Quantitative Easing Explained by Hello Kitty or Something

Technology is pretty cool sometimes. For those of you who were still confused by the Fed's recent actions regarding quantitative easing and treasury bonds, here are two cute characters who talk their way through it. Via Rachel Lucas, from Hot Air:

Obama Sold Out Allies to Russia for a Bill of Goods?

To be honest, I don't fully understand this whole Wikileaks thing, but I did find this point made by Ace of Spades to be quite interesting:

In May 2009, rumors surfaced that President Obama was planning to leave several European countries exposed to Russian ambition if Russia would agree to help keep nukes out of Iran. Rumors confirmed: according to the Wikileaks cables, Obama proposed a trade -- he would cancel the Polish missile shield if Russia would support sanctions for Iran.

The missile shield was officially canceled in September 2009. Shortly thereafter President Obama met with President Medvedev who came out of the meeting conceding "in some cases, sanctions are inevitable."

A diplomatic victory for Obama? Not remotely. Less than a month later, Russia reversed itself and declared that "[t]hreats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive." After the US and the EU imposed tough penalties on Iran in September of this year, Russia immediately condemned the sanctions regime and started finding ways to undermine it.

Obama sold out our allies to Russia for a bill of goods.

President Barack Obama has done a poor job domestically, but it probably will take several years for our nation to realize how poor of a job he has done with foreign affairs. He brought to the table certain key assumptions about foreign policy that have proven to be very wrong- from believing that he could modify our enemies behavior by sitting down with them without preconditions and talking it out, to backing immediate withdrawal of our troops from key strategic locations, to attempting to try terrorists in civilian courts, to bowing to foreign leaders and hoping that would make them like us better, to pushing memes of foreign policy that haven't been accepted since Obama's time in college studying foreign policy.

This particular deal is yet another example how a black-belt in evil outmaneuvered a white-belt in rainbows, and serves to underscore the point that President Obama was not and is not an equal to the task that has been given to him.

For those interested in learning more, check out American Missile Defense: A Guide to the Issues (Contemporary Military, Strategic, and Security Issues).

UPDATE: Reader John recommends that we all read a book by Dinesh D'Souza called The Roots of Obama's Rage which he suggests explains Obama's foreign policy.

Make the Tough Call on Extending Unemployment

Many people in our nation are unemployed as a result of the liberal policies of Obama and Bush, of Democrats and liberal Republicans, who didn't respect private property rights, who created barriers and limits to our freedom and liberty, and who failed to embrace and love human life in all of its glory. These liberal policies manifested itself in high taxes, cumbersome regulations disguised as 'safety' or 'environmental', new entitlements, increased federal control over disaster relief and education and energy production, increases in barriers to production and investment, and the giving away of taxpayer money that the government doesn't even have to those who haven't earned it.

Unemployment is difficult, and it doesn't look like the situation is going to get a whole lot better, especially if Obama and the Democrats don't extend the Bush tax cuts. In order for jobs to be created though, you have to allow people to make free choices, and what is happening right now with unemployment benefits is not right. The government is using money taken from my children and from my grandchildren (ie, debt) to pay people to sit home and not work. It isn't paying these people enough to really pay the bills or buy any new products (so it isn't 'stimulus payments') and these unemployment benefits can only be earned when people aren't working, so they aren't producing anything for our society. At some point, unemployment benefits must be scaled back or cut off, or else unemployment will simply turn into yet another entitlement program, paid for by debt, acting as a drag on our economy and preventing jobs from being created.

Tough choices have to be made at some point by unemployed- to either get retrained, to switch careers, to retire early at a reduced standard of living, to get a job at a retail chain or fast food joint, or to take a risk on themselves and go into business as an entrepreneur. Of course unemployment is a safety net that people do pay into, and thus should be there for those to cushion their fall and buy them time to recover and readjust, but unemployment should not be a long-term solution, or else it will be come a long-term problem.

That being said, our elected leaders (mainly Democrats in Congress and the Presidency but also some Republicans) are unable to make the tough decisions that need to made regarding unemployment. There are increased calls to extend these benefits, indefinitely I imagine, by many in the media. Via RealClearPolitics, Robert Reich (whose book The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism was required reading in two of my University classes) is one of these types of people who are unable to make the hard decisions to get American back to work, and writes in the San Francisco Chronicle "Extend benefits for jobless, not tax cuts for rich":

Yet Republicans and some Blue Dog Democrats in Congress say we can't afford another extension of jobless benefits. The deficit is too big.But wait. These are the same members of Congress who say we should extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Extending the Bush tax cuts for the people at the top would cost more than extending unemployment benefits for struggling families without a breadwinner. These families need the money. The rich don't.

This Reich is the same person who advises Democrats on economic policy, and he thinks that in the zero-sum game of wealth creation, it is better to take money from jobs creators (ie, the wealthy, those people who worked hard for their money, who invest in businesses, who buy products, and who run businesses) and transfer that money (through government bureaucrats, who take a large cut for themselves) to those who are unemployed, so that they can continue to not produce anything and drain wealth from society. Reich is proud of the 'tough decision' that he is making and thinks that it is 'really brave' for politicians to take money by force and give it to someone else for doing nothing (being unemployed) and then take credit for it. Reich ends his editorial by saying:

Quick action is needed. About 800,000 unemployed workers will run out of benefits this week. Two million more will stop receiving benefits by the end of December. Millions more after that. The choice couldn't be clearer.

The choice is clear- make the tough decision Congress and do something different than creating another entitlement program. Perhaps it is some sort of reduced unemployment program, designed to transition people off government dependence to independence and freedom, or perhaps it is some sort of unemployment program that rewards people for getting back to work in any way rather than bribing them to stay in government-induced dependent poverty, but the choice is clear- do not just simply make the easy call and extend benefits, but instead make the tough call and move people closer to freedom while increasing protection of private property.

Mead Surveys World Challenges and Predicts Trouble?

Often overlooked on this blog and others is foreign policy. Those who follow the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan usually only do so as a reflection on US domestic policy. Events in North Korea or Georgia serve only to give citizens of the United States a chance to test responses by political actors. Few really truly appreciate that importance of foreign policy, but it was foreign affairs that dragged our nation into the War on Terror, the Cold War, Vietnam, Korea, WWII, WWI, etc. It was foreign policy that led to crisis in the Balkans, Rwanda, Somalia, etc. It was foreign policy that opened up markets to our products.

Walter Russell Mead never losses sight of foreign policy and its importance and today put together an excellent article that surveys the major challenges facing the world. Here are some highlights from his article Things Fall Apart, via The American Interest:

...There are times when the ideas of the world’s rulers and the institutions through which they govern are adequate to the needs of the era, and there are times–like the present–when they are not. It is not just the Obama administration that seems mentally and even culturally unprepared to understand much less to guide the events now sweeping through the world. In Brussels, Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo and Delhi — to say nothing of Washington – leaders seem equally clueless, equally committed to outmoded, inaccurate approaches to the issues of our time...

Europe

...The European Union is perhaps the most feckless of the world’s power centers. Its currency is built on a foundation of hopeful assumptions that haven’t panned out: for example that countries as disparate in culture and situation as Greece, Germany, Finland, Ireland and Italy can all live happily under a common currency. There has been no shortage of warning signs for the last decade: there was no secret about the housing bubbles in Ireland and Spain. The falsity of Greek statistics was well known, as were the imprudent habits of its governments and the dysfunctional nature of its economic culture....

