Category Archives: Liberalism

Repeat: Friday Follies for June 5, 2015

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The left is attempting to smear Marco Rubio and his wife. The Drudge headline this morning is this: NYT INVESTIGATES: Rubio and Wife Cited 17 Times for Traffic Infractions... The New York Times couldn’t be bothered by Hillary’s State Department incompetence, nor of the bribes funneled to her and Bill through their shell corporation, but let the Rubios get some traffice tickets? Horrors!

I’ll take the Rubio’s traffic ‘indiscretions’ over Bill’s and Hillary’s criminality any day. At least the Rubios paid their fines instead of attempting to cover them up.

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Rick Perry announced his candidacy for Prez yesterday. I saw him speak at the NRA Annual Meeting in Nashville a month ago. It was apparent then that he was going to run. (You can see my comments and a link a video of his speech here.) Perry’s opening video of him shooting steel with an AR was a hit with the NRA members—especially his final look to the audience in the video.

Perry lost his bid for Prez in 2012 by screwing up one interview. In that interview, he said he’d close three federal departments. He named two and couldn’t remember the third. I’ve heard him say elsewhere that he had learned his lesson—never give an interview after having major surgery. Perry had surgery on his back during the campaign and was taking pain-killers when he was interviewed.

I like Perry. I like a number of the ‘Pub candidates, Cruz, Walker, Rubio, Jindal, and to as lesser extent, Paul. I told my wife after hearing Perry speak in Nashville, “He is the only one speaking today that actually appears Presidential.”

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I don’t know how many of you subscribe to Erick Erickson’s daily newsletter. I do. I don’t always agree with him but, on occasion, he says something that strikes a cord within me. Today’s newsletter had such an occasion. I would hope you read it, too. It contains ammunition for you in your next discussion with a liberal who claims our Founders were racist, old white men.

Open Letter to a Liberal Professor

My conservatism doesn’t need to be edited.

By: Diary)  |  June 4th, 2015 at 03:27 PM

(From the diaries…bill s)

The heart of this entry is a letter I wrote in response to one specific liberal professor who made the mistake of attempting to embarrass me for holding conservative views. First let me share a little back-story. It was an online course on American Government, one that made use of a message board for class discussion and student interaction. After introductions our first assignment was to answer a question regarding freedom in America, including how and to whom it should be applied. I happily typed and posted my response, which I share here in part:

“Our Federation was founded on the ideas of Individualism, and the idea that freedom should be available to every citizen in equal measure. It was this idea that the framers of our Constitution embodied and enshrined within our system of governance. They sought to create a document that preserved and protected the idea of individual freedom by enumerating a system that not only protected the citizen but allowed the citizen to participate should he or she choose to do so.”

Being a liberal my professor could not let me, a mere student, praise the work of our nation’s founders, especially in an open forum where other students might be exposed to a positive view of them. Thus she felt it her duty to post a reply and correct my “errant” notions, and responded by stating:

“I will not usually intervene here, but I want to push you all to think about something —

Irish writes: “Our Federation was founded on the ideas of Individualism, and the idea that freedom should be available to every citizen in equal measure.” As I’m sure Irish knows, though, the Founding Fathers explicitly did not believe that freedom should be available to every citizen in equal measure. Quite the opposite. They believed that freedom should be available mostly to the wealthy, land-owning, white men. Our idea of who should be allowed to participate in this project of self-governance has evolved substantially over our history.”

Like so many liberal professors, in a room with a captive audience, this woman had become far too comfortable spouting factual inaccuracies and historically incorrect statements in order to drive forward a corrosive ideology. Like so many conservatives I am sick of this having become a common occurrence, so rather than drop the matter, I chose to respond:

Professor,

In response to your attempt to correct my statement I would prefer to defend my position. I said exactly what I meant, it needs no correction, and furthermore I can defend my position with historical evidence.

At the time of our nation’s founding the understood meaning of the word “citizen”, so far as political involvement was concerned, was indeed that of white, land-owning, males. Thus, to say, as I did, that “Our Federation was founded on the ideas of Individualism, and the idea that freedom should be available to every citizen in equal measure” is accurate in its context. However to state that the founders “explicitly did not believe that freedom should be available to every citizen in equal measure” that they believed “[q]uite the opposite” going so far as to suggest that “They believed that freedom should be available mostly to the wealthy, land-owning, white men” is demonstrably incorrect.

It defies logic to suggest that our Constitution’s Framers intended to reserve citizenship and freedom to white, male, landowners, either generally or exclusively. If that were the case they could have done so, they had the opportunity — they had the votes.

Our Constitution, written by those very framers, does not restrict citizenship or freedom in such a manner. Even issues such as slavery are acknowledged but not enshrined, left instead to the discretion of the states. Nowhere within our founding document can be found anything resembling the Jim Crow laws or the “slave” codes that erupted in the South after the passing of the 13th Amendment. Yet these men you accuse of harboring such vile racist views had ample opportunity to include such legislation. Furthermore, the inclusion of the Article 5 Amendment process indicates that our Constitution’s framers were aware of the fact that times would change, and also aware of the need to provide for those changes. They were conscious of the population growth in the North and expected that it would eventually overrun the influence of the South within Congress. Feeling that this would be the case they allowed the Three-fifths Compromise in an effort to prevent the Southern States from simply importing more slaves as a means to increase their power within the House of Representatives. This act by the Framers suggests they intended to provide a means by which our federation could eventually deal with the issue of slavery while accomplishing the immediate, and necessary, task of creating a union of the existing States.

