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Senator Specter & The Erosion of Republican Values

The loss of Senator Arlen Specter to the Democrats has already triggered angst and soul-searching among various Republicans, notably Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine.  Her piece in today's New York Times is emblematic of the challenges the Republican Party faces, but not in ways she describes.

Her premise is that had the party moderated itself and been more politically ecumenical, moderates such as Specter wouldn't feel compelled to leave.  She tellingly quotes Ronald Reagan, who said:

We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.  As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.

We can certainly agree that Reagan's list of core Republican principles constitute the bulwark of our shared beliefs, however the problem we must confront is the impact of profound changes in our culture in the past few decades.  In an age of relative cultural homogeneity, when Americans shared a tacit acceptance of what constituted right and wrong, the moral outliers were less extreme, and therefore, less concerning. 

For example, thirty years ago it would shock people to hear that the newly elected president supports legislation allowing a teenager to have an abortion without notifying her parents, as well as the 'morning after' pill for seventeen year olds.  We can add to that the liberal agenda which is faithfully taught in our public school system as well as our colleges and universities, from a disdain of Western thought to their unreflective celebration of all things heterodoxical.

Therefore, for moral agnostics, limiting the party platform to fiscal, monetary, and foreign policy, makes perfect sense.  But, for those who are deeply concerned about the pandemic of cultural and moral anarchy, who see America slowly morphing into a version of Sweden, where abortion and assisted suicide are common and where guns are anathema, these issues are paramount.

It's against that backdrop that Specter's defection must be viewed.  Indeed, whether it's fiscal or social policy, today's moderate is yesterday's liberal, since they either subscribe or acquiesce to Keynesian spending and are therefore mute in the face of unprecedented federal spending; and, in social policy they subscribe to the secular agenda which is studiously indifferent to the moral implications of the hard left's policies, the very policies that have led to the breakdown of traditional values, from defining marriage as between a man and a woman to endorsing the teaching of the new three 'R's, racism, reproduction, and recycling.

Snowe concludes by asserting that "we should view an expansion of diversity within the party as a triumph that will broaden our appeal.  That is the political road map we must follow to victory."  However, in politics, the definition of victory is largely in the eye of the beholder:  Is it victory or a dereliction of duty to support President Obama's fiscal policy which will double the national debt in four years?  Well, Snowe and Specter were two so-called moderates who supported the president, which makes one wonder how she can lionize Reagan's vision of "restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction."

As I've argued in past posts, the reason there's a growing gulf between Republicans and conservatives is that many of the former seem intent on parroting Democrats' belief in larger government, unchecked spending, and a wholesale indifference to traditional values.  Historically, being a champion of traditional Republican principles implied an adherence to  traditional moral values, but today those people are often vilified as 'conservatives.'

That's why bona fide Republicans such as Sens. Mitch McConnell and Tom Colburn, and Reps. Mike Pence and Eric Cantor, are convinced that the party must reflect traditional Republican values, not today's watered down version which are effectively indistinguishable from Democrats.

Jimmy Carter & The Anti-Gun Zealots

When truth fails to achieve the political traction we seek, some of us resort to hyperbole and distortion.  Such is the case with Jimmy Carter's piece in today's New York Times concerning the so-called assault weapons ban. 

Carter's specious polemic uses the same threadbare liberal line that begins with his love of hunting, that he himself owns guns, but quickly descends in to the marsh, with his blunt segue:

But none of us wants to own an assault weapon, because we have no desire to kill policemen or go to a school or workplace to see how many victims we can accumulate before we are finally shot or take our own lives.

Well, no one is forcing Mr. Carter to own an assault weapon, but I can assure him that everyone I know who owns a high capacity .223 rifle shares his sentiment about not wanting to "kill policemen," etc.  However, they do enjoy shooting at the range and in the rural outdoors and their choice of weapons is no one's business, least of all a former president whose understanding of the 2nd Amendment is on a par with his veneer-thin understanding of our economy.

We turn now to the dishonest, and, at times ignorant mischaracterization of weapons the left includes in their list of "assault" weapons.  There are certainly many rifles that look as though they might be carried by a member of our Special Forces, when, in fact, the SF would have nothing to do with them, since, among other shortcomings, they're not automatics.  That stated, they are, in fact, deadly weapons that can cause serious carnage, but only in the hands of a murderer.

