Wouldn’t you know it? I thought I had the minority-of-one issue behind me, and along comes Rand Paul. Of course, I was pleased to find that I really wasn’t a minority of one for expressing my views on unionization, but today’s article will be far more difficult for even the most ardent liberty advocate to swallow.
When MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow asked Rand Paul if he believed that a private business should have the right to refuse to serve African-Americans, he correctly answered, “Yes.” But he went on to say, “I’m not in favor of discrimination of any form.” Read Full Article
As BHO continues to transform the United States into a socialist hell, the latest poke in the eye is the National Mediation Board’s proposal to make it easier for airline and railroad workers to unionize.
For seventy-five years, the rule has been that in order for any class of workers (e.g., pilots) employed by an airline or railroad to unionize, a majority of all employees in that class have to vote for unionization. But the proposed new rule would require only that a majority of employees who actually vote on the question of unionization would be needed to unionize. Read Full Article
The gangster government now in control in our nation’s capitol is a grim and repugnant reminder that freedom, at best, is ephemeral. At worst, it’s a myth. In fact, true freedom – like true capitalism – has never existed anywhere on this planet. Rest assured that those with an insatiable lust for power will never allow either to occur.
The boldest experiment in doing away with dictatorial government was the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and perhaps the most important words in that document are: Read Full Article
I recall when I was a teenager asking the question, in a civics class, “What’s to stop the president or Congress from ignoring the Constitution and doing whatever they please?” Predictably, the class laughed and the teacher patronizingly explained to me that our system of “checks and balances” made such a scenario impossible. I was too intimidated to press the matter any further, but I do remember that I was totally unconvinced by his dismissive answer.
Segue to 2010, and, by golly, we have a president and a Congress that ignores the Constitution – even laughs about its relevance – and does whatever they please! Darn it – where’s your high school civics teacher when you need him most? Read Full Article
Why have the combined mudslinging voices of the media (so called), Congressional Democrats, and the thin-skinned boy wonder who occupies the Oval Office not been able to turn the tide against the tea partiers? If you look at the poll numbers, the answer is obvious: Most Americans are tea partiers.
However, most of them are not yet in enough pain to skip a day at the ball park and stand in a crowd of thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) and listen to tea-party speakers. That’s a shame, but it doesn’t change the fact that they identify with the tea-party movement. Read Full Article
On April 15, I attended my third tea-party rally, this one at the Washington Monument. While I applaud those who put in the time and effort to organize the event, as well as those who took the time to participate, I was a bit disappointed.
First, I was hopeful that an overwhelmingly large crowd would turn out, given the significance of the date. It didn’t happen. It looked to me to be about 10,000 people, which must have warmed the hearts of the Obama-loving left that so desperately wants to believe that voter anger will fade away by November. Read Full Article
Jon Voight is a true champion of liberty. When he appeared on Huckabee last Saturday, it was a refreshing change from the usual cast of progressives and radicals whom Huckabee welcomes on board each week.
Voight is one of those rare celebrities who is not afraid to be specific in his criticisms of Barack Obama and his Congressional allies. In his Huckabee appearance, he was clear and adamant in assuring the audience that the charges of hatred and racism against the tea-party people are completely without merit. He then read a letter he had written to “the people of America.” Read Full Article
As the attacks on the tea-party people by left-wing politicians, BHO’s inner circle of hatchet artists, and the cheerleading media continue unabated, it always catches my attention that very few people are willing to come right out and say that it is Der Fuhrbama himself who is calling the shots on all this.
Whenever something outrageous happens, everyone seems to go into a humoring mode as though BHO, of course, had nothing to do with it. We are supposed to believe that it’s just his overzealous supporters acting on their own. Read Full Article
Last week, I caught the tail end of a television interview with Obama supporter Annabel Park, founder of the Coffee Party USA. What little I heard of the interview sounded like it was the progressives’ answer to the tea-party movement. The party’s mission statement, as posted on its Web site, is as follows:
The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but Read Full Article
In my article “Saying Yes to the Party of No,” I commented on how pleased I’ve been to see Glenn Beck talking about a subject I’ve been writing about since the late seventies: a government-declared state of emergency leading to a “temporary” dictatorship.
