taxes. Ten years later, a second reevaluation was deemed worthy of an article in The Wall Street Journal.

My parents put two sons through college on the earnings of my Father, a CPA with vivid memories of the Great Depression. He was a liberal, a Democrat, and advocate of the United Nations. Starting in the 1950s Mother taught gourmet cooking in the adult schools that sprang up after the war, earning enough to purchase the family cars and otherwise contribute to the budget. They remained married for over sixty years. He never learned to drive.

After the haircut, I topped out the gas, a little under a half-tank, and paid $21 for a mixture of gasoline and ethanol, the latter mandated by the government and heavily subsidized. The cost included state and federal taxes. I can recall when gasoline in the 60s and 70s was around 60 cents a gallon. I can also remember long lines at the pumps in both 1967 and 1973-74 when the Saudis, angered by the U.S. support for Israel, implemented oil embargoes.

A visit to the supermarket these days is a carnival of sticker-shock. The price of food has been rising thanks in part to the increase of the cost of energy to produce it and the diversion of corn to produce ethanol that reduces the mileage you get from the gas you purchase and likely harms your car’s engine. Corn is a major feedstock so the cost of a steak is rising too.

During WWII, the milk was delivered to my home by a horse-drawn wagon. Before refrigeration became widely available, we kept it in an ice box that required the delivery of large blocks of ice. There was radio, but no television. If you wanted air conditioning, you had to go to the local movie theatre. Price of admission, plus popcorn cost a kid about twenty-five cents. I saw my first television program in the 1950s. Within no time, everyone had a TV.

When I attended elementary, middle and high school there was zero talk about illegal drug use because there was none and I cannot recall any mention, let alone the teaching of heterosexual or homosexual sex of any kind. The school day began with a pledge of allegiance and a prayer. We did not have a politically correct curriculum or have to listen to fantasies about the planet heating up.

We did not recycle because everyone knew it was just the garbage.

It was the rare child who came from a family that had experienced divorce or who was being raised by a single parent. There was no segregation in the north, but my high school was almost completely white. That ratio has been reversed.

The Draft ensured that every able-bodied young man would serve a minimum of two years in the military learning the arts of warfare. We had all been born early enough to have passed through World War Two as very young children. This was followed by a conflict in Korea in the 1950s when we were teens. By the time the Vietnam War came along it was a new generation of conscripts fighting it. After that, the military became entirely staffed by volunteers.

The biggest scandal of the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower involved a vicuna coat his chief of staff had accepted as a gift. It would take Watergate to stain and end Nixon’s presidency, an ugly sexual dalliance to undermine Clinton’s, and a parade of congressional felons that constitutes a non-stop perp-walk these days.

Since I was a lad the government added a Department of Education, a Department of Energy, a Department of Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, and others I cannot recall. Regulation of everything has exploded. Borrowing and spending has exploded. If anybody had told me back then that the government was broke, I would have thought he was crazy, but the debt ceiling kept being raised until there is, in effect, no ceiling.

In my memory, American society began to shift from traditional values and patterns in the 1960s. The century-long failure of the South to rid itself of the aftermath of the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws, eventually found expression among blacks, but it also caused riots in U.S. cities.

In time, gays in New York would rebel against police harassment and a whole new movement would be sparked, culminating in the demand for same-sex marriage, along with an end to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the military. The lives of women changed with the advent of “the Pill” and demands for more equality.

Sex, drugs and rock’n roll became the order of the day. We have gone from Frank Sinatra to Lady Ga-Ga. Later generations than mine share a more chaotic vision of society and a far more costly one in which to live.

It has taken the emergence of the Tea Party movement to capture and focus the independent voters who have seesawed back and forth between the comfort of Eisenhower’s conservatism to the free-spending of Lyndon Johnson, the conservative values of Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama’s effort to force European-style socialism on America.

In my life, we have gone from the Great Depression to an era in which whole nations have discovered that a highly centralized government inherently cannot function without bankrupting its citizens whether they live in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Portugal, Greece or in the former Soviet Union.

As international organizations have flourished, from the United Nations to the European Union, the more unwieldy, corrupt, and grasping they have become.

We live now in the Age of Terrorism. No one in authority seems to want to acknowledge the source, the threat to civilization called Islam. Few Americans knew anything about Islam before 9/11. Now you can’t get on a plane without a full body scan and search.

If your grandpa or grandma say they miss the “good old days”, keep in mind that in many fundamental ways, they really were good.

© Alan Caruba, 2010   Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs . An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center.

The Philosophy of death and genocide - (Cartoon title - Kant_Hume_Hobbes by Bob Row; uploaded on August 20, 2009; courtesy - toonpool.com). Click to enlarge.

On British character

Indian attempts to show imperial British character as exploitative fail on one count. Apart from adjectives and inferences, there is usually little else. The terminal narrative is to a large degree propaganda – forethought and afterthought.

Been there and done that

David Hume (1711-1776), whose historiography shaped British outlook for the next 200 years, sheds some light on events during this period. Hume’s  influence provoked a latter-day philosopher to note that “Hume is our Politics, Hume is our Trade, Hume is our Philosophy, Hume is our Religion.” (statement by 19th century British idealist philosopher James Hutchison Stirling).

Hume’s argument about the ‘progress’ that British brought to the colonies lives in the colonial narrative even today. In the context of Ireland Hume wrote, “A more than equal return had been made [the slothful and barbarous Irish], by [the planters] instructing the natives in tillage, building, manufactures, and all the civilized arts of life”

Hume’s views on White superiority persist till date. Hume wrote,

I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the Whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them.

Thoughts and ideas that were later echoed by Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

A testimony to British ‘character’

To David Hume, an investor in slave trade, Britishers from East India Company in India ‘manifested the immense superiority of the British character’. This British ‘character’ according to Hume, of ‘the servants of this company of merchants [was] formed in a great degree by the habits and conditions of the masters’. Hume says, it was this British ‘character’ that was the reason why

a mercantile company, in less than ten years, [could] acquire by war and policy, more extensive  possessions, and a richer revenue, than those of several European monarchs.

