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Still The Gold Standard: Barry Goldwater’s “The Conscience of a Conservative” 50 Years Later

President Obama, Day #…..

july2009Ah, who cares? As disappointed as I was about the outcome of the last general election, I thought I'd take a few months off from writing and spend it observing this new global (dare I say, Intergalactic?) phenomenon that is our new President. Today is July 6, and I fear that he is almost exactly what I thought he would be last summer, that is to say, pathetic. Having said this, I have to confess that the reason I took some time from writing was that I wanted to be objective in my assessment of this man (as opposed to self-styled Deity). So many conservatives have been lambasted precisely because they wouldn't give President Obama a chance. Not that he needed one, but we DO have to be fair. And I was secretly praying that his rhetoric was merely that and he was pandering to his ultra-liberal base and that, being a man of reason and logic, he was a closet conservative and would instinctively do the right thing. No such luck! I've waited five and a half months for him to do something, anything, good for the country. So far, here's what President Obama has accomplished:
  • He's spent $1.2 trillion (that's $1,200,000,000,000) of succeeding generations' money on absolutely nothing of any consequence
  • He's flown around the world numerous times at taxpayer's expense, all the while chiding the taxpayers to tighten up their belts and pay for his largesse
  • He's been on television almost every day whining about the failed policies of "the last eight years" and gathering support for his socialist agenda.
That's it. He's talked, and talked and talked some more. One gets the sense that talking is all the man knows how to do, and, after reading his resume, that's all he's ever done. At least he's consistent. Meanwhile, here in middle America, our country is suffering [...]
Energy Leninism? Or Just Plain Leninism?

Energy Leninism? Or Just Plain Leninism?

leninAs goes Energy, so goes the country.
“The worse, the better,” Vladimir Lenin is said to have observed. What Lenin meant was that the worse social conditions became in Russia, the more likely he and the Bolsheviks could foment a communist revolution. President Barrack Obama’s White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel recently updated Lenin’s maxim, saying, “Never allow a crisis to go to waste.”Last Friday, the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives took those maxims to heart when they pushed through their 1,200-page American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act by a vote 219 to 212. The bill is supposed to address the twin crises of economic recession and climate change by creating millions of new “green” jobs. Instead of an old-fashioned Soviet-style five-year plan, ACES can be thought of as 50-year plan to radically transform how Americans produce and use energy.
…Well, look, Ron Bailey, this entire administration seems to me to emulate the tactics of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, in all things, not just energy… and in my view we’ve not seen nearly the worst of it yet. (A Depressing thought as we come to July 4th, isn’t it?) So why should Energy be any different? Energy, after all, is the key to our country and it’s prosperity. Which of course was why I raised such holy hell when the first thing Obama did upon being sworn in was to reverse President Bush’s sign off on offshore drilling. That action is the major reason oil prices have better than doubled in the last 6 months. The question that Ron asks, though, seems to me pertinent:
Will Americans tolerate such sweeping interventions into their lives and workplaces? … The 1994 mid-term election became a referendum on [...]
Still The Gold Standard: Barry Goldwater’s “The Conscience of a Conservative” 50 Years Later

We Forgive You. Now Git.

governorsanford-officialportraitI'm saddened, frustrated , and absolutely disappointed. The story of Mark Sanford was a roller coaster that dumped me off a cliff at the end. Allow me to take you through this sequentially. I've spent the past 36 hours dramatically changing my thoughts about how I might speak to the unusual story of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's mysterious disappearance. Mark was the head of the Republican Governor's Association (now headed by Haley Barbour), and considered a potential candidate for the 2012 Presidential nomination. First I thought, after hearing that he had been missing for several days after driving off in a bodyguard's SUV, that this guy was a little weird. I could, at that point, conceive of only one type of circumstance that might explain this behavior, and that would be some kind of kidnapping or other threat by an outside party. Barring such a circumstance, I figured running for President didn't sound like something that could be on his calendar... disappearing on purpose and intentionally avoiding everyone with no explanation just didn't sound like an event that would instill anyone's confidence. The good news, I thought, is that he certainly hadn't disappeared because of an extramarital affair. No one would draw this much attention just so they could spend time with an alternate squeeze. Later on I heard he was hiking in the Appalachian Trail. Clearing his head, evidently. According to his staff, this was not unusual, so my thoughts about the man didn't change much, just continuing to seem very odd and unlikely to be a kidnapping but rather just some eccentricity. South Carolina officials were [...]
Still The Gold Standard: Barry Goldwater’s “The Conscience of a Conservative” 50 Years Later

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 [...]
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