American-Manifesto.com In Defense of American Exceptionalism

New Jersey is a shining example of this.  And there is finally some recognition of the fact that NJ is losing many of its wealthiest residents for blindingly obvious reasons: the taxes are too high and the business climate too hostile. 

The left, of course, continues to be in denial about a basic fact of the modern world: businesses, people and capital can and will go where they are put to the best use.  The left thinks it can raise taxes and expand government and the economy will continue to prosper.  But the fact is that in Blue States like New Jersey, California, New York and much of the Northeast, as government has become more “progressive”, their economies have become more European: high unemployment and low growth.

Yes, there is still a great deal of wealth there.  But it’s a legacy of a dynamic economic past.   The power of compounding interest is a wonderful thing.  Over time though, the wealth will be spent down if it is not replenished.  The free economies and limited governments that allowed the creation of wealth gradually became “progressive” and these regions have been fooled into believing that once-wealthy means always-wealthy. 

A number of years ago I told Mrs. Manifesto that barring a radical rekindling of an earlier ethos in the “progressive” Northeast, I suspected at some point we would likely relocate south or west to a more dynamic area of the country because that’s where the opportunities will be.  I have seen nothing to change my mind yet.

If anyone finds some of that elusive global warming could you let me know where it is?  As we receive our second 2-feet-or-so snowfall in about a month and a half I could really go for some AGW.

There have been two types of complaints (examples) about Justice Alito’s reaction to Obama’s criticism during the State of the Union address that the Citizens United decision overturned a century of law and couple open elections to involvement by foreign entities. 

The first objection is on substance.  Some people agree with Obama’s assertion and feel Alito has no grounds for grousing.  However, even the NYT’s Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse recognizes that Obama was off target.  So, the complaint on substance doesn’t hold up.

The second objection is on style.  They complain about a breach of protocol by Alito.  So let me get this straight, the president who bows to foreign monarchs, bashes the previous president while overseas, gives a gift of improperly formatted DVDs to a head of state, returns a bust of Churchill to England and gives the Queen of England an iPod is being defended over someone else’s supposed breach of protocol?  Seriously?

There is just nothing I can say to prepare you for this.  Enjoy.

The Inquirer, like most lefty newspapers, usually makes at least a feeble attempt to make its partisanship seem non-partisan.  Today, however, they didn’t cover their tracks very well.  They ran a front page story about how former Philadelphia Eagle Jon Runyan receives a tax break (an agricultural exemption) on part of his 20 acre property.

Several points:

1. The article describes him as a “Republican candidate” for the house.

Is he, in fact, a candidate?  I’m not so sure he actually is.  He definitely said back in November that he’s going to run.  But I don’t see anything since then indicating that he has officially declared.  An insignificant detail? Perhaps.  Or maybe this is an article that would never be run about a non-candidate and they think his “candidacy” provides some cover against charges of publishing a hit job.

2. The headline on the Inquirer’s website reads “Donkeys give GOP’s Runyan a Tax Break”.  The dead tree version’s headline reads “A few donkeys help N.J. Republican qualify for farmland”.

Jon Runyan is certainly a well known local sports figure.  But you’d have to be a bit of a news junkie to be aware that he is (or is going to) run for Congress.  Particularly since his final football season just ended last Sunday and he hasn’t done any campaigning yet, most people know him as a sports figure not as a politician.  So wouldn’t a non-partisan headline describe him as “Former Eagle” rather than a Republican?

3. Where’s the story?

There’s no allegation of illegal activity, unethical activity, insider deals, influence peddling or any other kind of funny business.  It’s a front page story targeting one person who is making use of a legal and common feature of the NJ tax code to lower his tax bill.  This is newsworthy…how?

4. Where were they before?

Where was the Inquirer when Obama was busy appointing people, like his Treasury Secretary, who actually broke tax laws?  Did they report on it?  Yes, a little.  But did they give it equivalent billing given the relative prominence of their roles?  Um, no.  Did they scrutinize or harass Gov. Corzine’s tax returns?  He was a very wealthy guy.  I can guarantee he used all kinds of legal tax techniques to reduce his tax bill.  Funny, I don’t recall such a story.