...Meanwhile, Europe continues its relentless failure to manage urgent challenges at home and abroad. The Europeans are unwilling (and in some cases, unable) to make the investments that would keep NATO strong; the continuing refusal to take Turkey’s application for EU membership seriously further and decisively marginalizes Europe in the Middle East. Wishful thinking cannot substitute for policy when it comes to the question of immigration, and Europe’s deepening demographic crisis ensures not only a future of population decline but of economic decline and welfare state bankruptcy as well...

China

...Europe is not the only place where leaders don’t measure up to the problems. Although China is not as democratically governed as Europe, on the whole the technocrats of Beijing have handled the last twenty years better than the bureaucrats of the EU. Nevertheless Beijing is confronting a confluence of economic, environmental and social challenges that pose problems which even China’s leadership is unlikely to overcome. Arguments about China’s currency undervaluation, while real, miss the main point: Whether China revalues the renminbi or not, its model of rapid growth based on manufactured exports is reaching fundamental limits... Rising raw material prices combined with consumer fatigue in the malls is squeezing the profitability of Chinese industry just as workers are demanding higher wages. Meanwhile, food price inflation in China is triggering mass anxiety and the financial system appears vulnerable to the kind of bubbles that have wreaked such havoc in the West....

China’s problems go beyond economics. Chinese public opinion, smarting from what it sees as two centuries of humiliation, and now elated by (overblown) press reports of China’s rise, wants its government to follow a more assertive and even aggressive foreign policy. Disputes with Japan, Korea and Vietnam over offshore islands stir deep currents of emotion, and public opinion judges the Chinese government by its ability to prevail in these disputes.

...Looming environmental disasters threaten China’s future, with issues of water, air quality and the usual environmental devastation that accompanies communist governance on a massive scale already taking a toll. The consequences of the one-child policy threaten a demographic disaster as an aging Chinese population will place a growing burden on a society not yet affluent enough to support it...

Russia

Emerging from the sordid shadows of the Soviet Union, Russia faced four great challenges. It needed to come to terms with the horrors and failures of the past, recognizing the enormous evil that Russia both suffered and inflicted during the Soviet period... It has failed, and Russian life and culture remain poisoned by the residue of unrepented horrors and uncomprehended crimes.

...Second, Russia needed to build a modern and competent state that in turn could provide the framework for a new economy and a new society... but with every passing year the critical failure of the Putin presidency to build the stable institutions and solidify the rule of law that a genuinely strong Russian state would require becomes more clear — and more costly....

...The third task, of building the kind of capitalist economy that could provide its citizens with dignity and affluence, has also been left undone. There is no one who thinks that the rule of law is secure in Russia, or that investors (foreign or domestic) have any real security for their investments....

...The fourth task, of finding a suitable world role for a new Russia, has also been decisively botched. Russia has no real friends anywhere in the world; there are those it can bully and those (a much greater number) that it can’t...

Mead also touches on Japan ("a pale shadow of its former self"), India (scandals, poverty, political chaos), Israel, Turkey, etc. His conclusion is one that I also echo:

I hope and pray that the generations of today will not know the sick despair of September 1939; if we are to avoid that kind of fate under even uglier circumstances, we need to start demanding more of our leaders — and of ourselves.

For those interested, check out some books by Walter Russell Mead such as Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (Vintage), or Walter Russell Mead.

Evidence Overwhelms Liberalism so They Turn to Conspiracy Theories?

After taking control of Congress in 2006 and winning the Presidency in 2008, the evidence is pouring in that liberal policies create a society that is less, in every sense of the word. Of course we all know that policies that attack natural rights- such as your right to life, your right to make free choices, and your right to work for and keep your own property- will of course lead to society that is less. Being from Michigan, I've watched what happens when Democrats run your state in the liberal way, and it isn't pretty. In 2010, voters went to the polls and soundly rejected Democrats and their liberal agenda, and now Democrats are frantically trying to find some way to explain what happened that doesn't involve them rejecting their entire worldview. There has to be some sort of conspiracy or something to explain why when they run things everything goes badly, or else they might have to admit that they are wrong! Via memeorandum, here is some of Liberals resort to conspiracy theories to explain Obama's problems:

... For some, the solution is to lay the blame on President Obama. He hasn't been liberal enough. He can't communicate. "I cannot recall a president," Robert Kuttner says in the Huffington Post, "who generated so much excitement as a candidate but who turned out to be such a political dud as a chief executive." Obama is "fast becoming more albatross than ally." This is an ideological movement at its most cynical, attempting to throw overboard its once-revered leader to avoid the taint of his problems.

But there is an alternative narrative, developed by those who can't shake their reverence for Obama. If a president of this quality and insight has failed, it must be because his opponents are uniquely evil, coordinated and effective. The problem is not Obama but the ruthless conspiracy against him.

So Matt Yglesias warns the White House to be prepared for "deliberate economic sabotage" from the GOP - as though Chamber of Commerce SWAT teams, no doubt funded by foreigners, are preparing attacks on the electrical grid. Paul Krugman contends that "Republicans want the economy to stay weak as long as there's a Democrat in the White House." Steve Benen explains, "We're talking about a major political party . . . possibly undermining the strength of the country - on purpose, in public, without apology or shame - for no other reason than to give themselves a campaign advantage in 2012." Benen's posting was titled "None Dare Call it Sabotage." ....

When the evidence comes in proving that you are wrong, how you react says a lot about the type of person that you are.

For those interested, check out None Dare Call It Conspiracy or None Dare Call It Treason.

Who is Your Sovereign?

A sovereign is the supreme lawmaking authority within its jurisdiction. When the Pilgrims left England and came to America, in their hearts they didn't recognize as their sovereign lord the King of England, realizing that anyone who could make it wrong to practice your religion could not truly be the real authority over your actions. The Pilgrims didn't recognize themselves as sovereign lords over themselves, able to determine what was right and wrong for themselves, knowing that this sort of selfishness and vanity would lead away from morality and create an absence of law. When the Pilgrims came to America, they didn't recognize 'no one' as sovereign, realizing that someone had to be responsible for their actions and had to provide law over them or else their community would dissolve into anarchy.

When the Pilgrims arrived in America, they knew in their hearts who their sovereign lord was- they knew who was the real lawmaking authority who watched over them and governed their behavior. Even on the shores of a faraway world, far from the British military or the power of the crown, far beyond the reach of any monarch, in a hostile land filled with potentially hostile people, the Pilgrims sat down and gave thanks to their sovereign lord and savior, to the authority which governed their society, to the source of law and rules and power, and to the one person who could possibly guarantee their safety and salvation. The Pilgrims gave thanks to God and his son, Jesus Christ, recognizing him as their sovereign.

Nolan Finley, writing in the Detroit News today, wrote in Editing God out of history distorts truth:

Ask any grade school kid who the Pilgrims were giving thanks to on the first Thanksgiving and I'll lay you three-to-one odds that the answer you get is, "the Indians." Public education is so obsessed with separation and so uncomfortable with discussions of religion that it has sanitized the unbreakable link between faith and America's founding. Now children are taught that the Pilgrims set the first Thanksgiving dinner for the Native Americans who helped keep them alive during their first harsh year in the New World.

This is more than just a small distortion in the name of political correctness. And it's not one of those Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays issues. Whether you're a believer or non-believer, you should be concerned that God is being written out of this nation's history because doing so will limit our understanding of who we are as a people.

Faith was the driving force in the lives of the Pilgrims. Certainly the Indians helped them through the deprivations of that first year. But the settlers believed it was their prayers that accounted for their survival. And despite the starvation and sickness, they saw this new land as a great gift from God, a place where they were free to practice their religion.

The freedom to worship sparked a hunger for other liberties and created a culture that chafed at submission to arbitrary authority.

