HALF-FULL REPORT 11/23/12
It's Un-American not be woozy today, recovering from too much turkey, the fixins, and adult beverages at yesterday's Thanksgiving dinner. So let's relax and enjoy the troubles the leaders of other countries are having this week. Hopefully, they may portend those of ours. Who does this describe? "A false, cold-hearted, calculating spirit who commits evil without passion and slowly orchestrates despotism with all the intelligence of a Machiavelli." It fits Zero like a glove because it's the quintessential description of a Banana Republic Caudillo - the charismatic corrupt dictator or "strongman" whom "the masses" love for his professed love of them while he strangles their freedom and any chance for prosperity. Yet Argentina is today falling rapidly out of love with its Caudillo -- actually Caudilla -- as Egypt is with its new Pharaoh. Our Caudillo, our Pharaoh, may not be far behind.
REMEMBERING FREEDOM
I might as well confess this right at the start: this is the saddest Thanksgiving of my life. I am still having a very difficult time coping with Nov. 6. Yes, the number of Moron Uneducated Mooching Taxtaking Americans has increased under Zero enough to get close enough to the margin of fraud, enabling the Dems to steal it via voter suppression and theft. But what really made it within the margin of fraud is what hurts the most: That millions of non-Democrats - Republicans, Conservatives, Libertarians - chose to not vote for Romney, thus choosing of their own free will to destroy their country in an act of malicious sado-masochism. My term for them is Platonic Conservatives, Platonic Libertarians. The basic philosophical battle of Western Civilization has for 23 centuries been between Plato and Aristotle - between Platonists who believe the perfect must be the enemy of the good, and Aristotelians who believe it must not. Romney is a good man, an infinitely better man than Zero - yet the Platonists demanded perfection. The difference between a Romney Presidency and that of Zero's is not between Heaven and Hell, for neither of them exist here on earth, any more than does Plato's World of Forms. The difference is an America that would have started digging itself out of a fascist pit, and one that will now dig itself ever more deeply into it. On Nov. 6, the Platonists chose the latter. Freedom is fragile. Once freedom is gone -- especially if it is thrown away not taken away -- it is very difficult to get it back. As the great polymath Jacob Bronowski observes in his masterpiece, The Ascent of Man: "We are being weighed in the balance at this moment. If we give up, the next step will be taken, but not by us. We have not been given any guarantee that Assyria and Egypt and Rome were not given. The ascent of man will go on, but don't assume that it will go on carried by Western civilization as we know it."
ENVY AND THE FIXED TRAIT MINDSET
Envy is passive greed. It is also the result of a particular way of thinking of yourself. Greed as it is commonly used refers to an "excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions." Of course there can be a beneficial effect to a desire for more, when it is channeled through the free market system, where in order to get more yourself, you have to create value for others - as Milton Friedman so brilliantly explains here. Envy is an expression of that same "excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions," but with a difference: the envious person does not believe that he has the ability to earn the things that he desires. Which leaves only one alternative: he must covet what others have attained for themselves. For very good reason does the 10th Commandment condemn it. Greed and envy are the negative qualities that you can fall into when you allow your Rat Brain to guide you - following your impulses and automatic responses without regard to your consciously chosen principles, values, and priorities. The dysfunctional nature of greed and envy have one thing in common: a fixed trait mindset.
WEST 2016!
His only experience in federal office before becoming president was a single term in the House of Representatives. Two years before his election, he lost a race for the U.S. Senate. Why do I write about Abraham Lincoln at the start of a column about my favorite Congressman? Because Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., won't be my favorite Congressman much longer. He was narrowly defeated for re-election, in large part because of chicanery (i.e., Dem vote fraud) in St. Lucie County. National Democrats hope this will be the end of him, politically. If conservatives are smart, it will be just the beginning.
BUILDING A CONSERVATIVE CULTURAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Before Nov. 6, I thought only governments could spend so much money to such little effect. Republicans spent about $1 billion on Election 2012. For bupkes. If fewer than half a million votes in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado hadn't been stolen, Mitt Romney would be taking the oath of office Jan. 20. When you lose so narrowly within the Democrat margin of fraud, defeat can be blamed on many things. Mr. Romney might have won if: Yet the bigger takeaway for me from Election 2012 is how shrewd leftists were to concentrate on gaining control of our most important cultural institutions. It took time, but the payoff has been huge. Liberals and those further left dominate our public schools, colleges and universities, Hollywood, and the news media. The deck was stacked against Republicans. Conservatives can break the liberal stranglehold on our culture --but only if we wise up. If, a few years ago, conservatives had invested just one percent of what was blown this year on campaign advertising on building conservative cultural infrastructure, Mitt Romney might now be president-elect.
WHY CAN’T LIBERALS UNDERSTAND FIFTH-GRADE MATH?