I would suggest that our Constitution is not a rigid document enshrining bigotry, patriarchy, or voting rights tied to landownership, is evidence of the lack of intent to restrict society in America in such a manner; but it could have been. This is a truth I feel is easily supported. We need look no further than he dissenting opinion in the infamous Dred Scott case. This document contains a great deal of history relating to the treatment of African Americans prior to the Emancipation. In the opinion Justice Benjamin R. Curtis reveals that four Northern states (Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire and New York) provided voting rights for African American citizens even before our Constitution was drafted. (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1072053/posts) Ironically, in light of your assertion, several states when ratifying the Constitution did so with votes from both Whites and African Americans. This, to my mind, seems to fail as evidence of an exclusionary approach by the Framers.

I am however not naïve, I realize that there were those among our founders who felt otherwise but the facts are clear — the majority of our Founding Fathers did not intend to restrict freedom, using a narrow definition of who was a “citizen,” reserving it to a select few, as you have suggested.

On a final note I would point out that where there hasbeen a substantial change to our definition, or understanding, of what constitutes a “citizen” it has been a result of those “white, male, landowners” in the North who voted to abolish the institution of slavery and redefine said citizenship, via the 13th and 14th Amendments, and this was done in the face of great opposition from the southern Democrat Party. (On a side note: This phenomena was repeated in the early 1900’s when again “white men” in the House of Representatives and the Senate voted to extend that definition to include recognized national voting rights for women as citizens of America, and this via another Constitutional Amendment. This decision closed the gap legally between citizenship and voting rights for women.)

The ability for this to happen, both for former slaves and for women, was precisely a result of those “white, male, landowners” who could have enshrined sexism, bigotry and the like within our founding document but did not.

I stand by my original statement, and maintain that I was accurate in my portrayal of the intent of our founders.

I appreciate your time.

I knew even then that I would not change her mindset, or reverse her ideology, but I also knew that I was throwing down a gauntlet she could not afford to pick up. This is why it is important we self-educate. We as conservatives must be able to defend our beliefs with documented and researched opinions. It is amazing to watch a liberal when they are out of their element, falling back on tired and weak hypothetical arguments.

Not surprisingly this professor never again attempted to correct my posts, and for the curious, my grade did not suffer for my response.

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They’re off!

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The 2016 campaign season started this week with GOP sessions in Iowa and other locales. Ted Cruz, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio received applause. Rand Paul a few less, mainly due to his lack of support for national security. Apparently Rand Paul has no problems with the Castros in Cuba. Cruz and Rubio, do. In Arizona, John McCain was booed at the AZ state GOP meeting and Sarah Palin hinted she may consider running again in 2016. Of course, the liberal media went into hysterics. All-in-all, it was a good start.

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Everyone is watching the scenes and positions: Conservatives vs. RINOs, RINOs and Liberals against Conservatives. There  is another, less well known, battle going on in, of all places, the gamer and science-fiction communities. Have you heard about Gamergate and the controversy in the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) over the Hugo Award? Most people think the conservative vs. progressive conflict involved only politics. Wrong!

Gamergate is…complicated. The SFWA controversy less so. Both involve censorship and attacks by ‘progressives’ against more conservative participants. Gamergate, a term created by Firefly actor, Adam Baldwin, began with a controversy involving sexism, feminism in on-line games. Self-declared critics quickly took sides and the battle was on. Taken as a whole, Gamergate is trivial. Viewed as a cultural battle, it is another battleground used by the progressive movement to change American culture into a tyranny where free speech and expression do not exist.

It issue became so controversial that Wiki banned five feminist editors from touching the topic. The issue was ‘fairness.’ ‘Fairness,’ however, depends on your personal viewpoint. Wiki strives to maintain impartiality for their online encyclopedia. Usually, they are successful and this ban is a response to maintain that impartiality.

The SFWA/Hugo Award controversy is less confused. Larry Corriea, a SF/Fantasy writer is on one side, that of conservatives, many of them members of the Baen writers group. Baen writers are generally conservative. Many of the writers product military science fiction and write with a more conservative viewpoint. On the other side is John Scalzi, a self-declared liberal and progressive, and the progressive members of SFWA.

An explanation about the Hugo awards controversy

Posted on April 24, 2014 by correia45

A few days ago the finalists for the Hugo were announced. The Hugos are the big prestigious award for science fiction and fantasy. One of my books was a finalist for best novel. A bunch of other works that I recommended showed up in other categories. Because I’m an outspoken right winger, hilarity ensued.

Many of you have never heard of me before, but the internet was quick to explain to you what a horrible person I am. There have been allegations of fraud, vote buying, log rolling, and making up fake accounts. The character assassination has started as well, and my detractors posted and tweeted and told anyone who would listen about how I was a racist, a homophobe, a misogynist, a rape apologist, an angry white man, a religious fanatic, and how I wanted to drag homosexuals to death behind my pickup truck.

The libel and slander over the last few days have been so ridiculous that my wife was contacted by people she hasn’t talked to for years, concerned that she was married to such a horrible, awful, hateful, bad person, and that they were worried for her safety.