The words they used matter. When you edit out "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" from the Declaration of Independence, as President Barack Obama has been doing lately, you lose the understanding that the early Americans were able to take the extraordinary risk of breaking way from their king and taking responsibility for their own governance because they believed God was the only sovereign they were answerable to.

It was a remarkable proposition at a time when the entire rest of the world was under the rule of monarchs.

The belief in America's divine destiny and its providential partnership fueled the nation's sea-to-sea expansion and sparked a missionary zeal for spreading freedom. It gave rise to the notion of America's large and unique place in the world and the theory of American exceptionalism that is also now considered quaint in many quarters.

The irony here is that schools have no problem exposing our flaws in the name of getting history right. It almost relishes defrocking our heroes — Jefferson owned slaves, and so did Washington; Jackson practiced genocide; the pioneers ravaged the land. They do so even to the point of challenging the nation's legitimacy.

But when it comes to discussing the very complex and integral ways religion shaped our history, educators lose their nerve. So they invent more convenient scenarios, such as Pilgrims cooking up the idea of a huge Thanksgiving dinner to honor their Indian benefactors, instead of the God whom they ardently believed led them to this New World and controlled every aspect of their fate.

There's both good and bad in the nation's religious history. Americans have done some noble things in the name of serving God, and they've made some tragic mistakes doing the same. It's not proselytizing to explore that relationship between God and country. It's just telling the truth.

Truth is largely being scrubbed from public schools today, especially in the social studies, in ways big and small, and the fact that almost every single one of my students thinks that Thanksgiving was held to give thanks to the Native-Americans and not God is just one more piece of evidence that our nation is losing its history and its soul, and soon when people ask you who your sovereign is, your answer of "The President of the United States" will not be the same as the Pilgrim's reply of "God and Jesus."

Barone's Analysis of the Wave Election of 2010

Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner should be required reading for anyone going into or studying government or politics- his analysis of elections and voting patterns is the best. Here is a shortened version of his most recent analysis of the Wave Election of 2010- be sure to check out the full article here:

Gentry liberals: The tsunami swept from the George Washington Bridge to the Donner Pass, but didn't wash away affluent liberals to the east and west of these geographic markers. Also surviving were the cannibals -- the public employee unions that are threatening to bankrupt states like California and New York, a prospect that doesn't faze the left-leaning gentry.

Jacksonians: In 2008 Barack Obama ran weakly in lands settled by the Scots-Irish from the Appalachians southwest to Texas. In 2010 Democrats did even worse there.

Germano-Scandinavian America: The Upper Midwest, settled largely by German and Scandinavian immigrants, has long been the most pacifist, isolationist and dovish part of the United States. That's one reason Obama did well in caucuses and primaries and in the general election in 2008 in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. He even made it a close race in the Dakotas. But that appeal seems to have vanished this year.

Blacks and Hispanics. Black voters remained almost unanimously Democratic this year. Not so Hispanics, who voted Republican in Florida and only mildly Democratic in Texas, where Republicans captured two Hispanic-majority House seats on the Mexican border.

The Finnish vote: Around 100 years ago Finnish immigrants flocked to the mines and woods of the country around Lake Superior, where the topography and weather must have seemed familiar. They've been a mostly Democratic, sometimes even radical voting bloc ever since. No more, it seems.

Finns, Hispanics, Midwest pacifists/isolationists, and Jacksonians are all falling out of the modern-day Democratic Party. It appears that the election of Obama in 2008 is indeed going to destroy a modern-day party, but it isn't the Republican Party as expected- he is going to rip apart the Democratic Party into those who produce and those who are parasitic.

Steve Brenan Dislikes America, or So I Imagine He Does

Steve Brenan of the Washington Monthly (which I found via memeorandum) begins his blog post 'None Dare Call it Sabotage' this way...

Consider a thought experiment. Imagine you actively disliked the United States, and wanted to deliberately undermine its economy. What kind of positions would you take to do the most damage?

Let's play the game! Close your eyes and take a minute to think about the policies you would put in place if you disliked America- the kind that would really do the most damage. What did you come up with?

In my mind, those positions that you would take to do the most damage to America would be those positions that damaged our long-term economic strength, eroded our historical values, weakened our security, opened up our borders to invasion, piled up debt, moved people from jobs to welfare, and granted other nations power over our domestic and foreign affairs. To be honest, the stimulus bill might have helped provide employment for people in favored union industries, but long-term, it is a policy designed to do considerable damage to America. Obamacare appears nice to some groups and rewards those who don't take care of themselves, but in the long term will be costly for the government to provide and will encourage structural irresponsibility, and includes death panels and money for abortions, both of which I also consider damaging positions for America. Letting pot be legalized, letting illegal immigrants flow into America, suing states that try to close the borders, encouraging gay marriage, doing little to stop the breakdown of the traditional family structure, funneling more money to killing unborn babies, working to remove firearms from law-abiding citizens, stealing money from my children and grandchildren to give higher salaries to government employees today, and letting Iran get nuclear weapons I would also consider positions taken to harm America by those who dislike our nation.

The funny thing is, after much thought (for a liberal), Steve arrived at a much different conclusion than I did. This is what he imagined:

You might start with rejecting the advice of economists and oppose any kind of stimulus investments. You'd also want to cut spending and take money out of the economy, while blocking funds to states and municipalities, forcing them to lay off more workers. You'd no doubt want to cut off stimulative unemployment benefits, and identify the single most effective jobs program of the last two years (the TANF Emergency Fund) so you could kill it.


You might then take steps to stop the Federal Reserve from trying to lower the unemployment rate. You'd also no doubt want to create massive economic uncertainty by vowing to gut the national health care system, promising to re-write the rules overseeing the financial industry, vowing re-write business regulations in general, considering a government shutdown, and even weighing the possibly of sending the United States into default.

You might want to cover your tracks a bit, and say you have an economic plan that would help -- a tax policy that's already been tried -- but you'd do so knowing that such a plan has already proven not to work.

It's almost as if there really is a bizzaro world out there, where up is down, left is right, and wrong is right. Every liberal program that I said was bad (because it was paid for by debt, encouraged unemployment, discouraged private initiative and hard work and responsibility, and was contrary to the historical values on which our nation was founded) he said was good. Every policy item that he pointed as something that would be good for America I saw as being bad for America.

I guess there is only one way to really test this stuff out. Let's let the Republicans run things for a couple years and then compare that to when Democrats ran things.... oh my word, we've done that (2000-2006 vs 2008 to 2010 is the only real comparison, although if you want to compare Michigan's growth from 1990 to 2002 vs 2002 to 2010, that'd be fair too) and based on that evidence, liberals like Steve are wrong and conservatives like me are right. See my posts Graph Comparing Unemployment Rate For GOP and Democrat Senators, Democrats=Higher Poverty, or my lengthy personal statistical analysis post Employment-Population Ratio Drops to 58.5%.

The data don't lie. Steve doesn't like America. I imagined it so.

UPDATE: For more of my thoughts about bizzaro world, please check out my earlier post 100 Years of Trying- Communism Wins in the End Though or my more indepth analysis of bizzaroness Bizarro World and the Israeli-Hamas Conflict.

UPDATE II: Some quick numbers... I'm bad with math so feel free to check them... between 1945 and 2008 (63 years), Democratic Presidents have been in charge for 28 years and added 2.05 trillon to the debt. From 2009 to 2011 (3 years), Democratic President Barack Obama added another 5.2 trillion in debt, bringing the total to 7.25. Projected debts for next year (2012) are over a trillion by quite a bit. Republican Presidents have been in charge 35 years, and from 1945 to 2009 added 7.75 trillion in debt. So, is the record clear on who adds more debt? Before Bush, it was Democrats. After Obama, it is going to be the Democrats again. And if Obama wins in 2012 and Democrats take back control of Congress, deficits will be several trillion a year for another 4 years, and not only will that be the end of our nation, but the record for which party is worse at adding debt will be conclusive. Foolish comments from liberals with no idea what they are talking about is always welcome though.