And, therein lies the real crux of the matter:  There is a wealth of statistics produced in the past decade that demonstrates that stricter gun control laws provide little, if any, measurable improvement in public safety.  In fact, the inverse is true:  As John Lott showed in his book, "More Guns, Less Crime," in the two year period following a state's approval of concealed carry permits, violent crime was reduced an average of 8 percent. 

Moreover, statistics from the federal government demonstrate that the ten-year "assault weapons" ban did not substantively improve our safety.  It's because of those statistics, not Carter's cynical assertion that Congress and President Bush caved to pressure from the National Rifle Association, that the ban wasn't renewed. 

Carter continues with another transparent canard:

Heavily influenced and supported by the firearms industry, N.R.A. leaders have misled many gullible people into believing that our weapons are going to be taken away from us, and that homeowners will be deprived of the right to protect ourselves and our families.

President Obama is on record as supporting a lengthy list of gun control laws, from federal registration of handguns to mandating that all ammunition be traceable to the owner, which will profoundly undermine law-abiding citizens 2nd Amendment rights and effectively reduce the rate of ownership, which is his real goal.

What Obama, Carter, and their cohort of urban elites fail to understand is that criminals will always be able to obtain guns, and, that when you inhibit law-abiding citizens from owning guns, the crime rate spikes.  A bumper sticker captures it all:

Criminals prefer unarmed victims.

Sean Penn & The Moral Exemplars of the Left

From its warm embrace of Joseph Stalin to its abiding respect for Fidel Castro, the left in America has always been enamored of despots and tyrants.  Given what the likes of Sean Penn is saying about Hugo Chavez, most recently in today's Huffington Post, it's clear the genetic blueprint that informs their political thinking has remained essentially unchanged in sixty years.

After the predictable litany of searing criticism against Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich, Penn offers the following astonishing statement:

I know President Chavez well.  Whether or not one agrees with all his policies, what is certain true of Chavez is that he is a warm and friendly man with a robust sense of humor...

Historians will tell you that Hitler could be charming and that Castro's candor is disarming, but along with Chavez, they're on a short-list of men who lead by threats, intimidation, and murder.  Their absolute indifference to due process and the rule of law is shocking to our collective understanding of civilized governance.  Yet Penn and his liberal pals lionize them as paragons of decency, and President Obama fails to see the glaring contradiction between his recent decision to expose Department of Justice lawyers to potential legal action and his outreach efforts with despots.

Demonstrating that extremism is a limitless instinct, Penn asserts that "The Cheneys, down to the O'Reillys and Hannitys and Limbaughs, effectively hate the principles upon which were were founded."  One has to wonder whether Penn has read the Federalist Papers, in particular Federalist 10, which best captures the core principles of our Republic, because, on a daily basis the men he cites above articulate those very principles, and to that list I would add Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, and Michael Medved.

So far off the civic chart has the modern liberal drifted that it would be nearly impossible for a Jefferson, Hamilton, or Adams to recognize their contorted and abused approach to public policy.  From the moral equivalence arguments they advance to justify tolerance of despots such as Castro, to their emasculation of our military, to their coddling of criminals, to their willfulness in characterizing terrorism as a matter for the criminal justice system, and, yes, to their dream of confiscating guns from law-abiding citizens, it's just staggering that the Penns of the world believe conservative commentators are the ones who "hate the principles upon which were were founded."

But, we should remember they're convinced they're the moral exemplars of the world, and if they say they are, well, that's all the proof they need.

President Obama: Making America Less Safe

Update, 4/21/09:  Marc A. Thiessen's piece in today's Washington Post unambiguously proves that the enhanced interrogation techniques President Obama said have not made us safer, have, in fact, thrwated al-Qaeda plans to attack America.

In a transparently cynical political move, as Thiessen notes, "The Obama administration released pages of unredacted classified information on the techniques used to question captured terrorist leaders but pulled out its black marker when it came to the details of what those interrogations achieved."  Perhaps this is Obama's notion of the post-partisanship he campaigned on last year.