Dennis Van Roekel, president of the largest teachers union, the National Education Association, failed fifth-grade math last week. The question he failed is: If X (government spending) is growing faster than A (government tax revenue) plus B (new revenue from higher tax rates on ‘the rich'), when will A + B = X? President Obama met with leaders of left-leaning organizations, including Mr. Van Roekel, to discuss the ‘fiscal cliff' last Tuesday (11/13). After the meeting, Mr. Van Roekel appeared on Neil Cavuto's Fox News show to discuss the budget deficit. Mr. Van Roekel told Mr. Cavuto that he had recommended taxing the top 2 percent more to deal with the problem. Mr. Cavuto then correctly explained that taxing the top 2 percent could not solve the problem because even with the increase, spending would still be growing far faster than revenues -- primarily because of entitlement programs. After some back and forth, Mr. Van Roekel could not identify one item in the budget that he was in favor of cutting and kept insisting the problem could be solved only by taxing the top 2 percent, even though Mr. Cavuto again correctly and clearly explained that even taxing the top 2 percent at a 100 percent rate would not produce enough revenue because entitlements are growing faster than the economy. Mr. Van Roekel appeared to be unable to grasp this rather simple concept.
HALF-FULL REPORT 11/16/12
I must admit that I remain in a state of total shock over November 6th. There is still a part of me that finds the results incomprehensible. The actual results were within the margin of fraud, so the Dems stole it. At the Rendezvous, we had a world-expert on cyber-intelligence explain how "trivially easy" it is to hack into and rig voting machines. Plus all the other voter-suppression tricks the Dems use in states with no Voter ID. What Dems do is whatever it takes to win without any semblance of morals. What Pubs do is blame each other, whine, and wimp out. A perfect example is Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal on Monday (11/12) being a smart-ass ignorant jerk demanding IQ tests of Pub candidates. He typifies the growing RINO chorus chanting the GOP must now capitulate on 1) abortion, 2) homosexual marriage, and 3) amnesty for illegals. Why? To get elected. Power as an end in itself, not to politically accomplish something moral. It is Stephens and his ilk who need to take an IQ test - as demonstrated by the evisceration of his argument for amnesty by Victor Davis Hansen on Tuesday (11/13). Hansen's The Latino Vote Obsession is a masterpiece, simply a "must-read" this week. Another masterpiece must-read is this interview with my dear friend Robert Agostinelli. No one can tell it like it is like Robert.
BENGHAZI IS MORE THAN JUST ANOTHER SEX SCANDAL
It's taken a soap opera to get the network evening news broadcasts to take an interest in what happened in Libya on 9/11/2012. Better late than never. Three days after Barack Hussein Obama was safely re-elected, Gen. David Petraeus, the CIA director, resigned. The reason, he said, was his affair with Paula Broadwell, 40, his biographer. We didn't learn about the affair until election day, the White House claims. This strains credulity. Gen. Petraeus apparently lied when he testifed about Benghazi to the House Intelligence Committee Sept. 13. Why? His testimony was behind closed doors, so security couldn't have been the reason. Was he being blackmailed? The most important questions have nothing to do with sex. Let's ask them.
LEGITIMACY AND DISOBEDIENCE
These are times that try men's souls, wrote Thomas Paine in 1776, and so is the time that's upon us now. So, it is time to examine our core beliefs, very clearly and plainly. More than anything else, difficult times demand that we know what we believe - not with shallow slogans, but down to our depths. "Conservative values" are not a core belief - they are derivative, not primary. The term is, at best, a short-hand reference to a set of ideas. But unless you have a very clear grasp of what those values are, the slogan becomes a cheap imitation. We must know the real thing, not merely a group of words that stand in its place. Have you ever asked yourself what makes a government legitimate? Legitimacy in human government is far more important than force. Ruling humans by force alone is a losing proposition: The ruled will adapt; they'll hide their grain before it can be taken, or they'll just leave. In order to rule humans successfully, they have to be willing. This willingness can be attained either by manipulation or by convincing people that joining together provides better results. A government that convinces people to support it has a valid claim to legitimacy. A government that manipulates people into supporting it does not.
INTROSPECTION YES, RECRIMINATIONS NO
Defeat fosters introspection, which is good, and recriminations, which are bad. All Republicans agree the GOP must change to be competitive in future elections. But few agree on what should change. No good can come from forming a circular firing squad. The GOP lost across the board. Bad candidates lost. So did good candidates. Moderates lost. So did Tea Party favorites. Republicans lost in blue states, purple states, even in some red states. Republicans didn't lose because they compromised too much or too little, were too strident or too milquetoast. They lost because 38 percent of the voters were Democrats, just 32 percent Republicans. That Mitt Romney came as close to winning as he did with a D+6 electorate is remarkable. But weep not for the GOP. Weep for America. Catastrophe looms.