I wish I was exaggerating. Don’t take my word for it. My readers have been collecting a lot of them in the comments of the previous Hugo post and on my Facebook page. Plug my name into Google for the last few days. Make sure to read the comments to the various articles too. They’re fantastic.

Of course, none of this stuff is true, but it was expected. I knew if I succeeded I would be attacked. To the perpetually outraged the truth doesn’t matter, just feelings and narrative. I’d actually like to thank all of those people making stuff up about me because they are proving the point I was trying to make to begin with.

Allow me to explain why the presence of my slate on the Hugo nominations is so controversial. This is complicated and your time is valuable, so short explanation first, longer explanation if you care after.

Short Version:

  1. I said a chunk of the Hugo voters are biased toward the left, and put the author’s politics far ahead of the quality of the work. Those openly on the right are sabotaged. This was denied.
  2. So I got some right wingers on the ballot.
  3. The biased voters immediately got all outraged and mobilized to do exactly what I said they’d do.
  4. Point made.

The column continues with a discussion about motives and issues surrounding the award process. If you read all of Correia’s post, you will notice the controversy is not about books, novels, nor much about their quality nor content. It’s about politics—conservatives vs. liberals.

On the other side, among many, is John Scalzi, past President of SFWA whose term expired in 2013. Scalzi, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, chose to not run again for office. His name was the only one on the ballot when he was elected.

Correia and Vox Day have been accused of attempting to stuff the ballot box by creating proxy memberships in SFWA. Scalzi admits that the tactic has been used before by liberal writers in their attempts to win Hugos. The tactic is fine when liberal writers do it. But when Correia gathers some real conservative writers and persuades them to join SFWA, it suddenly become controversial. Another form of the liberal bias is the weighted voting system. Toni Weisskopf, Baen’s publisher, had the most votes for Editor Long Form award, but came in 2nd due to WSFS’s (World Science Fiction Society) weighted voting system. Baen’s conservative books are an anathema in the SFWA.

Scalzi wrote this posting after the Hugo Awards were announced. I’ve never heard of the winning writers, Charles Stross excepted, and I’ve been reading science fiction since I was in grade school sixty years ago. Of the winners, however, every single one of them is a progressive who push their political agenda openly in their novels. Even USA Today noticed the conflict.

Thoughts On the Hugo Awards, 2014

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In no particular order (and for reference, the winners are here):

1. I am super-delighted that the Hugo Best Novel Award went to Ancillary Justice. One, because it’s fantastic, but two, because I feel entirely unwarranted pride in Ann Leckie’s career, because I gave her her first professional sale, and was delighted to give Ancillary Justice a blurb for when it came out. I had nothing to do with the book’s success, other than receive the pleasure of letting people know I thought it was great. I’m still super proud of its clean sweep of the major SF/F awards, and of Ann. This is just great.

2. I’m also giggling that Charlie Stross name-checked me and Lou Anders when he won for Equoid; I remember that fateful night in Denver in 2008, when the messy seeds of that story were planted with two words, the two words being “unicorn bukkake.” And now, Charlie’s got a Hugo out of it. That’s just about perfect.

3. Also: Mary Robinette Kowal! Who is one of my favorite people on the planet. Some of you may know that her Hugo-wining novelette was disqualified last year, despite having enough nominations to make the slate, because its first appearance was in audio form. It then appeared in word form, and here we are. I’m thrilled that it got a chance to be considered in another year, although frankly it should have never been disqualified at all. I do believe a proposed rule change would have audio-first stories considered in fiction categories along with print-first stories. I think that’s wise.

4. And generally I am delighted with the slate of winners in other categories as well. I think there was a fair amount of concern that the large increase of Hugo voters this year was going to be evidence of (for lack of a better phrase for them) “single issue” voters — specifically those voting only for Wheel of Time or participating because of the “sad puppy” slate of conservative writers. But the voting tallies suggest that if there were “single issue” voters, they were swamped out by people who did their homework and then voted from there. To which I say: Well done, Loncon 3 voters! You done good.

5. You’ve seen me snark about it, I’m sure, but now that the voting is over, what did I really think of the “sad puppy” slate of nominees championed by Larry Correia and others? What I thought at the beginning, which was: The folks pushing the slate played within the rules, so game on, and the game is to convince people that the work deserves the Hugo. It does not appear the voters were convinced. As a multiple Hugo loser myself, I can say: That’s the breaks, and better luck another year.

With that said, Correia was foolish to put his own personal capital as a successful and best selling novelist into championing Vox Day and his novelette, because Vox Day is a real bigoted shithole of a human being, and his novelette was, to put it charitably, not good (less charitably: It was like Gene Wolfe strained through a thick and rancid cheesecloth of stupid). Doing that changed the argument from something perfectly legitimate, if debatable — that conservative writers are often ignored for or discounted on award ballots because their personal politics generally conflict with those of the award voters — into a different argument entirely, i.e., fuck you, we got an undeserving bigoted shithole on the Hugo ballot, how you like them apples.

Which is a shame. It’s fine for Correia to beclown himself with Day, if such is his joy, and he deserves to reap the fruits of such an association. I suspect, however, there are others whom he championed for his “sad puppy” slate who were less thrilled to find themselves looped in with Day by involuntary association. Likewise, Correia is a good writer and his works are fun to read and easy to enjoy; others he championed are likewise fine writers, and their works deserving of award consideration. He didn’t do his work, or the work of these other writers, any favors by muddling his message with Day’s nonsense.

