Category Archives: culture

Perfection

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It can be costly, especially for those not directly involved.

The perfection here is in the attitude of President Barack Obama and his acolytes as demonstrated by their responses to criticism.  Obama is above reproach—perfect—and so dissent must be suppressed and inconvenient law ignored.

Some examples, indicating Obama’s straightforward belief that the only reason people don’t agree with him is because they’re easily manipulated:

Obama’s bellyache, “One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates.  If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it[.]”

(This is especially rich given the way the media have coddled Obama.)

Obama’s whine that House Speaker John Boehner wanted to reach a deal on recent fiscal issues but couldn’t in part because he was vulnerable to attack for compromising Republican principles and working with the president.

(Notice that: compromising principles is an ethical thing to do….)

There are others:

Juan Williams, on a recent Fox News Sunday episode, saying in all seriousness that Obama had to make the unconstitutional appointments because he couldn’t get his appointments into office any other way.

Because when the law is inconvenient, it’s OK to disregard it.  If you’re the President.  How very Nixonian of both Williams and Obama.

And there’s

Obama’s claim that the only reason folks disagree with his gun control attack on the 2nd Amendment is because they want TV ratings and to sell more guns and ammo.

He left out the bitter clingers.

And the Progressives’ race card:

Jimmy Carter said, “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.”

And [emphasis added]

It is wrong to believe Barack Obama shouldn’t be president because he’s black.  That you have other reasons along with those–even ones that rank higher–doesn’t make it excusable.  Likely those other reasons are themselves tied to Obama being black.

Yet for all his perfection, Obama’s failures make a long list:

  • Obamacare and skyrocketing premiums and other costs
  • Dodd-Frank and its suppression of business effort with regulatory costs
  • EPA attempt to regulate water as a pollutant
  • Obama’s unconstitutional appointments to NLRB, CFPB
  • NLRB’s statement that they’ll ignore the court’s ruling, because they consider it wrong
  • failure to produce a budget
  • refusal to curb spending, debt build-up

Obama may eventually suffer the consequences of the failure of his perfection.  But he’s not the only one who will suffer: he’s inflicting those consequences on the entire nation, on all of us.

The 1st Amendment

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…and the Progressives’ war against it.  They insist that only certain speech is permissible, and they are the arbiters of what we will be allowed to say and what we will be allowed to hear.

If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.

President Barack Obama said that to The New Republic in a recent interview.  Plainly, some folks shouldn’t be allowed to talk to their Congressmen, or to influence the vote of that employee.  Nor are news organizations allowed to report on that, unless they’re saying the right sorts of things.

There’s more, as Kirsten Powers noted in the article at the above link.

[T]he White House has kept Fox News off of conference calls dealing with the Benghazi attack, despite Fox News being the only outlet that was regularly reporting on it and despite Fox having top notch foreign policy reporters.

They have left Chris Wallace’s “Fox News Sunday” out of a round of interviews that included CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS for not being part of a “legitimate” news network.

This is an extension of the attack on that inconvenient clause in that hard-to-understand Constitution that has continued since Obama tried to blacklist Fox News from press conferences in 2009.

It’s not just the Party, though.  Media Matters typifies the assault from outside the Party.  In their Media Matters 2012 memo (copies here and here) [emphasis added]:

…during a recent press conference, ABC‘s Jake Tapper asked Robert Gibbs how Fox News—”one of our sister organizations,” as he put it—is different from any other network.  His question indicates the pervasive unwillingness among members of the media to officially kick Fox News to the curb of the press club.  By legitimizing Fox News as a news organization, reporters and commentators are enabling the network to continue conducting a massive conservative political campaign under the guise of journalism.  In the process, they are permitting Fox News to dominate the national discussion by spreading smears and lies—smears and lies that become conventional wisdom.  They are also defending an organization that has nothing but contempt for journalistic standards—hence undermining their own profession and the public interest at the same time.

Disagreement can only be dishonest, and so the disagree-ers must be prevented from speaking.  Thus, Media Matters proposes “The Solution:”

…we must launch new initiatives specifically designed to push back against Fox News’ partisan tactics.

Media Matters even complains about the reach of the 1st Amendment:

Conservatives are unwilling to yield even to minimal restrictions placed upon the press and speech by our laws….