I have long believed that the mathematics of an insatiable entitlement society in the U.S. guarantees a runaway inflation, which likely would be followed by anarchy and chaos – a perfect excuse for government to resort to strong-armed totalitarian measures to “restore order.” My model has always been Germany’s Weimar Republic in the 1920s, where runaway inflation brought Adolf Hitler to power. Read Full Article
Millions of people are convinced that the implementation of Congress’s new People-Control Bill (a.k.a. as Obamacare) is, of and by itself, the death of liberty in the United States. There’s no question that this draconian measure is the most anti-freedom, unconstitutional, immoral piece of legislation ever “passed” by Congress, but it would be a mistake to focus on it to the exclusion of everything else.
In truth, Obamacare is just one part of the tyranny wrecking ball that clobbers Americans on a daily basis. What I am referring to is the “progressive” notion that elected politicians – not to mention non-elected bureaucrats – have the authority to grant, as well as take away, individual rights. Read Full Article
For more than a year now I’ve been wanting to read Bill O’Reilly’s A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity. Notwithstanding the fact that O’Reilly dumbfounds me with his “fair and balanced” handling of Bolshevik Barry’s blatant attempts to bring down the U.S. economy, the book sounded like it would be a nice break from the kind of stuff I read day in and day out – books that have a tendency to make my brain throb.
Well, I’m pleased to be able to say that A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity is a very enjoyable read. Bill O’Reilly is a master of pithiness and wittiness. I rarely laugh out loud when reading a book, but I did so a number of times with A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity. Read Full Article
When you’re in a seemingly impossible situation, one of the most important but least understood tools you can employ to turn things around is detachment. There are many things from which you can detach yourself, and one of the most important is the habit of judging people, actions, and circumstances as being right or wrong, good or bad.
As Deepak Chopra says in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, when you are constantly classifying, labeling, and evaluating, you “create a lot of turbulence in your internal dialogue.” The more internal bickering that takes place, the less time and room (in your mind) you have for constructive thinking. Read Full Article
Lindsey is at it again. Some people enjoy golfing. Others find their greatest pleasure in reading. And, of course, millions of people are content just to anesthetize themselves with junk TV. To each his own — so long as a person doesn’t violate anyone’s rights in doing his thing.
Unfortunately for Americans, Lindsey Graham’s thing is to reach across the aisle to his progressive friends and promote legislation that violates the rights of his employers (i.e., you and me). To parody Ursula the witch in the Disney classic The Little Mermaid, it’s what he lives for. Read Full Article
After more than a year of lies, deception, corruption, heavy-handed tactics, bribes, threats, bailouts for privileged corporations, government takeover of two of the three largest automakers, and nonstop attempts to force government-controlled health care on people who don’t want it - among other abominable actions – The Big Question about the Duplicitous Despot has become: “Do you believe Barack Obama is a socialist?”
Gosh, that’s a real toughie. You’ll have to give me a couple of seconds to think about it. Whenever I hear this question posed on television, I wonder to myself, “Are you asking if the person thinks he’s a socialist as opposed to a communist? You certainly couldn’t be asking whether he’s a socialist or just a misguided moderate.” Please, let’s get real here. Read Full Article
I had a long visit a few days ago with a Republican Congressman, who assured me that even if the Republicans win back both the House and Senate in 2010, government spending will continue unabated. He agreed with me that, with few exceptions, Republicans are as lacking in courage as Democrats.
But he also made one other point that I thought was significant. While BHO and a handful of far-left Congresspersons are driven by ideology and really do want to see the U.S. transformed into a socialist (if not communist) state (apologies to Bill O’Reilly, who “doesn’t believe for a second that Barack Obama doesn’t have the best of intentions for his country”), most are simply ignorant. Read Full Article
There is much speculation that if the Republicans meet with BHO and his comrades to discuss health care, they will be walking into a trap. They are concerned that if they don’t go along with his idea to force socialized medicine on Americans that the Dems will pound away at the theme that the Republicans are “the party of no.”