Don't You Go Away Tea Partiers- The GOP Establishment Is Fighting Back

Next week here in my county we'll have a Republican County Convention, and for those of you who can't make it, I'll give you a taste of what it is going to be- a battle between the Tea Party and the Establishment. Although many people in the Tea Party think this is some sort of new battle, it is in reality an old battle in the GOP, one that has pitted the libertarian/conservative/teaparty wing of Taft/Coolidge/Goldwater/Reagan/Palin vs the moderate/establishment/progressive wing of Roosevelt/Hoover/Nixon/Bush/McCain. For many years, the teaparty wing cowardly left the field of battle and stayed home while the establishment types ran thing, or would win a victory and then go home to pat themselves on the back while their victory was watered down by the establishment, but hopefully today will be different, because although the establishment has suffered some defeats lately, they don't intend on going home either.

This battle will be joined at the local level, but also at the national level, and at the national level the establishment part will be played by the K Street Lobby. The following is a good story letting you into a peek at this battle at the national level, from the Washington Examiner, called GOP's K Street Wing Ready for Insurgent Challenge:

The insurgent conservative Republicans and Tea Party candidates elected Tuesday are obviously a pugnacious and determined bunch, but they're not the only ones fixing for a battle over the direction of the party. The Republican Beltway establishment and the K Street wing of the GOP are ready to fight any effort to end pork-barrel spending and kill corporate welfare.

The first fight will come mid-November, when the newly elected senators join returning senators to set party rules for the next two years. Sen. Jim DeMint will propose to ban earmarks by GOP senators. The appropriators will fight him, probably backed by the party leadership. Senior Republicans will also oppose other reforms DeMint might push -- such as term limits for all members of the appropriations committee. Among the old guard of the GOP caucus, there's no notion that Republicans need to abandon their standard operating procedure.

After the 2008 election, the GOP Senate caucus killed all of DeMint's proposed reforms. This was an early spark in the conservative insurgency of 2009 and 2010. DeMint fired up his Senate Conservatives Fund, and immediately took sides against the party leadership -- supporting Pat Toomey against incumbent Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania and Marco Rubio over GOP-anointed Charlie Crist in Florida. It was open warfare, with DeMint, the Club for Growth, and Tea Party groups on one side, against the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the GOP's K Street kingpins, such as former Majority Leaders Bob Dole and Trent Lott....

...None of McConnell's Team Establishment is liberal, but none is a boat rocker. Or, as Portman put it when I caught up with him on the campaign trail, McConnell's new allies are "serious legislators." Portman didn't name those senators and candidates he considered "not serious legislators," but presumably he included DeMint and Paul.

There are plenty of signs the establishment is ready to fight: Lott's plan to "co-opt" the Tea Partiers, House appropriator Jerry Lewis' dismissal of earmark reform, and the absence of serious reforms in the party's "Pledge to America."

McConnell and DeMint will clash again this month. Popular anti-spending fervor will help DeMint. GOP old-dog clout will help McConnell. Perhaps tipping the scales are the losses of insurgent Republicans Ken Buck, Sharron Angle and Joe Miller -- and the survival of McConnell consigliere and appropriator Lisa Murkowski. There may be plenty of new faces, but it's the same old party.

The GOP is still the same old party- but all that means is that all you Tea Party people better not back down and go away this time around.

Education System Must Be Changed, Or Else We'll Only See Ciceronian Gasps of a Dying Republic

Here is a thought-provoking essay that recently appeared in the the American Thinker called The Elephant in the Room:

For the first two hundred years of America's history, there was little in the way of public education. Thus, from the middle of the 17th century to the middle of the 19th century, education was most often a family affair (though churches, literary societies, and apprenticeships also contributed to the education of early America's youth).

As youngsters, our Founding Fathers were educated like most other children of early America. Of the six Founding Fathers, three were homeschooled: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Two were self-taught: Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin (though Franklin did attend primary school for two years). And one, John Adams, was both homeschooled and privately taught (at a very small school).

How far from our early ways America has strayed! Today, only a minority of children are homeschooled. Granted, the homeschool movement is resurgent and growing at a healthy rate of 12% a year. Even so, the majority of America's children attend public schools, learning not at their mother's knee, as previous generations of Americans did, but under the tutelage of government employees, per the dictates of statist bureaucrats. To top it off, a growing number of America's children receive their very sustenance from their school benefactors. In San Diego, California, for example, more than 46 elementary schools begin their day by feeding all of their students breakfasts at their desks.

Is it any wonder, then, that America's youth has a cozy relationship with statism and a relatively high regard for big government? How can young Americans not feel a fondness for government when they have more or less been raised by it? Would it not, in fact, be somewhat immoral (or at a minimum, ungracious) for children to be raised by their surrogate parents -- government teachers -- and then oppose teachers and their employer, big government, at election time?

The truth of the matter is this: as long as America's children continue to be educated (and fed) by government employees, conservatives will make precious little headway in preventing America's steady march towards statism. This holds true no matter how well conservatives organize or electioneer or broadcast their limited-government message. It simply defies logic and historical evidence to believe that a populace raised and educated by government employees will choose to move away from government encroachment. True, there are exceptions to the rule. But these are so few (and decreasing yearly) as to be little more than the Ciceronian gasps of a dying Republic.

If America is to return to her founding principles, she must become a nation whose children are raised by parents who teach them not only their A-B-Cs, but also the proper path to virtue and the importance of liberty. When we sequester our children five days a week in age-segregated government institutions, we minimize the time our children spend with the very elders who might pass on to them the immortal truths enshrined in our founding documents -- truths passed down from Athens and Rome to the Medievals and, ultimately, to our Founders.

Not only that, but by sending our youngsters off to public schools, we force our children to spend their days learning to behave as good drones do, thinking not for themselves (as liberty-minded, self-reliant individuals), but for authority figures hired by the government. The authority figures are grooming our children to become not individualists and innovators, but worker bees who may someday do their part to maintain the health of the collectivist hive. Like good little worker bees, our children learn to pick up their pencils when the bell rings, to regurgitate facts that bureaucrats have decided are good to memorize (facts that rarely align with the truths taught by Aristotle, Cicero, and Madison), and then to put their pencils down when the bell rings again.

Though most of us grew up holding our public schools in high esteem, I believe it is time we rethink our loyalties. We ought to understand that the modern public school system is no friend to liberty. If in doubt, consider the fact that Karl Marx included free education for all children in public schools as one of the Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto. Consider, too, the fact that America's modern public school system was not invented in early America, but in Prussia. It was the Prussian educational model that advocated compulsory attendance, specific training for teachers, and a uniform curriculum for each school grade.

America adopted the basic tenets of the Prussian education system at the end of the 19th century. Should America, the last, best hope of mankind, continue to goosestep along with a Prussian model for educating its youth? Or is time to cast aside a system that is unfriendly to our founding principles and return to the educational methodologies of our forefathers? A lot rides on the answer to that question. May we choose wisely.

Personally I disagree with a lot that this essay suggests, but the larger point remains that the entire structure of our education system that we've been locked into for the last 100 years needs to be seriously reconsidered. In my mind there are still schools, but they are more free-market businesses that compete to educate children who each carry with them some sort of foundation-grant voucher. The details for my dreamscape of education of the future are still fuzzy, but I know that the reality of education today is not the vision for a bright future for America.

Check out Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling from John Taylor Gatto.

