Category: Politics

Obama in Cloud Cuckoo Land

People say that Obama is intelligent.  I'll grant you that he is well-spoken: unlike Bush II he doesn't stumble over his words.  Trouble is, Obama's words are mainly  blather.  I fail to discern the substance of intelligence in them.  The man lives in a dream world. He's incoherent and irresponsible, an empty suit, a disaster.  The Anointed One has turned  out to be an emperor without clothes.  The audacity of hope has given way to the mendacity of empty hope and change rhetoric.

Part of the documentation for these assertions is provided by Victor Davis Hanson here.  Study it carefully.

Why Lie When You Have Good Arguments?

Last week I pointed out Senator Charles Schumer's blatant lie about Tea Partiers.  Apparently, Senator Jon Kyl has also lied and then gone on to justify his lie in a  manner most creative:

. . . Arizona senator Jon Kyl used his time on the Senate floor during a budget debate to claim that abortions make up "well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does." When it was pointed out that, in fact, abortion funding constitutes about 3 percent of the organization's budget, Kyl shrugged it off. "It wasn't intended to be a factual statement," he said.

One question is why anyone would lie when they have he has decent arguments.  The use of tax dollars to fund abortion is morally wrong whatever one thinks of the morality of abortion itself.  It doesn't matter how many or how few tax dollars are used.  That's one argument.  A second is that funding outfits like Planned Parenthood is not among the essential functions of government, and that in a time of dire fiscal crisis, government must be pared back to its essential functions.  That's a second argument.  Properly exfoliated, they are powerful arguments.  They won't convince leftists, but then no conservative argument will.  But they will reinforce conservatives in their view and bring some fence-sitters over to our side.

Arguments appeal to our better nature, our rational, truth-seeking nature.

So what does Kyl do? He tells a lie thereby badly injuring his credibility.  Even if Kyl doesn't care about the truth, he ought to care about his credibility, and he must know that to be caught in a lie is to harm it.

So why lie when you have good arguments?

Perhaps it is like this.  "All's fair in love and war" and one of war's casualties is truth.  Politics has nothing to do with truth; it has everything to do with defeating your enemies and gaining or maintaining power.  Politics is about power, not truth.  Politics is war conducted by other means. (I call this the 'Converse Clausewitz principle.')

So perhaps when Schumer and Kyl et al. lie, they make a calculation:  the positive propaganda effect of the lie will offset the negative effect of being caught in a lie, and so lying is conducive to the end in view, namely, defeating the enemy.  Also to be considered is that when politicians  lie they are primarily addressing their constituencies many of the members of which do not care about truth either.  Proof of this is the crap that people forward via e-mail: scurrilous and unsourced allegations about Obama, Pelois and whoever.  When you point out to them that it is drivel, they are unfazed.  For again, it is about winning by any means, and truth doesn't come into it.

Mendacity pays.  Perhaps that is why politicians are so practiced in the arts of deception and prevarication.  They get away with their mendacity and we let them.  They don't care about truth because the people don't and they represent the people.  Maybe we get what we deserve.

Are the Republicans Exploiting the Fiscal Crisis for Ideological Ends?

Many Democrats are arguing that the Republicans are using the current fiscal crisis to further their ideological agenda.  The suggestion is that their stated fiscal concerns hide their real motivations which are ideological.

This fiscal vs. ideological distinction is as bogus as John Kerry's war of necessity vs. war of choice distinction.  Obviously no war is a war of necessity, and every war is a war of choice.  Consider the so-called Civil War of the USA which began on this day 150 years ago.  (So-called because it is better described as a war of secession.  The war was not about the control of the central government in Washington; the war was one of secession: the southern states wanted to secede from the union and achieve independence similarly as the the thirteen colonies wanted to secede from the Crown and be independent of British domination.)  Now the Civil War was certainly not necessary: the North could have let the South secede.  Was U.S. involvement in WWI or WWII necessary?  Obviously not.  And so on.  No war, strictly speaking, is necessary.  You can refuse to get involved in foreign conflicts; you can refuse to defend yourself if attacked.  You can accept dhimmitude.  So every war is a war of choice.   Kerry's distinction is therefore bogus. 