Proudly, Hume described ‘British character’. What Hume said, Indians experienced, first hand. Hume described how Britishers of East Indian Company

David Hume was spot on regarding British (and European, too) behaviour!

considered, in every transaction of war, peace, or alliance, what money could be drawn from the inhabitants. … Before they planned aggression, they calculated the probable proceeds, the debts that they might extinguish, and the addition, on the balance of accounts, which they might make to the sum total. They considered war with the natives, merely as a commercial adventure: by so much risk encountered, a certain quantity of blood spilt, and a certain extent of territory desolated, great sums were to be gained. (read more via The history of England: from The history of England: from the invasion of Julius Cæsar, to the revolution in 1688 – Volume 12 By David Hume).

Having assured supplies of gunpowder from India, numerical superiority in navy based on Indian shipyards, Britain  started a blood-soaked 200-year military campaign in India – and the world.

Related Articles

• David Hume’s Rejection of The Enduring Self (socyberty.com)
• A tournament of atheists, then and now (theglobeandmail.com)
• The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment (3quarksdaily.com)
• Wicked Company (blogs.discovermagazine.com)

By Alan Caruba

Anyone who has tried to discuss, debate, or argue political issues with a liberal eventually concludes they are dealing with someone too deranged to be influenced by facts. The midterm election defeat of Democrats in the House and the narrowed margin of control of the Senate mean nothing to liberals whose explanations ignore reality.

Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, explained the defeat in almost classic liberal terms. “Well, anger certainly continues to be all the rage in the corridors of American politics,” he pouted in an commentary titled “Man Up, America!” ignoring the fact that Nancy Pelosi–a woman–wielded the power in the House that produced the largest turnover of seats since 1938.

Ignoring the possibility that two years of legislative insanity that forced Obamacare on an unwilling majority of Americans, of stimulus bills that were nothing more than pork, of financial reforms that ignored the source of the mortgage meltdown, Carter concluded that “The general anti-Obama rage out there is palpable, adding that the “hatred for Obama” had “more to do with race than anything else.”

This “white, conservative and independent Americans are all bigots” mantra ignores the fact that Obama made history as the first black man to be elected president and that it could not have happened if a lot of white people had not voted for him, starting with the Iowa primaries in a very white State.

“What makes today’s fury more worrying,” Carter continued, “is the fact that angry right-wing extremists tend to carry guns in disproportionate numbers to their liberal counterparts.” Where have we heard this before? Oh yes, it was Obama talking about people “who cling to their guns and religion” instead of turning their lives over to an all-powerful central government.

Nearly a million “angry right-wing extremists” turned up in Washington, D.C. to peacefully protest passage of Obamacare without a single arrest or incident. They were summarily dismissed by a very arrogant White House that was too busy forcing “healthcare reform” on the majority of Americans to pay attention to how many of them were unemployed.

There is an aspect of psychology called “projection” when one accuses someone of the very characteristics found in themselves. “What do you call an electorate that seems prone to acting out irrationally, is full of inchoate rage, and is constantly throwing fits and tantrums”, asked Carter. We call them liberals.

Compounding the failure, refusal or inability to accept the reality that liberal, Democrat actions, led by President Obama and enacted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, we have learned that the Speaker has made it clear that she wants to retain her power as the new House Minority Leader.

Historically, House Speakers who have presided over a loss of power resign, but not Nancy Pelosi. Indeed, her letter to the Democratic caucus cited “the most productive Congress in a half century” without apparently taking any notice that its legislative program led to a loss of 61 seats in the House. “We have no intention of allowing our great achievements to be rolled back,” she said, citing the programs that were responsible for a crippled party in Congress.

Under normal conditions, the current Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, would be expected to be elected by the Democratic caucus to replace Madame Pelosi, but there does not appear to be anything “normal” about those who lost or those who survived.

Pelosi wants the Democrat Seal of Approval for two of the worst years Americans have been through and, of course, Democrats have been in control of Congress since 2006, halfway through former President Bush’s second term. Stimulus hasn’t worked. Unemployment is higher now than when Obama was elected. Obamacare, passed by Democrats who hadn’t even been allowed to read the bill, and a multitude of other ills resulted in a massive rejection of Democrats in Congress.

What have liberals learned from this? Nothing! The swift decline of confidence in Obama is attributed to his skin color. The economic stagnation is the fault of Wall Street. The rise in healthcare premiums will be blamed on insurance companies, not Obamacare. The anger of the electorate is blamed on angry, white-wing conservatives even though Tea Party candidates did not all get automatically elected to office.

On the Saturday following the elections, Rasmussen Reports summed up the situation for Obama as follows:

“Still somewhat in shellshock following Tuesday’s elections, President Obama so far seems content to blame the messenger, not the message.”

“In other words, the American people would really like his agenda if he had just explained it better. We’ll see.”

“Voters have mixed feelings about the tone the president set at his first post-election press conference on Wednesday. Most, in fact, are not confident that the president can work with the new Republican majority in the House to do what’s best for the American people.”

“Just before Election Day, the majority of voters said the election was a referendum on the president’s agenda and that he should change course if Republicans win control of the House. But most also don’t expect him to make that change.”

Obama got elected on a message of hope and change, but voters did not like the change and are running out of any hope that he understands what happened on Election Day.

That’s what happens when liberals are given power and that is why the next two years will be continued resistance to the changes voters want. Expecting them to rationally interpret the elections is a waste of time.

© Alan Caruba, 2010   Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs . An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center.

Nancy Morgan

After living in California for 33 years, I finally decided to leave. I sold my business and my home and relocated to South Carolina.

I moved to California when I was 17. Like most of my fellow residents, I was busy living my life. I gave very little thought to politics, assuming that politicians knew best how to run the state. I wasn’t even aware of the difference between Republicans and Democrats. I would always vote, but with 20/20 hindsight, I see how my votes were manipulated and influenced by the overwhelmingly liberal media.

Until age 36, I pretty much followed the party line, believing what I saw on the news and read in the papers. I figured the ‘experts’ knew better than I, and was relieved not to have to form my own opinions. I relied on group thought, which is, or was, extremely pervasive in the Los Angeles area.

I remember hearing a talk show host describe how a school board in Torrance was successful in defeating a Christian candidate and remember feeling glad that there were others out there working to keep radical influences away from our children. I never questioned the premise that Christians were considered radical.

I adopted as fact the headlines I saw on the news. I was busy living my life. It wasn’t until 1992 that I became aware that I had only been exposed to one side of the story. I was not even aware that there was a conservative point of view.