The Obama administration is rapidly becoming a story-board for the adage that the arrogant and ignorant are bound to repeat history.  Beyond his "can't we be friends" approach to dealing with the likes of Ahmadinejad, Castro, and Chavez, his latest folly was the release of legal memorandums related to the Bush administration's interpretation of torture and its practical application.

The attempt to define the outer edges of legally acceptable methods of extracting information from enemy combatants was a process integral to the former administration's understanding of its charge in protecting the nation from further attacks after 9/11.  In virtually any other era in our nation's history that effort would have easily satisfied the legal and civic requirements of reasonableness.  However, in our era, where exquisitely refined sensibilities have supplanted common sense and where one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter, palm-slapping such a suspect is tantamount to a chargeable offense, which means waterboarding is a heinous action redolent of Stalin and Saddam.

Writing in The Swamp, the Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau outlet, Mark Silva reports on former CIA director Michael Hayden's articulate and cogent argument that the release of the memos makes "America less safe," which he made in an interview on Fox News Sunday.  

What's difficult to understand is the left's supremely naive characterization of the interrogation methods used by the CIA.  Waterboarding, which is used in the Air Force officer's flight training program, is a bloodless, painless process that's extremely effective in retrieving vital information concerning national security.  Part of that naivete, as asserted by Sen. John McCain, is that unless we treat enemy combatants in strict accordance with our rules of criminal justice, our enemies won't reciprocate when our soldiers or Marines are captured.

You might recall that special kind of humane treatment in action in Fallujah when barbarians burned and then strung up the charred bodies of several American soldiers.  Why do such critics seem impervious to the fact that savages who will behead perfectly innocent men such as Daniel Pearl and Nicholas Berg would treat captured soldiers in precisely the same way?

The second facet of Obama's astonishing act of stupidity is that it compromises the potency of interrogations in an a priori fashion.  As Hayden noted:  "At the tactical level, what we have described for our enemies in the midst of a war are the outer limits that any American would ever go to in terms of interrogating an Al Qaeda terrorist.  That's very valuable information."  But, of course, many on the left don't believe we're in a war, which is why Obama has proscribed the use of the phrases "war on terror" and "enemy combatant."

It's as though public relations for this neophyte executive are more important than results, which means it's all about style and spin, not bringing a deft and credible understanding of your enemy to bear on the problems we face.  That's why he's embracing Castro, a despot worth about $1.5 billion who's starving his people and who's jailed hundreds of political dissidents without due process.  In Obama's view, treating barbarians like allies will bring them into the fold of civilized nations.

As the most superficial review of history persuasively demonstrates, we've been down this road before.  The only difference between Attila the Hun and Ahmadinejad is the clothing, but it's apparently going to take the development of a nuclear weapon to prove that to Mr. Obama.

Obama & The Left's Dream of Government Hegemony

One of the questions that serious commentators on both sides of the aisle are asking in the wake of the tea parties is whether they'll resonate with a broader spectrum of the electorate.  There's probably a bit of overreach on both sides, with conservatives believing moderates and Independents are just as fed up with the obscene spending as they are, and liberals confident that those same people see the need for President Obama's fiscal 'investments.'

But until a movement achieves coalescence it can appear scattered and diffuse and that's the way liberals hope it stays.  One sure way to keep that trajectory alive is to vilify its members and in that regard Arianna Huffington has perfect pitch, serving up her usual blend of hyperbole and distortion.  If you try to digest her litany of sarcasm and disdain for all things conservative you'll miss the sub-text message, which is that liberalism under Obama has reached new pinnacle of superiority.

Conservatives, in this glimpse through the looking glass are all reactionaries who exploit political opportunities for craven motivations.  That certainly plays well for readers of her blog who look to her for smug reassurances that liberalism under Obama will thrive, but the truth is something rather different.  At the core of Obama's special brand of liberalism is an unprecedented shift from free markets to government sponsored services.  We can talk about how government spending as a portion of GDP will grow from its 40-year average rate of 20 percent to 28 percent, and that in ten years the interest on the debt will $900 billion, but for most people those are abstract notions no easier to grasp than inter-stellar space.

