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The Tiller shooting: The response is unreasonable.

There's much to discuss in terms of implication, as regards the shooting of abortionist George Tiller, none of them particularly complimentary to those claiming to take up Tiller's side. Even from the outset, my instinct was that the reaction to the Tiller story was overblown... intentionally so. Whatever else might be said, we're talking about one man's death. Absent the issue of Abortion, and in light of the seven men in Chicago alone, shot in the same 24 hour period, one man being shot just isn't national news, sorry. It also and most certainly doesn't rise to the level of 'terrorism' as some have been loudly claiming. It's interesting, too, how the word "'Terrorism" has been rediscovered by the left, to be applied to this thing, isn't it? Let's examine this, for a moment: Since back in 1993, there have been seven abortion clinic workers killed as such. If this constitutes an organized bit of terrorist activity, I suggest it to be so far below the radar as to be invisible. This is a misapplication of the term terrorism, in light of the much larger terrorism we've seen in the last decade... terrorism that for the most part, the left ignored. They also ignore that the killing of Tiller has been condemned by every mainstream pro-life group. Their entire response seems out of the bounds of reason. So unreasonably loud is the howl over this one in fact, that one cannot help but wonder if it wasn't orchestrated so. If we take what we see on the web as indicative, for the most part these are leftists.... who are people already used to making noise far in excess of their actual numbers. I think we can take this level of noise as an indication of the number of organized mouthpieces on the web right now. (And I think that has implications for our political future.) There are a goodly number of left-of-center bloggers that have [...]
Honor them, today.

Honor them, today.

Have you ever been to Arlington ?memorial-day2 It's a place like very few others on the planet. It's true enough; the world would be a better place if places such as Arlington weren't required to be a part of it, but man is fallible. Our freedoms that so many of us take for granted , come at a very high price. What you see in front of you is but a small part of that price. Something there is about humans that causes us not to want to be indebted to anyone. It's perhaps why some are so anti-military. Yet we are indebted to these individuals, and millions more like them, buried on battlefields all around the world. We are indebted in a way that is wholly unique. This is not just about that they died. It's what they died for, and whom. It's been a long time since [...]
Honor them, today.

It’s About Freedom

row-of-us-dollar-signsArthur Brooks, at The Wall Street Journal suggests that there’s a bit of a culture war going on about the future of capitalism. The headline suggests that “The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism “
There is a major cultural schism developing in America. But it’s not over abortion, same-sex marriage or home schooling, as important as these issues are. The new divide centers on free enterprise — the principle at the core of American culture.
I dare suggest Brooks in this quote, has this exactly backward. He’s pointing at a symptom and labeling at the root cause. Not that I blame him, really. It’s been so long since we’ve dealt with things on the level of principle that even the more learned among us get it garbled in translation. I agree with Arthur that this is a war that is cultural in its nature. However, the war over capitalism, as he calls it, is part of the war on culture because capitalism in its truest sense can only exist in a free society, which is a culturally generated condition. It is the product of a particular variety of culture that… (at least until recently)… we here in these United States have been blessed with. What I am suggesting is that the principle at the core of the American culture is in fact freedom, of which capitalism is a product. While it is true that there are a few places in the communist world, China for example, where capitalism raises its head in some form, it is diluted in the extreme. It is in fact, capitalism in name only. Alas in the view of many, a goodly number of which were out on the front lines of the tea party protests last month, that kind of weak as dishwater capitalism, capitalism in name only, is the [...]
Obama And the USSC

Obama And the USSC

obama3I am disturbed, but not surprised by some of the comments made by Barrack Obama as regards the role of a Justice of the Supreme Court and thereby, what we will get in the replacement for Justice David Souter, who is retiring, next month. Those comments give us a frightening view of what we have in store from anyone Obama might nominate. There are many, including the Washington Post… hardly a bastion of liberal thought… who have counseled Obama to look for judicial restraint:
Alas, the once-dominant species of liberal proponents of judicial restraint has relatively few surviving members. Obama should find them - why not Jose Cabranes, the excellent judge whom President Clinton appointed to the 2nd Circuit? - and help revive the species.
It appears that Obama will be moving in the opposite direction, making that restraint even more of a rarity. Comments made while Obama was still just a candidate, as early as 2001, in an WBEZ interview, are exemplary:
But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the [...]
Honor them, today.

Specter, Principles, And Trust (Rather, the Lack of Them)

arlen-specter-2To begin with, let’s get a snip of this morning’s op-ed up on National Review:

Arlen Specter belongs to a type familiar to Congress: the time-serving hack devoid of any principle save arrogance. He has spent three decades in the Senate but is associated with no great cause, no prescient warning, no landmark legislation. Yet he imagines that the Senate needs his wisdom and judgment for a sixth term. He joined the Republican party out of expediency in the 1960s, and leaves it out of expediency this week.
Indeed. At the end of the day,what we have here is the second in a line of what will be many ‘victims’ of what are now being called the Tea Party protests. The first, I think, was John McCain. Now, you’re going to be hearing, over the next weeks and months between now and the mid-term elections, how the supposed GOP swing to the extreme right has cost the Republicans the 2008 election. These charges have come from such as Lindsay Graham and Ramesh Ponnuru, among others, and of course from staunch Democrats, who it would appear are simply pulling themselves up on any available handhold. Specter, in particular blames that factor on his leaving the party. But it’s not so. In truth, the movement of the party for the time that Specter has been in office, has been to the left… The exception… Reagan.. being their wildest success. That leftward march since Reagan has damaged the party, and the country and culminated in the GOP losses in 2008. The Tea Parties have been a [...]
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