Scott Brown has scored a stunning upset victory in the Massachusetts senate race. We’ve all seen the elements of the shock factor: Massachusetts until now had an all Democrat congressional delegation, the Senate seat had been held by Ted Kennedy, John Kennedy or a hired temp since the 1950s, Scott Brown was down in the polls by almost 30 points only a few weeks ago, his opponent Martha Coakley was elected the Massachusetts Attorney General with 70% of the vote the same day Obama won 60% of the vote, the list goes on. So what does it mean?

What Obama’s advisors will tell him tomorrow, ironically the first anniversary of his inauguration: “Mr. President, Coakley ran a terrible campaign. When Ted Kennedy died, it gave the voters an opportunity to loosen up their allegiance a little. It was a race dominated by state-specific personalities. It had nothing to do with your agenda in general or healthcare in particular.”

What the American people really said: “Mr. President, welcome to the first day of the rest of your presidency. We look forward to its conclusion.”

I have seen repeatedly in the healthcare debate an argument from the left along the lines of “someone who is sick and uninsured isn’t really free”.  I always thought that was a bizarre assertion.  Well I recently read an article on the Progressive giant, John Dewey and that very formulation played a big role in his thought.

Basically the idea is that the human spirit needs to be nourished for a person to reach their full potential and only when that potential is reached are they really free.  You can easily see the next steps from that….and therefore we need XYZ government programs to guarantee nourished spirits and expand human freedom.

This is, of course, complete and utter bunk.  It is precisely the kind of sloppiness that permeates the left now.  Freedom is not subjective.  Yes, there are shades of grey but even the tones are objective. 

The Soviets believed they were the heroes of the People.  They thought they were nourishing the human spirit by providing the basic necessities of life (and in Soviet Russia they were very basic indeed).  So were the Russian people free?  Not even a little bit.

Even if you take out the worst oppression from the Soviet model, there’s still a nagging problem with the “freedom through collectivism” model:  who decides what you need?  If the government’s job is to nourish you and guide you, what if what you want isn’t what the progressive social engineers think you should want?  In case it escaped your notice, progressive social engineers don’t tolerate dissent well. 

If the model citizen becomes one who let’s the progressives tell him what choices to make, where’s the freedom?

I have grown increasingly impatient with the sloppiness, self-importance, condescension and intolerance that has come to characterize the left.  Two recent letters in the Inquirer were so grating that I have decided to inaugurate an award for those who exemplify the most obnoxious affectations of the left.  It will be given out whenever I choose to whoever I deem worthy (high standards, right?).  Winners will receive the joy of discovering themselves to be the butt of well-deserved scorn and ridicule the next time they do a vanity search on Google.

Philip wrote:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in the very short time she has been on the court, has asked more questions than Thomas has in the many years he has been there.

I voted for President Obama because I knew he would not nominate justices with such limited intelligence. We deserve and should have better than a seat-warmer.

Philip gives no indication that he’s ever read any Supreme Court decision, let alone one by Clarence Thomas.  He gives no hint that he has any interest or expertise in constitutional law.  He never mentions what constitutional scholars think of Thomas.  Nor does he seem to have any awareness that only a fraction of the time the justices spend on a case actually involves oral arguments.  And, of course, he seems oblivious to the possibility that Thomas might have very valid reasons for observing rather than participating.  But, by gosh, he sure knows that Clarence Thomas is of “limited intelligence”!

For that, Philip Lustig, I award you a Preening Twit.

Bud wrote:

For too long have Republicans let their party be a home place of bad science. Their reactions to “Climategate” and the recent cold spell demonstrate a lack of understanding of climatology…

Is Bud a practicing scientist of any flavor?  Does he have any training, expertise or actual understanding of climatology himself?  Or is he just regurgitating the usual things that any sophisticated intellect such as he is supposed to repeat as proof that they are such impressive and independent thinkers.  Wow, Bud, repeating the usual leftwing mantras…what great insight!

You too, Bud, are awarded a Preening Twit.

It seems to me that one of the big mistakes that supporters of gay marriage make is that they begin with the assumption that gay marriage and traditional marriage are equivalent and interchangeable.  In other words, they simply begin with a civil rights argument without ever establishing its applicability.  And I actually agree, if gay marriage was interchangeable with traditional marriage then it probably would be a civil rights issue. 

However, it is not self-evident that gay marriage is interchangeable with traditional marriage.  Men and women are not equivalent just as mothers and fathers are not interchangeable.  