Now, I understand Correia will be happy to tell you that his Hugo loss doesn’t matter to him, which is fine. I do wonder if he considered how other people that were seen as part of his slate feel the same way, or whether he’d do them or their careers any damage by associating them with a bigoted shithole, or that if he really wanted to make the argument that a particular set of writers are ignored by award voters, that he went about making the argument in just about the worst way possible. Bad strategy, bad tactics, bad result.

6. About the entire Wheel of Time series being nominated, again, fully within the rules, so game on, and I would have been honestly happy for Brandon Sanderson if he’d picked up the Hugo with Robert Jordan. I think people underestimate the skill and talent required to do what Brandon did over the course of three books, which was to satisfy the long-term fans of the series, bring the series to a well-developed end with all the story arcs closed up and and emotions earned, and to keep his own ego as a writer in check as he did it. Think that’s easy? I sure as hell don’t — and as a writer, I couldn’t have done it. If Wheel of Time had won, Brandon would have earned every millimeter of that rocket, and I would have been cheering for him.

Likewise, I was never particularly worried about Wheel of Time voters being “single issue” voters — that is, voting only for Wheel of Time and then blowing off the rest of the ballot. Anecdotally, I know a fair sampling of Wheel of Time readers, and none of them only read Wheel of Time. Having the series on the ballot may have brought in new voters, but it seems like they took their voting seriously. So there you have it.

7. In sum: A very good year for the Hugos; indeed, a vintage year. Congratulations to the winners; congratulations to the nominees; congratulations to the voters. See you next year in Spokane.

Culture wars exist. More specifically, it is one culture war masquerading as many. In the end, it still comes down to this: it’s them or us. I know which side I’m on.

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A paradigm shift?

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I didn’t watch Obama last night. I wasn’t interested in listening to his pontifications and lies. Listening to the top-of-the-hour news this morning, I was vindicated in skipping Obama’s brag fest.

Instead, I went to a small meeting to listen to a friend who is a political activist and heads a state-wide organization. I’d rather listen to him than Obama.

I’ve heard my friend speak before. He’s always been knowledgeable and has numerous inside contacts in Jeff City. He original topic was the upcoming legislative session in Jefferson City. I was particularly interested in HB 188, a bill designed to attack grassroots organizations, like the Western Missouri Shooters Alliance, by forcing them to disclose their membership lists and donors.

That was his intent. And…he did cover a few of the items coming forth in Jeff City. We were a small group last night. Many of the usual members didn’t come. Some are snowbirds and were out-of-state in more warmer climes. When questions started from the floor how we, as individuals, could be more effective lobbying in Jeff City, his planned talk went out the window.

In retrospect, the diversion was good. He explained the legislative process that many did not understand. How opinions of legislators can be changed. He cited the successful veto-override effort for SB 523 in the last session. We discussed various techniques how individuals can influence legislators…and how some tactics, yelling at staffers over the phone, can back-fire.

The discussion spread far and wide and as I listened I began to hear an underlying concept, something I’d heard from others outside Missouri…the federal government is becoming irrelevant. Every new tyranny from Washington has an opposite and equal reaction within the states. The result of the reaction is more ‘nullification’ bills being filed in state legislatures. More states joining the Convention of States movement. More states resisting, and in many cases, succeeding, edicts being issued from Washington.

Prior to the Civil War, an individual’s primary loyalty was to his state. After that war, a person’s loyalty, supported strongly by the triumphant North, was to the country as a whole and to the central government. That viewpoint has continued until Obama was elected. (For some, it was earlier but I’ll not argue the point.)

What I am hearing from many across the country is a return to the primacy of state loyalty. The growing view that it must now be the states who defend their citizens from the tyrannical acts of the central government. It matters not the issue, be it education and common core, the EPA and water-rights, Obamacare and the forced expansion of medicaid, or the failure to secure our borders. Here, there, people’s loyalties are shifting and I don’t yet think the liberals have noticed. Yet.

I’m of two minds on this paradigm shift. I was born, as was my wife, in Illinois. I have relatives who live in the oppressive state, still. But, I’m glad my wife and I left over forty-five years ago. Missouri is now my state, my home, and I’m proud of it and our ‘Pub controlled legislature.But I’m still loyal to the nation as a whole—not the FedGov, but to the United States. I once swore an oath to defend the nation and the Constitution. I’ve not recanted that oath. But the Constitution no longer rules the federal government. Loyalty to the Constitution is not loyalty to the FedGov.

Note above, I said ‘Pub controlled state legislature, not conservative controlled. Not all of the ‘Pubs in Jefferson City are conservatives. It’s a work-in-progress to change them to conservatives…or replace them with conservatives.

I’m sure the libs will call those who have shifted their primary loyalty to their states racists, fascists, Nazis, the usual liberal diatribe. They overlook one central fact: conservatives can live quite well without the federal government in their lives. The liberals and social parasites, cannot. That, perhaps, may be the real divide within this nation.

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Alpha and Omega

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Revelation 1:8 King James Version (KJV)

8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

In the passage above, God is the beginning and the end. In today’s world, democrats and liberals want to usurp that authority.

