Tag Archives: morality

Law and Order Candidates

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Call up into your memories, no matter the pain, of the rioting, looting, arson, murders all last summer in Progressive-Democrat-run jurisdictions: Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, New York City, Atlanta, and on and on.

Recall the move by those same Progressive-Democrats, and increasingly by their colleagues in other jurisdictions, to defund the police, to reduce the number of police on the payroll, to “reimagine” policing. And the ensuing rise in murders in those cities.

Especially pertinent to that last, is the newly elected St Louis Mayor, Tishaura Jones (D), coming into office with an ongoing rise in homicides to the highest rate in 50 years. Her answer to that rise?

[D]efund the city’s police budget by $4 million and to eliminate nearly 100 vacant officer positions.

Now we get the Progressive-Democrat Left making clear that they want even more of this. Here’s Ezra Klein, Left journalist, making that desire explicit:

Klein posted several examples of Democrats facing political hurdles over an increase in crime and then concluded the backlash could help Trump win back the Oval Office in 2024, should he run again.
“The politics of this could really tip, and not just in cities—if these numbers keep getting worse, then as with Nixon and Reagan in the ’70s and ’80s, it could bring ‘law and order’ conservatives (including Trump) back to power in 2024[.]”

Klein tried to disguise his—the Left’s—fear of law and order as a fear of the return of authoritarianism and outright racism. He’s misleading with that, given that it’s the Progressive-Democrats who ruled by a “phone and a pen,” and today by unilateral, don’t want to negotiate with Republicans, Party fiat.

Klein also ignored, in his pious disguise, the openly racist policies of the Left, from their selection criteria for school admission that use race (and gender), their critical race “theory,” their identity politics.

Klein also ignored, particularly regarding policing, the murders of black police officers by Party’s supporters antifa and BLM during those riots and lootings, and the black-on-black homicide rates, the latter which don’t have the cachet of race that the Left so desperately need for their narrative.

Klein also carefully ignored Party icons like Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D, CA) actively inciting riot and trying to intimidate the jury in the Chauvin murder trial before the jury was sequestered.

Racism and authoritarianism, indeed.

Thus, the left’s fear: we’ll be faced with law and order candidates in 2022 and 2024.

The horror.

Whose Money Is It?

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That’s the central question we should be asking ourselves—and we should be electing our government representatives on the basis of the answer.

For example: the Progressive-Democrats in the Maine State legislature are looking to add a 3% income tax “surcharge” on any Maine citizen who makes $200,000 or more per year. The rationalization for this is provided by Progressive-Democrat State Senator Ben Chipman:

If someone is making $1 million a year, they can afford to pay a higher tax rate than somebody who is making $20,000 a year[.]

If they can afford it, they’re somehow obligated to pay it. That imagined obligation can only flow from the Progressive-Democrats’ view that the money we earn isn’t our money, it’s Government’s money, and Government—the men and women in Government—will let us keep what they deem sufficient to our needs.

After all, as a prominent Progressive-Democrat almost said, a short while ago,

If you’ve got [an income], you didn’t [earn] that. Somebody else made that happen.

As that man also said,

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me, because they want to give something back.

What the Progressive-Democrat chose to misconstrue, though—what Progressive-Democrats as a group choose to misconstrue—is that “give back” means “Government take back.”

Because Government, according to Progressive-Democrats, isn’t really taking back; Government is keeping and giving back a portion of what it doesn’t believe is ours to begin with.

Someone who is wealthier than me is somehow obligated to pay more than me for the same good, service, benefit I’m getting? I pay $X for a car or a meal out but my neighbor, who has a higher income than me, should have to pay $X++ for that same car or meal out? Just because he can afford to pay $X++?

How does that work, exactly? Where is the morality in that? Where is the equality in that? Where is the Progressive-Democrats’ precious equity in that?

From Luke 12:48 (King James Version):

For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

Absolutely. Hence the desire of those who want to give something back.

But that’s the thing. The obligation is levied by God on us as individuals, not by Government on us as a collection of citizens, and it’s an obligation for each of us to give according to our chosen methods and beneficiaries (and by extension, to choose wisely), not an authorization for Government to take according to Government men’s choices (and by extension, to be subject to their arbitrariness).

Tim Tebow and Colin Kaepernick

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Or, in the eyes of some sports commentators, it’s Tim Tebow vs Colin Kaepernick. Because white privilege.

I don’t ordinarily comment on sports in this blog, but this item isn’t about sports. It’s about respect and patriotism.