But there is a concept that most of can get our arms around and that is the quality and character of the lives we lead, which is to say the degree to which we're living life on our own terms.  When we cede control of our money to government in return for the promise of financial security and comfort, two inevitable results accrue: 

First, whether it's health care or our investments, we delegate power over our decisions to a bureaucracy that's truly indifferent to our unique wishes and desires.  It's like having a government-sponsored living will with advance directives for the kinds of decisions that are common and integral to adulthood, not for issues related to life and death.

Second, each time the government encroaches on decisions that are rightfully ours to make it recalibrates the thresholds and trigger points that define an acceptable level of intrusion such that our guard is lowered and we're progressively less likely to protest.  If you use a kind of time-lapse photography to condense intrusions over many years it would be truly shocking, but since the liberals use a slow-drip process it's kind of like we're on tranquilizers--we just don't notice it.

It's difficult to understand what liberals see in a Western European style of government that's so attractive to them.  Is it easier, or kinder, or more 'civilized,' or do they perceive it as more predictable and less stressful?  It's obviously a quid pro quo they're entirely happy to accept, but when you consider the Faustian deal in the stark light of day it's remarkable they're willing to give up so much in return for a one-size-fits-all style of living. 

And, why is the goal of living a stress-free life such a strong motivator?  It seems we're constantly told to avoid stress and tension, that it leads to heart attacks and hypertension.  Well, it's also the natural by-product of challenges at work, of meeting our obligations to our families, not to mention living up to the standards our religion demands.  Are we truly at the point where we want to spin off life's challenges in return the bland reassurances of a government that plays a major role in our lives?

I pray that most Americans have the common sense to eschew the left's siren song of a world where our choices are scripted by government, a monochromatic world devoid of stress and challenges, where we're taxed into civic submission.

Great Hopes for America's Tea Parties

The great American Tea Party is underway nationwide as protesters of all political stripes gather in over 300 cities to protest the blasphemous way the Obama administration and congress is spending the Republic into a state of interminable debt.  At the current rate, in 2019 the largest single annual federal expenditure will be a $900 billion interest payment on the national debt.

Yet, as Andrew Cline notes in his analysis of this egregious usurpation of power in The American Spectator, an astonishing 48 percent of Americans said their taxes were "about right."  Cline's piece is worth reading as it provides a brief and digestible history of taxation in America.  For instance, it will shock some readers to learn that in 1802, under President Jefferson, all direct taxation was abolished.  Moreover, the War of 1812 was financed and paid off by 1817.

It's a fascinating lesson because the reason so many sheep--uh, tax payers--are so willing to be fleeced is that their understanding of our history might be generously characterized as inadequate.  Indeed, Obama and his liberal pals in congress are threading the fear and ignorance needle, using the former as a cudgel to beat tax payers into pre-emptive submission and exploiting the latter by arguing it's a wholly plausible response to our economic woes.

Here in the Colorado Springs region, several towns are host to protests and the early indications are that they're being well attended.  Since this is a conservative area, the citizens are especially angry about the kind of spending in Washington that's making drunken sailors look like fiscal church mice. 

Within the broad spectrum of Americans who are apparently game to pay more in taxes is a group, a rather large group, who are touting it below the radar as the back door to socialism.  They're the urban elites in D.C., New York, Chicago, and L.A., as well as many other enclaves of would-be Western Europeans, who have an inbred fear of free markets and who, once emasculated, are drones programmed to acquiesce to higher taxes, regulations, and a commensurate reduction in freedom.

The reason the monstrous level of taxation required to service Obama's massive spending is not causing more of a revolt is that our public school system has successfully produced a meta-curriculum designed to justify an intrusive--and expensive--role for government in our lives.  Imagine, for instance, the shock of the average American in the early 19th century were he to learn that in 2009 citizens would be dunned upwards of 40 percent of their income in total taxes.

It's difficult to guess where all of this will lead, but the truth is that Americans have been historically antagnoistic to taxes, in part because they correctly believe government is not equipped to deliver services beyond defending the nation and delivering the mail.  But, they also understand that an integral part of the American experience is succeeding on one's own, that failure case hardens us against future missteps, and that when government promises to smooth out life's bumps it also removes the challenges--which arrogantly blunts motivation.