To an extent, they have done so at the beginning with widespread abortions upon demand. Now another liberal and Obamacare architect, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, wants to kill us when we reach age 75. “Seventy-five years is enough,” he says. Death at the beginning and end by government fiat.

Whenever we chip away a bit at abortion, the abortionists scream and froth at the mouth. This month, Missouri passed a bill over democrat Jay Nixon’s veto, to extend the waiting period from 24 hours to 72 hours. It’s a small thing, giving a pregnant woman three days to think over her irretrievable decision. But if you listen to the abortionist’s protest, you would think Missouri had banned all abortions completely.

They lie, of course.

A woman doesn’t know if she is pregnant for a month or more after conception. Frequently more, two, sometimes three months before observable changes occur. The abortionists want us to believe that three days is critical? Why? Is it really the woman’s decision or the abortionists? The abortionists, according to democrats and liberals.

When Nixon’s veto was overridden, I knew it wasn’t the end. I was right. The abortionists have changed tactics. They are shipping pregnant women out-ot-state for abortions…like cattle to slaughter. All because of another 48 hours delay.

‘Out-of-state abortion providers ready to treat more Missouri women,’ St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “One of the strictest abortion laws in the country is about to take effect in Missouri, and some out-of-state providers say they are prepared to treat more Missouri women if they show up at their clinics. Starting Oct. 10, women who want to stay in Missouri for the elective procedure will have to wait 72 hours after consulting a physician before they can receive an abortion. That’s triple the previous 24-hour waiting period. There are no exemptions in the case of rape or incest. The state has only one abortion provider left, Planned Parenthood in St. Louis.

 

“Dr. Erin King, the associate medical director at Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City, said she’s not sure if more women will show up, but she’s ready to respond if they do. Her clinic is about 15 minutes from downtown St. Louis. The state of Illinois has no waiting period for women age 18 or older. … King said her group tries to provide as much information about women’s options and the state-imposed wait times on its website. … The price for an abortion varies depending on the stage of the pregnancy, which also dictates the type of abortion. The price ranges from $465 for the abortion pill to $3,720 for a procedure performed at 23 weeks, according to Hope Clinic for Women’s website. A patient then submits an itemized summary to her insurance carrier but is not always reimbursed, according to a Hope Clinic staffer. King’s clinic performs more than 5,000 procedures a year, according to its website, and is one of the closest clinics to Missouri. A Planned Parenthood and the Center for Women’s Health, located in Overland Park, Kan., serve metropolitan Kansas City. A third provider, Aid for Women, closed its doors in July, according to its website.” — PoliticMO and the St Louis Post-Dispatch.

Why all this effort to kill people from the left? Perhaps it is because they view us as commodities—commodities to be used and discarded when we are no longer useful to them. We have the abortionists at the beginning of life slaughtering innocents and then we have others, like Dr. Emmanuel, at the other end waiting to dispose of us.

In his controversial essay that appears in the October issue of The Atlantic, the prominent bioethicist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel argues that longevity — living into your 80s, 90s and beyond — often comes at the expense of quality of life. Emanuel says he will be perfectly content if he dies at age 75.

“By the time I reach 75, I will have lived a complete life,” Emanuel writes in the magazine. “I will have loved and been loved. My children will be grown and in the midst of their own rich lives. I will have seen my grandchildren born and beginning their lives. I will have pursued my life’s projects and made whatever contributions, important or not, I am going to make. And hopefully, I will not have too many mental and physical limitations.”

Emanuel, the director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and head of the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, helped develop President Obama’s health care reform law. — CBS News.

Dr. Emanuel reminds me of the movie, Soylent Green. Sarah Palin’s Death Panels exist. Dr. Emanuel created them in Obamacare.

 

And people shake their heads when I predict an upcoming civil war. The left will continue to push, push, push their agenda of maximum control until the rest of us get fed up and refuse to comply. When that happens, the gloves come off and the left will unleash their goons to force us into compliance…and we will refuse. That’s why the government is creating para-military groups in the Department of Education, the IRS, USDA and other federal agencies that have nothing to do with violence except what they create themselves. Perhaps the Surgeon General’s Riot Control Police will appear next.

Is it possible to prevent a civil war? Yes, of course. But we won’t when we have leadership like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell leading the congressional ‘Pubs. They are part of the problem, not the solution.

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Friday Follies for March 21, 2014

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I didn’t find a topic for today. Instead, I’ve found a number of nuggets that I want to bring to your attention. The first of these is Microsoft. In case you weren’t aware, Microsoft is one of the nation’s largest ISP—Internet Service Provider. If you have a HotMail account, you’re a user of that Microsoft network. Microsoft isn’t just Windows, it is more…much more, and they have problems.

Microsoft caught up in fresh privacy storm

 

By Richard Waters in San Francisco

Microsoft on Thursday scrambled to head off a privacy storm after it was revealed that the software company had searched through the private email of a blogger it suspected of having received stolen software code.

The concession marked one of the most damaging privacy gaffes to hit a leading US technology company since revelations in 2013 that the country’s National Security Agency had been spying on their users. The companies involved, including Microsoft, reacted with outrage at the secret government snooping.

On Thursday, the software company first sought to play down the outcry over its email search in a statement defending the move, before following up only hours later with a promise of new and stronger procedures to reassure users that their privacy would be protected in such cases.

