Helping People

Quoting Thomas Sowell:

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”

The Influence Of Christianity Upon Our Government

Jedidiah Morse

Quoting Jedediah Morse (Patriot and “Father of American Geography”):

To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. . . . Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all blessings which flow from them, must fall with them. (Source: Jedidiah Morse, A Sermon, Exhibiting the Present Dangers and Consequent Duties of the Citizens of the United States of America (Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1799), p. 9.)

Truth Redefined

Kelly O’Connell is an author, attorney, and radio show host. In his article “Who Defines ‘Truth’ When Politicians Re-Write the Dictionary?” he points out three areas of American life – Education, Church, and Political Correctness – where the false has been declared true:

The very notion of truth itself has been tied, stretched out and crucified for political advantage in America. This is why we are in a dreary swamp, a national malaise. Our current struggles are all the more remarkable considering most result from wrong ideas. A simple attitude adjustment, ie a “reality check”—would eliminate most of our seemingly permanent issues fairly quickly. Our troubles occur because disreputable political doctrines are raised over common sense. For example, huge deficits undermine America’s ability to continue its military and humanitarian roles, home and abroad. And yet, the notion of serious spending cuts is regarded by liberals as more horrible than an offer to barbecue holy cows in downtown Bombay.

The problem in America today is our “official” national narrative is based upon a torrent of false, leftist ideas, directed by political theory towards relentless failure on every front. In other words, the elites uphold the tenets of Marxism. A key example is Political Correctness. This devilish doctrine claims no action is bad, in itself—as long as fostered by an ideologically acceptable group. . . .

Continue reading this article. . . .

Guided By Values

Quoting radio talk show host Dennis Prager:

“The liberal world came up with the idea of giving trophies to kids who lose; they don’t want their children feeling bad. Conservatives, on the other hand, teach their kids how to lose well. They are less worried about their children feeling bad. A couple of years ago, I gave a speech on happiness to the students and faculty of a prestigious high school in the Los Angeles area. The subject was the need to act happy even when one isn’t feeling happy — because it is unfair to others to inflict our bad moods on them and because we will never be happy if we allow our feelings to dictate our happiness. From what I experienced that day and learned later, liberal students and faculty generally loathed my speech; conservative students generally loved it (there was no conservative faculty to speak of). Why? Because conservatives are far more likely to be comfortable with the idea that feelings are not as important as behavior. Those who know that feelings must not govern us, but that we must govern our feelings, are far more likely to be happy people. The upshot of all this? There is an amazingly simple way to defeat the left: Raise children who are grateful to be American, who don’t complain, who can handle losing and who are guided by values, not feelings.”

Rewarding Bad Behavior

Quoting Mark Steyn:

The most basic of conservative principles is that if you reward bad behavior you get more of it. We now have a government offering trillion-dollar rewards for bad behavior to the financial system, to the housing market, to the auto unions, and to individual voters.

 

Political Correctness In American Policy

Karl Marx

The ideas supporting political correctness were first articulated by a group of Marxist professors who, in order to escape Hitler’s wrath, escaped Nazi Germany before WWII. Historically then, we can see that political correctness is the result of cultural Marxism. It is economic Marxism translated into cultural terms. These German Marxists understood that Karl Marx was wrong about the inevitability of the socialist takeover of capitalism. They believed that Marxism must be turned into a stealth project in order to take over free capitalistic democracies. Many of these German Marxists resettled in America, where they and their followers have continued to advocate these ideas. Author and attorney Kelly O’Connell writes about the effect of political correctness on the US:

Political Correctness is first a movement of speech purification which is meant to remove any objectionable content that unfairly differentiates between the speaker and different subgroups. It is also supposed to change behavior by promoting these subgroups. It typically buries traditional morality along the way. The real problem with PC is that it is a theoretical standard which has real world consequences that can be quite appalling.

There is no lack of examples of bad, unintended consequences to the PC movement. Many claim America’s universities have been absolutely degraded by the absurd standards of PC. Another points out the harm it has done to medical services. But the worst influences may be upon US security and warfare. . . .

For example, did the Fort Hood Shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, get preferential treatment because he was Muslim then end up shooting 41 American soldiers while screaming, “Allah Akbar”, ie God is Great—as an Islamic declaration of Jihad? America is so PC friendly, US service people cannot even carry their own weapons on base. . . .

Imagine in how many different ways the PC movement has hampered the ability of America to wage war effectively. These PC-styled Rules of Engagement have so hampered US forces in Afghanistan that the enemy often can claim strategic advantage in planning attacks despite all their weaknesses. . . .

Here are two examples of Rules of Engagement:

If having been fired upon by a shooter who then drops his weapon to his side as soon as he comes under notice from coalition forces, he should no longer be considered an immediate threat and is not to be fired upon, even if he decamps to another location where it is likely he will take up another position to resume firing.

If troops come under fire from a dwelling place which could be considered to have women and children present they are to avoid returning fire and deploy to another safer area.

Read more on this subject. . . .

Should Health Care Be Left To The Free Market?

Ann Coulter

Quoting Ann Coulter:

The reason seeing a doctor is already more like going to the DMV, and less like going to the Apple “Genius Bar,” is that the government decided health care was too important to be left to the free market. Yes — the same free market that has produced such a cornucopia of inexpensive goods and services that, today, even poor people have cell phones and flat-screen TVs.

The Free Market

P. J. O'Rourke

Quoting P.J. O’Rourke:

The free market is simply a measurement. The free market tells us what people are willing to pay for a given thing at a given moment. That’s all the free market does. The free market is a bathroom scale. We may not like what we see when we step on the bathroom scale, but we can’t pass a law making ourselves weigh 165. Liberals and leftists think we can.