The proximate subject and source of commentators’—the personage at the link isn’t alone—manufactured angst is that, after a number of years, Tim Tebow has signed with an NFL football team to try to earn a slot on the roster for the coming season, while Colin Kaepernick has sat out for a similar number of years, unable to get a contract.

However.

When Tebow takes a knee, it’s to give thanks for a successful play and a successful game. And to give thanks even after an unsuccessful game.

Kaepernick, on the other hand, takes knees in utter, deliberate disrespect for our national anthem, our national flag, and in deep insult to all the generations of American soldiers who’ve fought, been killed, been maimed fighting for everything our anthem and our flag symbolize—including Kaepernick’s right to be an insulting ass.

And Kaepernick does this while oh so piously insisting that he’s protesting social injustice and police brutality, instead of going into the neighborhoods and working, concretely, for more and better opportunities for the locals and working with the police to improve their neighborhood performance.

Oh, and Kaepernick did get a specially arranged tryout—and walked away from it at the last minute over another of his made-up beefs.

Support for Hamas

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Iran has been exposed, once again, as supporting terrorism, this time straight from the horse’s mouth.

[Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau,] Ismail Haniyeh…thanked “the Islamic Republic of Iran; who did not hold back with money, weapons, and technical support.”

Nor does the support for Hamas come solely from Iran.

In his speech Friday at the start of his joint press conference with Republic of Korea President Moon Jae-in, President Joe Biden (D) spoke at length—bragged—about how he’d been in frequent contact with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and about how several levels of his administration had been in constant contact with various levels of Netanyahu’s government to pressure the Israelis to “find a way” to end the hostilities with Hamas (and, oh by the way, Egypt helped out), and how he, Biden, had pushed Netanyahu to stop the rioting in Jerusalem. Biden had not a word, not a syllable, of his effort to push the Hamas leadership to stop their terrorist attacks on Israel or to push the Hamas leadership to stop Palestinian rioting in Jerusalem.

That’s coupled with Biden’s anxious push to get Iran to let the US (re)join the Iran nuclear weapons acquisition deal, ultimately to lift sanctions, and to pay billions more American dollars to the terrorism- and terrorist-supporting state, much of which money will go to Hamas.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took note of that latter, also.

America is about to supply Iran with billions of dollars in sanctions relief to continue this. For America’s security, and for that of Israel, this is dangerous.

That’s this administration’s one-sided pressure on Israel, backed up by his Progressive-Democratic Party as Party Congressmen insistently accuse Israel of terrorism and apartheid, with nary a word about Hamas’ terrorism and with no contradiction from Party leadership. Biden has pretty words, to be sure, about undying support for Israel, but that prettiness is belied by his actual behavior.

Whether it’s Biden’s intent or not, the outcome of his behavior is decreased antithesis toward Hamas and Hamas’ terrorism (which much clearly is Party’s intent), and increased the danger to Israel and to us.

Definitions

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The Supreme Court has agreed to take up Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which is about a Mississippi law that substantially bars abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Court’s ruling, whatever they decide, however united or split they decide to be, will substantially impact their 1992 Planned Parenthood v Casey ruling that created a bar against “substantial burdens” on a putative right to abortion and their Roe v Wade ruling of 20 years earlier that manufactured out of the umbras a “right” to abortion.

The Court, though, in keeping with Chief Justice John Roberts’ timidity, is unlikely to decide the matter broadly, possibly even avoiding Constitutional matters altogether. It has taken up, from the several questions in front of the lower courts, only the narrow one of whether all pre-viability bans on elective abortions violate the Constitution.

It occurs to me that even that much hinges on the definition of “viability.”

Here’s the Merriam-Webster Online definition of viability as it pertains to babies:

the capability of a fetus to survive outside the uterus

Roe‘s creation set an implicitly technology-based threshold of the third trimester for its viability standard. There’s nothing in the definition of viability about requiring medical support—or medical intervention of any sort—for the fetus to survive outside the uterus. Medical technology has advanced considerably in the 40 years since Roe; the 15 weeks of Dobbs is within the capability of today’s medical technology.

Texas just enacted a similar ban, but that State’s threshold was set at 6 weeks. That does stretch the bounds of today’s medical technology, but maybe doesn’t exceed them. The Court’s Dobbs ruling will, of course, impact the Texas law if it goes one way. Or, the Court could uphold Dobbs, but say 6 weeks goes too far.

In any event, while the technology basis of Roe‘s threshold is strongly implied, it would be good if the Court in its ruling explicitly stated that the threshold depends on medical technology and can be moved toward conception as medicine increases its ability to sustain fetuses and bring them to term outside the uterus.