In 1992, Ross Perot was on TV holding up a toilet seat. Perot said the Air Force had paid something like $700.00 for that toilet seat. He then said the 5 words that changed my life forever. “And this is public knowledge.”

Huh? I decided to check out his claim. And I found that, yes, that information was public knowledge. Only problem was, the media in Los Angeles had never reported it. Just as they never reported any other than the liberal point of view.

After some searching, I latched onto National Review Magazine and the Washington Times. What I found when reading those publications made my blood boil. There was a whole school of thought out there that I had never been exposed to. The conservative point of view. And I found I agreed with their premises.

No matter how thin the pancake, there are always two sides. For 22 years, I had only been exposed to one side of the story. And I came to find that side I had been exposed to was far different from what I had been led to believe. Shame on me.

I assumed that my husband, family and friends would be just as angry as I when I informed them of my new insights. I quickly found out that, then, as now, they were totally opposed to hearing any facts that challenged their long held views.

Long story short, I became a pariah. Conservative views were simply not tolerated back in the 90′s in Los Angeles. When I persisted in voicing my opinions, most of my relationships suffered. My husband left me and my family made clear that there must be something wrong with me. I got tired of the raised eyebrows and condescending smiles. I realized nothing I said would penetrate. The frustration drove me to anger, which pretty much nixed any chance I had of influencing others to my new point of view.

For 8 years, the only place I could be myself was when I covered conservative gatherings. Finally, a stray news item had a catalytic effect on me. I found that 7th graders in San Francisco were being taught how to fist. (A homosexual practice – enough said) Under the guise of teaching tolerance, my tax dollars were being used to fund a week-end ‘health’ fair that brainwashed children into believing that the gay lifestyle was normal – merely a lifestyle choice. That was the last straw.

I took off on a cross country trip, seeking a place where I could be myself and where my tax dollars wouldn’t be continually funding policies with which I fundamentally disagreed. I finally decided on South Carolina. I sold my business and home and left California for good.

I miss many things about California. But after last Tuesday’s election, I realize that living in California is no longer an option for me.

The blatant media malfeasance, the lack of intellectual diversity and the continuing reign of liberal politicians guarantees that California will remain mired in failed liberal policies for the foreseeable future. And I will not condone paying the taxes the state insists upon when I know the money will be spent on promoting a largely discredited liberal agenda. That’s not the America I want to live in.

Since 2002, several of my friends have also left California for good. Studies show that the only increase in population in California right now are immigrants. Which begs the question: Who will be paying the taxes required to fund the utopian agenda put in place by far-left liberals? And how long can California continue to ignore reality before the whole state comes crashing down?

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s possible Governor-elect Moonbeam can solve the state’s fiscal crisis. Just because he’s a lifetime member of the far left doesn’t mean he can’t change his stripes and usher in the reforms California so desperately needs. By golly, I just saw a pig fly right by my window!

Nancy Morgan is a columnist and news editor for RightBias.com and she lives in South Carolina.

Read more from Nancy Morgan at Right Bias

By Frank Salvato

The midterm elections coming up this November 2nd are perhaps the most important election since the US Civil War. Where the 1864 election came in the midst of a war that tore families apart, saw brothers fighting brothers and the fate of the Union and the issue of slavery hanging in the balance, among other pressing questions (slavery was not the only catalyst for the US Civil War), the 2010 midterm elections are just as critical as again we see the very well-being of our country hanging in the balance.

There really is no singular issue that makes this election more important than the one before it. While many rail about the transformative healthcare bill or the threat of Cap-and-Trade or the bankrupting of our country or any number of irresponsible policies of this Congress and the current administration, the truth is that the critical issue of this election – of this moment in time – is much simpler and much more complex, all at the same time.

The issue that sets this election cycle apart from almost all others is a question of – dare I say it – rebellion; of revolution.

On the one side we have a well-funded and well-organized Progressive movement that quests to change – some say “fundamentally transform” – the United States of America. In a complete failure on their part to appreciate the genius of a constitutionally republican form of government – that it allows for the will of the people while protecting the rights of the minority – Progressives seek to transform the United States into a Socialist Democracy, a country that practices what Glenn Beck is coining as State Capitalism. State Capitalism is the model being employed by China, Venezuela and myriad other neo-Socialist governments springing up around the world.

On the other side of the balance is a grassroots movement, determined, focused and well-educated on the issues, champions of an American philosophy chartered in the US Constitution. The Tea Party movement has enjoined with the constitutional elements of the Conservative movement and Republican Party in a pursuit to reaffirm our nation’s commitment to the inalienable rights endowed to all men by the Creator; the rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Progressives, whose ideological genesis emanates from the tenets of Marxism and the Frankfurt School, and who have been affecting this transformation, incrementally, since the turn of the 20th Century, believe that an all encompassing government is the answer to the ills of our nation; that government is the solution to our problems. They believe that the Constitution is a living document meant to expand with the needs of the times and that the policies of the United States have garnered Americans the scorn of many nations throughout the world.

The Tea Party Movement and its brethren believe in the principles of individual responsibility, limited government, limited taxation and adherence to a Constitution that limits the powers of government, enabling and unleashing the creativity of the American entrepreneur. They believe that our Great American Experiment has created the best hope for freedom and liberty for all men and women everywhere in the world, that a free people left to their own devices, devoid of excessive government interference can and will find answers and solutions to questions and problems. The Tea Party Movement and its brethren – of which I consider myself one – believes that a benevolent Capitalist system brings out the best in human nature and creates cohesive communities, communities where children thrive and grow to attain just a bit more than the generation before them.

In limiting the over-reach of government – the intrusion of government into the private sector and into our homes – we facilitate the re-emergence of self-reliance, individual responsibility and the benevolence of the American soul.

In limiting taxation – the sapping of the accrued wealth of individuals and business owners – we unleash the strength of Capitalism, the very economic model that has made the United States the most prosperous nation on Erath and a nation able to reach out in benevolence around the world. We facilitate reinvestment in business and, in turn, make it possible for business owners to expand, which creates jobs and individual wealth.

And in our belief that all should adhere to the US Constitution – its protections and its governmental limitations – and the constitutional process, we believe we establish the common bond that affords equality in opportunity to all while guaranteeing Life, Liberty and each individual’s pursuit of Happiness.

