Taking Candy from Babies

As we await the swarming of the socialist hordes, we can take solace in the fact that we enjoy some distinct advantages over our opponents. People who depend upon a paternalistic government for their every need are, by definition, weak, pathetic, helpless losers. They cannot take the first step in life without instructions from some government functionary. They lack ambition and initiative. A lifetime of listening to false promises of something for nothing has dulled their intellects. They spend their lives waiting for some smooth-talking strongman to save them from the burdens of striving and making decisions. They are takers and not contributors. The more advanced among them expect the strongman to vicariously purify their souls by robbing the haves and giving to the have-nots. As the socialist government's promises fail and the promised nirvana fails to materialize, the drones must turn to the more resourceful members of the society for their needs. A black (that is, "free") market appears, which undermines and discredits the government. The government, already corrupt, becomes loathed rather than revered. The free, capitalist system again has the upper hand.

Therefore, do not compromise or throw in with the collectivists. Continue to clearly and forcefully articulate and defend your beliefs; after all, they are correct. Winning an argument with your opponent is like taking candy from a baby. To have the truth echo in his ears will cause his morale to crack.

Hillary the moderate? Get serious

The local talk radio guy is taking calls about Obama's appointments, notably the appointment of Hillary as Secretary of State. This is a nominally conservative show, mind you. The callers are falling all over themselves talking about how this indicates Obama is moving to the center. What planet are these people from? Hillary is, if anything, a harder left true believer than Obama. She cynically voted for the war in Iraq because she was looking toward 2008 even then and figured the war would be a cakewalk. Let me remind one and all of her eye-rolling spectacle in the joint seession of Congress right after 9/11. That's the true Hillary, the one who figured that, somehow some way, we had it coming to us and that all this flag-waving was distinctly unpalatable. Sure, Hillary pretended to be a "moderate" for a few months during the recent campaign. But she's a far left eurosocialist/globalist right down to her bones.

Regarding these appointments, it's also been observed that Obama's top level figurehead appointments may be of the mild mannered unobjectionable sort; his mid level appointments, where the rubber meets the road, will be the matter to watch. And the thinking is, those appointments will be the hard core activists who'll carry out the transformation of this society that Obama has called for repeatedly.

In other words, folks: don't be fooled.

McCain Pays Court to Lord Barack

This disgusting display vindicates me in everything I have ever said about McCain.

First to throw overboard

“I think the important thing for the Republican Party is now to also look at other issues that are very important for this country and not to get stuck in ideology... Let’s go and talk about healthcare reform. Let’s go and . . . fund programs if they’re necessary programs and not get stuck just on the fiscal responsibility (presumably this means it's okay to be fiscally irresponsible?).” Thus saith Arnold Schwarzenegger, who needs to be the first RINO thrown overboard by the Republican Party. His brand of republicanism needs to be roundly repudiated by every true conservative and he needs to be deprived of any further voice at any Republican gatherings. He is finished.

I Feel So Dirty

I was the one who swore he would never vote for Captain John "Wrong-Way" McCain, under any circumstances. I vividly remember sitting in the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, 2002, listening to George Will eloquently score McCain's arrogant assault on the First Amendment, known as the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill. The bile rose on each of the many occasions when our great war hero betrayed his party. The Great Maverick, as a politician, has always been more self-serving traitor than maverick. He's as much a "foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution" as I'm a foot soldier in the Lenin revolution. He's no conservative; his philosophy, to the extent he has one, is a bizarre mix of selfish opportunism and joining with the enemy. He's joined the enemy so many times that he qualifies as a member in good standing of the enemy. Why would I ever vote for such a bum?

Then came Sarah, our young, beautiful, perky, peppy, electrifying, unabashed conservative. I sold out to Sarah on Day One. I didn't need a cross between Ronald Reagan and William Buckley; I just wanted someone to articulate my principles. And that's exactly what Sarah did, with some dutiful parroting of McCain's more hare-brained proposals. I was on board. I made calls for McCain, went to a McCain-Palin rally, wore a stupid McCain hat. My motivation was to "stop Obama," as the sign said that I carried at the rally. I winced at McCain's every boneheaded misstep, hoping against hope that we could avoid the unspeakable nightmare of electing a communist to the position once occupied by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.