The column continues here…

In essence, Microsoft admits violating a user’s privacy—without a warrant. Their promises of privacy went out the window when it affected them. But, that follows their liberal corporate policy. Microsoft is one of the most liberal corporations in the country. Bill Gates, personally, has donated $186 million to boost Common Core. The various Gates foundations are also big contributor to liberal issues.

It is important to know whom to trust and whom is not worthy of trust. Bill Gates and his wife are, I submit, not trustworthy when it comes to personal liberty, freedom, and  to the education of our children.

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Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims

On the bright side, Rush Limbaugh has the illiteratti all up in arms. His two children’s books about the American Revolution and the founding of our nation is climbing to the top of the sales charts. He presents the truth about our history in a form that children—and adults, can understand. The libs are outraged.

Rush Limbaugh selection in children’s book competition causes a stir

(CNN) – Rush Limbaugh – radio host, conservative firebrand and… children’s book author of the year?

The Children’s Book Council and its Every Child a Reader program released on Thursday their author-of-the-year finalists for their annual Children’s and Teen Choice Book Awards.

Limbaugh is one of the four finalists, and his nomination has prompted outrage on social media, given the host’s often-incendiary nature.

Limbaugh’s book is titled, “Rush Revere and The Brave Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans” – a time-traveling tale of colonial America and the latest of two books in the “Rush Revere Series” published last year by Simon & Schuster.

Limbaugh, an outspoken figure in the political world, often expresses controversial sentiments on his radio program. Recently, Limbaugh blasted Pope Francis’ economic views as “pure Marxism,” and, in 2012, he called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute” for her support of women’s access to birth control.

The Children’s Book Council issued a public letter, posted to its website and Facebook page, defending its finalist selection process following the uproar online and insisting that the author of the year finalists “are determined solely based on titles’ performances on the bestseller lists.”

“Some of you have voiced concerns over the selection of finalists from bestseller lists, which you feel are potentially-manipulable indications of the success of a title. We can take this into consideration going forward, but cannot change our procedure for selecting finalists after the fact,” the organization said in the letter.

The CBC letter goes on to say the kids, who will start voting next week, ultimately decide which author wins in each of the six categories, including best author. The letter goes on to assure that the organization has a procedure in place to protect against fraud and adult’s voting in the contest.

“This program has never been about CBC or ECAR endorsing finalists,” the letter says.

Limbaugh touted the apparent success of his book series on his radio program on Thursday.

“We just found out last night that on the New York Times Best-Seller List of March the 30th, ‘Rush Revere and the First Patriots’ will open at number one, and ‘Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims’ moves up to number four,” said, according to a transcript of the audio.

Limbaugh’s book landed at the number-5 spot on the New York Times best seller’s list for the week of March 23.

Heh, heh, heh!

***

A movie is being released in a few days, Noah. According to the trailer, “It is inspired at the Book of Genesis.” The producers admit to taking “some artistic license.”  A lot of license. If you have seen some of the short trailers on TV, it looks like some fantasy horror movie.

Russell Crowe in “Noah.”

Darren Aronofsky wrestles one of scripture’s most primal stories to the ground and extracts something vital and audacious, while also pushing some aggressive environmentalism, in Noah. Whereas for a century most Hollywood filmmakers have tread carefully and respectfully when tackling biblical topics in big-budget epics aimed at a mass audience, Aronofsky has been daring, digging deep to develop a bold interpretation of a tale which, in the original, offers a lot of room for speculation and invention. The narrative of the global flood that wiped out almost all earthly life is the original disaster story, one that’s embraced by most of the major world religions, which means that conservative and literal-minded elements of all faiths who make it their business to be offended by untraditional renditions of holy texts will find plenty to fulminate about here. Already banned in some Middle Eastern countries, Noah will rile some for the complete omission of the name “God” from the dialogue, others for its numerous dramatic fabrications and still more for its heavy-handed ecological doomsday messages, which unmistakably mark it as a product of its time. — The Hollywood Reporter.

When you compare Noah with Cecil B. DeMille’s classic, The Ten Commandments, or the more recent, Son of God by Roma Downey and her husband, Noah could not be further from the truth. It is so bad, even Islamists have banned it.

According to the column above, one of the most outrageous omissions in Noah, is not it’s “artistic license,” but its complete omission of God in the film.

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End of the Year Review

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Usually, at this time of year, the media has a feeding frenzy of Year-End Reviews. For some reason, I’m not seeing many this year. Camile Paglia had an interesting view in her column last week, in the Wall Street Journal. Paglia, a self-described lesbian, wrote an article in defense of men and masculine virtues.

It was an interesting article, especially from one firmly entrenched in the left and a feminist. She has had a revelation! Men, and masculine virtues are a necessity if Western Culture is to survive.

The rot is pervasive. For example, a church erected a sign saying “Support our Troops”. The sign replaced a faded realtor sign. It wasn’t long someone complained to the county and an order was issued to the church to remove the sign. Why? Supposedly, because the church failed to get the proper permit. The real reason? Hatred for our country and the virtues associated with our military.

Paglia believes that trend has gone too far. From Zero-tolerance edicts in education to gender-neutral policies across the country. It is time for that to come to an end.

Camille Paglia: A Feminist Defense of Masculine Virtues

The cultural critic on why ignoring the biological differences between men and women risks undermining Western civilization.