For far too long we have allowed the inside-the-beltway mentality to cheat generations of Americans out of purity in government. We have tolerated corruption and nepotism and now, as we fight for the very soul of our nation, we truly come to understand two quotes from a man far more aware of the fragility of the Great American Experiment than we; Thomas Jefferson:

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

and,

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

The time is upon us. The time has come for each and every American citizen to stand-up and make a choice – and stand by that choice. Do you stand for Progressivism and government dependence? Or do you choose freedom and self-government? Do you choose slavery to an elitist class? Or the liberty that comes from honest representative government.

The time has now come, for all of us, to choose.

Do you choose Progressivism or Americanism?

For me, the choice is clear.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Frank Salvato is the managing editor for The New Media Journal. He serves at the Executive Director of the Basics Project, a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative.

Read more excellent articles from Family Security Matters

Nancy Morgan

On the campaign trail last month, Obama lambasted Republicans, saying, “Republicans have not come up with one new idea.” Putting aside the fact that Obama is ‘factually incorrect,’ (see Rep. Paul Ryan’s ‘A Roadmap for America’s Future‘) his statement embodies the fatal flaw of progressivism.

Winston Churchill said, “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” Obama disagrees.

Each and every “new” policy of Obama’s administration in the last 20 months has one thing in common. Their foundations are lodged in wishful thinking, hope, if you will, that Obama’s perception of reality will magically translate into the underlying reality. They are all “new” solutions to old problems.

New solutions to old problems are an essential element of America’s spirit of entrepreneurship and one of the reasons America leads the world in innovation. Unfortunately, Obama’s view of progressivism completely excludes the lessons of history.

It comes as no surprise to students of history that Obama’s solutions are not working. From bailouts to the cutely named “stimulus” programs, from ObamaCare to the government take-over of many segments of the formerly private economy, every solution Obama has proposed or implemented has been tried in the past. And they have all failed in the past. Just as they are failing now.

Whether due to ideology, ignorance, hubris or naivety, Obama appears to believe he can define his own reality. He is like a young child who, by closing his eyes convinces himself that no-one can see him. Obama is the result of a liberal education un-tempered by real-life experience or economic necessity. Or the lessons of history.

Our founders designed the system of federalism, wisely leaving to the states the ability to experiment with new solutions. The states are America’s laboratories, implementing new solutions on a small scale, minimizing the risk of failure and those darn unintended consequences. Until now.

Never having been held responsible for the outcome of his actions, Obama sails merrily forth advocating his, not so new, ideas, secure in the knowledge that the American taxpayers will be paying the very real cost of his mistakes. As we are now doing on a daily basis.

Obama’s reliance on the ideological tactics employed by many of his known mentors and friends, has resulted in a measurable decline in America, economically, politically and militarily.

His inability to allow for the possibility that history, tradition or conservative principles may offer a possible solution to the current economic mess America remains mired in, guarantees that America’s problems will not be solved as long as Obama holds office.

As Obama struggles to redefine reality to his specifications, history marches on, with dire consequences for the future of America. As history shows:

The average age of the world’s greatest civilization from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith

2. From spiritual faith to great courage

3. From courage to liberty

4. From liberty to abundance

5. From abundance to complacency

6. From complacency to apathy

7. From apathy to dependence

8. From dependence back into bondage

Obama is either unaware of the course of history, or he is counting on it.

Nancy Morgan is a columnist and news editor for RightBias.com and she lives in South Carolina.

Read more from Nancy Morgan at Right Bias

Just after Obama was elected president, I asked my niece, Sarah, to tell me, in one word, why she voted for him. She thought about it for awhile, and then replied, “equality.”

Sarah is a newly minted Ph.D., a recent product of government schools and a very smart woman. Not surprisingly, she has adopted the progressive’s outlook as her own. To her credit, she is concerned with others less fortunate than herself. She is concerned with fairness and equality. She is genuinely compassionate and strives to do the right thing.

Unfortunately, like millions of Americans, Sarah has been led to believe that Obama has the ability to make life more just. She seems to believe that the leftist template of “social justice” will finally result in equality and justice for all. I give her credit for her concern and I applaud her interest in others. I also look forward to the day when she has enough life experience to realize that life will never be fair. That people will never be “equal.”

Fairness and equality are subjective concepts whose definitions differ depending on whom is doing the defining. The kicker is words that can mean anything end up meaning nothing.

Equality, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. It is a lovely concept, but the devil is in the details.

Here’s a news flash: Life isn’t fair and people are not equal. And history shows that any and all attempts to make it fair and equal – from socialism to communism to Marxism – have been dismal failures. What Sarah wasn’t taught in school is that countries that are free, are not equal. And countries that are equal, are not free.

America is unique and prosperous because our country offers the only equality achievable by man: equality of opportunity and equality before the law. At least we used to. In an effort to make life fair for all, Obama’s agenda has resulted undermining two of the most important pillars of our society – the rule of law and the right to own private property.

Unelected czars have been given the ability to change the rules on a whim. Government bureaucrats have been given unprecedented power over the formerly free market, with the ability to confiscate (nationalize) any business that doesn’t conform to ever-changing standards imposed by political fiat. Our own Department of Justice has flatly stated that the rules governing election fraud are there only for disenfranchised blacks, not whites.

By arbitrarily changing the rules that govern our society, Obama and his fellow progressives have thrown the country into turmoil. Imagine being in the middle of a high stakes game and all of a sudden, the rules change. Heads they win, and tails, you lose. How “fair” is that?

In Obama’s world, some people are more equal than others. (Can you spell “unions”?) By stacking the deck in favor of one group at the expense of another, in the name of fairness and equality, Obama’s policies have resulted in a less equal and less fair America.

What my niece Sarah doesn’t realize is that all rights come with attendant responsibilities. One man’s right not to be offended means that another man’s right to voice his opinion is infringed upon. One man’s right to free housing means another man’s right to keep the fruits of his own labor is diminished. As Thomas Sowell states, there are no solutions, only trade-offs.

Obama has convinced many Americans that he has the ability to bestow unlimited rights. Like a weekend dad, Obama feeds his ‘children’ ice cream, lavishes them with toys, and lets them stay up all night. He leaves to mom (Republicans) the much harder task of teaching the reality that there are no free lunches, that rights are not free when they are paid for by others, and that life isn’t fair. It never has been, and never will be.