Now, in the wake of McCain's blowout loss (it was a landslide, and I don't assign one iota of blame to Sarah), I feel like I need to take a shower and have my skin pumiced off. Our hero is even now planning his cooperation with Comrade Obama and his fellow travellers, and his torpedoing of his nominal teammates on the Republican side of the aisle. Had he won, perhaps things would have been slightly different from what we can expect once the great "agent of change" takes command. Politics makes for strange bedfellows, even for a proud, pure ideological conservative like myself. And that just makes me feel all the dirtier.

The enemy is within

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor – he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear."

– Marcus Tullius Cicero 42 B.C

Have they already won?

Remember back in the days right after 9/11 when there was a phrase going around – it turned into a joke, actually – that if we didn’t do so and so or such and such, then “the terrorists have already won?” As in, “If we don’t go out to the shopping malls to buy Christmas presents, the terrorists will have already won.”
Remember that? That’s what I’m thinking about these days. Ever since the election, a lot of pundits on the right have been worrying over what Obama will do when Al Qaeda inevitably hits us again. Will he be tough enough? Will he hit back, and hit back hard? He says he will, of course. And maybe he would.
But what if Al Qaeda doesn’t hit us again? And not because they’ve suddenly learned to love us. What if Al Qaeda doesn’t hit us again because they’ve figured out that, with Obama’s election, they have already won. What if they’ve decided that America will no longer stand in the way of their oft-stated and clear ambition to bring the entire globe under the house of Islam? What if they figure out they’ve already won?
And there’s an irony here. During the Clinton administration, the approach to dealing with jihad was to treat it as a matter for law enforcement and the courts. It was Bush who decided that we needed to treat jihad as a military matter - that is, as a matter of war. Now, the tables have turned: Jihad will go forward, of course, as by doctrine it must. But it no longer needs to be carried out as a war or by other violent means. As Obama settles in, as his judiciary takes shape (and it will make rulings for the next generation and more), jihad will prevail in our courts. Quietly, inexorably, inserting itself into the fabric of our national life, just as it is already doing in the old Europe.

Is Sarah the One?

I'm not so sure. This morning at the gym, I was watching TV and reading the captioning. Sarah was on at least two morning shows, and on CNN, according to the caption, she said, "If I cost John McCain one vote, I'm sorry. . . . He's a great American hero," etc. Cost McCain votes? The genius who "suspended" his campaign to "go to Washington" and get savaged by the socialists there and the media, and got absolutely nothing in return? The same idiot who told irate Republican voters in a rally, "Don't worry about Senner Obama, he's a good man, he's a family man, you don't have to worry about him as president"? That idiot? If she keeps this up, if she tries to "redeem" her Katie Couric performance in this fashion, she's toast. Now is her real moment. The eyes of the people who didn't vote for the Messiah are on her, and they are legion. If she blows this, then she is truly not worthy of such a high office, and will be doomed to be the most beautiful governor in American history.

Cleaning house

Ann Coulter says, "After showing nearly superhuman restraint throughout this campaign, which was lost the night McCain won the California primary, I am now liberated to announce that all I care about is hunting down and punishing every Republican who voted for McCain in the primaries. I have a list and am prepared to produce the names of every person who told me he was voting for McCain to the proper authorities. We'll start with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. Then we shall march through the states of New Hampshire and South Carolina -- states that must never, ever be allowed to hold early Republican primaries again."

This is the kind of specific, concrete, naming names type of discourse we need right now. And it must go way beyong Ann Coulter. I am waiting to see who will name names, who will call a RINO a RINO. BTW, in her current column she absolutely nails why I never liked John McCain and why we will all probably grow to, as Brian said, hate him again.

Idle silence

I have never been particularly inclined to toot my own horn. But I once had a job where I allowed a jealous peer to define my performance in the mind of our mutual boss. My reticence to talk about my accomplishments hurt my career considerably. I realized that it was not enough to do a good job; it was also necessary to make sure the boss knew I was doing a good job.