And they’re right, they will. But rather than fearing the label, the Republicans should embrace it. If the Republican Party intends to get back to its pro-Constitution, free-market, small-government, low-spending roots, it should be proud to be called the party of no. Read Full Article
I recently read a fascinating book about chaos theory — Chaos, by James Gleick. Oversimplified, chaos theory is about the underlying chaos that exists in seemingly orderly systems.
The so-called butterfly effect comes into play here, because a small change in initial conditions can dramatically change the long-term behavior of a “system.” A system, of course, can be just about anything — the weather, a mathematical formula, a sporting event, even a student’s school career. Read Full Article
Even though Social Security and Medicare guarantee to bankrupt America, we should not lose sight of the fact that there are scores of other government programs that are both immoral and costly — and that need to be abolished.
Take unemployment benefits, for example. If Obama and progressives on both sides of the aisle continue with their never-ending extensions of unemployment benefits, we will look back on 2009 as the good old days, a time when we had only a 10-20 percent unemployment rate (depending on how one wants to calculate it). That’s right, unemployment benefits make the average worker worse off, not better, because, like minimum-wage laws, they cause unemployment. Read Full Article
As the U.S. edges ever closer to coming face to face with the consequences of its $100+ trillion of debt and “unfunded liabilities,” the cries from the never-give-up-the-fight progressives over “unfettered” capitalism are becoming increasingly louder. The coalition of communists, Marxists, socialists, progressives (a.k.a. “liberals”) — along with those who are simply envious, ignorant, or angry — are calling for capitalist scalps.
They say that the worsening depression (euphemistically referred to by politicians and media pundits as “recession” — and one that is on the verge of a rebound, at that) is a result of capitalism run amok. More regulation and more redistribution of wealth is the only thing that can save America, right? Not quite. Read Full Article
In this, the final installment of “Saul, Barack, and Me,” I’d like to discuss Saul Alinsky’s views on self-interest, which he summed up in Rules for Radicals as follows:
Self-interest, like power, wears the black shroud of negativism and suspicion. To many the synonym for self-interest is selfishness. The word is associated with a repugnant conglomeration of vices such as narrowness, self-seeking, and self-centeredness, everything that is opposite to the virtues of altruism and selflessness. Read Full Article
To justify his anti-liberty pursuits, Saul Alinsky came up with “a series of rules pertaining to the ethics of means and ends.” Most of them are rambling, convoluted meanderings that are based on the age-old progressive habit of anointing oneself judge of right and wrong, but I think it will be instructive if I touch on a couple of them here.
Alinsky’s “second rule of ethics” is worth dissecting, because it gives such a clear picture of how a professional agitator’s thought processes work. His second rule of ethics says that “the judgment of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment.” Read Full Article
Major earthquakes near heavily populated areas always produce destruction and mass casualties, but I’ve never seen anything quite like the carnage and suffering that Haiti has been experiencing. As I watch the aftermath of this tragedy, a number of thoughts go through my mind.
First is the question, “Why?” Why is the fallout from this earthquake so much more horrific than that seen in natural disasters in, say, the United States? How can such a cataclysm happen in the Western Hemisphere in the twenty-first century? Read Full Article
As the angry, arrogant — and now severely wounded — “leader” of our nation revs up to fight back against mounting public opposition to his progressive policies, one is beginning to wonder if he might deserve to inherit Saddam’s title of the Master of Miscalculation.
Brit Hume says that Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts could be the best thing that could ever happen to Obama and his fascists cohorts in Congress if it causes them to open their eyes and move toward the center. He’s right, but it’s not likely to happen. Here’s why … Read Full Article
I have long considered Rupert Murdoch — a transplanted Australian, of all things — to be one of the greatest American heroes of our time. Like millions of other Americans, he saw the liberal bias in the media, but what made him different is that he had the financial wherewithal to do something about it.
In 1996, Murdoch, through his flagship company News Corporation, started Fox News as an alternative to CNN’s addictive liberal coating of the news. And, in what has proven to be a stroke of genius, he hired Roger Ailes as the man to run his new enterprise. Ailes is staunchly conservative, daring, and one of those guys who seems to have been born with the Midas touch. While you’re at it, you can add him to my list of the greatest American living heroes. Read Full Article
Everyone — including the far left — is well aware of the hypocrisy of the Democrats as it relates to their treatment of Harry Reid versus their reaction to Trent Lott’s comment to Strom Thurmond at his 100th birthday party.
