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TSA 2010

By on November 30, 2010 in Culture, News, Politics, Travel

Amid horror stories, press reports, and public outrage over the U.S. government’s blatant violation of an American citizen’s right to travel unmolested by the state, the TSA was accepted by the American people this Thanksgiving. The TSA had recently changed its security procedures to include state-sponsored groping by government agents for those passengers who declined a full body scan, another recent addition to the TSA’s battery of dictates for Americans who travel by commercial aviation. Established under the equally wretched Homeland Security department, another monstrosity created by George W. Bush (and, like socialized medicine, continued by Barack Obama), the TSA possesses and uses unprecedented power over anyone who travels in America. Less than ten years after middle class, college-educated Islamic terrorists boarded American jets without violating one aviation security law, the U.S. is on its way to becoming a dictatorship.

How did this happen and why? I do not pretend to know all the answers. I do know that, as the TSA furor reached its Thanksgiving climax, something happened and we lost our rights. Judging by personal experience and observation, Americans did what, unfortunately, (today’s) Americans do. They choked. Rather than take ideas seriously, when faced with imminent and grave threat to their individual rights, they opted for total submission to government control; faith in the state. There were no serious, widespread protests in opposition, no outbursts, no real resistance to the molestation. I think the public’s submission began in earnest with a line that has been improperly interpreted by some as having sparked an uproar. The San Diego, California, passenger who strenuously objected to the government’s handling of his “junk” inadvertently made a joke of the TSA’s wicked existence and every American with a slightly Puritanical streak who felt uncomfortable at having to think about the issue launched into what became an endless parade of jokes about “junk”. The human body and its most precious parts are not junk; the body is an exalted, sacred form that should be treated with respect and dignity. Not pawed by a government eager to sacrifice its entire population to an Islamic (or Christian or Mormon) holy war and put the nation on perpetual lockdown in the meantime. No, the TSA, which ought to be abolished with its host the Department of Homeland Security, will not end anytime soon. It will fester and get worse and so will the jihadist enemy and the states that sponsor them (whom the U.S. government appeases).

The TSA will stop when Americans stop making a joke out of tyranny and cease referring to that which ought to be regarded as sacred as “junk”. It will stop when Americans start thinking, the first step toward thinking for themselves.

ObamaCare and the 2012 Presidential Race

By on November 8, 2010 in Health Care, Politics

As newly-empowered Republican Congressional leaders make the rounds following their historic victory in the House of Representatives in last Tuesday’s election, the clear consensus is an abridged, which is to say emasculated, approach to repealing ObamaCare.

Ignoring the national mandate to reject the President’s socialized medicine, which is in judicial dispute by nearly half the states of the union, may be defunded by Congress, and is already having a devastating impact on American health insurance and business, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin prematurely declared the repeal effort dead until 2012 on FoxNews this week. The Republican power-seeker who, like his religious conservative Congressional colleagues Mike Pence, Jim DeMint and Eric Cantor, talks like he champions capitalism and individual rights but, in fact, does not, basically told the Tea Party movement to go to hell. But the Tea Party rank and file may yet put Rep. Ryan in his place. Though it is true that, in the abysmal pack of major GOP 2012 presidential contenders, not one recognizes that health care is not a right, the only one pulling away from the pack thus far, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Christian conservative, is making a name for himself by leading the charge against ObamaCare.

Once the American people get a whiff of Obama’s health care dictatorship to come and once the Tea Party figures out that they’ve been had less than a week after the huge GOP gain, sellouts like Pence, Cantor and Ryan may be flushed out with Obama. Watch what the GOP does on repealing ObamaCare and, in a party demanding more capitalism not less, look for the most consistent advocate for repeal not replacement. Whomever comes closest to arguing for the morality of capitalism, not Christianity, against ObamaCare and demands its unequivocal repeal, to the extent anyone in the GOP can achieve such a status, would be catapulted to frontrunner in the race for the Grand Old Party’s nomination for 2012. Don’t count on Congressman-Can’t-Do Paul Ryan.

Election Results

By on November 3, 2010 in News, Politics

In a stunning rejection of Barack Obama and his presidency, and of the Democratic Party agenda, Republicans have been elected to a majority in the House of Representatives by an historic margin, apparently by a gain of over 60 seats, and narrowly missed winning a majority in the U.S. Senate. In an undeniable rebuke of New Left President Obama, the head of the Democratic Party lost what had been his Senate seat in corrupt, Democratic-controlled Illinois to Republican Mark Kirk, former congressman and former chief of staff to retired Congressman John Porter. Senator-elect Kirk, an environmentalist who has backtracked on those policies, is a pro-choice moderate who may lean to the right and bring the GOP closer to supporting secular government, capitalism, and a military offense against jihadists. If he wants to be a serious advocate for capitalism, individual rights, and defense, he would instantly be an appealing alternative to the bunch of mindless conservatives lined up for the presidential nomination in 2012, whether as a candidate or as a voice of reason.

