Tag Archives: ethics

Progressive Civility

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In the run-up to the Wisconsin recall election, we got the Democrats’ attempt to smear Governor Walker with a carefully timed, just before the voting, dishonest claim of having fathered a child out of wedlock as a college kid.  We also got the Progressives’ preview of one of their core beliefs, that of a surveillance state, with a mailer they sent to all potential voters in the state:

We’re sending this mailing to you and your neighbors to publicise who does and does not vote.

… The chart shows the names of some of your neighbors, showing which have voted in the past.

After the June 5th election, public records will tell everyone who voted and who didn’t.

Ann Althouse has posted an image of the letter she received.  As Dr Althouse says, “This…is truly despicable.”

Now, post-election, Walker is the target—literally—of Democrats’ death threats.  Here are some of the…saner…threats.  And lest a reader thinks these are just angered BS, the Milwaukee Police Department and the Wisconsin Department of Justice think they’re real enough to investigate.

I wanna kill scott walker so fucking baddd!!!!! & the racist dumb assholes that voted for him

Please somebody kill Scott Walker.—

Scott walker will die within the next week ive already payed for the hit—

Oh Yeah, Somebody Gone Shoot Scott Walker White Ass.—

Scott Walker needs to die—

NBS I Know What School Scott Walker Son Go To—

As backdrop, we have this from last February by Congressman Michael Capuano (D, MA) about the Wisconsin recall election:

Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary.

It’s been interesting to see the denunciation by the Democratic Party leadership and by the NLMSM of these Progressive examples of civil discourse.

Here they are from President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, David Axelrod, Jim Messina, Debbie Wasserman Schulz, and Valerie Jarrett:

…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8E_zMLCRNg

Here they are from the NYT, LAT, WaPo, CNN, and MSNBC:

MSNBC had this on the 6th, the day after the elections and the day the threats began appearing.  And WaPo had this piece on the 6th, which though is more along the lines of mine.  Since then, it’s been

…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g04aCp3ej-I

for all of them.

Pair this with the Democrats’ atrocious attacks on the very fabric of our democracy 15 months ago when they ran from the state of Wisconsin (and Indiana) in order to block the democratically elected government from being able to function at all, solely because those Democrats were unable to impose their views on the majority.

The Progressives’ view of democracy and of individual liberty is not something we can afford four more years of.  Or ever again.

Right to Vote and DoJ

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The Federal Department of Justice has written a letter to letter to Florida’s Secretary of State, Ken Detzner, ordering him to stop trying to purge the Florida voter rolls of ineligible “voters.”  Interestingly, the order is predicated on technical, procedural grounds: five counties in Florida still are subject to the National Voting Rights Act of 1964, and Detzner didn’t say, “Mother, may I?” to DoJ before attempting the purge.

Never mind that an early inspection of the state’s rolls turned up as many as 182,000 folks registered to vote who may not be US citizens.  Never mind that, as the spokesman for the Florida Department of State, Chris Cate, said,

Bottom line is we are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot[.]

Never mind that the state has had in place for months a request to the Department of Homeland Security to match the state’s driver’s license records with the DHS’ databases to facilitate the assessment of citizenship and thereby of voting eligibility.  The DHS has been unresponsive.

This move comes on the heels of Attorney General Eric Holder’s racist speech which he gave to the Council of Black Churches last Wednesday concerning voter eligibility.  The Wall Street Journal had some choice words concerning those racist words from our AG; I won’t go into that here.

But such attacks, together with Advancement Project Co-director, Penda Hair’s ironic remark, which included this

We commend the attorney general of the United States Eric Holder for ensuring that the right to vote, the fundamental pillar of our democracy is protected for all American citizens

make the larger point here.  In the name of protecting the sanctity of an American voter’s ballot, Progressives are actively attacking it.  They pretend not to see that if ineligibles aren’t prevented from voting, the votes of honest Americans are diluted or outright cancelled by ineligible, false, votes.

Al Franken (D, MN), for instance, was elected to the US Senate in 2008 by 312 votes out of 2.9 million votes cast.  In 2004, President George Bush carried Florida by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast.  Identifying ineligible voters and getting them off the rolls matters.

I have to ask: what’s the Progressives’ real objection to an honest voter roll?

Income Inequalities

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“Income inequality is a strange obsession, at least to the extent the obsessives focus their policy responses on trying to adjust the condition of the top 1% rather than improving the opportunities of everyone else.”
–Holman Jenkins, The Wall Street Journal

As Freud put it, “Everyone must be the same and have the same.  Social justice means we deny ourselves many things so that others may have to do without them as well.”

Or we could follow an alternative.  We could worry less about equality of outcomes and more about equality of opportunity, as our Founders suggested.  Since we don’t all have an equal endowment of ability or work ethic, and more importantly, we don’t all have the same goals for our lives, equal outcomes—equal incomes, equal wealth—is necessarily impossible.

But those equal opportunities, and the ability of everyone to satisfy his own potential in the manner and to the extent each sees fit, is the stuff of rapidly increasing wealth for all of us—not only of the pecuniary variety, but of the moral, as well.

Expanding Government Dependency

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Who benefits from government benefits?

This is what we have today:

  • 49.1% of the American population lives in a household where at least one member received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2011.  This is an increase of two-thirds since the end of the Reagan era:
  • 45 million people in 2011 received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a 70% increase from 2007 according to a CBO report.  That report also  said that the number of people receiving the benefits, the food stamps, would continue growing until 2014 and would not, in the foreseeable future, revert to anything like the Clinton/Bush era lows.
  • The median number of weeks before someone unemployed leaves the labor force is 21.4.  That’s about five months—a long time.  But then it seems to be final.  Out of work too long, and employers view that person as damaged goods.  Out of work too long, and skills are eroded, and employers are less interested.  That person needs more government benefit payout.

Again, I ask: who benefits from this?  The answer is: follow the money to the source.

Memorial Day Celebrations

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Enjoy this holiday.  Take the time to kick back, relax from the hard work you’ve been doing, and just goof off for a bit.

While you’re doing that, though, do something else, also.  Invite that veteran in your neighborhood, who came back from his service wounded or maimed, and his or her family, to your celebration.  Invite the family in your neighborhood whose veteran was killed in his or her service to your celebration.  They need the break and the relaxation and the support, also.  And they’ve earned your thanks.

Mt Soledad Memorial

Mojave Memorial Cross