Thousands of small businesses and millions of Americans are sitting on billions of dollars, refusing to invest their hard-earned money because this administration has stacked the deck in favor of whoever has the most political clout. Why risk capital when the rules can be changed on a whim? Why hire a new employee when it is impossible to estimate how costly their health-care package will be?

I only hope that my niece Sarah, and the rest of America’s progressives, realize sooner rather than later, that all of man’s attempts to attain utopia, world peace, and equality for all are not only futile, but risk destroying the hard-won equality of opportunity and equality before the law that America has spent over 200 years developing.

Nancy Morgan is a columnist and news editor for RightBias.com and she lives in South Carolina.

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By Tom McLaughlin

Liberals love to pat themselves on the back for giving away other people’s money. Latter-day Robin Hoods, they love to tax the “rich” and give to the “poor,” but they’re as tight as the bark on a tree with their own money. Do they rationalize that they give away so much of our money that they don’t need to give away much of their own? “It’s more blessed to give than to receive,” goes the proverb, and liberals believe it’s most blessed to give what isn’t theirs.

Most of what federal government takes from me and about about half of all other Americans is used for social programs. The other half of Americans pay no federal income taxes and receive most of the benefits from those programs. All this was designed by those who called themselves “progressives” at intervals of Democrat rule during twentieth century. Whoever might disagree with them were, by implication, regressive. Progressives called themselves “liberals” later on, but now they again wish to be called “progressives” here in the twenty-first century because “liberal” has taken on a negative connotation. Whatever they’re called, their aim is the same: take as much as they can get away with from the most  productive and give it all to the least productive. They use big, bloated government for this redistribution because they don’t want to use bows and arrows and live in the forest like Robin Hood. They want the support Robin Hood received, but also the creature comforts beyond even what the Sheriff of Nottingham’s lifestyle provided. They love performances at the Kennedy Center and lavish parties at the White House paid for by taxpayers.

Whenever progressive liberal Democrats are in charge, they ramp up promises beyond what government could possibly afford. FDR’s New Deal promised Social Security pensions for the elderly. That’s been increased since to include disability payments for people of all ages and may soon be extended to millions of illegal aliens as well if they get their way. Al Gore used to talk about a “lock box” for the money FICA takes from our paychecks, but that was a myth. All the money we send to the federal government for our old-age pensions is spent immediately by that bloated government. All Al Gore’s lock box would contain is IOUs. In 2016, there won’t be enough money to back up the millions of checks it sends out every month. Looking further ahead, deficits for Social Security run to $100 trillion over the several decades.

Liberals in LBJ’s Great Society gave us Medicare thirty years later. Projected deficits for that run into the tens of trillions. Also, Barack Obama gave us health care “reform” that will take $500 billion from Medicare that isn’t really there and spend trillions more that we don’t have either. What he’ll do is try to borrow more and add that red ink to the $14 trillion deficit he already run up. All this debt and the prospect of still more is what’s really depressing the economy today.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has been using FDR’s Keynesian defibrillator to apply trillion-dollar jolts to an economy that continues to flatline. While running trillion-and-a-half-dollar annual deficits that alarm our creditors so much they’re balking at lending us more, he wants to use the “progressive” federal income tax to soak even more out of the “rich.” He’s also using the Federal Reserve to buy US Treasury bonds nobody else wants, and pay for them by printing over $3 trillion. It’s not a question anymore about if it’s all going to come unravelled – it’s only a question of when.

Up to now, the half of Americans who pay no federal income tax have been inclined to vote for presidents, senators and congressmen who promise more and more benefits at the expense of the other half who pay for it all. Along with the votes of guilt-ridden, trust-funded liberals, they swept “progressives” into power in 2006 and 2008. Their policies, however, are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Cities and states like Detroit and California that progressive liberals have been in charge of longest are the closest to bankruptcy. Enough of the bottom half of Americans are watching their over-extended neighbors default on their mortgages and credit cards  and realizing that our federal government is doing the same thing. Uncle Sam won’t be able to backstop it anymore. They’re realizing that if they keep voting for progressive liberals and their socialist policies, it will all come crashing down.

It’s going to be very interesting when votes are counted the evening of November 2nd.

Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Tom McLaughlin. Tom is a history teacher and a regular weekly columnist for newspapers in Maine and New Hampshire. He writes about political and social issues, history, family, education and Radical Islam.

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Elin Maria Pernilla Nordegren, a Swedish model and the ex-wife of Tiger Woods encashed on her insecurity. (Cartoon By Mike Lester, The Rome News-Tribune - 6/30/2010 12.00:00 AM; ©Copyright 2010 Mike Lester.). Click for larger image.

Iran in Stone Age

On the Islamic side of the world, in Iran, courts reopened a 2005 adultery case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. After the trial, it was decided that Sakineh would be stoned to death for her ‘crime’.

This would have been just another case of Desert Bloc justice, till the French First Lady, Carla Bruni sprang to the ‘defence’ of this ‘victim’. The case become more high profile, after Brazil’s President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, offered asylum to Sakineh – which Iran rejected.

Iran has reportedly sentenced Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani – the 43-year-old Iranian woman who faces execution after being convicted of adultery – to 99 lashes in prison for “spreading corruption and indecency” after allowing an unveiled picture of herself to be published in a British newspaper.

The claim, which could not be confirmed, comes from her family and a lawyer representing Mohammadi Ashtiani, based on reports from those who have recently left the prison in Tabriz where she has been held for the last four years. (via Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani to be lashed over newspaper photograph | World news | guardian.co.uk).

The "Free' Press had a gala time with a 'free' victim. Cartoon by Joe Heller, Green Bay Press-Gazette - 4/16/2010 12.00.00 AM. Click for larger image.

On the other side

In the USA, over the last 12 months, we have a modern-day spectacle – The Hounding of Tiger Woods.

His crime?

Tiger Woods had sex with willing women. With a lot of willing women. No pedophilia, no rape or forced sex, no violence.

Just simple sex.

OK. May not be simple sex. Maybe in complicated ‘kamasutra‘ positions, in unusual locations, with varied partners. But does all this, change the issue. Make it  any different.

Guys, he just had sex.

Nothing more than sex. How can consensual sex be a sin, immoral, crime, shameful, and all that baggage of guilt? If there is an injured party, I can only see Tiger. All those willing and able women quite ‘enjoyed’ both the kissing, and the telling. Not to forget the money they made for both the kissing and the telling!

