Jun 21, 2010

Define Capricious

ca*pri*cious
adj.
Characterized by or subject to whim; impulsive and unpredictable. See synonyms at arbitrary.

Adj. 1. capricious - changeable; "a capricious summer breeze"; "freakish weather"
unpredictable - not capable of being foretold
2. capricious - determined by chance or impulse or whim rather than by necessity or reason; "a capricious refusal"; "authoritarian rulers are frequently capricious"; "the victim of whimsical persecutions"
arbitrary- based on or subject to individual discretion or preference or sometimes impulse or caprice; "an arbitrary decision"; "the arbitrary rule of a dictator"' "an arbitrary penalty"

Sound familiar? What the heck... let's review:

1. After the 2008 election, there were calls by many on the Left for President Bush and his administration to step aside and let the Obama administration take over during the financial crisis prior to the constitutionally mandated date of January 20th (20th Amendment). The constitutional date for presidential inaugurations has been so revered in American history that prior to the 1933 date change to the 20th Amendment from March 4 to January 20, only four exceptions were made. These four presidents delivered their inaugural addresses on March 5th because March 4th fell on a Sunday. Respect for the date was only superseded by respect for the Sabbath. Times have changed.

2. Three days after entering office President Obama overturns the Mexico City Policy which prohibited the use of American taxpayer funds for abortion services overseas. He does this against the will and consent of a majority of Americans.

3. On February 4th, Obama announces pay caps of $500,000 for executives of companies receiving TARP money. Interior Secretary Salazar cancels 77 leases to oil and gas companies made by the Bush administration, while letting 39 stand. The authority for the executive to determine private enterprise executive compensation limits and to arbitrarily cancel contracts is enumerated in which part of the constitution? Don't answer that.

4. On February 21st, Obama's DOJ affirms the Bush administration's position that enemy detainees in Afghanistan do not have the right to use U.S. courts to contest their detention. On November 13, Attorney General Holder announces that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried in downtown Manhattan within several weeks. He does this against the will and consent of a majority of Americans. In a rare show of sensitivity to public opinion there has been no announcement as to when and where KSM will be tried, but apparently it won't be in Manhattan. May we suggest GITMO, which is yet to be closed as Obama repeatedly promised during the campaign?

5. March 30th, Obama announces restructuring ultimatums for Chrysler and
General Motors effectively taking government control of two of the Big Three auto
firms. Obama fires the chairman and CEO of GM. In the restructuring deal, the
UAW ends up with a majority share of Chrysler (55%), making the term "secured"
creditor meaningless and once again shattering the very idea of constitutional
protection of contracts. The transactions are effected using capital infusions from
TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) slush funds as leverage to coerce reluctant banks. He does this against the will and consent of a majority of Americans.

6. April 5th, Obama gives a speech in Prague touting unilateral nuclear
disarmament for America and her allies. This, while rogue states such as North
Korea and Iran have been shown to have nuclear ambitions and the intent to
threaten their neighbors and/or sell their deadly wares to terrorists. His
unilateral disarmament policy is naive and dangerous and against the will and
consent of a majority of Americans, not to mention it is in direct conflict with
his role as president.

Those are some of the major events for 2009. In 2010 thus far, we've seen...

7. The comprehensive health care bill passed by the Senate is "deemed" passed by the House
using a procedure previously reserved for budget items. After at least 54
speeches by the president, lots of back room deals and severe arm twisting, the
measure is more unpopular with Americans than ever. It becomes law against the will and consent of a majority of Americans.

8. After Arizona passes a law intended to allow state police to enforce
immigration laws the federal government won't, the Obama administration
announces that immigration officials won't process illegal immigrants picked up
under the new law. This raises three main issues: 1) The president doesn't
acknowledge the concept of equal standing before the law. 2) The president
doesn't to plan to faithfully preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as he
promised in the oath of office. 3) The president doesn't care that a large
majority of Americans support the Arizona law and want the borders secured
before any immigration laws pass. He punishes Arizona against the will and consent of a majority of Americans.

9. In an event little noted by the mainstream media, Congress fails to write a
budget for 2011. It isn't that they missed passing a budget by the April 15
deadline, which they did, but that they didn't even bother to write one. The
budget is non-binding, but has serious implications as to the political will of
Congress to tax and spend responsibly. We, the taxpayers, should insist the
holders-of-the-purse-strings not only face the awful truth of the budget mess by
writing a budget... we should insist Congress live or die by a balanced budget.

10. In response to the oil spill devastating the Gulf of Mexico, Obama has
extorted $20 billion out of BP for another of his many slush funds (TARP,
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and now this). At least these
funds won't come from the taxpayers' pockets, but we should all be alarmed that
our president is so capricious as to utterly ignore due process and the rule of law.
We should also note he has an open hostility for free enterprise which suggests,
if America weren't so bullied by political correctness, we could openly call our
president a socialist. And if "progressives" weren't so intellectually dishonest in
pursuit of their aims, they would openly admit it.