Others to watch: Senator-elect Marco Rubio in Florida, who defied the Republican Party to win the nomination and defeated the Obama, Clinton, and Bush establishment, Kentucky’s new GOP senator, Christian libertarian Rand Paul, so far the only major Tea Party kook to win an election (Paul’s fellow religionists Angle, O’Donnell, and Paladino were all defeated), and California’s new Christian Governor-elect, former Jesuit Catholic seminarian Edmund “Jerry” Brown, who uses churches like Mel Gibson hustling blood porn to sell Brown’s peculiar brand of religious statism. Jerry Brown, part of the original rise of religion in U.S. politics in the 1970s with Baptist “born-again” fundamentalist Jimmy Carter, invoked God again in a rambling and egotistical victory speech. Watch for more God, tradition and religion in government. As an alternative, having lost its highest profile races partly due to their blatant proselytizing for religion in government, the Tea Party movement, which represents a rejection of Big Government, should oppose the mixture of religion and state.

Whatever else Tuesday’s election results may mean, the Tea Party movement clearly has the potential to shed its dingbats, to paraphrase Harry Binswanger, sponsor candidates who stand for man’s rights and capitalism, and restore the Republicans to the ideals of Lincoln, Jefferson, and reason. In the meantime, watch for strange, sudden alliances, power struggles, and a political shift in conflict from left/right to religious/secular. With the core principles of the GOP in play, a radically restructured Congress, and an overwhelmingly rejected but strikingly dishonest and divisive American president, it’s best to choose a side now; the battle has not yet begun.

Blanking Out with Jon Stewart

By on October 29, 2010 in Culture, Politics, Television

Remember the show about nothing? That was the tag for the popular 1990s comedy Seinfeld, which marked the rise of nihilism, the worship of the nothing, in American culture. This incessant sneering at values, any values, is rampant among what passes for today’s intellectuals: various leaders, artists, and politicians. Nihilism is everywhere, in cynical TV animated programs such as The Simpsons, South Park, and the defunct Beavis and Butthead and numerous live action examples in movies and television. From smart but cynical Seinfeld sprang smart but sniveling comedians, such as Bill Maher, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert (with conservatives Denis Leary and Dennis Miller on the right), who routinely engage in and dominate what’s left of the nation’s political discourse. Appropriately, earlier this week, the nihilist-in-chief made an appearance (the first by a sitting president) on one of those shows, Stewart’s aptly nondescript Daily Show on Comedy Central. Just as appropriately, the twin nihilists, put-down artist paired with a put-down president, apparently talked for the duration of the program about nothing.

Now the nothing worshippers are having a rally about nothing, conveniently timed as a sort of counterstrike against those idealistic Tea Party activists who care deeply, passionately, and openly about America and have no shame in saying so. Messrs. Stewart and Colbert are planning a congregation in the nation’s capital to accomplish nothing. Presumably, their legions of fans, water cooler cynics from coast to coast, will follow like lemmings into the abyss. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, which tried desperately to make sense of the affair, the two jaded comedians are refusing to disclose details about Saturday’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” as they call it. According to an official description, it’s a rally near the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial “for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat.” Stewart told CNN’s Larry King last week: “This is not a political rally in any way, shape or form.”

Then what is it?

As indicated in the above quote, Stewart prefers to define the rally by what it is not, insisting that the rally for nothing is not intended as a response to Glenn Beck’s recent conservative rally in the same location or a rejection of the Tea Party movement. In an interview with NPR, Stewart said the rally is non-partisan and non-ideological. Last month, he told NPR: “I have no obligation to the Democrats or progressives or liberals or unions. We’re not warriors in their cause.” In fact, a Daily Show producer described the rally as a comedic call for calm, adding: “Right now we are banking a lot on the Great Pumpkin showing up.” A rally for nihilists in a city ruled, for now, by a nihilist Leonard Peikoff rightly calls America’s first New Left president? Whatever its outcome, Saturday’s rally represents the culmination of worshipping nothing, which is what millions if not most Americans have done for a long, long time. Unless Americans choose to go by reason instead of blanking out, many will be left with nothing at all. They can start by choosing to think, voting for gridlock and, for once, changing the channel.

Forecast, Election 2010

By on October 25, 2010 in Politics

With races tightening around the country, and with most showing improvement for Republican candidates and a recent poll indicating that many of those polled suggest they could change their minds again, I tend to give Republicans the edge in next Tuesday’s election. Though I acknowledge that this is an optimistic projection, I forecast a major Grand Old Party (GOP) victory in both houses of Congress, with Republicans winning control of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. Based on my experience working on various campaigns, in Congress, research and views expressed by expert political scientists, I think the GOP may gain as many as 100 seats in the House and a narrow majority in the Senate. Additionally, I have observed that most American voters with whom I have corresponded in recent months overwhelmingly reject the Democratic Party-controlled Congress and administration agenda, particularly the President’s health care law ceding government control of the medical profession, known as ObamaCare. Even liberal Democratic loyalist Chris Matthews, who used to work for Jimmy Carter and Tip O’Neill, admitted in his commentary today that voters may put the GOP in control of the House and Senate. If people want to stop the advancement of government intervention in economics, they will have to do exactly that.