What exactly is it that Tiger Woods did? Cartoon by Mike Smith from the Las Vegas Sun.

Mebbe …

Coming from the land of kamasutra, where काम kaam (desire, including sexual) is my right, probably I am under-developed. Maybe these advanced, monotheistic Desert Bloc religions and societies are more advanced than the primitive culture I am from! Maybe, the social system of भारत-तंत्र Bharat-tantra has ‘corrupted’ me.

Who can object

Not Elin Nordegren.

She made US$400 million (or is it US$500 /600 /750 /1000). For her insecurity. That Tiger may abandon her and the children, while he is chasing all these women. A fear that is fair and legitimate. For a mother to two of Tiger’s children.

Not a bad deal. Or is there something more? Am I missing something?

Jesus tried, God knows! (Cartoon By John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune - 9/4/2008 12.00.00 AM; cartoon courtesy - politicalcartoons.com.). Click for larger image.

What’s the difference

Now.

I really don’t see a difference between Iran’s stoning of Sakineh and the American stoning  of Tiger Woods.

Except that the stones are different. The US and world media has tried to kill Tiger with stones made of words, ill-will and smear, imputations, cans of tar and brushes. All of them, ganged up, against one man. One lonely man.

Just because a married man had sex with a few women!

Now Iran is doing much the same thing as the stoning of Tiger Woods. Only the stones in Iran are different. The Western world has made Desert Bloc ideals of shariat into Liberal-Christian dogma.

Did the world have to hound him for having sex? Cartoon by Christo Komarnitski, Bulgaria - 4/9/2010 12.00.00 AM

Although the West has become ‘educated’, ‘advanced’, ‘developed’, ‘civilized’, rich - they have not given up. Stoning people.

Jesus tried, God knows.

Related Articles

• Iran Stoning Woman ‘Faces 99 Lashes’ (news.sky.com)
• Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani to be lashed over newspaper photograph (guardian.co.uk)
• Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani subjected to mock execution (guardian.co.uk)
• Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s family turned away from prison visit (guardian.co.uk)
• Vatican says stoning in Iran adultery case ‘brutal’ (msnbc.msn.com)

By Frank Salvato

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Progressive-Leftist from San Francisco, said when asked for her opinion on the construction of an Islamic Center and mosque just 500 feet from the footprint of the World Trade Center – Ground Zero – that the controversy had been “ginned up” for political purposes and that she would support an examination of the funding behind the “opposition movement.”

Said the Speaker:

“There is no question that there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some…And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque (is) being funded.”

We, here in the United States, don’t persecute people for their religious beliefs, although the Progressives do seem to be on an ongoing crusade to expunge all religion from the public square sans Islam. This is due to the undeniable fact that the Framers and Founders knew full well that there would be a time when a tyrant like Ms. Pelosi would be ascended to power by an uninformed and disengaged electorate. It is for this reason that the rights to Free Speech and Freedom of Religion were enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

But, if only for the next few moments, let us play along with Ms. Pelosi and pretend that the federal government has the power to persecute the American citizenry by investigating and examining the funding of political and ideological movements.

Socialized Healthcare Movement

First, let’s look at the movement that brought quasi-socialized medicine to the American people in the form of Obamacare.

As Michelle Malkin pointed out in her 2009 article Who’s Funding the Obamacare Astroturf Campaign?,

“…if you look at the funding behind the Obamacare Astroturf campaign, it’s the same few Leftist billionaires, union bosses, and partisan community organizers pushing the socialized medicine agenda.”

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) can be counted among those groups who helped to fund the movement, as can the Progressive groups Health Care for America Now (HCAN), MoveOn.org, the action fund of the Center for American Progress (a George Soros entity) the Campaign for America’s Future and ACORN.

Then there are the Progressive-Leftist loyalists who routinely regurgitate funding for socialist and quasi-socialist causes: Peter Lewis, Herb and Marion Sandler, Gara LaMarche, Drummond Pike and, through connections with them all, the Tides Foundation

So, as it would appear, the Obamacare movement was less about the poor, down-trodden of the working-class pining for relief from the big, mean insurance companies and more about the will of a group of well-funded Progressive elitists whose agenda is globalization, socialization and opportunism.

Pro-Amnesty Movement

We all remember those “immigration rallies” that took place around the country, most notably in Arizona, Chicago and New York, where hundreds of thousands (per the mainstream media) turned out to protest for “equality” and “opportunity” for those who arrived on American soil illegally, don’t we?

Funding for the very coordinated pro-amnesty rallies around the country come, in part, from: The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles; The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights; The New York Immigration Coalition; The Latin American Integration Center in Woodside, New York; The Center for Community Change; Casa of Maryland; The National Council of La Raza; and The Farmworker Justice Fund (a subsidiary of La Raza), to name but a few. It should be noted here that each of these entities receive funding from the United States government, your tax dollars.

Then, of course, there are the usual suspects: SEIU, the AFSCME, MoveOn.org, Center for American Progress, etc.

Again, the pro-amnesty movement is completely funded by a small group of very vocal Progressive elitists who have a societal agenda and not the lowly migrant worker who is simply here to “achieve a better life in America.”

Anti-War Movement, Then & Now

The difference between the anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the anti-war movement of the 21st Century is little more than the name change of the ideological movement. Where in the 1960s and 1970s it was found that the anti-war movement was funded, in part, by the Marxist elites of the former Soviet Union, today the anti-war movement is funded, in part, by the Marxists of the American Progressive movement. In both cases the ideology is decidedly Marxist and decidedly anti-American.

In the Vietnam Era, organizations and groups such as: the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and an uneasy alliance of radical pacifists, moderate pacifists, communists, socialists and reform Democrats facilitated the protest marches and activities that captivated the televisions in the first “televised war.”

But in the 21st Century military conflicts – namely Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq) and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) – groups such as Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), Code Pink, the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), Not In Our Name and the Green Party USA, among others, worked to skew the public’s perception of the mission that saw our young men and women engaged in two theaters of battle.

What separates the two eras? Not much. A cursory examination of all of these groups, both past and present, illustrates a common ideology leaning heavily toward a Marxist/Socialist/Communist anti-American bent.