Updated Dec. 28, 2013 10:46 p.m. ET
Philadelphia

‘What you’re seeing is how a civilization commits suicide,” says Camille Paglia. This self-described “notorious Amazon feminist” isn’t telling anyone to Lean In or asking Why Women Still Can’t Have It All. No, her indictment may be as surprising as it is wide-ranging: The military is out of fashion, Americans undervalue manual labor, schools neuter male students, opinion makers deny the biological differences between men and women, and sexiness is dead. And that’s just 20 minutes of our three-hour conversation.

When Ms. Paglia, now 66, burst onto the national stage in 1990 with the publishing of “Sexual Personae,” she immediately established herself as a feminist who was the scourge of the movement’s establishment, a heretic to its orthodoxy. Pick up the 700-page tome, subtitled “Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, ” and it’s easy to see why. “If civilization had been left in female hands,” she wrote, “we would still be living in grass huts.”

The fact that the acclaimed book—the first of six; her latest, “Glittering Images,” is a survey of Western art—was rejected by seven publishers and five agents before being printed by Yale University Press only added to Ms. Paglia’s sense of herself as a provocateur in a class with Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern. But unlike those radio jocks, Ms. Paglia has scholarly chops: Her dissertation adviser at Yale was Harold Bloom, and she is as likely to discuss Freud, Oscar Wilde or early Native American art as to talk about Miley Cyrus.

Ms. Paglia relishes her outsider persona, having previously described herself as an egomaniac and “abrasive, strident and obnoxious.” Talking to her is like a mental CrossFit workout. One moment she’s praising pop star Rihanna (“a true artist”), then blasting ObamaCare (“a monstrosity,” though she voted for the president), global warming (“a religious dogma”), and the idea that all gay people are born gay (“the biggest canard,” yet she herself is a lesbian).

But no subject gets her going more than when I ask if she really sees a connection between society’s attempts to paper over the biological distinction between men and women and the collapse of Western civilization.

She starts by pointing to the diminished status of military service. “The entire elite class now, in finance, in politics and so on, none of them have military service—hardly anyone, there are a few. But there is no prestige attached to it anymore. That is a recipe for disaster,” she says. “These people don’t think in military ways, so there’s this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we’re just nice and benevolent to everyone they’ll be nice too. They literally don’t have any sense of evil or criminality.”

The results, she says, can be seen in everything from the dysfunction in Washington (where politicians “lack practical skills of analysis and construction”) to what women wear. “So many women don’t realize how vulnerable they are by what they’re doing on the street,” she says, referring to women who wear sexy clothes.

When she has made this point in the past, Ms. Paglia—who dresses in androgynous jackets and slacks—has been told that she believes “women are at fault for their own victimization.” Nonsense, she says. “I believe that every person, male and female, needs to be in a protective mode at all times of alertness to potential danger. The world is full of potential attacks, potential disasters.” She calls it “street-smart feminism.”

Ms. Paglia argues that the softening of modern American society begins as early as kindergarten. “Primary-school education is a crock, basically. It’s oppressive to anyone with physical energy, especially guys,” she says, pointing to the most obvious example: the way many schools have cut recess. “They’re making a toxic environment for boys. Primary education does everything in its power to turn boys into neuters.”

She is not the first to make this argument, as Ms. Paglia readily notes. Fellow feminist Christina Hoff Sommers has written about the “war against boys” for more than a decade. The notion was once met with derision, but now data back it up: Almost one in five high-school-age boys has been diagnosed with ADHD, boys get worse grades than girls and are less likely to go to college.

Ms. Paglia observes this phenomenon up close with her 11-year-old son, Lucien, whom she is raising with her ex-partner, Alison Maddex, an artist and public-school teacher who lives 2 miles away. She sees the tacit elevation of “female values”—such as sensitivity, socialization and cooperation—as the main aim of teachers, rather than fostering creative energy and teaching hard geographical and historical facts.

By her lights, things only get worse in higher education. “This PC gender politics thing—the way gender is being taught in the universities—in a very anti-male way, it’s all about neutralization of maleness.” The result: Upper-middle-class men who are “intimidated” and “can’t say anything. . . . They understand the agenda.” In other words: They avoid goring certain sacred cows by “never telling the truth to women” about sex, and by keeping “raunchy” thoughts and sexual fantasies to themselves and their laptops.

Politically correct, inadequate education, along with the decline of America’s brawny industrial base, leaves many men with “no models of manhood,” she says. “Masculinity is just becoming something that is imitated from the movies. There’s nothing left. There’s no room for anything manly right now.” The only place you can hear what men really feel these days, she claims, is on sports radio. No surprise, she is an avid listener. The energy and enthusiasm “inspires me as a writer,” she says, adding: “If we had to go to war,” the callers “are the men that would save the nation.”

And men aren’t the only ones suffering from the decline of men. Women, particularly elite upper-middle-class women, have become “clones” condemned to “Pilates for the next 30 years,” Ms. Paglia says. “Our culture doesn’t allow women to know how to be womanly,” adding that online pornography is increasingly the only place where men and women in our sexless culture tap into “primal energy” in a way they can’t in real life.

A key part of the remedy, she believes, is a “revalorization” of traditional male trades—the ones that allow women’s studies professors to drive to work (roads), take the elevator to their office (construction), read in the library (electricity), and go to gender-neutral restrooms (plumbing).