Last week I heard Rush say that the Obama administration will be like Clinton's in that they will never stop campaigning. But I'm not sure this is such a bad thing. I fact, I think it is perhaps the greatest failure of the Bush administration. Of course, Clinton took it too far, using his campaign techniques to obscure the truth and keep the masses deceived (as Obama will do). But Bush has utterly failed to use his prominence as president to simply keep the troops rallied, which I think is not only a legitimate leadership practice but also a necesssary one. Instead, in the name of being "presidential" and staying above the political fray, he has allowed the adversary to define his performance in the mind of the boss (the electorate). This failure on his part has now cost us dearly.

"As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence" (Benjamin Franklin).

The new global society?

The Drudge headline on Sunday night says Gordon Brown is calling on the nations of the US and Europe (primarily) to take the lead in forging a new global society. A question: Will the nations of the world openly embrace, with conviction and enthusiasm, the constitution of the United States? Anything less will be unsatisfactory for any true American. No real American will willingly be organized under anything remotely resembling the system anyone such as Gordon Brown (or Barack Obama) might cook up in the Hague.

Brown says the financial crisis of the last two months highlights the urgency of implementing this new order. The problem with Brown - and with Obama - is that they see the entire financial/material order of the world as being based on a zero sum game. In other words, in their view, the material pie is only so big and if the nations of the west are getting big pieces of the pie, that means some other nations are getting smaller pieces, in some cases, vanishingly smaller pieces. Such a view, with its echoes of Malthusian thought and Club of Rome shortsightedness, never accounts for the capacity of human intelligence to invent new ways to expand prosperity and to constantly redefine what constitutes resources.

The Brown/Obama view is simply an essentially Marxist misreading of the forces of history.

The West has created material prosperity for its people not at the expense of other societies but very specifically because of the principles under which it operates, the principles that have guided its social/political/economic development.

If the nations of Africa, for example, embraced - truly embraced - Jeffersonian principles of governance, JudeoChristian values of justice, mortality,, and ethics, and free market principles of economics (the markets, of course, operating under the rule of law), they would find themselves very quickly moving up the economic /material ladder. The fact that the nations of Africa, almost without exception (if there is an exception, please point it out to me) live in kleptocracies and thugocracies has everything to do with their endemic and heartbreaking poverty.

All the well-intentioned (and for the sake of argument, let's grant the intentions are benign) intervention in the world will do nothing, nothing, to solve the problems of third world poverty. An indiscriminate transfer of wealth from west to east and south will only turn the entire third world into a vast, globe-encompassing equivalent of Cabrini Green, a model Obama should well understand.

The leftist globalists, devoured by Western guilt about the rest of the world's dysfunctionality, don't recognize the reasons for the West's material success.

We are in for a world of hurt if the global organizers seize control of the international order in any substantial way.

These people must be fought and resisted with every tool at our disposal.

Fight Them on the Beaches

By now, the shock of the Obama “victory” has worn off to some degree, though that shock, to me, has been equalled only by the September 11 attacks in my lifetime. We who love liberty and independence must prepare ourselves for the assaults to come. Our rights to free speech, association and religion, to private property and to bear arms are all under attack. The idea put about in the media, even in such organs of the “right” as the Wall Street Journal, that Obama will govern from the center,” is preposterous. You will wait as long for that to occur as we have been waiting for the fabled “Iranian moderates” to assert themselves. If we entertain such delusions, we will be steamrolled.

What can we do to slow down this leftist charlatan and his adoring hordes? We must assert ourselves with principled arguments at every point where the Obama agenda is pressed. We must do this with our friends, family and acquaintances. We must write letters to the editor, in order to keep newspapers and other letter writers honest. We must e-mail columnists who now freely list their e-mail addresses. You’d be surprised at how many will respond. We must continue to write or call our elected representatives to make our feelings known. That’s how we stopped the phony immigration “reform” pushed by George W. Bush and John McCain and forestalled the abominable, failed federal bailout. Fifty-six million Americans voted against the Great Agent of Change, and we must mobilize for the battles to come, hoping to take advantage, in the 2010 election, of Obama’s inevitable policy disasters. We must also show our complete opposition to the RINO, so that this contemptible creature will become an endangered species, if not altogether extinct. We must continue to sound the alarm on this and other blogs, and to invite our friends and acquaintances to do the same. We must encourage candidates, like Sarah Palin, who champion our principles, and explore other political parties who might do the same.