The same is true of the fiscal vs. ideological distinction.  Every fiscal decision reflects underlying ideological commitments, and no ideological commitment is such that its implementation does not cost money.  Obviously, the fiscal policies of both the Republicans and the Democrats are ideologically driven.  It makes no sense to speak of 'politicizing' fiscal decisions since every such decision is already political in nature.  

For example, both the funding and the defunding of NPR, NEH, NEA, Planned Parenthood, etc. are both fiscal and political and reflect different notions  of what  government is for:  what it must do, must not do, and may do.  Imagine  a conservative and a liberal arguing about National Public Radio.

Conservative:  We need government, but "That government governs best that governs least." (Thomas Jefferson).  We need government to do certain jobs that we cannot do ourselves.  But the essential functions of government are limited, and public broadcasting is not one of them.  Public broadcasting may under certain circumstances be a legitimate function of government, but it is obviously not an essential function of government.  There must be limits on governmental power since "Power tends to corrupt, etc."  So, given that we are in dire fiscal straits, and cuts have to be made, and since public broadcasting is not an essential function of government — though it may perhaps be a legitimate nonessential  function of government under financially rosy conditions –  one of the things that must be done to save money is to zero-out the NPR and PBS budgets.  But there is a further reason to defund these agencies, and that is that they are not fair and balanced: they take a liberal-left stance in their programming.  That would be no problem if they were wholly in the private sector.  But surely it is morally wrong to use taxpayers' dollars to promote partisan sociopolitical views, thereby violating the convictions of the vast number of libertarians and conservatives who hold, rightly or wrongly, that liberal-left politicies are pernicious.

Liberal:  I don't buy any of that.  You conservatives and libertarians think of government as a necessary evil when in fact it is a force for untold good that cannot be achieved in any other way.  We need more government, not less.  A just society is a fair society, and a fair society is one in which wealth and other goods are distributed equally.   A severely progressive tax code may infringe the liberties of certain individuals but it helps in the achievement of material equality which is surely a much higher value than the liberty of the individual.  The wealth of the nation belongs to all of us, and it it legitimate for government to spread that wealth around in an equitable manner.  "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," as a very great man once said. Everyone has a right to adequate health care, for example, and it could easily be provided for all if the rich were taxed at appropriately high levels.  As for NPR, its programming is of high quality precisely because it doesn't have to kow-tow to mass demands of hoi polloi.  It helps enlighten the dumb denizens of fly-over country who cling to their guns and bibles.  Sure it tilts to the Left, but leftism is true.  Public broadcasting, contrary to why you conservatives think, is an essential function of government.  Without it, the masses cannot be properly enlightend and educated.

The point here is that both the conservative and liberal positions are rife with ideological commitments.  So it is asinine and contemptible when Dems claim that Republicans are driven by ideology, or that they are exploiting the fiscal crisis for ideological ends.

I wouldn't be so contemptuous of the Dems if they weren't so bloody mendacious and so blind to their double standards.

Big Government on the Brink

We are in deep trouble as Robert Samuelson ably documents in this troubling piece.  So what does Nero Obama do?  He fiddles while Rome burns and its legions get mired in Libyan sand and other sinkholes of the  benighted and backward.  Even if Obama the Irresponsible and every worthless Democrat were sent packing we'd still be in deep trouble.  Meanwhile gold approaches $1500 an ounce.  'Lead'  ain't cheap these days either.  It is a bad sign when gold and 'lead' appear to be wise investment choices. 

Overextended abroad, collapsing within.  The bigger the government, the more to fight over.   It's time for a return to good old American self-reliance. Make your plans and prepare for the worst.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) Caught Lying

Here at 3:40:  The Tea Party "has an ideology to get rid of all government."  That's a blatant lie.  A lie is not the same as a false statement.  Every lie is a false statement, but not every false statement is a lie.  A further condition is necessary: one must make the false statement with the intention to deceive.  And that is exactly what Schumer is doing.  His intention is to deceive.  For he is not so stupid as not to know that limited government is not the same as no government.  He knows full well what Tea Partiers and other conservatives advocate.  He's lying to hold onto power.