So, as Americans protest from sea to shining sea, let's hope their efforts are just the beginning of a great awakening, one which insists that despite our economic trials, flushing trillions of dollars into the system, expanding the liberals' pet projects, starting new leftist programs, and consigning our children and grand-children with an onerous debt, is at once cynical and ignorant--not to mention unconstitutional.

Will Obama Have the Resolve to Confront Antagonists?

One of the few immediate benefits of President Obama's recent international therapy session is that it provides an early benchmark against which we can easily measure the futility of dealing with the world's despots.  One of the glaring implications of Mr. Obama's various speeches in Europe and elsewhere is that America has learned her lesson and will take a docile backseat to the world's powerhouse nations, those which sat idly during the genocidal conflagration in Bosnia in the 90s and who now express a fashionable, if lethal, indifference to a nuclearized Iran.

Writing in the National Review, Rich Lowry ably acquits the premise that, its stylish protestations notwithstanding, the world needs American might, in particular its ability to project power--the liberals' least favorite phrase in the English language.  As he observes, the incident of piracy off the Somalian coast is a microcosmic example of how indispensable the U.S. military is in an age of regional anarchy and nascent nuclear threats.

The vapid response to North Korea's missile launch by the United Nations perfectly reflects the anemic potency of the world's presumed power brokers.  Indeed, America's unique capacity for global reach is crucial in our age where authority and power are vilified as anachronistic relics rendered superfluous by our post-modern consensus that evil is a fiction crafted by those with imperialist instincts.  Yet there appears to be a tacit, if not putative, universal agreement, that we can delay confronting Iran's nuclear program and that Kim Jong Il can be again cajoled with heating oil concessions.

In a stunning declaration of naivete, Obama is proposing that we cut military spending, in particular missile defense.  Moreover, if he agrees that a counter-insurgency in Afghanistan is the best way to prevail, why isn't he calling for more soldiers and Marines?  His rapidly acquired spending addiction seems peculiarly limited to propping up the liberal agenda, which has always been antagonistic to the military.

His broader response to the piracy conundrum will be another test of Obama's will, not to mention his understanding of the threats we face, in particular because there are no easy answers.  Critically, any meaningful action of the kind that will immediately reduce future threats must involve strong and focused leadership, the kind that recalls Reagan staring down Gorbachev in Reykjavik, which caused universal condemnation.  As history has subsequently demonstrated, Reagan's resolve ultimately led to the dissolution of the Soviet empire.

It's difficult to imagine Obama mustering that kind of strength against the likes of the pirates in Somalia, much less North Korea or Iran.  He seems quite susceptible to the conventional notion that the antagonists we face today can be dealt with by diplomacy alone.  In truth, the only authority belligerents respect is the kind that's backed with the threat of certain violence--a lesson he'll be forced to learn, one way or another.

Easter 2009: "How Great Thou Art"

One of Easter's enduring paradoxes is our universal hope--and prayer--that Christ's death and resurrection will translate into personal salvation.  When we read in John 20: 1-9 that Jesus' tomb is empty, that only the burial cloths were found, we struggle to grasp the astonishing implications, as the prophesies from the Old Testament and subsequent Scriptural readings begin to fall into a symmetrical relief.  As the word spread over the centuries and the truths of Christ's teachings were realized, the message of His saving sacrifice inspired artists and composers worldwide.

One of the most endearing hymns that came to poignant terms with the awe-inspiring notion of personal salvation is "How Great Thou Art."  (This is a link to the audio.  You can start the music, then toggle back to the lyrics below.) 

This rendition is by the great Irish tenor, Ronan Tynan.  The third verse is a stark reminder of His supreme sacrifice and how it can deepen our faith as we struggle to meet the challenges on our spiritual pilgrimage.

I.  O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the works Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.


Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!


II.  When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.


Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!


III.  And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.


Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!


IV.  When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation,
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.
Then I shall bow, in humble adoration,
And then proclaim: "My God, how great Thou art!"


Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

Holy Saturday: The Darkness of Pure Faith

Holy Saturday feels like the longest, emptiest day in the year.  No Mass, no Presence in the church, no priest, no people.  And, yet "something strange is happening," begins an ancient Christian homily.  "God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear."