Reversing the Situation on Liberal Teachers: Conservative Teacher Suspends Student for Supporting Gays?

For kicks and giggles, today me and another teacher played a little prank on our staff, although they never knew they were being punked.

"Did you guys here about the conservative teacher in Clarkston who kicked out the pro-gay student in his class," I asked my fellow teachers today while we were eating lunch. They hadn't heard about this incident (which is made up) or the real incident in Howell (which is the exact opposite of what I related to them), so I told them: "What happened is that one of the students in this conservative teacher's class was wearing a rainbow flag Tshirt, and this teacher didn't like gay people so he asked the student to turn the shirt inside out, and the student responded by asking why he had to do that when the teacher was wearing a Confederate Flag belt buckle. The teacher then explained that gay people were bad and that Confederates were good. The kid disagreed with the teacher, and then the teacher told the kid that he was wrong and that his opinions were wrong, and when the kid told him his reasons, the teacher threw him out of class and suspended him for class for thought crimes. Later administration reprimanded the teacher for his behavior. What do you all think about that?"

This was purely a fishing expedition for me, to see if I could bait some of these liberal teachers who fill the public schools of our nation into agreeing with administration (something that teachers rarely do) and talking about how this teacher was indeed wrong, and to be honest I caught a lot!

"This teacher was so wrong to make kids comply with his beliefs," one teacher said. Another said "This is bullying and shouldn't be tolerated in schools." A really liberal teacher was very angry and said "I hope they fire this teacher- he shouldn't be allowed to continue to push his conservative views in public schools!" As a whole, my gauge of the discussion after several minutes was that most teachers on our staff were supportive of administration's attempts to 'silence the conservative teacher for pushing his views.'

It was at this time, after this pre-arranged amount of time, that my buddy came into the room, sat down, got out his lunch, and listened to the conversation for a minute, and then interjected- "Excuse me guys, but I think you are a little confused. It's the exact opposite of what you are talking about." My buddy then proceeded to tell the teachers what really happened.

In the Howell School District in Michigan, on Oct. 20 an economics teacher named Jay McDowell told a student in his classroom to remove a Confederate Flag belt buckle. The girl complied, but another student asked the teacher about how the flag differs from the rainbow flag that the teacher was wearing on his shirt. The teacher explained that he thought that one flag stood for slavery and the other flag stood for gay rights, to which the student replied 'I don't accept gays.' The teacher then told the student that he wasn't allowed to personally express his view that he didn't like gays, even though the student explained that his objection was based on his personal religion. The teacher then told the student that it wasn't 'appropriate to say something like that in class', and gave the student a one-day class suspension and kicked the student out of the room. Administration then reprimanded the teacher for his behavior for violating the students' free speech rights as well as school policy."

The reaction to hearing the true events was priceless. There was a long moment of silence as liberals were forced to stare their previous statements in the face and fit in reality with their views, and then with a shudder, these liberal teachers jerked back into the recesses of their minds and reversed course and revealed their hypocrisy.

"The teacher should be able to run his classroom however he wants," one teacher said. "This teacher was stopping bullying and intolerance and encouraging diversity" another teacher said. A really liberal teacher said "I hope they suspend this student for a long time- he shouldn't be allowed to continue to push his conservative views in public schools!" As a whole, after hearing the true story of what happened, my gauge of the discussion that most teachers on our staff were opposed to administration, were supportive of the teacher, and were very hateful of the student who expressed his private viewpoint on gays in a high school economics class.

I've pointed out many times that I don't mind people who really believe in individual liberty, freedom, free speech, or conservative views. I honestly don't mind socialists or communists that much (although I don't agree with them), as long as they are consistent. But liberals seem to have a problem being consistent and having an ideology which really has no any mooring on anything, and this does bug me. Support or oppose the teacher, and don't switch based on the teacher's views. Support or oppose the student, and don't switch based on views. Public schools are not the place to force viewpoints and religious views on students- they are places to teach economics, science, math, reading, or critical thinking. Bullying students, whether they are conservative or liberal, should always be punished- in both the fictional story and the real story, the teacher was wrong and administration was right.

UPDATE: Welcome readers from For a Better Day, FreedomPub, Weird and Pissed Off, and Conservatives on Fire! Please be sure to take a minute to check out other great posts on my blog!

Separate But Equal- Clyburn Named 'Assistant to the Leader'

Voters sent a message to Washington in 2010, and that message was that they were not happy with the direction that the Democratic leadership was taking our nation. They inflicted historic losses on the Democrats in the House and higher-than-usual losses on the Democrats in the Senate. The losses would have been higher if Democrats in the House and Senate hadn't aggressively campaigned as moderates who didn't agree with the leadership of Pelosi and Reid and managed to convince voters of that fact. But after all of this, it turns out that the Democrats didn't receive the message and that those moderates who said they didn't side with leadership were only lying to voters, because the Democrats are going to continue with Pelosi, Reid, and Obama.

The only real change that might have occured in the Democratic leadership was a change at the number two position in the House. Democrat Jim Clyburn challenged Steny Hoyer for the second most powerful position for the Democrats in the House, the position of minority whip, in order to shake up the leadership for the Democrats. But leadership and the Democratic rubes rejected Clyburn in favor of keeping more of the same failed leadership and policies that extended and deepened the Great Recession under Pelsoi (since 2006) and Obama (since 2008).

Rather than rejecting Clyburn in favor of Hoyer, Pelosi came up with an interesting compromise- create a brand new separate position for Clyburn, and then pretend that it was 'wink wink' equal with Hoyer. Pelosi and the Democrats in Congress decided that separate was equal, and that after rejecting someone based on the merits (I hope) that it was okay then to create a brand new weaker position to fill with them.

Clyburn is an African-American.

PS Here is a joke for you: "Two politician are having lunch together, all of a sudden one stood up and shouted, 'Your lying.' The other replied, 'I know but just hear me out.'"

Palin vs Obama- The Impact of Youtube Elections on the American Political System

One important aspect of the mass media today is the ability for average people to use their cell phones to capture politicians on camera, making mistakes, making speeches, blundering, or doing nice things. The ability to capture the everyday politician on film, out of his environment and unscripted, and then post that video on a video-sharing site so that it can be seen by thousands of people around the world is going to affect our political system.

In my opinion, this 'youtube election' effect will have both good and bad aspects to it. Because politicians know that everything they say and do will now be filmed and put online, they may react to this by making few direct pointed statements and saying little. Politicians could increasing be expert sophists- people who have a general knowledge of some things and communicate that general knowledge in soaring rhetoric, and if lacking in knowledge or specifics, able to gloss over that by using words to dazzle and awe an audience. Politicians will increasingly become humorless, as they fear their comments being taken out of context and used against them. And voters will increasingly fall into an endless loop of judging a candidate based on one misspoken thought taken out of context or a joke that didn't really land, and could be forced to then vote for the empty suit, who disguises their general lack of qualifications for office through the use of well spoken words and has no bad jokes to be thrown against them since they never joke around. The worst of the 'youtube election' effect will produce a President Barack Obama.

Or perhaps the worst of the 'youtube election' effect will produce a Governor Sarah Palin. Rather than hiding behind soaring rhetoric and sophistry, rather than avoiding all pointed statements or jokes for fear of them being used against them, a politician may decide to overload the system with comments, jokes, and images of them, so that the sheer mass and volume of information that they pour into the internet will overwhelm any negative images, jokes taken out of context, or misstatements or quotes. A politician will be be forced to be more honest and direct with voters, giving them unprecedented access to their lives and views, because they know that it will be harder and harder to hide their true beliefs, especially if they are lacking in rhetorical skill or their supporters don't buy their sophistry as easily. They'll respond by tweeting and producing a reality show about their lives, like Palin did.

