Category Archives: culture

Arrogance of the Left

Posted on by
Reply

This is made blatantly, nakedly clear by New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio.  In his State of the City speech last week, he laid bare the premier goal of the Progressive-Democratic Party, even above doing away with ICE and with our borders generally.  He said—and he meant every word of it:

Here’s the truth. Brothers and sisters, there’s plenty of money in the world. There’s plenty of money in this city. It’s just in the wrong hands.

His first sister is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) who wants to raise taxes on those wrong hands to 70%—or more; she, like her fellow Party apparatchiks, have articulated no limiting principle to such raisings, they’ve carefully declined to say how much is one’s “fair share.”

After that, de Blasio’s brothers and sisters of the Party want free education and free, single-payer medical care for all, including illegal aliens (remember their open border demand).

How to pay for all of this Party largesse?  The first goal: by taking all that money that’s in the wrong hands and giving to the correct, deserving holders of the money.

Mind you, who are the correct holders, who are the deserving holders, will be defined by those members of the Progressive-Democratic Party.  They’re the ones who Know Better than those with the money, those who’ve earned the money, how that money should be used.

It isn’t their money, anyway.  It’s the Party’s money.  Party generously will let us have some of it for a period of time, though.

What? Me Compromise?

Posted on by
Reply

In a Wall Street Journal piece Sunday about the length of the current partial government shutdown—they’re touting is (as are most of the NLMSM) as the longest on record as though a partial closure is somehow comparable to a complete closure—Kristina Peterson, Michael Bender, and Rebecca Ballhaus closed with a description of a bill being developed by Senators Rob Portman (R, OH) and Jerry Moran (R, KS) that would pair DACA recipient legal status with funding for border security, which would include a wall.

However.

Democrats are unlikely to view the bill as a fair trade, as it swaps $25 billion in border security for legal status—and not a path to citizenship—for the young immigrants….

This would be just another example of the Progressive-Democrats’ absolute refusal to negotiate. Such a bill would move the DACA matter significantly in their direction, with nothing at all to prevent them from coming back later with a bill to move “legal status” to “path to citizenship”—the Reagan move of taking half a loaf today and coming back tomorrow for the other half.

The Progressive-Democrats only know “No,” however.

For Whom Do They Work?

Posted on by
Reply

Some Progressive-Democrats in the House are beginning to wonder about their Party’s strategy for dealing with the border wall funding question, immigration reform generally, and, proximately, the current partial government shutdown.  For instance, here’s Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin (D, MI):

There’s a number of us on the Democratic side who are quite concerned that we’re not working on negotiated positions and taking the bull by the horns and trying to think about what it would look like[.]

Some are just irrational, like Harley Rouda (D, CA):

Next he’ll want a moat with alligators[.]

Reasonable or foolish, though, Progressive-Democrats must decide—sooner is better—whether they work for their constituents or for their Party leadership.

Religious Bigotry?

Posted on by
Reply

North Dakota wants to let its high schools teach a Bible studies class, and the ACLU (among others) has gotten its institutional panties in a twist over it. State Congressman Aaron McWilliams (R) has a bill moving through the State’s legislature that would achieve that.  He said

The intention of this bill is to provide an option to schools to teach a class on the bible from a historical perspective.  My position is that no religious text should be excluded from being taught as it relates to the historical or philosophical influences in our history or on our society today.

The class would be an elective amounting to 1/6 of the total social studies requirement for graduating from a North Dakota high school.

The ACLU thinks that teaching a religious document even from a historical or philosophical perspective, even when it’s not a required course, is somehow the State establishing or supporting a particular religion.  That plainly isn’t the case; even the august personages of the ACLU know that—or American history wasn’t a safe space for them and they were triggered to unconsciousness by their grade school lessons and their junior high civics lessons.

Heather Smith, Executive Director of the North Dakota chapter of the ACLU does have a point, though.  Sort of.

A school could teach comparative religious classes, or you could talk about the Bible’s relationship to literature, art, or music[.]

But not its relationship with our history or culture, or with western civilization’s history or culture generally?  Not its relationship with our national philosophy, such as it is, or with philosophy generally?  Apparently, Smith was triggered by her high school logic class, too.

On the other hand, the comparative religion concern has some validity.  Perhaps McWilliams’ bill could include an option to teach an additional elective course, also worth 1/6 of the total social studies requirement, that teaches the Torah and the Talmud “from a historical perspective.”  After all, we are a Judeo-Christian nation, with a staunch Judeo-Christian history and underpinning.

Such a broadened perspective on who we are, how we began, and how we came to be where we are now—including these incessant attacks on our Christianity and Judaism—would strengthen our American culture, and it might inform even the members of the ACLU.

Side tidbit: the first Georgian patriot to die in combat in our Revolutionary War was a Jew.

A “Caravan” Participant’s Comment

Posted on by
Reply

A Fox News piece centered on the refusal of some “caravan” participants’ refusal to leave a closed Tijuana warehouse and go to a better shelter facility—but a few miles farther away from our border—closed with this comment from 40-yr-old Honduran Norma Perez, who traveled with her 5-yr-old child.  She wants President Donald Trump to

personally go to Honduras so he can see with his own eyes that we simply can’t go back, that there are no jobs, no companies, nothing.

Never mind that all the foreign aid we’ve been sending to Honduras to help with precisely those conditions has been going into the pockets of Honduran authorities; very little of it has made it to folks like Perez.  Since she’s never seen any of the money or any of the economic benefits from the money, there’s no reason she would know of it in the first place.

However, it is well-known that the Mexican government has offered all of the “caravan” participants asylum and work permits.  Perhaps Perez should personally go to those Mexican authorities and accept the asylum and work permit offers.  And stop holding her child at risk.