Today we follow the victorious Christ to the realms of the dead.  Byzantine icons picture the wounded Warrior King standing astride his weapon, the cross, at the entrance to the underworld.  He leans down and extends his hand to the foremost figure in the crowd, surging toward him.  It is Adam.

He says:  "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead...I am your God, who for your sake have become your son.  I did not create you to be held prisoner in hell.  Rise up, work of my hands, for you were created in my image...Rise, let us leave this place.  One after another he leads the just out."

Today we follow Christ the Victor in the darkness of pure faith.  We believe it was for our sake that he died.  He has paid for our ransom.  We hope for everything from him.  Close to his Mother, today, we wait.

Mother Mary Thomas Noble, O.P.

The New York Times: Valium for the Liberal

It's time for a bit of comic relief and this time it comes courtesy of Alec Baldwin, one of many actors who has repeatedly demonstrated the truism that talent is, in fact, limited to one's avocation.  Writing in today's Huffingtonpost, Baldwin is the left's cheerleader-in-residence for the intellectually flaccid New York Times, a paper that's been earning its way onto the endangered publication list for many years.

One of the hallmarks of intellectual incestuousness is the inability to peer over one's horizon and Baldwin's infatuation with the Times fits the definition perfectly.  Haughty, acerbic, and preternaturally indifferent to journalistic standards that demand a bright line between reporting and editorials, the Times is the left's bible, something to help them suffer through another day in America where vestiges of capitalism and free enterprise still prevail.

In a stunningly generous concession, Baldwin asserts:

I still think people should read a newspaper every day and that children should be taught the importance of doing so in school.  Television news can be good.  It just isn't as good as the New York Times.

First, he fails to tell us exactly why we should read a newspaper every day, much less why children should be taught to do so in school.  Perhaps it's because an average of 89 percent of newspaper editors vote Democrat in any election, which is the left's proverbial fifth column.  But can you imagine a more pedestrian observation than to note that the Times is better than television news?

He mentions an article about disputed workmen's compensation compensation cases as the apparent hallmark of sound journalism, with the implication that the injured downtrodden are being denied their rights under the law.  You can tell Baldwin has never run a company or met a payroll because he's obviously never dealt with frivolous WC claims, which drain corporate funds, and add to overhead and lost productivity.

However, in the past decade the ugly truth about newspapers, and network television news, became common knowledge, and that is their exquisitely refined ability to select news that presents conservatism in a poor light while praising liberalism.  Indeed, the fidelity they demonstrate to leftist policies, not to mention the lionization of the cultural anarchy they've created, is apparently obvious to everyone but themselves.  Recall Walter Conkrite's nightly peroration, "And that's the way it is...", which was the thin veil of objectivity that's long since been lifted.

Other than liberals, people who read the Times or watch network news intuitively understand that they could be ingesting the Democrats' talking points.  That's why Internet news sources have exploded in recent years, something that Baldwin fails to mention.  It's not merely because they're easy to access, they provide an intensely wide variety of news and information and their bias is effectively disclosed at the outset.  In contrast, reading the Times is an exercise in liberal hedonism, but if it's an echo chamber you seek, it's a veritable Shangri-La.

Is Capitalism Immoral?

Perhaps you saw the protester's banner outside the G-20 Summit that read "Capitalism is Immoral."  Writing at Townhall.com, Austin Hill explores this assertion and makes a reasonable foray into the argument's inner paradoxes, such as asking what the protester's alternative might be?  The obvious answer is that draconian government regulation and controls to redistribute income more aggressively would mitigate capitalism's inherent unfairness.

However, by embracing that argument, Mr. Hill overlooks a more fundamental one:  Why is it that  people who are convinced they have the moral right to slaughter innocents in the womb also believe their are default moral arbiter in economics?  Indeed, this is the same crowd--nay, mob--who would abrogate our 2nd Amendment rights, ensuring that only criminals are armed, who embrace illegal aliens who are draining our public coffers, and who would emasculate our military while inviting radical Islamists in through the front gate.