The alternative, in the words of the great Ronald Reagan, to be realized sooner or later, is “the soup kitchen of the welfare state.”

Celebrate the Fraud

We're told we're to celebrate the "historic" election of Obama as president. Celebrate, hell. As General Anthony McAuliffe told the Germans when they asked him to surrender his unit in the Battle of the Bulge, "Nuts."

Let's examine what we have to celebrate. The election of a communist who lied, cheated and stole his way to the top office in the land, which gives him command of all the armed forces of the United States. He broke campaign finance laws left and right, taking money from dead people, cartoon characters, and foreigners. His goon squad of socialist storm troopers, ACORN, committed massive voter fraud. He lied through his teeth to a stupefied electorate.

Only a complete fool would think this doctrinaire communist is all of a sudden going to "govern from the center." Anyone who's not an idiot knows what's coming: defense cuts, civilian goon squad storm trooper army, global poverty act, elimination of secret-ballot union elections, legalized theft in the form of "redistribution" of wealth, suppression of free speech in the form of the "Fairness Doctrine," socialized medicine, the destruction of our economy through "cap-and-trade" and other environmental idiocy, open borders, the culmination of Obama's lifetime of black-separatist agitation and thought, suppression of religion in the form of prosecuting those who speak out against "gay marriage" or the religion of the "Messiah," banning of guns, and the general shredding of what's left of the U.S. Constitution.

I don't want to celebrate these atrocities, these assaults on myself and my country. And I don't want to "work" for Obama's socialist paradise. I don't want to "sacrifice" only so that I can have communism's kick in the teeth. To hell with Obama and all of that.

Of our leaders in the media, Rush Limbaugh has been stout in his defiance. That hero of conservatism, Mark Levin, has been absolutely defiant; he's not congratulating anybody for anything. Unfortunately, Glenn Beck wants to "congratulate" and "support" Obama. I e-mailed him, told him he's crazy, then turned off his show in disgust.

We all have a choice: put our heads down and fall in line with all the other drones for our bowl of gruel; or resist this malevolent menace with every fiber in our beings. If you think that's going to be easy, think again. But the only alternative is surrender, and the death of your soul. No thank you.

Shedding republicanism?

Rush is apparently saying the Republican Party needs to be purged of non-conservatives. I think we need to go further.

The fact is, the Republican "brand" may be tarnished beyond redemption. From time to time in this nation's history, new parties rise up to address new issues with new language and new ideas. Now, perhaps, is such a time. Perhaps it's time once and for all to shed the Republican identity and start with something fresh.

I would be willing to bet that all three of us - Brian, Dave, and me -came to the Republican party because of the compelling logic and power of Ronald Reagan's argument. In fact, the "Republican" part was incidental; we came to conservatism.

I for one was always - and still am- uncomfortable with the country club republicanism as embodied by such as Christie Todd Whitman, the Maine sisters (Snowe and Collins), and the well-startched and self-satisfied sorts such as Richard Lugar. I also have always been skeptical of Republican institutional indifference to the excesses of corporate America. Big business and big government are way too cozy (as the recent turn of events in the economy demonstrates all too clearly).

There's plenty with Republicanism, in other words, that I've never embraced. I was willing to go along with it because it seemed expedient; we now see where expedience has gotten us.
So where are we? With a Republican party that has been rejected and, frankly, humiliated, perhaps now is the time for something fresh. Now is the time for a new movement, something as optimistic and sunny as a spring day.

