American-Manifesto.com In Defense of American Exceptionalism

The Inquirer did a charming hit job on its editorial page today.  I’ll give them a little credit for creativity since this one is a visual trick.  Here’s a screenshot and a link to the editorial.

That’s a picture of Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett next to a headline that says “Enabling prostitution”.  The editorial is about prostitution on Craigslist and a variety of efforts to stop it.  Corbett is, in fact, barely in the editorial at all.  Yet there’s his mug next to the headline.

I’ll bet you’d never guess he’s a Republican running for governor.  I’m sure you’re surprised to hear that.

I’m glad to have such a respectable publication in this town.  They have the highest standards at the Inquirer.  They are above dirty tricks and hit jobs.  That’s why I’m sure the editors don’t beat their wives or kick their dogs.

I can across this in the explanatory comments of the Second Restatement of Torts Law.  Restatements are documents produced by the American Legal Institute to describe the current state of laws in certain areas.  This comment is in an area on the subject of outrageous conduct relating to the intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The rough edges of our society are still in need of a good deal of filing down, and in the meantime plaintiffs must necessarily be expected and required to be hardened to a certain amount of rough language, and to occasional acts that are definitely inconsiderate and unkind.

And why, exactly, do lawyers feel entitled to file down the rough edges of society?  Freedom requires rough edges.  Anything less is a managed society not a free society.

You know.  The one Obama likes so much.

Would it be okay for the Sons of Confederate America to build a facility next to where Martin Luther King was assassinated?

Would it be okay for the Mormons to build a church near where Matthew Shepherd was murdered?

Would it be okay for the Klan to sponsor the upkeep of the road where James Byrd was murdered?

Would it be okay for Operation Rescue to build a information center near where Barnett Slepian was murdered?

I have been quite bad about posting lately.  This is because I am preparing for a rather significant undertaking.

On Monday I begin law school.  I suspect my posting will be sporadic as a result however I will certainly try to do so whenever I can.

I submitted this letter to the editor a couple weeks ago.  It was not published and unfortunately I did not save a link for the original letter.

A letter in today’s paper derided Sen. Sessions’ description of Elena Kagan as a “dangerous progressive”, saying progressivism is by definition forward-moving.  I disagree.  There is little forward-thinking about the poorly named progressive movement.

Our ancestors took centuries to reestablish the primary position of the individual in society.  Those efforts reached a high point in the writing of our constitution with its underlying philosophy of limited, defined government powers that are carved out of the rights of the people.

From the beginning progressives have been trying to reverse this.  They seemingly seek to turn us into wards of the state where we’re free only to choose from a list of options selected for us by the state.  Their philosophy is that government power is the presumed default out of which a few individual rights are carved.

It is a gigantic step backwards in time to pre-enlightenment philosophy.  One might even say the progressive movement would be better named the regressive movement.

Did you ever get the feeling the legacy media coordinates the coverage (and non-coverage)?  Did you ever sense they weren’t very neutral but were actively taking sides?  Did you ever feel like they were making things up that were patently untrue?  Or that they were attacking certain people for having politically incorrect views?

Well, you were right.  The Daily Caller has a piece with more information on the Journolist scandal.  You could be forgiven for not knowing what that is since it has been largely ignored.  Anyway, the piece details secret coordination of stories, including targeting conservatives for media attacks.

One reporter secretly wrote:

What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.

This ought to be a huge scandal.  It confirms much of what conservatives have complained about with the media for years.  Cue the chirping crickets.

The Inquirer had a piece today that was a pretty obvious attempt to paint the Tea Parties as being similar to neo-nazis:  The Tea Partiers are against illegal immigration.  There is a neo-nazi group patrolling the border region (like the Minutemen).  So, the Tea Partiers must actually be nazis or at least nazi sympathizers.  The article left out the Tea Party angle but, come on, we’re not that stupid.

Just like with the NAACP’s the “Tea Parties are racist” nonsense, there’s no evidence required.  The progressives know what’s in your heart.  ”Evidence?  We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence, ” seems to be their attitude.

Anyway, the neo-nazi group wasn’t named in the article but is apparently somehow associated with the National Socialist Movement.  I was a bit curious about it so I looked them up.  Conveniently their website has something called the “25 Points of American National Socialism” that details their core platform.

Now, let me make a simple point that the left doesn’t want to admit: hate is not a unique phenomenon of the right.  Animosity towards “the other” is as far as I can tell a universal human trait.  We are, after all, a tribal species.  It’s my nation versus your nation, your religion versus my religion, your politics versus my politics, my city versus your suburbs, my neighborhood versus your neighborhood, my gang versus your gang.

Why do I mention this?  Because being a hate group (which they certainly are) is not sufficient to make them right wing.  Animosity towards others exists just as much on the left as the right.