But, as we descend into the inner-workings of their argument, the first point is radically clear:  Regardless of the fact that America has the world's second highest corporate income tax, and that its personal income tax rates are already painfully progressive, it doesn't "give back" to the fiscally unwashed masses in sufficient amounts as to render it 'moral.'  Therefore, despite the fact that the top 1 percent of income earners pay 39 percent of all federal income taxes and that the top 5 percent pays 58 percent (and, that the bottom 50 percent pays 4.3 percent), the unalloyed liberals feel it's still not 'fair.'

Beyond the fact that this demonstrates it's not, in fact, about fairness, it proves that such arguments have a limitless elasticity and inexhaustible capacity to soldier on, the abundance of evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.  It's also a testimony to our public education system, our jaundiced media, and our 'higher' education system, that work in refined harmony to ensure the next generation is thoroughly inculcated with the notion that capitalism is all about greed, not opportunity, that there are winners and losers--which, of course there are and ought to be--and that the latter are permanently mired in failure.

The truth, of course, is a rather more mundane matter.  The 'fairness' the left lionizes is really only a matter of a nominally level playing ground, which is to say, bi-lateral contracts, freely negotiated.  That begins with the employment contract:  Neither the employer nor the employee is forced to accept the contract and neither is obliged to maintain it against his will.  It also covers the marketplace:  If you want to drive the extra miles to Wal-Mart to save up to thirty percent on groceries, it's your call; the same goes for negotiating with the flinty used car salesman--you can play hardball, but if you don't have the skills or nerve, you'll likely pay sticker price.

The reason all of this is to distasteful to liberals is twofold:  First, it places the onus entirely on you, regardless of your innate intelligence, aptitude, or saviness; and, second, by definition, if you fail, it's your fault, which nullifies the left's lengthy (and self-serving) list of excuses, from 'the system,' to one of its many '-isms,' all of which whittle away at the real truth, which is that each of us is ultimately responsible for our own success or failure. 

Integrally related is the fact that one episode of failure doesn't mean we're out of the game, rather, it means we might well have learned something to better prepare us for the next challenge.  But, in the left's 'zero-sum' game, failure is at once final and humiliating.

There is, in fact, nothing whatsoever 'immoral' in capitalism, which is the system that has lifted more people and nations out of poverty than any other.  Because, it not only encourages innovation and risk-taking, it requires us to include accountability in the equation, and, when we're accountable, we tend to play by the rules.  That is conspicuously lacking in the left's endorsement of the government as the economic arbiter.  Moreover, self-interested behavior becomes an oxymoron when we're obliged to live in a statist nation.

Obama's Steep Learning Curve on the World Stage

A political theme prevalent in President Obama's remarks abroad this week is that America has learned its lesson.  It doesn't require a sub-text analysis in the vein of policy deconstruction to see where this is heading.  Given his thin political resume and colorful associations over the years, the central question that prescient observers asked during and after the campaign was whether the world generally, and Western Europe specifically, would become more like America or vice versa.

Some skeptics, and almost all cynics had answered that question long before his inauguration, but after listening to his speeches this week it's only intellectual troglodytes who deny where this trajectory is leading. 

Obama's pattern of self-effacing remarks about America not only betrays a deep and unthoughtful ignorance of our Republic but also about the office he holds.  For reasons that remain inexplicable, modern post-Kennedy Democrat presidents seem politically engineered to confuse their incumbency with the office.  It's as though in their eyes the political clock ceased to exist prior to their inauguration which led them into summarily misguided thinking concerning America's standing in the world.

More inclined to apologize for America's missteps and foibles than to champion her unalloyed values and principles--those that twice saved the world from despotism last century--they might well have coined a variation of the Stockholm Syndrome, effectively agreeing with our critics.  That lead each of them into a feckless foreign policy:  from Johnson's astonishingly obtuse prosecution of the Vietnam war to Carter's ingeniously flawed policy in Iran and many other places, to Clinton's thoroughly misinformed Agreed Framework with North Korea and his studied blindness to the threat of radical Islam, the record is stained with a pattern of ineptitude and naivete that's simply stunning.

Now we're entering yet another chapter of Democratic governance and the early indications are clear:  domestically, America will soon approximate a mirror image of the worst Western Europe has to offer, with massive federal spending (and taxation) which hobbles productivity and transfers interminable debt to our children; in foreign affairs, the quaint notion of American exceptionalism has been vilified and supplanted by Obama's insistence that America is merely one of twenty in the G20, an equal that knows its place and pledges to cease throwing its weight around.