Yes, we can see in the emptiness that is Obama and the oversharing that is Palin the effect that the mass media is having on our political system. You can either choose to get caught up in the soaring rhetoric that marks the best of Obama's speeches, where he says amazing things that mean nothing and speaks nothingness with some amazing ability, or you can settle in with some popcorn and a coke and watch Sarah Palin and her family in her newest reality TV show, Sarah Palin's Alaska, on TLC. Either way, you'll be seeing all the new ways that the mass media impacts our political system.

Obama's book is The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Vintage) and Palin's book is Going Rogue: An American Life.

California Continues War on Freedom: Now Proposes to Ban Circumcision

Recently I wrote in San Francisco Passes Ban on Toys and Happiness:

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently approved a preliminary ban on toys in McDonald's Happy Meals, although the decision still needs to pass a final vote. This echo's an earlier decision in California’s Santa Clara County, which also passed a similar Happy Meals toy ban ordinance. And don't look now, but the Center for Science in the Public Interest wants the ban on toys and happiness for children to go national- it is going to sue McDonald's to force it to end its practice of throwing in a free toy along with an order of fries and Chicken McNuggets....

....Liberals in California and potential liberals in the court system believe that if you are left to freely decide on your own what to feed your child, you will make the wrong decisions because you are an idiot. You are not free to decide what to feed your children and your child is not free to enjoy happiness and a toy unless they eat their vegetables. Oh, we've all been there- threatening little Timmy or Amy to eat their vegetables or no toys, but I bet you never figured that someday you wouldn't have to say this, because if little Timmy or Amy didn't eat their vegetables the police would beat them down and steal their toys. The nanny state continues to get bigger and bigger, as people in California vote against a limited government that is restricted to protecting life, liberty, and property rights, and instead empower an all-powerful government to rule your life and control your children, all in the name of some sort of morality or fairness or something. It's creepy and predatory, and it warrants an injunction, and that injunction will be the American people standing up and saying "come and get me, and pry this McDonald's toy out of my cold dead hand if you can." ....

Well, it doesn't stop with this for liberals. Not content to control what you choose to feed your child, liberals in San Francisco could soon put a measure on the ballot banning circumcision, reports CBS San Francisco, and it will likely pass because it meets the liberals main criteria of 'control other peoples' behavior.' The ballot measure that would make it a “misdemeanor to circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the…genitals” of a person under 18.

Now, whatever your views as parents are regarding circumcising your son (and we did extensive research before having our 5 boys circumcised), it is clear that the decision is yours and not the state's to make. People circumcise their children for many reasons- health and religion chief among them- and for the government to come in and punish parents or doctors who perform this surgery because some liberal doesn't like it speaks again to the tyranny that government increasingly engages in, where it is now the greatest threat to your life, liberty, and property.

This is not the first or last time in the last year that California has proposed or considered banning human liberty and freedom just because some do-goody fascists controlled government power and used it to coerce others into obeying their unjust commands. Whether it is outlawing Happy Meals, banning male circumcision, or outlawing bacon-wrapped hog dogs, the government of California is out of control. Instead of doing a few things right and doing them well and under budget, California's government, run by liberals and Democrats, is now a bankrupt sprawling Leviathan that threatens the citizens of that once great state increasingly.

In Government Thugs vs Bacon-Wrapped Hot Dog Vendors I wrote:

...In what is only to become more common with the passage of legislation giving more government power over controlling the health care and energy industries, the video shows how public officials paid for by citizen taxpayer dollars spend their time going around Los Angeles seizing bacon-wrapped hot dogs...


...Yes, amid the hustle and bustle of downtown Los Angeles, there exists an underground world of illicit trade in bacon-wrapped hot dogs. The Department of Health has made it illegal to sell a hot dog wrapped in bacon, and if they catch any street vendors doing so, they will use their police powers to hassle these private businesses, shut them down, seize their goods, or even destroy their businesses....

...A government bureaucrat, supported by no data at all, feels personally that bacon-wrapped hot dogs are not safe, and put in a rule that makes it illegal to sell them. Apparently he feels he is the business of stopping people from doing what they want because he doesn't agree with it- sounds like more government officials in the business of tyranny....


....Be prepared for more of this- is your home or business going to be up to the new Green Codes or the new Health Codes that government officials come up with every day? With Democrats in office, you really need to ask yourself- are you really living in a free country any more?...

...Democrats, liberals, and Obama are only about one thing- controlling your life. Now they are even trying to control what you eat! Will the attacks on property, liberty, and life never end?...

If I'm wrong, how come I'm so right so often?  Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

More Interesting Times Coming- Dollar No Longer World Reserve Currency?

A famous curse of the Chinese is "may you live in interesting times." Uninteresting times, such as the 1920's, 1950's, 1990's, or early 2000's, were times of very little upheaval, of steady but unspectacular economic growth, of domestic tranquility, and rather boring cultural changes. Some people though don't like peace, tranquility, steady growth, and static cultural norms- they want change. And once you start changing things, times get interesting.

In May You Live in Interesting Times, I wrote:

Many want Obama to be Lincoln, who, even though he was a great President, was head of a country that descended into a Civil War that was incredibly bloody and socially destructive. They want Obama to be FDR, who was the head of a nation that went into its longest and deepest recession ever and engaged in another bloody and destructive war. Or they want Obama to be JFK or LBJ, both of whom ran a country that was in the midst of some interesting times- riots, strikes, Vietnam, etc. How come liberals and the media don't want to live in the 1980's, that was a long boring time of economic growth and rebuilding of strength. Or the 1950's, when our country returned to white picket fences and normal times (admittedly, I'm too young for this, but I always loved that show Wonder Years). Because those were the boring times under Republican Presidents, and were not times when liberals grew in power.

I wrote this post in 2008, predicting that over the next couple years, this Chinese curse would come up more and more often, now that liberal Democrats controlled the Congress and Presidency and would push for more 'interesting times.' Jonah Goldberg referenced it back then, Powerlineblog referenced it back then, and I've been seeing it referenced many times since. Including today, when I read an article in the Telegraph about how the Age of the Dollar is Drawing to a Close, and after decades of stability and boring uninteresting currency issues, things may start to get interesting as the world drops the US dollar as a reserve currency:

The rest of the world is now openly questioning the merits of a global currency whose value is governed by America's perceived domestic needs, while the growth that once underpinned confidence in its ability to repay its debts has never looked more fragile.


Already, there are calls for alternatives. Unwilling to wait for one, the world's central banks are beginning to diversify their currency reserves. This, in turn, will eventually exert its own form of market discipline on the US, whose ability to soak the rest of the world by issuing ever more greenbacks will be correspondingly harmed.

These are seismic changes, of a type not seen for a generation or more. I hate to end with a cliché, but we do indeed live in interesting times.

The entire article is a good analysis of what could happen very soon- the entire world switching from using the US dollar to some sort of other currency or basket of currencies- but the point is that if they do so, times may get even more interesting in America, and we'll all be regretting the change we made with our votes in 2006 and 2008.

If you're looking for a good book to read about interesting times, read Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett. It's a funny and engaging tale from Discworld about Rincewind and Cohen and chaos theory and world politics and a mad rush through Chinese peasant culture, Japanese martial arts, an group of ancient barbarians with a most unbarbarian plot and revolution that can't help but have things go the right way for them. It loony and fun and a great read.

Democrats Saved or Created over 20 Congressional Jobs!

According to officials at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, their actions over the last several months ultimately saved or created over 20 Congressional Jobs. Democratic efforts mirrored their success in job creation in the economy at large, where Obama and Pelosi and Reid have bragged about saving or creating thousands of jobs through their policies.