We need to make it clear to him and his  ilk that when they  lie about us we will tell the truth about them.

 

The Bigger the Government, the More to Fight Over: The NPR Case

An excellent illustration of this truth is the current brouhaha over the defunding of National Public Radio (NPR).  Why is time and money being wasted debating this?  The short answer is that government has assumed a function that is obviously inessential to it and arguably illegitimate.  If government stuck to its essential tasks, one of which is obviously not public broadcasting, then we wouldn't be having this debate which is not only unproductive,  but also distractive from truly pressing issues such as 'entitlement' reform.  (A curious coinage, wouldn't you say?  As if prosperous oldsters who, having had a lifetime to accumulate substantial net worth in a relatively stable political and economic environment, are entitled to  intergenerational wealth transfer payments even in excess of what they have contributed  plus a reasonable return.)

The quality of the NPR debate in the House of Representatives was truly depressing.  (I have watched a good portion of it on C-SPAN — which is not supported by Federal dollars and is as objective as an media outlet  gets.)  It's as if the participants live on different planets.  One expects liberals and their opponents (both conservatives and libertarians) to disagree about the  role of government.  But they can't even agree on the 'green eyeshade' issue.  A sensible Republican gets upon and explains how the defunding of NPR will save taxpayers' dollars.  Then a Dem rises to flatly deny that there will be any savings. 

Liberals and conservatives  will argue until doomsday about the size, scope, and legitimate functions of government.  Those arguments are unavoidable and intractable due to profound axiological and philosophical differences.  But one would have thought that agreement could be reached about simple economic facts.  A husband and a wife might argue over whether the tax rebate should be spent on upgraded carpeting or on security doors.  That would be par for the course.  But if they argue about the size of the rebate or about whether or not cancelling their subscription to cable TV will save them x dollars per month,then they are in deep trouble and headed for divorce court.

The Dems are either lying or engaging in some other less blatant form of prevarication when they claim that defunding NPR will not affect the Federal budget deficit.

The liberal case is exceedingly weak, an indication being the rhetorical tricks and distortions liberals sink to.  For example, Representative Louise Slaughter claimed that the Republicans are out to "destroy" NPR.  See here at :34.  That's an outright lie. Or is she so stupid as not to know that defunding a program which its own officers admit does not need Federal funding is not to destroy it?  Contemptible.  Another Dem claimed that the Republicans are ought to"silence" NPR.  Another outright lie.

By the way, here is where civility meets a limit. One is under no obligation to be polite to a liar.

But Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee takes the cake.  She claimed that defunding NPR is an affront to the First Amendment.  How stupid can a liberal be?  Apparently she thinks that the First Amendment protects a government-funded propaganda arm of the Left from the people when it is the other way around:  the First Amendment protects the speech rights of the people against the government.

Of course, no liberal will admit his bias, either out of mendacity, or more likely, because he is simply incapable of seeing it. For a typical liberal, his view of the world is the world.  Hence liberals are mostly incapable of  seeing that NPR pushes a liberal-left point of view.  The problem, again, is not that they have that point of view, but that they feel justified in using taxpayers' dollars to promote it.  Part of the problem is that they do not understand how anyone could reasonably disagree with them. 

The bigger the government, the more to fight over.  Do you like pointless bickering?  Then support an ever-expanding state.

For more on NPR, see here  and here. 

National Public Radio Needs Your Support!

If you like NPR programming, as I like some of  it, write them a check!  Just don't demand that they receive taxpayer support.  At least not now.  We are in fiscal crisis, and budgetary cuts must be made.  If such inessentials as NPR, PBS, NEH and NEA cannot be defunded, where will the cuts be made?  Think about it.  If these small allocations cannot be zeroed out or placed on moratorium, how are we going to tackle entitlement reform?

So one good reason to defund NPR is that we cannot afford it.

Some think that a refusal of sponsorship amounts to censorship.  But that is stupidity pure and simple and duly refuted here.