So, take a closer look at the NSM’s 25 Points and scratch off the “hate” items since they are not indicative of a right or left leaning group.  What are you left with?  Things like these:

• Opposition to free trade, the WTO and the IMF
• Opposition to NATO
• A demand that “that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens”
• A demand to ban the charging of interest
• A demand to nationalize all corporations
• A demand for profit sharing by corporations
• A demand for a living wage
• A demand that the “treasonable system of health care be completely revolutionized.”  [Dod says: that's not Obamacare they're referring to]
• A demand to communalize big department stores [Dod says: I wonder how many NSM members shop at WalMart]

The list goes on.

How, exactly, are these guys right wing?  If you follow the evidence and not the rote responses, they aren’t, of course.  It’s totally dishonest to pretend otherwise.  The neo-nazis, just like the original nazis, are in fact, left-wingers and socialists.  They belong in the Democratic Party more than the Tea Parties.

What’s the likelihood of that story accidentally leaking out?

George Steinbrenner died today of a heart attack.  It’s difficult to envision baseball without Steinbrenner.  But I guess it would be something like:

• Soccer without the diving prima donnas or
• The Tour de France without the drug addicts or
• The NBA without the thugs or
• The NFL without a Brett Favre soap opera or
• The Olympics without a judging scandal

It’s just not the same.

I had a letter to the editor published in the Inquirer in response to their anti-McDonald editorial.  It’s not the most exciting piece of writing but it works.

When Rep. Kanjorski (D-PA) made his recent comments about how a program he was supporting wasn’t for “minorities” or “defectives”, my reaction was “queue the silence”.  Sure enough, there’s been a whole lot of nothing made of it.

So, I’m just going to make a simple observation.  Isn’t it amazing how you can say some remarkably offensive things and if you have a D after your name, it’s treated as an aberration?

For example, if you’re a former Klansman, you can drop the N-word.  Or, you could brag about your state being a slave state, make a crack about Indian accents at 7-11s or talk about your future boss as being clean and articulate, and still end up as Vice President.  You could also refer to a certain future President as being “light skinned” and lacking “a negro dialect” and still be the Senate Majority Leader.  You could even end up on the Supreme Court after saying that hispanic woman would read better judicial decisions because she’s a hispanic woman.

On the other hand if you are wearing with the scarlet letter, R, and you said anything similar you’d be toast.  And then we’d be reading about how all Republicans are knuckle-dragging racists.

But the legacy media’s honest, on the case and trustworthy, of course.  Riiiiight.

You know conservatives are landing punches when the left starts trotting out the “conservatives are anti-intellectual” argument.  The ever-predictable EJ Dionne pulled this one off the shelf today.

It’s not that we’re against the systematic study of ideas.  We’re all for it.  But for too many intellectuals “systematic study” involves “systematically ignoring” anyone to the right of Bill Clinton.  Do you think Karl Marx or Milton Friedman is more widely read on college campuses?

I think what a lot of us really dislike is the preening, self-important lefties who think disagreeing with them is a character flaw and who just know how much smarter they are than the rest of us.  Personally, I like to just let them discredit themselves.  It’s generally easy.  Just let them talk and then use their own words against them when the real world proves them wrong.

A few examples:

• The intellectuals told us Tea Partiers are uneducated racists.
• The intellectuals told us the scientific debate on global warming was over.
• The intellectuals told us if you like your insurance, you can keep it under Obamacare.
• The intellectuals told us Obamacare would cost under $1 billion.
• The intellectuals told us Obama’s diplomatic strategy will mend relations with allies and convince rogue regimes to behave.

In each case conservatives made fact-based arguments and were derided and ridiculed for their trouble by the brilliant intellectuals.  And in each case conservatives have been proven right.  Sorry, who’s anti-intellectual?

Mrs. Newbie Shooter once told me a story about a crusty old teacher who said she new the leftists had won when economics was pulled from the curriculum in New York.  I bring this up because the Wall Street Journal had a great piece today quantifying just how poorly lefties understand economics.

The summary is this: the more conservative you are, the better you scored on their assessment.  The more lefty you are, the worse you did.  It’s not a small margin of victory, either.

This is quite consistent with my experiences with lefties.  I have been in many arguments (friendly and otherwise) with lefties who dismiss very basic economic concepts as lies and pass off outright conspiracy theories as solid facts.

The article was limited to economics but the problem is far from limited to that.  How many times do we find ourselves having to argue with people who think facts are negotiable and unsupported opinions (and volume) should be enough to silence the opposition?  Epistemic closure anyone?

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig has refused to overturn the shockingly bad call that robbed Armando Galarrago of a perfect game.  As much as I hate to say it, Selig got it right.  Not for any of the reasons I’ve heard on sports radio, like human error is part of the game.

Nope.  It was the right call because it would rob the world of this.  That, folks, is good sportsmanship.