Reid, with his perpetual scowl firmly in place, was predictably pathetic in his reaction to questions concerning his remarks about BHO’s racial qualities. In a press conference that followed the “light-skinned-with-no-Negro-dialect” bombshell, instead of answering the questions asked of him, Reid used each question to launch into a self-serving speech about what a swell guy he’s always been when it comes to the African-American community. Read Full Article
In Part III of this article, I said that, unlike BHO, Saul Alinsky had a soul, as evidenced by his saying, “I salute the present generation. Hang onto one of your most precious parts of youth, laughter. Don’t lose it as many of you seem to have done. You need it. Together we may find some of what we’re looking for — laughter, beauty, love, and the chance to create.”
What I meant by that statement was that Alinsky had feelings. Nonetheless, as I have previously stated, he was a complex man who was full of contradictions. Anyone who spends his life in a meaningless pursuit such as “community organizing” has to be plagued by contradictions, because without them, he would be forced to come face to face with the reality that his life has no worthwhile purpose. Read Full Article
The Saul Alinsky who helped lay the foundation for the amorality of the soulless young lad who would one day lie and scheme his way into the most powerful office in the world comes through loud and clear in Rules for Radicals when he said, “We live in a world where ‘good’ is a value dependent on whether we want it.”
This is an important statement by Alinsky, because it opens the floodgates to interpret the term general welfare in any way one chooses. In other words, simply wanting something makes it right. If your desire is to play God and steal from those you deem to be rich and give the stolen loot to those you deem to be poor, so be it. If that’s what you want, it’s moral. Nice and simple. Read Full Article
In Part III of this article, I said that the Saul Alinsky-like idea of playing musical chairs with the reins of power is a yawner, because history has clearly taught us that what happens in a successful revolution is that a new upper class emerges (Castro and his thug associates, Mao and his thug associates, Quadaffi and his thug associates, etc.).
In all revolutions, the doors of elitism swing open and a small number of populist leaders (as opposed to the duped masses — euphemistically referred to as “the people”) rush to take their places inside. As Alvin Toffler describes vividly in The Third Wave: Read Full Article
Saul Alinsky was well aware of the advantages of living in a reasonably free society like the U.S. In Rules for Radicals, he said:
“Let us in the name of radical pragmatism not forget that in our system, with all its repressions, we can still speak out and denounce the administration, attack its policies, work to build an opposition political base. True, there is government harassment, but there still is that relative freedom to fight. I can attack my government, try to organize to change it. That’s more than I can do in Moscow, Peking, or Havana. Remember the reaction of the Red Guard to the ‘cultural revolution’ and the fate of the Chinese college students. Just a few of the violent episodes of bombings or a courtroom shootout that we have experienced here would have resulted in a sweeping purge and mass executions in Russia, China, or Cuba. Let’s keep some perspective.” Read Full Article
When Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad recently appeared on Chris Wallace’s Fox News Sunday, Wallace said to Senator Klobuchar:
“According to the latest Rasmussen poll — and let’s put it up on the screen — 57 percent of voters given a choice between do nothing … or pass this bill … say it would be better to pass no health-care reform bill. Only 34 percent say it would be better to pass the bill. Senator, don’t Democrats run a considerable political risk when you’re going to pass major legislation with no bipartisan support over what seems to be almost a 2-1 opposition from the American people?” Read Full Article
Those who talk about the U.S. now coming of the “recession” are either fools or propagandists. Via health care, cap and trade, and other wildly unconstitutional measures, BHO and the criminal Congress will assure that the economy is many times worse off by next November’s elections than it is now. The objective, of course, is to bring people to their knees so they will have “no other choice” but to look to benevolent government for help.
I believe that 20-25 percent unemployment is coming … more massive bailouts of companies “too big to fail” are coming … higher taxes are coming … government controlled health care is coming … cap and trade is coming … and, yes, jail time for those who do not obey the unconstitutional edicts of the criminal class in Washington is coming. Read Full Article
Rick May 21, 9:24 PM on Was Saving GM Worker’s Job Fair?If he hadn't bailed them out, our country's unemployment insurance system would have been overloaded...