A majority of the American people recognize this.  And I think a lot of people don’t appreciate being told they are bigots for expecting a political faction to make a convincing argument before agreeing to their platform.  I think gay marriage supporters ought to step back and focus on honing their logic rather than heaping abuse on people who disagree with them.

Mrs. Manifesto and I had the opportunity to see Invictus over the weekend.  I was not entirely sure what to expect but I have to say this is a great movie.  I’m not interested in doing a movie review but I wanted to briefly note that there is a very conservative theme to it.

The movie’s title comes from a poem by William Henley.  Here’s the poem.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

The poem and the movie are very much about choosing not to wallow in self-pity and choosing not to let circumstances run your life.  To me, this is the great dividing line between left and right.  Conservatives believe you control your life and your choices are the primary determinants of your fate.  The left believes you are not in control of your fate and that external forces that you cannot personally influence will determine what happens to you.

It’s refreshing to see something coming out of Hollywood that promotes the conservative perspective.

To the multitude of differences between Pres. Bush and Pres. Obama we can add: their preferred vacations.  Pres. Bush would famously go to his Texas ranch and do manual labor around the homestead.  Pres. Obama, on the other hand, has gone off to a vacation home in ritzy Waikiki Beach, where his manual labor consists of 18 holes at a beautifully manicured golf course. 

Do you think all that bowing Obama’s been doing was just stretching out for the golf course?

In that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.   An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear.

The angel said to them, “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.   And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased!”

Not really, of course.  This is a case of correlation not causation but there is a very clear pattern to state-by-state happiness data published recently in Science.  The Wall Street Journal published a summary (here is their chart).  The happiest states overwhelmingly voted for McCain in the 2008 election and the least happy states unanimously voted for Obama.

Here’s the breakdown:

Notice particularly the top and bottom quintiles.  Of the 10 most happy states, only 3 voted for Obama.  Of the 10 least happy states, every single one voted for Obama.  Miserable policies for miserable people.

This really should not come as a surprise given the left’s fixation on class, envy and jealousy.  It’s also consistent with their dismissive attitude towards religion and private charity.  And let’s not leave out the alignment with the right’s views on personal responsibility, industriousness and individual autonomy versus the left’s blame-shifting, dependence and state control.  Basically most of the characteristics that make you less happy align neatly to the left wing worldview.

Every now and then I wonder if I over think things a bit.  For example, I was working on the post below and started to wonder if it was a little too speculative.  Then I came across this.  It turns out, I’m not so crazy. 

It’s tough sometimes to write about these things without sounding like a paranoid lunatic.  Is the left deliberately trying to undercut our society?  That’s a tough call but at a minimum they are guilty of dangerously sloppy and self-indulgent thinking.  They seem oblivious to the possibility that their policies ideas might have a destabilizing effect on our families and culture.   It isn’t even clear to me that they understand that would be a bad thing.

Whether it’s deliberate or not, it is certainly dangerous and destructive.

One of the points defenders of traditional marriage make is that marriage is, first and foremost, about creating and raising children.  It’s not, despite what many proponents of gay marriage contend, about an expression of love.  You don’t need marriage for that.  While obviously you don’t need marriage to create or raise children, your chances of successfully raising children are increased dramatically when parents are married.

What if gay marriage were legalized?  We know that the left is never happy.  They always need something to rage against and change.  What other marriage battles might they engage in?  Here’s a question.  If marriage has been redefined to be about romantic love and the self-fulfillment of adults, severed from the expectation of childrearing, why would marriage be limited by physical proximity? 

If you are of a certain age range, you may know someone who moved to another part of the country (or globe) and married someone because of a relationship that started online.  This happened even before “social networking sites” entered the lexicon.  The tools for creating personal relationships online are more powerful than ever now.

If a legally authorized officiant were to agree to it, what if two people who have an entirely virtual relationship want to get married but won’t or can’t relocate to be with each other?  What if they have no intention or ability to ever meet in person, even temporarily?  Is that marriage?

Seem crazy or impossible?  What if the both had medical conditions that made travelling or relocating too difficult?  Or what if one person lived in an authoritarian country that made emigration nearly impossible?  Or what if marriage would give people with a virtual relationship a tangible benefit (health insurance, for example) but it was just too inconvenient or unromantic to actually take the relationship offline and into the real world?  Do you think leftwing lawyers wouldn’t try to push the envelope here?