Because it’s just plain wrong to insist on individual liberty.  When that’s inconvenient to a point of view.  And not a single LiberalProgressive, as Powers notes, is sufficiently embarrassed by these activities to protest.  It isn’t Progressives who favor, in Powers’ words, “cherishing dissent and an inviolable right to freedom of expression.

This is Progressive freedom.

Self Defense and the Police

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The following is part of a larger beef between a sheriff and a mayor, and between a sheriff’s department and a state government, but the principle he espouses is a sound one, for all that.

In the aftermath of personnel cutbacks driven at least in part by recent changes in state law effected by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) and the Republican led state house, and against the backdrop of a personal animus felt toward him by the city of Milwaukee’s Mayor, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr has some advice for those he’s sworn to serve and protect.

I need you in the game.
…
With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option.  You can beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back.
…
Consider taking a certified safety course in handling a firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there.
…
You have a duty to protect yourself and your family.  We’re partners now.

The only disagreement I have with him is in that last bit: “We’re partners now.”  In fact, we’ve always been partners with our sheriffs and police, and with all of our first responders.  The duty of which he speaks is older than the concept of government—it’s at the foundation of any social compact: we come together to form a government to help us satisfy our duty of protection.  But that duty to do so existed prior in order to be the motive.

This cop is taking a lot of heat, all of it unfairly because he’s simply stating a truth.

When the bad man comes, and seconds count, the police will be only minutes away.
-Neptunus Lex

The Brits Get It

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Or some of them do.  We need to figure it out, also.  Here’s another bit from The Telegraph; this lady was unimpressed with President Barack Obama’s “oration.”

There were some quite surreal moments when Mr Obama seemed to be channelling Gordon Brown at his most self-congratulatory.  Specifically rejecting the notion that America “must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future” (that is, we can afford to support both the old and the young), he said: “For we… understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.” Ah, yes—remember that refrain: we will govern for the many, not the few?  Which turned out to be a euphemism for high tax, high-spend economics, galloping entitlements and an epidemic of welfare dependency?  Warning to America: it didn’t work out.

And

Mr Obama made no attempt to explain how support at both these ends of the age range was going to be afforded.  Or what effect his insistence that the most expensive entitlement programmes—social security, Medicare and Medicaid—were untouchable would have on the US deficit.  Hard economic fact could be countered by ideological passion: “[These entitlements] do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us.”  Well, maybe.  But they have to be paid for with hard cash—by somebody.

And

The core message was pounded home relentlessly: American government is now in the redistribution and welfare-provision business, and this is not (contrary to appearances) at variance with the founding fathers’ conception of a nation that is inherently opposed to state interference and domination over the individual.

Then she offered an alternative from a roughly contemporaneous oration by the British Prime Minister, David Cameron.

Then we got Mr Cameron’s offering, which, by comparison with the Obama message, seemed to be coming from a future world: from those who had learnt the lesson of overly powerful centralised political institutions that have spent money like there was no tomorrow on programmes that were steeped in benign rhetoric about “social fairness”.

And

Mr Cameron had a dream of the European Union as an open, flexible, freely diverse fellowship of nation states, each of them democratically accountable to its own electorate, and all of them able to cooperate in whatever ways suited their individual needs at any given time.

Talk about role reversal.

On Being More Like Europe

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Or at least more like British Europe.  Here is one area in which we could learn and from which we would profit by copying.

The Telegraph had this last weekend.  From their brief article about Great Britain’s Immigration Exam, their citizenship test, it’s clear that the Brits are going back to expecting prospective citizens to know what it is that is British culture and going away from politically correct froo-froo.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has torn up the 2007 edition’s section on New Labour, swept away guides to immigrants’ rights and put a new focus on what it means to be British.

The Life in the UK handbook, described by the Home Office as “essential reading” for migrants sitting the new test from March, will focus on British values, culture and history, as well as the success of Olympic heroes at London 2012.

Out go politically correct sections on how to complain about being arrested and “mundane information about water meters”, and in come “the events and people who have helped make Britain a great place to live”, ministers said.

Our schools would do well to make this adjustment, also.  (Take the sample test, too.  It’s fun.)