” Michelle Obama‘s going on: ‘Everybody must have college.’ Why? Why? What is the reason why everyone has to go to college? Especially when college is so utterly meaningless right now, it has no core curriculum” and “people end up saddled with huge debts,” says Ms. Paglia. What’s driving the push toward universal college is “social snobbery on the part of a lot of upper-middle-class families who want the sticker in the window.”

Ms. Paglia, who has been a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia since 1984, sees her own students as examples. “I have woodworking students who, even while they’re in class, are already earning money making furniture and so on,” she says.

…

…men, and especially women, need to be honest about the role biology plays and clear-eyed about the choices they are making.

Sex education, she says, simply focuses on mechanics without conveying the real “facts of life,” especially for girls: “I want every 14-year-old girl . . . to be told: You better start thinking what do you want in life. If you just want a career and no children you don’t have much to worry about. If, however, you are thinking you’d like to have children some day you should start thinking about when do you want to have them. Early or late? To have them early means you are going to make a career sacrifice, but you’re going to have more energy and less risks. Both the pros and the cons should be presented.”

For all of Ms. Paglia’s barbs about the women’s movement, it seems clear that feminism—at least of the equal-opportunity variety—has triumphed in its basic goals. There is surely a lack of women in the C-Suite and Congress, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a man who would admit that he believes women are less capable. To save feminism as a political movement from irrelevance, Ms. Paglia says, the women’s movement should return to its roots. That means abandoning the “nanny state” mentality that led to politically correct speech codes and college disciplinary committees that have come to replace courts. The movement can win converts, she says, but it needs to become a big tent, one “open to stay-at-home moms” and “not just the career woman.”

Yes, it’s a long article. I did trim it a bit. If you wish, you can read the entire article at the WSJ website.

All is not lost, however. We still have young men, and women, joining the military, engaging in traditional roles, trades, acquiring skills that provide role models for the younger ones. There is a revolt, in states across the country against Common Core and it’s emasculating agenda. The opposition against Common Core falls along philosphical lines—the liberals and the NEA are for it, families and those concerned about education that actually teaches instead of indoctrinating students with liberal agendas, are against it.

As these forces intersect, 2014 promises to be ‘an interesting year.’

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A script for failure

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I listen to a lot of talk radio, in the morning, the afternoon, occasionally, depending on what I’m doing, in the early evening.  Needless to say, they are conservative radio shows…except for one.

In the afternoon, one of our local radio stations has a program with two hosts—I call them the neocon and the dummy. Sometimes, in my own mind, I have other descriptions for the dummy.

I listen because most of the time, the issues aren’t political. They discuss local news items, other news from across the the country and cultural issues. The neocon has over the last year or two, become more conservative, fiscal and social. The dummy is a former TV ‘journalist’ frozen in the liberal mindset.

Much of the time, the show is worth a few laughs. That is one reason that I listen. The other reason is that it’s too much trouble to change stations. It’s an old radio and the slide-rule dial doesn’t work anymore.

This week, the two hosts had a blowup. According to reports in the following days, it included one host, the dummy, throwing things at the other during off-air time during a commercial. Libs do that when they aren’t winning the argument.

What was the argument? Supporting kids when they have unreachable, or apparently so, dreams. The neocon apparently called the dummy a dream-killer. The dummy replied that it was a waste of time and effort for the kids to pursue dreams manifestly impossible to achieve. Yes, she’s a helicopter mom.

I pity her kids. She has several kids, teens and near-teens. While the dummy thinks she is preventing her kids from the pain of failure, she refuses to recognize that failure is only a step on the path to success. But…her kids will never know how to cope with failure.

No, the dummy has cocooned her kids. They are not allowed to achieve because they may fail. They aren’t allowed to have dreams because mommy thinks those dreams are silly and unreachable. They aren’t allowed to fail because mommy thinks failing can’t teach anything.

Mommy knows best. She will insure her kids never know the joy of working towards a dream, will never know the pain of failure that teaches the kids to stand back, analyze the failure and make a new plan to achieve the dream, or to modify the dream to one that can be achieved.

The dummy lives her liberal principles. She knows best. Only she has the ability to decide what her kids can do, can achieve, in what manner, and woe betide any of her kids, her chattel property, that deviates from her chosen path. It’s a script for life failure.

In the not too distant future her kids will finish high school. Will they be allowed to choose their path in life? No. Mommy knows best. I’m sure she will push them into a suitable, liberally cultured university, who will continue her philosophy of life micromanagement. They will insure her children graduate, maybe, with a useless degree, probably social work, with no life skills necessary for them to survive on their own.

Her kids will not know how to handle failure, and fail they will. They will expect mommy to bail them out and when mommy won’t or can’t do that, they’ll look towards mommy’s mommy, the government, to bail them out.

What the dummy has bred is another generation of social dependents, incapable of success because they’ve never been allowed to succeed. She has created a new generation of failures, dependent on government.

What a detestable life. The neocon had the temerity to point this out to the dummy and when she couldn’t support her arguments, she threw things, a typical reaction from a lib whose life is one of control and who fears the consequences of her micromanagement.

I find it hard to have sympathy for her. No, that’s not right, she deserves no sympathy. Her kids, who she has forced onto the path of failure, a path not of their choosing, do deserve sympathy…until they have kids and repeat the cycle of life failure, lessons taught to them by their mother.

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