Yet again, it was not the distraught family members of those serving in the US military who were taking the lead in the anti-war protests, both then and now – although there were some among the membership in these organization, rather as John Tierney points out in an April 2004 study titled, The Anti-War Movement in 2004,

“The organizers of the “peace movement” have little interest in peace. The irony is that they exploit war to press their long-standing goal of radical political change. Liberal groups will deny it, but the ideological base of the peace movement can fairly be labeled ‘neo-Communist’ because its leaders belong to remnants of the old Communist Party of the United States.”

So, in the end, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for Ms. Pelosi to suggest that we look into “how is this opposition to the mosque (is) being funded.” Because – in the end – what is good for the goose is good for the gander…or the salt marsh mouse of San Francisco, as it were.

Truth be told, the Ground Zero mosque issue, for Ms. Pelosi’s edification, is not one of constitutionality because no one is suggesting that Muslims – fundamentalist or otherwise – shouldn’t be allowed to practice their religion. In fact there are a good number of mosques in the vicinity of lower Manhattan and a great many in New York City and its outlaying areas. The issue is exclusive to ethics and morality; whether aggressive members of the Islamic community (read Feisal Abdul Rauf and his supporters) should feel obliged to build what will undoubtedly be seen as a trophy of conquest to the radical Islamist world just 500 feet from what is essentially a graveyard for 2,967 souls, slaughtered by jihadists – radical Islamists – on September 11, 2001. Remember, those who lost loved ones on that day have only Ground Zero as the tombstones for their dead, our dead.

Maybe Ms. Pelosi should dispense with the Progressive clap-trap and investigate the funding behind the September 11, 2001, attacks and the advance of radical Islam inside the United States and around the world.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Frank Salvato is the managing editor for The New Media Journal. He serves at the Executive Director of the Basics Project, a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative.

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The Guardian endorses the Liberal Democrats and the cause of proportional representation:

Citizens have votes. Newspapers do not. However, if the Guardian had a vote in the 2010 general election it would be cast enthusiastically for the Liberal Democrats.

After the campaign that the Liberal Democrats have waged over this past month, for which considerable personal credit goes to Nick Clegg, the election presents the British people with a huge opportunity: the reform of the electoral system itself. Though Labour has enjoyed a deathbed conversion to aspects of the cause of reform, it is the Liberal Democrats who have most consistently argued that cause in the round and who, after the exhaustion of the old politics, reflect and lead an overwhelming national mood for real change.

Proportional representation – while not a panacea – would at last give this country what it has lacked for so long: a parliament that is a true mirror of this pluralist nation, not an increasingly unrepresentative two-party distortion of it. The Guardian has supported proportional representation for more than a century. In all that time there has never been a better opportunity than now to put this subject firmly among the nation’s priorities. Only the Liberal Democrats grasp this fully, and only they can be trusted to keep up the pressure to deliver, though others in all parties, large and small, do and should support the cause.

(…)

Surveying the wider agenda and the experience of the past decade, however, there is little doubt that in many areas of policy and tone, the Liberal Democrats have for some time most closely matched our own priorities and instincts. On political and constitutional change, they articulate and represent the change which is now so widely wanted. On civil liberty and criminal justice, they have remained true to liberal values and human rights in ways that the other parties, Labour more than the Tories in some respects, have not. They are less tied to reactionary and sectional class interests than either of the other parties.

The Liberal Democrats were green before the other parties and remain so. Their commitment to education is bred in the bone. So is their comfort with a European project which, for all its flaws, remains central to this country’s destiny. They are willing to contemplate a British defence policy without Trident renewal. They were right about Iraq, the biggest foreign policy judgment call of the past half-century, when Labour and the Tories were both catastrophically and stupidly wrong. They have resisted the rush to the overmighty centralised state when others have not. At key moments, when tough issues of press freedom have been at stake, they have been the first to rally in support. Above all, they believe in and stand for full, not semi-skimmed, electoral reform.

Contrary to Andrew Sullivan, who sees his favorite-candidate-by-default Tory David Cameron trailing in recent polls, and the Obama mantle passed on to someone else, I am very pleased with the Liberal Democrat surge in British election polls. I always had a vague sense that they were “all right”, being social/progressive liberal and all, but details of the LibDem program now being highlighted makes me very much want them to win this election.

For example, they want to introduce a Freedom Bill that provides strong protection to civil liberties:

We will introduce a Freedom Bill to restore and protect our most important liberties. We will scrap expensive and unnecessary ID Cards; remove innocent people from the criminal DNA database; restore the right to protest and freedom of speech; and restore other vital freedoms. We will protect people’s privacy by strengthening data protection laws and stopping unnecessary state intervention in our lives.

They also backed the group of experts led by Professor David Nutt who advised the government to base drugs policy on facts, and got expelled for that:

The best way to reduce the harm drugs cause to society is to base policy on facts,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary.

Commenting on today’s comments by the Government’s chief drugs adviser, Professor David Nutt, that ministers ‘devalued’ scientific evidence when considering the classification of cannabis, Chris Huhne said:
 
“Professor Nutt is right to suggest that there needs to be a full and frank debate about drug abuse without resorting to moral hysteria.
 
“The best way to reduce the harm drugs cause to society is to base policy on facts, not as a method of political posturing.
 
“The Government should either listen to its experts or save money by appointing a committee of tabloid newspaper editors instead.”

And they want to invest heavily in sustainable energy:

Liberal Democrats will drive a massive programme of investment in renewable energy sources such as wind, wave and solar. We will also transform the National Grid into a smart decentralised grid which will respond dynamically to the changing patterns of energy demand. Smart metering and guaranteed prices will unlock the potential of local and community energy generation, giving people control over the energy they use.

In short, they’re just very much like the Dutch progressive liberal party D66, and I like that.

They also hold positions considered “eccentric” in Great Britain, however, like adopting the euro (which I think would be great), and are therefore likely to go down somewhat in the polls as Election Day comes near. Also, with the peculiarities of the British electoral system, even if they win big, they will still be third in number of seats in Parliament. Then you’ll have a “hung Parliament” without one party having an absolute majority, which leads to a lot of worrying in Great Britain. The result might even be, shockingly, a (Liberal-Labour) coalition government!

Of that I say: welcome to the rest of Europe, people. Here in the Netherlands we’ve had “hung parliaments” and coalition governments since 1917, and it worked out pretty much allright. Time for a change, maybe.