“The margin we are beginning with is significantly lower than it might have been if the roof had been totally blown off and we hadn’t contained the damage,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the campaign committee. It was unclear to me whether he was describing the logic and reasoning that led to his party losing over 60 seats in the House in the 2010 election or whether he was describing the logic and reasoning that led to the loss of over 8 million jobs since Democrats took over control of Congress in 2006.

Being from Michigan, I watched for 8 years as a liberal Democrat, Governor Granholm, destroyed Michigan's economy. The entire time that the economy went down, she kept blaming others- Engler and then Bush- while promising that if we just enacted more of her policies and ideas then things would improve. And her policies and ideas continued to damage our economy, stunt economic growth, chase away productive businesses, and choke off progress. The harder she worked and the more she did, the worse it got in Michigan, and the whole time she claimed credit for 'saving' or 'creating' a few jobs in targeted industries while the overall picture got drastically worse. And after the election of Democrats in 2006 to Congress and of Obama in 2008 to the Presidency, we're now seeing replicated at the national level exactly what we saw in Michigan- blame, hope, promises, targeted 'jobs' saved, overall job losses.

Democratic strategists might have saved or created over 20 Congressional jobs for liberal Democrats, and may have saved or created thousands of more jobs for government employees and public servants and community organizers, but the numbers overall don't lie- liberal policies don't work, whenever enacted, either at the state level (Michigan's lost decade, bankrupt states in California and New York, etc) or at the national level (European states, USA since liberal Democrats took control, USA under Jimmy Carter, etc).

And it's not because liberals are idiots, or fools, or bad people, or evil, or anything like that- it is because raising taxes, regulating businesses, redistributing wealth, punishing productivity, erratically changing laws, violating established customs, weakening national defense, and enabling enemies of the state shockingly don't improve things. They will achieve successes, but the overall picture will get worse whenever these policies are put in place.

Exploding the Myths of Bush?

The rehabilitation of George W. Bush continues. After spending eight years listening to my favorite sports radio show go 'off sports' every now and then to bash Bush, I was very happy this morning to hear the solid liberals who do the show say "I had never before realized that George Bush was that funny," or "you know, he really is a decent guy," or "out of all the Presidents, he's a guy I think would be the most fun to sit down and have a beer with." The radio hosts had all watched W's interview the day before on Oprah or had seen his interview with Matt Lauer, and were being 'reintroduced' to Bush after he's been out of the political scene for a year or two, and what struck me the most was that now that Bush is no longer the 'evil enemy', myths about him are exploding left and right.

From the Washington Post, via powerlineblog, here are some other myths about President George W. Bush that are being exploded by time, analysis, research, and retrospection. Here are excerpts from the article (some editing by me for brevity), but please go here to read the whole thing:

Myth: George W. Bush was an uninformed Texas cowboy.
During his 2000 campaign against Vice President Al Gore, then-Gov. Bush went to great lengths to depict himself as a down-home Texan whom voters could relate to. But that image was at odds with his upbringing. Bush had plenty of blue in his blood. In 2004, Republicans again deployed the president's folksy image and manner of speech, contrasting Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry (the elitist who windsurfs off Nantucket) with Bush (the guy you'd rather have a beer with - even if he doesn't drink). But as the administration stumbled in crises from Katrina to Iraq, the reputation that had helped Bush win office turned into a huge liability as Americans increasingly questioned his competence.

Myth: "Compassionate conservatism" was just a campaign slogan.
Many critics dismiss Bush's talk about "compassionate conservatism" as nothing more than a cynical ploy to win over moderate voters in 2000. Liberals never believed that Bush truly wanted to bring racial and ethnic diversity to the Republican Party or that he accepted the need for the federal government to deal with entrenched social problems. The administration's bungled response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, along with regressive fiscal policies that disproportionately benefited wealthier Americans, also seemed to contradict the promise of compassion. Yet, as Vanderbilt University historian Gary Gerstle has shown, Bush was personally invested in compassionate conservatism. Bush's experience as a born-again Christian led him to empathize with individuals' personal struggles and to respect the role of religion in civic life. As president, he insisted that the war on terrorism must not become a war against Muslims. And his signature legislative accomplishments included expansive domestic programs, such as the No Child Left Behind Act (a huge extension of the federal government into primary education) and the Medicare prescription drug benefit (the biggest expansion of the system since its creation 40 years earlier).

Myth: Bush committed America to nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush appeared to commit the United States to remaking enemy nations into pro-Western democracies. Yet in many ways, Bush's commitment to nation-building was primarily a rhetorical tool to build domestic support for military operations. This lack of commitment became clear when U.S. resources were hastily diverted from Afghanistan toward Iraq, and when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld emphasized in the spring of 2002 that the Afghan people would have to handle most of the reconstruction themselves.

Myth: Dick Cheney ran the Bush White House.
The Bush era produced a stream of good books examining the vice president's hidden influence. In these accounts, Bush appears as a puppet to the real leader, Cheney, who lurked in the shadows. However, much of the subsequent writing about the Bush presidency - including works by journalists such as The Washington Post's Bob Woodward - challenges this portrait. We have begun to see instead that Bush, surrounded by political advisers such as Karl Rove, didn't allow power to move too far away from his control. And according to reports on Bush's memoir, the president even considered removing Cheney from the 2004 presidential ticket, given the vice president's "Darth Vader" reputation.

Myth: Bush left conservatism in ruins.
On election night in 2008, the conservative era appeared to be over, and the age of Obama seemed set to begin. Except it didn't happen that way. A recent poll by The Post, the Kaiser Foundation and Harvard University found that Americans dislike government more now than they did 10 years ago (though they support many specific programs). The Republican victories in the midterm elections suggest that, for all the problems that still face the GOP, conservatism is alive and well - even if it is a far different brand of conservatism than the kind Bush championed when he took office in 2001.

These myths will not die easily- a lot of people have a lot of time and money and effort invested into making us believe them, and to these people it is still important for us to believe them because if history is re-written to reflect the reality of Bush, it will have different lessons for the future. So, look for the left to fight any hint that that he is a funny, self-effacing, tad awkward, tough, honest, decent, and generally human person.

Be sure to get a copy of Bush's new book, Decision Points.

True Story: Liberal Teacher Told me to Stop Spreading 'Propaganda' of Liberty

One feature of my classroom that I haven't told you all about before is my Liberty Library. I got this idea from a friend of mine who also teaches in Michigan in a nice district that is a little friendlier than mine to conservative ideas. I decided to give it a try regardless, and purchased a series of short books (30 pages or less) that emphasize themes that I consider to be friendly towards the practice and belief of liberty- books such as The Law, Why Government Is the Problem (Essays in Public Policy), I, Pencil - My Family Tree As Told to Leonard E. Read, and Depressions: Their causes and cure (Politics minibooks). These books challenge students to think differently about the law, government, and economics, and students are free to check them out and read them as they wish.

Last week, a student of mine checked out from my Liberty Library my copy of Moral Basis for Liberty. This book discusses why liberty and freedom are good and desirable things for a society- in my opinion, ideas and thoughts and arguments that shouldn't in any way be controversial or debatable. But apparently having books around for students to read that discuss why liberty and freedom are good is something that other teachers in public schools disagree with, because at our social studies department meeting today, I was confronted by several liberal teachers regarding this book.

After I sat down, several teachers stopped talking with one another and looked to the leader of the group, Mr. Liberal Teacher. He addressed me "Teacher, it has come to our attention that you are spreading your propaganda around the school, giving books to students on subjects that are controversial and debatable."