But take it one step further.  If marriage is solely about the married couple, with children and physical proximity removed from the picture, can a virtual wedding become an instant transaction, like buying something from iTunes?  Could divorces become instant too?  If they are instant, is there even a pretense that marriages should be permanent?  Could spouses be added and dropped like a digital subscription? 

What if the online ethos was adopted offline and spouses who did live together were added and dropped at will?  Is that crazy?  Is that marriage?

Here is a letter I recently sent to the Philadelphia Inquirer.  It was unpublished, of course.

To the editor,

A recent letter claimed “anyone who is scientifically literate knows that climate-gate is a nonscandal”.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, many active scientists (climate and otherwise) have recognized this is a serious problem that undermines trust in the process of science. 

Hiding data, manipulating results, destruction of evidence, rigging the peer process, suppressing unsupportive papers, vendettas against dissenting voices and fantasies of violence against someone troublesome are scandals in any area of endeavor.  But they are deadly to the integrity of something that claims superior insight because of an evidence-based, peer-reviewed process.

At some point many scientists became activists.  Their funding and clout increased as a result but the methods to guarantee their integrity never grew in a way commensurate with the change in their mindset.  It is, indeed, a broader scandal that so many people have blindly trusted these scientists who have provided no transparency while having a great deal personally at stake in the debate.

The CRU hacking case just keeps getting better.  Here is a detailed discussion of how the IPCC’s chart for 20th century temperatures in Australia completely contradicts the raw data.  I’ll stop short of calling it fraud because that requires knowledge of motivations. 

But I think the time has come for us to demand that all climate researchers open their raw data and source code to independent auditors.  I’m not saying there is necessarily deliberate fraud.  But at a minimum there is incompetent use of statistical manipulations.

Where is the legacy media?  Busy watching their credibility shrivel.

As I was writing the previous post on the craptastic legacy media, I realized there’s a remarkable parallel with the unfolding CRU hacked email scandal.  When true believers (leftwing journalists in one case vs climate researchers in the other) control the input (reporting vs climate data) and the “unbiased” check on quality (editors vs peer reviewers), the output is the same: a stinking heap of crap that’s passed off as undeniable truth.

No wonder the legacy media is ignoring the CRU story.

The legacy media continues to not quite grasp the fact that they no longer have a monopoly on information.  Nicholas Kristof and the NY Times provide us with another shining example.  It’s an over the top story about a guy who lost his job and his insurance and has a potentially fatal health problem that he can’t get treated for lack of insurance.  Kristof, of course, says it’s “monstrous” for the nation not to pass Obamacare.

Fortunately, Michelle Malkin has a very good bullshit detector.  She decided to actually do research that consisted of more than taking the patients word for it.  It turns out there are a number of problems with the piece.  My favorites are:

1. The guy was already enrolled in Medicaid
2. The guy was already a patient being treated at a regional hospital

Oops.  That kind of makes the whole piece pointless.

What I find so amazing is that guys like Kristof (twice Pulitzered) and the NYT (many Pulitzers) think they can still get away with shoddy, incomplete, fact-mangling journalism (translation: the good old days).  They still don’t get the fact that the internet has made information available to the rest of us that used to only be available to them.  There was a time when Kristof could write a piece like that and no one would be the wiser.  But they just can’t take for granted anymore that someone like Michelle won’t smell the bullshit and do the research.  I wonder sometimes if we need to assign a fact checker to just about every substantial story written in the legacy media.

A letter to the editor in today’s Inquirer complained about a previous article that referred to hunting as a sport.  The author wrote that “a sport involves two equally matched teams on a level playing field”.  Oh yeah?  Clearly she’s never watched a 76ers game.  They’re 5 and 14 as of today.  I’ll bet the deer have a better survival rate.

The letter actually reminded me of a NY Times article from around Thanksgiving on locavores.  Apparently there’s a small but growing movement of these aficionados of locally produced foods who are taking up hunting.  It’s particularly interesting in that locavores are a very yuppie-like crowd who most certainly did not grow up in a gun culture.  I’d love to see the broader gun culture help to nurture this group and help them expand.

In keeping with tradition, a few things for which I am thankful…

*The beautiful and charming Mrs. Manifesto, always my supporter and friend
*That amazing, wobbly, bundle of joy and enthusiasm, Baby Manifesto
*Our loving and merciful God
*A gradual return to good health
*The rekindling of our nations’ resolve despite, even because of, the trying times we face