Politically Correct Marxism

No PC

Quoting columnist Melanie Phillips:

“‘Politically correct’ views all derive from anti-Western, secular ideologies such as anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, utilitarianism, feminism, multiculturalism and environmentalism. These all share the aim of overturning the established order in the West. So any groups who have power within that order can never be offended or hurt because they are themselves offensive and hurtful, while ‘powerless’ groups can never be other than victims. This obsession with power is, of course, a Marxist position; indeed, ‘political correctness’ is a form of cultural Marxism.”

Secular Progressive Fascism

In The Philosophy of Fascism, written in 1936, Mario Palmeiri writes, “Fascist ethics begin…with the acknowledgment that it is not the individual who confers a meaning upon society, but it is, instead, the existence of a human society which determines the human character of the individual. According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, and this need of rising the State to its rightful position.”

Don’t give me that “oh, but he was writing about Fascism! That’s right wing, not left wing!” nonsense. Fascism is merely socialism light. It is a system of private ownership of the means of production, with government control. The German fascists of World War 2 were self proclaimed big-government socialists. Does that sound right wing to you? (P.96 of Neal Boortz‘s book, The Terrible Truth About Liberals)

Spending The Public Trust

Quoting Ronald Reagan:

“These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. … It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people. Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, causing human misery and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity. But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals. You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?”

A Revolutionary Season In American Politics

 

Lew Rockwell

 

American politics has an educational value all its own if there is anything positive to be said about it at all. Elections encourage people to focus their minds and therefore, become more knowledgeable of what the politicians are actually doing in Washington. Perhaps, this time, Americans have learned that they cannot just wait till every election year rolls around to become involved in how we are being governed.  Lew Rockwell, who is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and the author of Speaking of Liberty, writes that:

It’s another revolutionary season in American politics, with voters preparing to do everything they can within the structure of the law to throw out the bad guys and the bad system they represent. The focus is on this amorphous thing called the Tea Party, which embodies a huge range of political impulses from libertarian to authoritarian, united under the common belief that everything is going wrong in Washington, with a common goal of upending the status quo. . . .

The health-care bill is also a source of American public anger. People are not deceived into believing that whatever reforms we are getting are going to fix the problems of the current system; they will make them worse. As it is, the freedom remaining in the system is the only reason that the system serves us at all. Take that away, and you take away a lifeline.

The revolt, then, is in high gear. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. The governed have long been very unhappy about the government, and they periodically wake up and seek to change it. It’s been some 16 years since the last go-round of such revolutionary sentiment. It is arguably stronger today than it was back in 1994.

The good aspects of this have nothing to do with political outcomes, despite what people believe. The political environment focuses the mind on important issues like freedom, economics, culture, power and its uses, and the role of the state. As they debate with their neighbors, follow election coverage, listen to the candidates, and watch the process, people learn and study and, most importantly, think and rethink.

If you begin with a skeptical attitude toward the government, watching and thinking can lead to a radicalization and ultimate embrace of a consistent opposition to government involvement. This is why election season always ends up creating a huge flood of new libertarians who buy books, feel the inspiration to get active (perhaps for the first time), and dedicate themselves to reducing the power of the state in whatever way they can.

Continue reading. . . .

Demonizing The American Citizen

Quoting columnist Arnold Ahlert:

“Why has the left directed so much time and effort into demonizing ordinary Americans? Because the Tea Party’s three primary planks — limited government, fiscal responsibility and Constitutional fealty — represent the greatest threat to liberalism since its flowering in the 1960s. A smaller, fiscally responsible government dedicated to a Constitution expressly designed to limit the power of the state is the death knell for those dedicated to the idea their worldview must be imposed on Americans by an ever-expanding state. The left’s worst nightmare is an America comprised of largely self-sufficient, clear-thinking individuals left to their own devices.”

The Democrats’ Strategy Of “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”

Quoting columnist Jeffrey Folks:

“Lenin famously described his strategy for communist domination as ‘one step forward, two steps back.’ Of course, by that he did not mean to suggest steps of equal length. The step forward was a lot more like two large steps, and the two steps back were more or less symbolic, designed to diffuse opposition. Clearly, in the past two years the United States has moved two giant steps in the direction of socialism. We have seen the redistribution of hundreds of billions of dollars, the seizure of major industries by the state, the re-emergence of a hard-core welfare state, the virtual nationalization of healthcare, takeover by regulation of the energy and financial sectors, and much more. This resurgence of state control has been accompanied by the new power of labor unions, environmental lobbyists, tort lawyers, and state bureaucracies. But now, having reached the limit of what the public will stomach, the Leninists who run the Democratic Party see that it is time for two baby-steps back. Those steps back are taking the form of a new suggestion of inclusiveness and bipartisanship (even of openness to business interests), talk of repeal of some parts of the healthcare bill, talk of making some parts of the Bush tax cuts permanent (after the election, of course), talk of a balanced budget (pay-go once again). As this list suggests, the step back is nearly all talk-talk in the midst of an election campaign designed to preserve Democratic majorities. The steps back, in other words, are not an actual retreat. They are merely talk. As soon as the election is over, the strategy of moving forward will resume — this time in the lame-duck session of Congress.”

Read more. . . .

Calvin Coolidge: Words of Wisdom

Calvin Coolidge

Quoting Calvin Coolidge (30th President of US):

1. Civilization and profit go hand in hand.
2. Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.
3. There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no one independence quite so important, as living within your means.
4. Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.
5. Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.
6. To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.