As conservatives, we should no longer carry the baggage of "Republican"; let's start something new, something that says, Whether you're black, white, red, yellow or brown, if you believe in the fundamental principles laid out in the constitution, if you believe in the power of the American idea, if you are not looking for government to solve your problems, if you believe that you should be the captain of your destiny, if you believe that American not only can be, but must be, a shining city on a hill, then you're with us.

We may start out small, but we aren't going anywhere, and history will come around to us. Why? Because we're right. To paraphrase William Faulkner's Nobel address, "I believe that we will not just endure; we will prevail."

A new "long march?'

Mark Steyn, writing this morning in National Review Online, touches on a theme that has been a favorite of mine: the Obama victory marks the culmination of the left's long march through the institutions. And he argues that the right will not succeed in taking back the country until it completes its own long march, because 21st century elections will increasingly be decided on the basis of cultural issues and the left owns America's cultural institutions.

That's all well and good, but one must ask, how do you go about reclaiming the institutions? Will the academy suddenly open its arms to the right? Hardly. The reason the left seized the academy was because at one time, the academy was governed by reasonable people who thought they were bing open-minded and fair by allowing all viewpoints to have a so-called place at the table. Unfortunately, the people who claimed that place at the table are not reasonable people and they have absolutely not intention whatsoever of opening up any seats to right thinkers.

The same is true across the entire cultural spectrum. (For example, the judiciary is now lost to the right for at least a generation).

So, what to do? I think the idea of doing our own "long march" is out of the question. The institutions are closed to use. What's needed, I believe, is to create an entire parallel universe in which conservative values and principles will be absolutely foundational .

Any thoughts?

Our long national nightmare

Well, that's it.

I've been reading the ongoing blog on National Review Online and was sickened and disheartened to read the genial notes of congratulations to Obama from worthies such as Jonah Goldberg, who one thinks would be one of the good guys.
What you realize is that to most folks inside the beltway - even so-called conservatives - this is all a game.

The attitude is something like, "We lost this time. But we'll get 'em next time." Reminds me of the scene in Bridge on the River Kwai when the William Holden character fully realizes that the British commando team he'"volunteered" with treats their entire suicidal mission as some sort of game. Holden shouts to the Jack Hawkins character, "By all means! Good hunting! Good show! Jolly good fun!"

I'm afraid that's where we are.
This election is a wake up call; matters needs to be taken out of the hands of the political operatives who have just been disastrous for conservatism over the past generation. A true grass roots effort, unbeholden to anyone, needs to reclaim the movement, the party, and the nation.

The New Dollar

Phone Bank Phun

Ah, the phone bank. In exchange for three tickets for the McCain-Palin rally in Hershey, I caved in and agreed to do two hours of phone calling for the ticket. I could have said no; but, hey, they told me they needed my help, and civilization hangs in the balance. I hadn't done phone banking for at least twenty years. Now I remember why. I realize now that I'd rather have multiple root canals, without Novocaine, or a barium enema, or be admitted to a hospital, than make unsolicited political phone calls.

They give you a list. Where did the list come from? Who knows; they didn't tell us. Most of the numbers are wrong numbers. And even if the numbers are right, nobody answers a land-line phone anymore. And with those generic, robotic answering messages, you don't know if you're calling the person on your list or Mickey Mouse (an Obama supporter, by the way). Of the few people who do answer, quite a few just hang up on you. Even people who support your candidate don't like being called.

And wherever the list came from, why do people give their work numbers? Applebee's? At least they have those head sets. "Patch me through." You want political campaigns calling you at work? And yesterday, on my third shift making phone calls (yes, I'm a big sucker), I finally called a dead person (another Obama supporter). Her son wasn't too happy to have to tell me that his mother has been dead for five years. And guess what? The automatic phone system does have a selection for "deceased."

I wish I had a dollar for every time a respondent, after I asked for the person on the list, said "Who??" You ask yourself, why am I doing this? Why is anybody doing this? I guess if our guys win by a couple votes (throwing the election into endless litigation anyway), it'll be worth it; but isn't there a better way?

Tomorrow, I'm putting in my last hour. ("An hour a day keeps Obama away," they say.) I guess the script will say, "Hello, did you know there's a world-changing presidential election today?"