When the government stops governing with the consent of the people, it is
tyrannical. When the government is capricious in the extreme, disregarding the
rule of law, confiscating property, imposing punishments on those who would
adhere to the rule of law, using extra-legal if not unconstitutional procedures to
jam down its agenda and picking winners and losers in contractual disputes, it is
contemptible even if the ends are as glorious as it intends. Such a government
is abusive, dangerous and illegitimate and must be opposed by every person
wishing to remain free.

God bless America! And to borrow my brother's tag line... buy more ammo!

Anyone, said T.S. Eliot, could carve a goose, were it not for the bones. And anyone could govern as boldly as his whims decreed, were it not for the skeletal structure that keeps civil society civil -- the rule of law. The Obama administration is bold. It also is careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness. [...] The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption. - George F. Will, Tincture of Lawlessness: Obama's Overreaching Economic Policies, May 14, 2009, The Washington Post

Jun 7, 2010

The Political Correctness Bomb or: How I Learned to Love the Lie


My political awareness started in the early 70s during the Vietnam War and Watergate. What did I learn from these pivotal events in American life? From the Vietnam War, I learned that America was a loser. I learned that lots of veterans were druggies and those were the good ones, because at least they were high while America perpetrated this grave injustice on the innocent Vietnamese people who just wanted to be left alone. The others had hearts of darkness capable of, how did John Kerry put it? Oh yeah,

they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

And this was all due to a primitive paranoia on the part of Republicans about their bogeyman – communism. Never mind that JFK took America into the conflict. It was those stupid conservatives who saw a communist under every rock and believed in some freaky “domino” theory about the spread of communism in Asia. Pheh!

After America won the war (see An American Amnesia) and lost the peace due to the Democratic congress de-funding the South Vietnamese government it had pledged to support in the peace agreement, what did I think about the subsequent killing fields and communist genocide in Southeast Asia? What genocide? Boat people? I didn't know anything about boat people until I met one in engineering school in the late 1980s.

Do liberals ever ask themselves what the difference is between Nazis and communists? Answer: Nazis kill Jews first and then anyone else who gets in their way. Communists kill anyone who gets in their way. Lots and lots of people. No matter. When you're a liberal, it isn't about the truth. It's about smug self-righteousness.

WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER!

COEXIST

SUPPORT THE TROOPS Bring them home!

What about Watergate? Oh yeah – Watergate was a liberal's political orgasm. It was affirmation of all I thought (using the term loosely) about evil conservatives and their war mongering, greedy, corrupt, bigoted ideology. Tricky Dick was the poster boy for Republicanism until Reagan displaced him with his stupid “evil empire” saber rattling, not to mention Iran Contra. What about Nixon's disastrous socialist experiment with wage and price controls? Further evidence that the dream can only be fulfilled by the “right” people. Barack Obama, anyone?

Liberals are in love with their virtue. It is a deep narcissism, which I'm hoping God will forgive in me since I was young at the time and who isn't narcissistic in their youth? Liberal intoxication with their virtue is so profound, their minds are impenetrable to facts and reality. The sin this engenders and the room it makes for evil to flourish is so destructive, the liberal survival mechanism is an extreme cognitive dissonance which would make the text books – if psychology academics weren't so subject to it themselves.

So, to my liberal friends – love the lie. It is keeping your head from exploding!

Political correctness is the bully's way to keep you from voicing truths inconvenient to the Left's narrative. - Western Chauvinist.

Melanie Phillips, author of The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth and Power spoke the following on The Dennis Prager Show, June 7, 2010.

Well, um, the book arose out of a puzzle, where I... I had come to the conclusion that over a very wide range of issues, black was being presented as white, truth was being presented as lies and vice versa, justice was being muddled up with injustice, right not being told from wrong. Um, and I set out to try to... to work out what on earth was going on and I came to the conclusion that in the west, the intelligentsia, the left-wing intelligentsia has simply departed from reason.”

But, the other great difference [between the UK and the USA] is this... that, although there are many many ordinary people in Britain who still know right from wrong, truth from lies and so on... and one of the points I'm making in my book is that the phenomenon I'm talking about... flight from reason, is confined to the intelligentsia. Nevertheless, there is much more hope that in America this can be fought off, because in America the great mass of people are still pretty God-fearing. … In those parts of the west that have become godless has grown up the belief that to follow the precepts and the beliefs of the Hebrew Bible and the Christianity that was built on top of it, which underpin our civilization... that if you believe in those things, say the intelligentsia in Britain, you are basically irrational. You are basically a credulous fool who believe a load of superstitious mumbo jumbo. And it's my argument that, in fact, those beliefs in the Hebrew Bible and the Christianity that was built on top of it, underpin the things that all of us, including secular folks hold dear. The idea of equality between human beings fashioned equally in the image of God; the idea of equality for women; the idea of freedom of speech; the idea of individual liberty; the idea of social justice; and above all, the notion of reason. These are things that are actually underpinned and given to us by the... by the Bible.” - Phillips describes herself as a secular Jew.

The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage. - Thucydides

The free enterprise system is about human flourishing. The happiest people are those who earn their success, whatever the amount of money they earn.” - Arthur Brooks, author of The Battle: How the Fight Between FREE ENTERPRISE and BIG GOVERNMENT Will Shape America's Future.