This may play in our confessional age, where lugubrious disclosures about past sins are on a par with mortal sainthood, but when the sitcom stops and policy implementation begins, the tension will mount.  Indeed, whether it's the Afghanistan-Pakistan quandary or the Iranian conundrum or the North Korea Rubik cube, Mr. Obama's fashionable subjugation of America on the world stage will have to give way to the need for real leadership, the kind that history demonstrates is so conspicuously lacking among our friends across the foam.

It's at that juncture that Obama will be confronted with the grim limitations of statecraft, of the oxymoronic notion of a defense underwritten by State Department fiat.  The most prominent feature of that genus of foreign policy is the willful and churlish indifference of Western Europe to the threat of radical Islam generally and Iran specifically.  By welcoming the enemy through their front gates, a la their nascent civic laws and judicial decisions that provide disparate rights for Muslims, they've signaled their incapacity to ever agree to a regimen of harsh sanctions against Iran, which is the only viable first step to retard its impending acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Without the support of Great Britain, France, and Germany, Obama will find center stage a very lonely place, reciting the lines of his predecessor and intimately understanding firsthand the profound challenges of degrading our enemies' nefarious capabilities.  Indeed, he'll find that the veneer of collegiality he forged this week won't be sufficient as the arch self-interest of those nations supersedes the global preoccupations that are unique to the United States--the only nation truly to able to prevail against the civilized world's foes. 

But that requires a measure of cooperation and assistance from nations with a vested interest, which Mr. Obama will find conspicuously lacking.

The Cynicism of Obama's Mandated Charity

One of the culturally corrosive by-products of modern liberalism is its cynical belief that charity can be mandated by funneling tax payer money through the government.  It begins with the unflattering conviction that people are innately uncharitable, that unless it's codified through law, Americans won't give of their own free will.  That, of course, is a lie in service to the political goal of expanding the government's power by injecting it with a distinctly political agenda, something liberals have been working at for decades.

We turn to James Bovard, writing in The American Conservative, who makes a compelling case for dismantling the expansive volunteer programs that have grown, Hydra-like, over the years.  The problem, as he observes, is that although Democrats tend to be in the vanguard of confiscatory charity, Republicans have either acquiesced or elbowed their way to the podium to garner support back home for re-election. 

What's lacking in this perverse paradigm is any hint of understanding that regardless of how laudable such programs might be, the government has no right picking the tax payers' pockets for what are clearly political objectives.  We can stipulate that Habitat for Humanity and a host of other programs do provide socially ameliorating services, but beyond the quaint questions of constitutionality, the practical reality is that the government casts nets that are nearly limitless, and their catch brings in the likes of ACORN along with the more politically benign programs.

Mandated charity is indicative of the left's dream of a tacit consensus regarding the proper role of government, which is uniquely tooled to champion its liberal agenda.  But when something is demanded by government fiat, regardless of how ostensibly worthy its cause, the spark that gives meaning to the act is snuffed.  As Bovard notes in his conclusion:

A New York Times editorial on March 24 hailed the GIVE Act for providing “a chance to constructively harness the idealism of thousands of Americans eager to contribute time and energy to solving the nation’s problems.”  But the GIVE Act is idealistic only if one believes that citizens should take their values—and their “moral opportunities”—from their rulers.

Indeed, underling the liberals' motivation for conscripting the nation into volunteering is an abiding cynicism concerning the presumptive self-interestedness of the common man.  In their view, pursuing one's economic interests is fundamentally at odds with the broader concern we have for the less fortunate among us.  The exemplary instinct to care for others, according to the left's code of conduct, can only be bred by recourse to a kind of genetic engineering, in strict fidelity to government--read, liberal--dictums.

They peddle this in conjunction with the uniformly liberal curriculum imposed by our public school system, which is why so many children and adults as well, are convinced of the evils of 'global warming' and believe that President Obama's political ecumenicalism will win the day with Iran, North Korea, and every other vile belligerent across the globe.

It's also why it's so difficult for conservatism to get a fair hearing in our cultural court, where the judge is appointed by the same liberals who've bought and paid for the jury.