But even if we could afford it, NPR in its present configuration should not receive Federal support.  And this for the simple reason that it is plainly a propaganda arm of the Left.  Now that should be obvious to anyone who has been following current events, including the firing of Juan Williams, the exposure and sacking of the two Schillers, etc.  If you deny the Leftward tilt of NPR in its present incarnation, then you are delusional and not worth talking to.  So let's assume that you are sane and admit the bias.  The next question is whether you think it is morally right that tax dollars be used to push points of view that most of us in this conservative land find objectionable.  I say that it it is not morally right that you take my money by force and then use it for a purpose that is not only inessential and unconnected to the necessary functions of government, but also violates my beliefs.

Perhaps, if NPR were balanced like C-SPAN, it could be tolerated in times of plenty.  But we are not in times of plenty and it is not balanced.

So that is my second reason for defunding NPR. 

Note that a reasonable liberal could accept my two reasons.  I am not arguing that government must not engage in any projects other than those that are strictly essential such as those connected to the protection of life, liberty, and property (the Lockean triad).  I leave that question open for the space of this post.  I am arguing that present facts dictate that defunding NPR is something we ought to do. 

I love Garrison Keillor and his "Prarie Home Companion" and tune in whenever I can.  "Guy Noir" is one of my favorite bits.  So I hope NPR stays on the air — on its own fiscal steam.  Hell, if they wean themselves from the  mammaries of massive Mama Obama Government I may even send them a check myself!  And the same goes for PBS. 

Taxation: A Liberty Issue

Despite their name, liberals seem uninterested or insufficiently interested in the 'real' liberties, those pertaining to property, money, and guns, as opposed to the 'ideal' liberties, those pertaining to freedom of expression. A liberal will go to any extreme when it comes to defending the right to express his precious self no matter how inane or obnoxious or socially deleterious the results of his self-expression; but he cannot muster anything like this level of energy when it comes to defending the right to keep what he earns or the right to defend himself and his family from the criminal element from which liberal government fails to protect him. He would do well to reflect that his right to express his vacuous self needs concrete back-up in the form of economic and physical clout. Scribbler that I am, I prize freedom of expression; but I understand what makes  possible its retention.

Taxation then is a liberty issue before it is a 'green eyeshade' issue: the more the government takes, the less concrete liberty you  have. Without money you can't get your kids out of a shitty public school system that liberals have destroyed with their tolerate-anything mentality; without money you cannot live in a decent and secure neighborhood.  Without money you can't move out of a state such as California which is 'under water' due to liberal fiscal irresponsibility.

Taxation is a liberty issue.  That is one thought as April 15th approaches.  Another is that the government  must justify its taking; the onus is not on you to justify your  keeping. Government exists to serve us, not the other way around.

Who Benefits From Public-Sector Unions?

An excellent piece by Michael Barone.  Excerpt:

The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public employee unions, who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party. (emphasis added)

Is that clear?  You pay taxes.  Some of your tax dollars go to pay the salaries of so-called 'civil servants.'  Some of these 'civil servants' belong to unions that automatically deduct union dues from their salaries and funnel this cash to the union bosses and lobbyists who pressure Democrat Party legislators to do their bidding.  Legislators, being human, love their power and perquisities, and do whatever they can to hold onto them.  To stay in power they need votes which they get from the union members who vote as a block for the Dems to get as many goodies as they can.

So we the people are forced via taxation to support the fiscally irresponsible and unsustainable Democrat Big Government agenda. Would you say that that smacks of corruption?

On Civility and the Recent Civility Initiatives

Civility is a good old conservative virtue and I'm all for it.  But like toleration, civility has limits.  If you call me a racist because I argue against Obamacare, then not only do I have no reason to be civil in my response to you, I morally ought not be civil to you.  For by being civil I only encourage more bad behavior on your part.  By slandering me, you have removed yourself from the sphere of the civil.  The slanderer does not deserve to be treated with civility; he deserves to be treated with hostility and stiff-necked opposition.  He is deserving of moral condemnation.