I was surprised, but of course sympathetic to his argument- I had brought up the same thing last year when he was requiring his students to read The Communist Manifesto and Che: The Diaries of Ernesto Che Guevara in his World History class. "What book am I passing out that is controversial and debatable?" I asked.

"Something about Moral Basis for Liberty," Liberal Teacher replied, and the other liberal teachers in his group nodded along. "What you do in your classroom is your own business, but you can't press your views on students regarding such issues as freedom and liberty."

This of course stunned me- I had never thought that students freely deciding to read books on liberty and freedom would prompt any sort of confrontation. Oh, I figured some of the more conservative or libertarian books in my library might cause some blowback, but not books that argued that freedom and liberty were moral! Liberals and Democrats want liberty and freedom too, right? Or perhaps Mr. Liberal Teacher didn't want those things- from what I have heard about his classroom, he is a lot like other liberal teachers, and attempts to intimidate and browbeat and bully his students into agreeing with his liberal worldview, and as such would view critical thinking and the open exchange of ideas and freedom and liberty as a threat to what he is doing.

The educational workplace though is not the proper place to have a debate such as this, and from personal experience I have learned that fighting an open war with liberal teachers is a sure-fire way to get fired, so I simply said "Thank you for your concern" and changed the subject. For now, they were content enough to have simply fired their shots at me and were content with their attempts to intimidate me, but I have to admit, they probably shouldn't have let it go with just that.

They're right to fear me, and fear other conservative teachers like me, who are busy opening the minds of students to the possibility that it is okay to be a conservative or libertarian, that it is moral to want liberty, that freedom is a moral goal in itself, that government should be limited in a free society, that private property rights should be protected and respected, and that government is rarely the solution to the problem but often the problem. I don't push these views in my classroom, but I make sure that they are available and that they are presented along with liberal and socialist and communist and fascist views, and as my students become more intelligent and wise and better critical thinkers, they are choosing on their own to listen to and follow the conservative views over others.

This liberal teacher should have gone farther in bullying and threatening me, because every year I churn through my classroom hundreds of more good patriots and citizens who someday will vote for a government that believes in the protection of life, liberty, and property. He is right to fear me, because I'm teaching my students to be like our patriot hero forefathers, the philosopher revolutionaries who dared to challenge the bullies from across the sea and build a free nation, one based on a proposition that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain rights, and that government should be a just government based on the consent of the governed. Liberal Teacher made his points, but in the end, the game will be won by the forces of moral liberty, and I will have done my part to make that so.

San Francisco Passes Ban on Toys and Happiness

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently approved a preliminary ban on toys in McDonald's Happy Meals, although the decision still needs to pass a final vote. This echo's an earlier decision in California’s Santa Clara County, which also passed a similar Happy Meals toy ban ordinance. And don't look now, but the Center for Science in the Public Interest wants the ban on toys and happiness for children to go national-  it is going to sue McDonald's to force it to end its practice of throwing in a free toy along with an order of fries and Chicken McNuggets.

Via MoneyWatch:

"McDonald’s use of toys undercuts parental authority and exploits young children’s developmental immaturity — all this to induce children to prefer foods that may harm their health. It’s a creepy and predatory practice that warrants an injunction,” says CSPI litigation director Stephen Gardner.

Liberals in California and potential liberals in the court system believe that if you are left to freely decide on your own what to feed your child, you will make the wrong decisions because you are an idiot. You are not free to decide what to feed your children and your child is not free to enjoy happiness and a toy unless they eat their vegetables. Oh, we've all been there- threatening little Timmy or Amy to eat their vegetables or no toys, but I bet you never figured that someday you wouldn't have to say this, because if little Timmy or Amy didn't eat their vegetables the police would beat them down and steal their toys. The nanny state continues to get bigger and bigger, as people in California vote against a limited government that is restricted to protecting life, liberty, and property rights, and instead empower an all-powerful government to rule your life and control your children, all in the name of some sort of morality or fairness or something. It's creepy and predatory, and it warrants an injunction, and that injunction will be the American people standing up and saying "come and get me, and pry this McDonald's toy out of my cold dead hand if you can."

Via Time, we get a good picture of the audacity of local bureaucrats who feel that they have the power to control the fair and lawful businesses practices of a private national business:

Under the legislation, a packaged fast-food meal aimed at children would have to meet guidelines for sodium, fat and calorie content — and contain at least a half-cup of fruit or three-quarters cup of vegetables. Only if it does that, could it — or its intended consumers — qualify for a toy. The criteria are very specific: any meal over 600 calories total would be disqualified, as would a meal with more than 640 mg of sodium or more than 35% of its calories coming from fat (with the exception of egg, nut or low-fat cheese sources).

So, a customer goes to a restaurant, orders food for their children that they freely choose, and then the nanny police jump out and tell this customer that he can't get a toy with that meal because he choose to give his kids his vegetables or fruit for lunch or breakfast instead? We all know exactly where this sort of thing leads, and it isn't the kind of state that I want to live in.

This blog never advocates violence, but I kind of am picturing a response similar to that in the movie Falling Down (Falling Down):

New Study Details Libertarians 'Immoral' Desire for Liberty?

University of Virginia social psychologist Jonathan Haidt concluded in a recent study that "standard morality scales do a poor job of measuring (libertarians) one central and overriding moral commitment"- individual rights. It appears that in previous studies, libertarians came off as immoral because they tested low on usual measures of morality- measures on caring, fairness, loyalty, respect, and purity. But researchers found that when they invented another standard, liberty vs tyranny, libertarians scored much higher than liberals and conservatives both.

The study produced a wealth of data regarding liberals, conservatives, and libertarians, but what fascinated me the most was the following passage:

Haidt and his fellow researchers suggest that people who are dispositionally (level 1) low on disgust sensitivity and high on openness to experience will be drawn to classically liberal philosophers who argue for (level 2) the superordinate value of individual liberty. But also being highly individualistic and low on empathy, they feel little attraction to modern liberals’ emphasis on altruism and coercive social welfare policies. Haidt and his colleagues further speculate that an intellectual feedback loop develops (level 3) in which such people will find more and more of the libertarian narrative (satisfactory at explaining things) and begin identifying themselves (even more) as libertarian.

Libertarians are an odd bunch at times, and hopefully you will all take a couple minutes to check out this study and get a better sense of what drives them.

Bush Was Right- We Must Defeat Zombies and Their Zombie Master Obama

George W. Bush was a very wise man. You probably don't remember this speech, but some years ago President Bush gave a very important speech where he identified the greatest threat to America as zombies (see my post Coon Hunting, A Bear Named Obama, Teleprompters, Queen Touching, and Bush Fighting Zombies). Zombies are those people who are controlled by others, usually through some sort of spell by some sort of voodoo master who weaves his magic with his voice. They are mindless and stumble around making loud noises, bowing to their master and trying to attack those who stand in their way. Zombies wage war against civilization, attempting to tear down and destroy organized religion, businesses, industry, and laws. These zombies are a grave threat to our Republic, and Bush was correct in discussing how we need to defeat these zombies wherever we can find them. Watch the video of this interview here.

Today, these zombies have no wills of their own, and you can see them sometimes walking around blindly, with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring what they do- kind of like people who voted Democrat last election. After 4 years of control by the Democrats of our national legislator, and 2 years of control by the Democrats of our Presidency too, voters around the nation should have learned their lesson and realized that Democrats, specifically liberal Democrats but also the Blue Dogs who lap up the liberalism of their colleagues, are a threat to the lives, liberty, and property of the citizens of this great nation. Their leader is Obama, and if you are curious, there is a video out there detailing exactly what Obama Zombies are like- click here to watch it.

Oh, there is also a book on this subject- check out Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation.