Today is Inauguration Day, and as Barrack Obama is officially sworn in as our 44th President, I will not be watching a single moment of the event. The initial response to such a declaration is obviously going to be that I am suffering from a case of Sour Grapes, but that would not be true.
Aside from the souring of the Republican brand, an unpopular incumbent Republican President and John McCain's stark brilliance in running an absolutely lousy campaign, Barrack Obama must be given credit for rising to the occasion and soundly beating his opponents. Running a successful campaign takes guts and raw stamina, and he demonstrated both.
As Inauguration Day approached, I began to reflect on my observations of past Presidential campaigns and events. I remember all the way back to Ronald Reagan's inauguration back in 1981, and I have been fortunate to see the celebration and coverage of every successful campaign since then. After careful consideration and reflection on how I felt about this past year in politics, it dawned on me that my negative reaction has nothing to do with Obama's election, Nanzi Pelozi, Harry Reid or even the democrat party as a whole.
After struggling for the past couple of months to coalesce my thoughts and feelings into a focused thread, I have come to realize that my sense of anger and absolute disgust is entirely the product of - and focused on - what we have come to call the "Mainstream Media".
The entire point of the Founder's reasoning behind the establishment of a free Press was to act as a watchdog of the government on behalf of the citizenry. The idea was that a fully informed citizenry would be educated on political issues of the day, thereby holding bad politicians accountable by them having to suffer the wrath of disillusioned voters who would subsequently remove them from power.
The Founders were brilliant men, but even their brilliance overlooked the worst possibility they could have envisioned: What would happen to the integrity of the checks and balances of government if the Press chose sides? Well, for at least the next four years, we're about to find out.
The coverage of this past election cycle has been the single largest case of journalistic malpractice ever foisted on a free society. I am not painting with a broad brush or stating it to be funny. I am dead serious. So serious, that I submit to you that if this malpractice was ever punishable by capital statute, the first order of business would be to send Oprah Winfrey, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and the rest of the liberal spam-monkeys at MSNBC, The New York Times, Time and Newsweek straight to the gas chambers. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200 dollars.
Let's take the Inauguration itself as a recent example. In the early part of his second term, President Bush celebrated with his second Inaugural party. The price tag: $40 Million dollars. The result? Numerous op-eds and opinion pieces criticizing the President for spending so much money on an Inauguration when we had troops fighting overseas. The cost of Barrack Obama's Inauguration? $170 Million dollars. The result? No "mainstream" media complaints, no calls for a reduction because of the troops being overseas or because our country is in dire economic times. No, we're told that now is the time when you want to display such celebration because it is so historical and raises the spirits of the country. Journalistic double-standard? Why, not at all!
The media has put Barrack Obama on such a high pedestal and has hung on his every word and action to such an extent that Moses' parting of the Red Sea would look like an amateur card trick in comparison to the advertised abilities of our next President. He was able to run a campaign on vague concepts such as Hope and Change, and instead of asking for - no, demanding specifics, he was lauded by the Press for running a campaign that captured the hearts of the American people by concerning himself and appealing to their needs, all while not getting mired in specifics. Whenever John McCain started highlighting or stated specific differences between their campaign or experiences, the press labeled McCain as erratic, desperate, grouchy, angry and unstable, while Barrack Obama was characterized as already "acting Presidential", calm, cool and collected. With that kind of positive coverage, why shouldn't he have acted cool? Obama himself said that at the moment when he accepted the nomination, it was the time when people would look back at that point and say "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Forget that such a claim demonstrates a line of thinking that is downright megalomaniacal and scary as hell in it's nature. It was far scarier that no one in the "mainstream" media saw fit to laugh him out of town for making such a ridiculous statement.
Today, Chris Mathews (who has been suffering from a near-terminal Man-Crush on our next President) will have to leave the Inauguration at least two times to change his shorts as a result of the "tingle" Obama gives him running too far up his legs. (Hey Chris, make sure you axe Obama if it was good for him, too.)
Regardless of how I feel about the media that helped get him there, Barrack Obama deserves his Inauguration and time in the sun, because he has rightfully earned it, and it would be wrong of me to deny or begrudge him his due as the result of his victory. What I will not do, however, is watch the media's coverage of the event. They have broken their Constitutional and journalistic duty to inform the American citizenry by taking their blatant bias to a never-before-seen level. As far as I am concerned, American journalism has less integrity and credibility than the BBC, Al Jazeera and Pravda.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
A Narrow Path
After his final address to the nation was complete, beltway pundits began exchanging predictions about what President Bushs' legacy would be. As predicted, liberals came out in droves and continued calling the President a war criminal...guilty of torture, murder and treason. By their one dimensional line of reasoning, the only thing Obama needs to do in order to make the country a virtual Utopia is to simply do the opposite of everything President Bush did.
Obama, while he is not nearly as brilliant or omniscient as his supporters claim he is, he is certainly not stupid, either. Besides knowing full well that the typical democrat party talking points that portrayed the President as a heartless monster was contrived, red meat fodder to feed their liberal cattle, he is also now doubtlessly privy to information that - if it was to ever become public - would embarrass and seriously damage the remaining credibility of anti-war moonbats everywhere. Obama is now in possession of inconvenient knowledge that makes it very difficult to deal with certain segments of his constituency. On one hand, he and other democrats have gained political power by exploiting the outrage and lunacy of some people who have embraced the lowest common denominator in politics. Likewise, they also know that those people have to be managed like a carefully orchestrated balancing act, because much of the base nature of their beliefs is not rooted in the facts.
At some point, when Obama decides to use more troops, continue detaining terrorists, not set a withdraw date, spy on foreign phone calls and act unilaterally, etc - he is going to start being assaulted by a lot of the people who put him in power. That will be a major problem, because of the potential use of the race card.
Obama could never have been elected without the votes of whites, but urban blacks who had never even seen a voting machine before came out in overwhelming numbers. This left them with a huge sense of pride and empowerment. They, in effect, see Obama's election as an achievement of theirs, not Obama himself.
Inevitably, when white liberals begin to voice strong opposition to Obama's decisions not to undo everything President Bush enacted or set into motion, the first instinctual reaction on the part of all of those urban blacks who would follow Obama off a cliff if he asked them will be to defend him at any cost. They as sure as night following the day will absolutely use the race card at some point. And liberal whites, having felt that they had purged themselves of the guilt associated with the past mistreatment of blacks by voting for Obama, will become extremely pissed off for being called racists for simply voicing disagreement with a President that just happens to be black. To give you a recent example of how quickly white liberals will turn on fellow black liberals, look at how quickly white homosexuals in California started dropping the N-Bomb as soon as religious blacks voted to defeat gay marriage.
Obama has to now take a path more narrow than the edge of a knife. If he reverses any of the actions and orders President Bush put into place, it will only take a single terrorist act made possible by a resulting lax in security to permanently shatter his mystique of infallibility. If he does what is necessary to win the war and acts responsibly, he throws every die-hard supporter over the cliff and must then deal with an internal civil war between the disaffected liberal supporters and the Obama loyalists who believe he is incapable of failure.
Obama, while he is not nearly as brilliant or omniscient as his supporters claim he is, he is certainly not stupid, either. Besides knowing full well that the typical democrat party talking points that portrayed the President as a heartless monster was contrived, red meat fodder to feed their liberal cattle, he is also now doubtlessly privy to information that - if it was to ever become public - would embarrass and seriously damage the remaining credibility of anti-war moonbats everywhere. Obama is now in possession of inconvenient knowledge that makes it very difficult to deal with certain segments of his constituency. On one hand, he and other democrats have gained political power by exploiting the outrage and lunacy of some people who have embraced the lowest common denominator in politics. Likewise, they also know that those people have to be managed like a carefully orchestrated balancing act, because much of the base nature of their beliefs is not rooted in the facts.
At some point, when Obama decides to use more troops, continue detaining terrorists, not set a withdraw date, spy on foreign phone calls and act unilaterally, etc - he is going to start being assaulted by a lot of the people who put him in power. That will be a major problem, because of the potential use of the race card.
Obama could never have been elected without the votes of whites, but urban blacks who had never even seen a voting machine before came out in overwhelming numbers. This left them with a huge sense of pride and empowerment. They, in effect, see Obama's election as an achievement of theirs, not Obama himself.
Inevitably, when white liberals begin to voice strong opposition to Obama's decisions not to undo everything President Bush enacted or set into motion, the first instinctual reaction on the part of all of those urban blacks who would follow Obama off a cliff if he asked them will be to defend him at any cost. They as sure as night following the day will absolutely use the race card at some point. And liberal whites, having felt that they had purged themselves of the guilt associated with the past mistreatment of blacks by voting for Obama, will become extremely pissed off for being called racists for simply voicing disagreement with a President that just happens to be black. To give you a recent example of how quickly white liberals will turn on fellow black liberals, look at how quickly white homosexuals in California started dropping the N-Bomb as soon as religious blacks voted to defeat gay marriage.
Obama has to now take a path more narrow than the edge of a knife. If he reverses any of the actions and orders President Bush put into place, it will only take a single terrorist act made possible by a resulting lax in security to permanently shatter his mystique of infallibility. If he does what is necessary to win the war and acts responsibly, he throws every die-hard supporter over the cliff and must then deal with an internal civil war between the disaffected liberal supporters and the Obama loyalists who believe he is incapable of failure.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
I'll be the Judge of that...
As a conservative, I am completely used to my opinions not sitting well with a large segment of our country. Long before Republicans attained sizable political power, the obvious differences in both politcal and social beliefs became very apparent to me once I left home to enter the professional workforce. I saw that a large portion of my conservative tendencies came from my upbringing, and I instinctively knew that certain actions and attitudes did not...and would not...fly in my household. Respect for your elders, knowing the value of an education and the value of the money you earn...and learning to be judgmental regarding the moral consequences of bad behavior were lessons that were reinforced every single day.
That's right, I said judgmental.
We are taught from an early age that being "judgmental" is wrong or a sign of moral turpitude. When we are presented with an opportunity to demonstrate some independence, people who want to encourage our actions coax us along by saying "Go on, we trust your judgment." Yet, when presented with a situation where genuine moral conflicts that negatively effect either ourselves or others occur, we are bombarded with denouncements where the prevaricator of bad behavior attacks his accusers with demands that they "not be so judgmental".
Our society functions because, in large part, people are capable of taking care of themselves and making positive judgment calls in day to day affairs. That means they look at any situation, define limits for themselves, determine what is right and wrong and render value judgments based on the actions or inactions of the people around them. Those that do this are responsible human beings.
Despite it being part of our everyday life, liberals regard the mere mention of judgment or the making of firm, committed decisions based on a moral compass not as demonstrating restraint, consideration or maturity, but rather the product of intolerance and hate. Even California, a state that is as liberal left as it can possibly get, defeated gay marriage. Yet the moment people considered the consequences and decided to draw a line at giving homosexuals the right to marry, homosexuals immediately attacked and hurled racial and ethnic slurs at the black and Hispanic communities and compared Mormonism to Nazism, who's long-standing religious beliefs saw such a move as an abomination. Open-mindedness and tolerance towards the beliefs of others, as it seems, is only meant to be a one-way political street.
Experience is the greatest teacher. From our first forays into public life and interacting with others, people define boundaries and set limits for themselves and those around them. Invariably, conflicts occur, and it from our successes and failures that we gain confidence in ourselves and our abilities. Believing in yourself is more than just a frame of mind, it is a state attained through a long process of trial and error, self-examination and correction. That is the process of attaining maturity.
If maturity arises from experiences related to resolving conflict, learning from mistakes and making good choices, then consider what we have allowed the government sponsored teachers unions to do to our kids:
Children in our public school systems are now routinely insulated from having to make any of the decisions or deal with any of the problems people routinely encounter on the path to adulthood. Schools have created artificial "bully free" zones. Punishments or discipline can never involve shame or humiliation. Cheating has been reduced in most cases to a minor offense where the most the student has to worry about is the failing mark for the test they were caught cheating on. Teachers are not allowed to enforce discipline beyond asking nicely or handing out detentions. Homework is not nearly as difficult. The dress code is often lax. Let's also not forget the obvious - that educational standards for mathematics, science and history are among the lowest for industrialized nations.
All of these examples can be directly tied to a perverse culture that demeans and belittles value judgments and the people who make them, and subsequently seeks to insulate kids from the very experiences that will aid them into becoming responsible adults. Creating artificial bully-free zones discourages self-defense and people settling their own differences by promoting a false nation that your own protection and value is to be managed and determined by someone else. It also leave kids unprepared as to how to deal with difficult and unsavory people on their own. The lack of shame and humiliation on students who are punished for bad conduct comes from the morally relativistic idea that imposing harsher punishment produces and promotes more bad behavior. Cheating is treated as being passe because of the group-think mentality that promotes the idea that "everyone does it". Teachers cannot enforce strict discipline because schools are supposed to teach, not "tell how my kids are supposed to act!". Homework has become viewed as just another punishment that is leveraged as a tool to control kids. The dress code has been downplayed as just another prudish way of telling people what to do, with no redeeming value. Downplaying the value of mathematics, science and history has been done by teachers to make their jobs easier. All three of those subjects are bound by facts, not feelings. Since teachers are more at home with promoting relativistic ideas such as philosophy or debate over subjects where there is only one true correct answer, promoting those subjects is subtly discouraged. Is it any wonder that the moment you hand a teenager behind the register a few extra coins to make exact change, talk about science or use historical context to make a point...their eyes glaze over?
I remember when my father, who was beside himself over the average report card I brought home one semester, threw me into the truck and took me on a tour of depressed neighborhoods. I saw the run down houses, and often we would see able-bodied people sitting on their porches with beers in their hands, all of them slovenly dressed. He verbally laid into me harder than any other time in memory, and what sticks out the most was his descriptions of the people we passed by. He called some of them "bums", he used the word "lazy" a lot, and even referred to one unshaven guy running around in his wife-beater as an "animal". He said that people make bad decisions in life and have to pay a price for those mistakes. He then took me on a tour of some really nice houses, and bet me money that the people living there had good educations, worked hard and made good choices. At no time for either class of people did he ever use the word "luck" to describe the most likely cause of their fortunes.
Years later, I looked back at that day and realized that it was one of the most profound moments in my life. I saw it as a day where from that point on, I never looked at people or myself in the same fashion. I also realized that, by today's counter-culture standards - liberals would regard what my father did for me that day as barbaric and insensitive. As they would claim, my father would have had no right to call anyone a bum or lazy because he had never been a lazy bum. What that experience did was firmly cement two strikingly powerful ideas in my mind:
- My life is not the result of someone elses' responsibility or lack thereof.
- Value judgments are the bedrock of good decisions.
When liberals try to use the biblical phrase of "Judge not, lest ye be judged" often in a last ditch effort to diffuse the argument of conservatives they disagree with by trying to make appeals to their religious beliefs, they are intentionally leaving out the context of the warning. Using only Mathew 7:1 is entirely incomplete, as this passage is not speaking to not judging at all, but rather it is speaking to not judging others in an unfair light, or any other cheap and selfish way.
Being judgmental does not mean that one is unwilling or unable to hear another point of view or understand where an adversary stands on an issue. Being judgmental is the act of being able to make decisions based upon the perceived pros and cons associated with different choices, and based on that set of choices, make the one that has the most benefit and causes the least amount of harm to others. It is impossible to do the right thing for yourself and others without being able to dispassionately cut through watered-down notions of right and wrong by being firmly rooted in the truth about who you are.
I was never given a better gift, and I can think of no greater gift I could give to my children.
That's right, I said judgmental.
We are taught from an early age that being "judgmental" is wrong or a sign of moral turpitude. When we are presented with an opportunity to demonstrate some independence, people who want to encourage our actions coax us along by saying "Go on, we trust your judgment." Yet, when presented with a situation where genuine moral conflicts that negatively effect either ourselves or others occur, we are bombarded with denouncements where the prevaricator of bad behavior attacks his accusers with demands that they "not be so judgmental".
Our society functions because, in large part, people are capable of taking care of themselves and making positive judgment calls in day to day affairs. That means they look at any situation, define limits for themselves, determine what is right and wrong and render value judgments based on the actions or inactions of the people around them. Those that do this are responsible human beings.
Despite it being part of our everyday life, liberals regard the mere mention of judgment or the making of firm, committed decisions based on a moral compass not as demonstrating restraint, consideration or maturity, but rather the product of intolerance and hate. Even California, a state that is as liberal left as it can possibly get, defeated gay marriage. Yet the moment people considered the consequences and decided to draw a line at giving homosexuals the right to marry, homosexuals immediately attacked and hurled racial and ethnic slurs at the black and Hispanic communities and compared Mormonism to Nazism, who's long-standing religious beliefs saw such a move as an abomination. Open-mindedness and tolerance towards the beliefs of others, as it seems, is only meant to be a one-way political street.
Experience is the greatest teacher. From our first forays into public life and interacting with others, people define boundaries and set limits for themselves and those around them. Invariably, conflicts occur, and it from our successes and failures that we gain confidence in ourselves and our abilities. Believing in yourself is more than just a frame of mind, it is a state attained through a long process of trial and error, self-examination and correction. That is the process of attaining maturity.
If maturity arises from experiences related to resolving conflict, learning from mistakes and making good choices, then consider what we have allowed the government sponsored teachers unions to do to our kids:
Children in our public school systems are now routinely insulated from having to make any of the decisions or deal with any of the problems people routinely encounter on the path to adulthood. Schools have created artificial "bully free" zones. Punishments or discipline can never involve shame or humiliation. Cheating has been reduced in most cases to a minor offense where the most the student has to worry about is the failing mark for the test they were caught cheating on. Teachers are not allowed to enforce discipline beyond asking nicely or handing out detentions. Homework is not nearly as difficult. The dress code is often lax. Let's also not forget the obvious - that educational standards for mathematics, science and history are among the lowest for industrialized nations.
All of these examples can be directly tied to a perverse culture that demeans and belittles value judgments and the people who make them, and subsequently seeks to insulate kids from the very experiences that will aid them into becoming responsible adults. Creating artificial bully-free zones discourages self-defense and people settling their own differences by promoting a false nation that your own protection and value is to be managed and determined by someone else. It also leave kids unprepared as to how to deal with difficult and unsavory people on their own. The lack of shame and humiliation on students who are punished for bad conduct comes from the morally relativistic idea that imposing harsher punishment produces and promotes more bad behavior. Cheating is treated as being passe because of the group-think mentality that promotes the idea that "everyone does it". Teachers cannot enforce strict discipline because schools are supposed to teach, not "tell how my kids are supposed to act!". Homework has become viewed as just another punishment that is leveraged as a tool to control kids. The dress code has been downplayed as just another prudish way of telling people what to do, with no redeeming value. Downplaying the value of mathematics, science and history has been done by teachers to make their jobs easier. All three of those subjects are bound by facts, not feelings. Since teachers are more at home with promoting relativistic ideas such as philosophy or debate over subjects where there is only one true correct answer, promoting those subjects is subtly discouraged. Is it any wonder that the moment you hand a teenager behind the register a few extra coins to make exact change, talk about science or use historical context to make a point...their eyes glaze over?
I remember when my father, who was beside himself over the average report card I brought home one semester, threw me into the truck and took me on a tour of depressed neighborhoods. I saw the run down houses, and often we would see able-bodied people sitting on their porches with beers in their hands, all of them slovenly dressed. He verbally laid into me harder than any other time in memory, and what sticks out the most was his descriptions of the people we passed by. He called some of them "bums", he used the word "lazy" a lot, and even referred to one unshaven guy running around in his wife-beater as an "animal". He said that people make bad decisions in life and have to pay a price for those mistakes. He then took me on a tour of some really nice houses, and bet me money that the people living there had good educations, worked hard and made good choices. At no time for either class of people did he ever use the word "luck" to describe the most likely cause of their fortunes.
Years later, I looked back at that day and realized that it was one of the most profound moments in my life. I saw it as a day where from that point on, I never looked at people or myself in the same fashion. I also realized that, by today's counter-culture standards - liberals would regard what my father did for me that day as barbaric and insensitive. As they would claim, my father would have had no right to call anyone a bum or lazy because he had never been a lazy bum. What that experience did was firmly cement two strikingly powerful ideas in my mind:
- My life is not the result of someone elses' responsibility or lack thereof.
- Value judgments are the bedrock of good decisions.
When liberals try to use the biblical phrase of "Judge not, lest ye be judged" often in a last ditch effort to diffuse the argument of conservatives they disagree with by trying to make appeals to their religious beliefs, they are intentionally leaving out the context of the warning. Using only Mathew 7:1 is entirely incomplete, as this passage is not speaking to not judging at all, but rather it is speaking to not judging others in an unfair light, or any other cheap and selfish way.
Being judgmental does not mean that one is unwilling or unable to hear another point of view or understand where an adversary stands on an issue. Being judgmental is the act of being able to make decisions based upon the perceived pros and cons associated with different choices, and based on that set of choices, make the one that has the most benefit and causes the least amount of harm to others. It is impossible to do the right thing for yourself and others without being able to dispassionately cut through watered-down notions of right and wrong by being firmly rooted in the truth about who you are.
I was never given a better gift, and I can think of no greater gift I could give to my children.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
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