If you call me a xenophobe because I insist that the federal government do what it is constitutionally mandated to do, namely, secure the nation's borders, then you slander me and forfeit whatever right you have to be treated civilly.  For if you slander me, then you are moral scum and deserve to be morally condemned.  In issuing my moral condemnation, I exercise my constitutionally-protected First Amendment right to free speech.  But not only do I have a right to condemn you, I am morally obliged to do so lest your sort of evil behavior become even more prevalent.

Examples can be multiplied, but the point is clear.  Civility has limits.  One ought to be civil to the civil.  But one ought not be civil to the uncivil.  What they need is a taste of their own medicine.

One must also realize that 'civility' is a prime candidate for linguistic hijacking.  And so we must be on our guard that the promoters of 'civility' are not attaching to this fine word a Leftward-tilting connotation.    We must not let them get away with any suggestion that one is civil if and only if one is an espouser of liberal/left positions. 

The Left no more owns civility than it owns dissent.

The motto of the No Labels outfit is "Not Left. Not Right. Forward."  'No Labels' is itself a label and a silly one , implying as it does that there are no important differences between Left and Right which need identification and labeling.  It is also preposterous to suggest that we can 'move forward' without doing so along either broadly conservative or broadly liberal lines.  To 'move forward' along liberal lines is to move in the direction of less individual liberty and ever-greater control by the government.  This is simply unacceptable to libertarians and conservatives and must be stopped.  There is little room for compromise here.  How can one compromise with those whose fiscal irresponsibility will lead to a destruction of the currency?  Any compromise struck with them can only be a tactical stopgap on the way to their total defeat.  Fiscal responsibility and border security are two issues on which there can be no compromise.  For it is obviously absurd to suppose that a genuine solution lies somewhere in the middle.

Worst of all, however is to claim that one is neither Left nor Right but then take policy stances that are leftist.  This demonstrates a lack of intellectual honesty.  The 'No Labels' folks cite the following as a "Shared Purpose": 

  • Americans want a government that empowers people with the tools for success – from a world-class education to affordable healthcare – provided that it does so in a fiscally prudent way.

    • But that's not a shared purpose but a piece of pure leftism.  First of all, it is not the government that 'empowers' people — to acquiesce for the nonce in this specimen of PC lingo — government is a necessary evil as libertarians and conservatives see it, and any empowering that gets done is best done by individuals in the absence of governmental shackles.  It is also not the role of  the federal government, as libertarians ansd conservatives see it, to educate people or provide health care.  Only liberals with their socialist leanings believe that.

    What the No Labels bunch is serving up is mendacity.  First they paper over genuine differences of opinion and then they put forth their own opinion as neutral, as neither Left nor Right, when it is obviously leftist.  So what these people are saying to us is that we should put aside all labels while toeing the leftist party line.  And be civil too!  I say to hell with that.  Let's be honest and admit that there are deep differences.  For example, if you say that health care is a right and I say it is not a right but a good, or a commodity, then we have a very deep difference. 

    In the wake of the Tucson shootings, the University of Arizona has set up a National Institute for Civil Discourse.  And then there is the American Civility Tour. Just what we need: more wastage of tax dollars on feel-good liberal nonsense.

    I conclude by referring you to a very interesting Allegheny College survey, Nastiness, Name-Calling, and Negativity. 

    Obamacare and Wussification

    An ugly word for an ugly thing.  Either one.

    The Obamacare provision which allows children to remain covered by their parents' health care insurance until the age of 26 promotes wussification.  Do I need to explain this? Not to a conservative, for whom the old virtue of self-reliance is indeed a virtue and therefore something to be encouraged and not undermined. 

     

    Are You a Liberal? Take This Test

    The following statements in boldface are taken verbatim from Dennis Prager's Are You a Liberal? I comment briefly on each in turn. Mirabile dictu, it turns out I am not a liberal! I could make of each  of these items a separate post. (And you hope I won't.) I don't want to hear anyone complain that I am not arguing my points. I argue plenty elsewhere on this site. In any case, that is not my present purpose.

    Continue reading “Are You a Liberal? Take This Test”