The arrogance is nothing new; only it was on full display at last week’s healthcare summit.  Americans who had the weekday leisure hours (and infinite patience) to tune in saw in microcosm the raw conceit that is the defining quality of this administration’s approach, not just to the healthcare, but every policy debate.  Perhaps the campaign trail is where he first learned he could get away with it, and indeed he did.  Being derisive of conservatives and conservative ideas will always win you points with the broad-minded liberal media. 

But it is much more than that.  Arrogance towards opposing ideas and derision towards those who stand in opposition is really what Progressive Liberalism is all about.  “If you disagree with me, it is because you are stupid.” That is the basic mindset.  “And because you are stupid, I don’t need to listen to you, you need only do as I say.”  When his healthcare plan is rejected by two-thirds of the American public, it is not because it is a bad idea, but because the ignorant masses are just too dumb to understand it.  So he will try to explain it in simpler terms so that they can understand it.  And if they still don’t get it, then tough sh*t!  Elections have consequences. The last election was about “hope and change”, but did anyone stop to ask what that really means.  Now that the campaign is over (as we are constantly reminded) apparently hope and change really mean entitlement and transformation: the entitlement of the governing elite to transform the society of the governed.

... or else!

This is the nature of Progressivism and, historically, has been the political approach of Progressives in America since the beginning of the twentieth century.  The governed are not to be listened to, but instead instructed by the governing elite in matters of health, wealth and general welfare.  Only the governing Progressive elites, having superior education and understanding, are qualified to fathom the multifarious aspects of daily life in an increasingly complex society.  It is they, therefore, who are best suited to make decisions for the average American citizen, who will only screw things up for himself.  Only the Progressives are capable of brininging about much needed change through the implementation of a whole raft of government programs.  And yet, none of the programs of the Progressives are based on any grasp of reality, but rather on an imagined vision of the future.  It is a vision of how to change reality.  A vision of a society reshaped and reordered in their image.  And once power is gained, that hoped for vision becomes expectation.  And the nearer the goal of the vision’s realization, the more expectation grows into entitlement.  Healthcare for all is now something to which we are entitled.  Healthcare is now a right.  In an America where rights are still defined under the Constitution and are God-given, this line of thinking is nothing short of arrogance: the arrogance of hope.

But the approach of the Progressives is not without its consequences, at least as long as we still live in a Democratic Republic.  Last week, average Americans finally got a long look at their methods and, in that sense at least, the healthcare summit did some good.  Regardless of how things play out over the coming weeks and months, there is always the ballot box, where Americans as voters will at last be able to send arrogance back from whence it came: the world of academia, where it doesn’t matter much.

INTOLERANT PROGRESSIVES STAIN UPCOMING ELECTION

Jason Rantz

Election Day is quickly approaching and the United States will likely elect the first African-American man to the most powerful office in the world. His political views aside, this would be a major victory for race relations in this country; it should end the argument that because of the color of your skin, there are still feats you cannot reach because of inherent racism in our system. Indeed, there is no higher position one can attain as President of the United States of America (though, it can be debated, I suppose, the highest position one could reach is that of the Pope). Yet on the heels of such a truly historic occasion, we are stained with the rancid scent of intolerance by the so-called “Progressives” of this country.

The other historic possibility next week is the election of the first female Vice President in this nation’s history, but you do not hear much of that coming from the Left, who love to tout themselves as the party of tolerance. You would think that even the notion of a female Vice President, regardless of her politics, would have some positive impact of the minds of the Progressives -but they don’t.

To be a feminist is merely a label for Progressives who want to see women gain the same positions of power as men, so long as they believe in every tenet of the Progressive movement – otherwise, they are seen as setting women back decades. A feminist columnist for the Detroit Free Press, Rochelle Riley, wrote that, in essence, Sarah Palin is politically insipid, her mere presence as a nominee sets women back, and that she is not “ready to represent women.” Similarly, Kim Gandy, the twice-elected President of the National Organization of Women (NOW), told the nationally syndicated Phil Hendrie Show that because she feels Palin is unqualified, her election would “set women back.”

That’s right: a woman reaching the highest position as a politician to date is not a victory for women! Yet, an African-American reaching the pinnacle of political power would change the landscape of race relations in the United States and signal to the rest of the world – which, by the way, is decades behind us in racial understanding – that we’re finally a society that properly values something other than an old white man. The hypocrisy is staggering, yet expected of the Progressive movement.

Progressives are anything but progressive. They preach tolerance, when at the same time they wholeheartedly reject any opinion other than their own. They resort to name calling and, especially in Sarah Palin’s case, there’s a notion that it’s not about a minority reaching a position of power anymore, but whether or not that minority is qualified and capable of the job in their eyes. Of course, a progressive will scream “racism” when someone rejects affirmative action in higher education admissions or will decry how the typical straight white man will pre-judge a woman, before giving her the chance to prove that she is just as capable as anyone else to perform a certain job. Yet before Palin even takes office, Progressives and so-called feminists like Ms. Gandy or Ms. Riley want to rain on Palin’s parade as a woman who just may be our next Vice President – they are, in essence, committing the same moral crime as a man does when he thinks a woman is incapable of running a business or sitting beside him on a board because she is female.

In Sen. Barack Obama’s case, the progressive movement says “The One” is not only ready for the job, but is already the best President we will ever have (and he’s not even been elected yet). These positive predictions of his presidency are plentiful, even though Sen. Obama has not achieved a single, major legislative accomplishment as a Senator or even a community organizer, a task he took on as part of his effort to pad his résumé to help propel him to where he is today. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, has more experience as an executive, along with actual accomplishments as, dare I say, a “maverick” of her own party in Alaska. Yet because of her politics, she is shunned by members of her own gender because she happens to choose life over abortion, or does not think a woman should advance in career for the sole reason of her lack of male organs.

In just a few days, we will have a new President and Vice President and on both tickets, a historical choice will be made. Before we judge either Obama or Palin’s performance in their jobs that they don’t yet have, Progressives should, as Americans, as people, as historically conscious beings, acknowledge how we’re about to change history, and not let petty politics say an African-American as President is somehow more important and meaningful as a woman being Vice President. Time for Progressives to grow up and live up to what their original tenets meant to celebrate: the prospect that a woman, independent in her beliefs from that of what a man may tell her to believe, will be the most powerful female in the country.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Jason Rantz is the Executive Producer of the Phil Hendrie Show and President of Rantz Productions LLC.

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