Donna Brazile has a thoroughly inane piece over at CNN where she says the BP oil spill fiasco proves we need big government.

Of course, she never actually says what authority or resource the government lacked that would either have prevented the mile-deep blown well or allowed it to react better.  Is it her contention that the oil industry is lightly regulated?  She certainly doesn’t mention that Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has been asking, begging, pleading for authorization from the Feds that would allow his state to create sand barriers to prevent oil from destroying the coast.

She says:

What the right fails to acknowledge is that big business, by its nature, is a bully.

Well, no, not really.  Business, by its nature, is competitive and pursues what is in its best interest but that’s not bullying.  Fundamentally being a bully in a competitive market is likely to be bad for business.  When you boil it down, business is a popularity contest.  To survive, you must be popular in your pricing, quality or some other measurement that matters to customers.

Is that true of government?  Nope.  Pretty much all laws and regulations (to say nothing of taxes) are coercive.  Note I did not say they were illegitimate.  But just try to violate some petty laws and you will get a reminder of government’s coercive power.

I received a letter from a private real estate appraisal company which was apparently hired by NJ to perform tax assessments in our township.  The letter says the company will be measuring and photographing our houses, and that they will be “conducting an interior inspection”.  It further states “it will be necessary…to examine the interior of all buildings”.

I called the county Board of Taxation to find out what level of “necessary” we’re talking about here.  They said we’re not actually required to give them access.  But we can’t appeal the assessment unless we let them inspect our house.

It is more than a little offensive and creepy (and since this is NJ, probably corrupt too) that my tax dollars are being handed to the shareholders of a private company that wants to invade my privacy so it can dictate my property tax bill.  Plus, if you think about the incentives in this arrangement, the company has every reason to set the appraisals high so the state hires them again.  Plus when my taxes go up the county can blame the state, the state can blame the company and the company can say everyone in the area had a comparable assessment.  So basically the taxpayers get to pay for their own screwing.  Business as usual in NJ.

Woody Allen provides us with yet another example of what the left is really about (power and control).  Woody says Obama should “be a dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly.”

That’s surprisingly similar to Thomas Friedman’s dreamy column about the awesomeness of one party rule in China.  The communist party “can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies.”  Oh goody!  Let’s be like China!

The left is always claiming they are for freedom.  Yet they keep coming back for more dictator love.  It’s a bit more than just a little school girl strongman crush.  Walter Lippmann, merely a double Pulitzer-winning cofounder of the New Republic, famously told Franklin Roosevelt “the situation is critical, Franklin. You may have no alternative but to assume dictatorial powers.”  There’s an endless supply of leftists expressing their undying love for Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.  Che Guevara is held up as a hero rather than a mass murderer.  There’s a long list of academics, entertainment types and media figures who had a special kind of love for the Soviet Union.  The examples go on and on and on….

These examples aren’t aberrations.  They are a logical consequence of the progressive regressive ideology.  If you view yourself as smarter and more enlightened than everyone else, and you think you have the right to engineer other people’s lives for them it’s no wonder democracy just seems a bit inconvenient.

I recently returned from the annual Second Amendment Blog Bash at the NRA Annual Meeting.    It was really quite spectacular.  Special thanks goes to Bitter who put together a great set of events.  She also arranged for the bloggers to have media credentials which was a really great bonus.

Thanks also to my hosts Mr., Mrs. and Lassie Newbie Shooter.  I had a splendid time with them.

Among the bloggers I had the opportunity to meet:
Breda
Snarky Bytes
Jay G.
Say Uncle
Joe Huffman

I also had the opportunity to meet and chat with Dave Kopel (thanks Bitter!).  He was truly gracious.

I also caught speeches by:
Chuck Norris
Mike Pence
Ollie North
Sarah Palin

My only regret about the weekend is that I was so busy running from event to event that I wasn’t able to actually blog while there.  Of course, now that I’m back I’m getting caught up everything that backed up while I was gone so there’s no time to make more meaningful comments.

I had a letter published in today’s Inquirer.  Amusingly, Mother Manifesto read the letter in the paper and said “yeah!  right on!” before she noticed it was from her son.

It’s amazing how the people who claim to hear the echo of Jim Crow in the tea parties fail to hear the rumble of Marxism on the left.

With all the demonstrations and political violence in Greece, I’m thinking the Tea Parties must have relocated.  The left, after all, is by definition calm, rational and non-violent and by default political violence only occurs on the right.  Got that?

Just a few short years ago we were told that no-bid contracts going to KBR were proof of corruption and cronyism in the White House.  What a difference a couple years makes!  I guess the current administration must used some of that magic transparency dust it has to make this crony-free.

That or there’s a double standard in the media.  Nah….that couldn’t be it.  They are neutral and unbiased.  Just ask them.