Jason Collins: Courageous? What about his twin brother?

After he announced to the world that likes sex with men, the airwaves are full of praise for NBA star Jason Collins and his courage.

Hmmm.  I think his announcement is ostentatious self promotion, but a display of courage . . . I don’t see it.  It does not take courage to tell the truth or to do what one knows is right and honorable, particularly when one knows he will be praised for it.  So, if he is telling the truth (I have no doubts) about his personal choice of sexual partner(s) – a choice about which I have neither an opinion nor any desire to influence – and he is acting in a manner that he believes is right, then he is not being courageous.  What “danger, fear, or vicissitudes” does he face after his honest announcement?  None.

But the pundits and politicians who claim to support ‘gay rights’ – the people who promote the indefensible, irrational idea that there is a special set of rights that hinge on a person’s method of experiencing sexual fulfillment and pleasure – insist that Mr. Collins has committed an act of courage.  That begs the question:  What has he done that they believe should make him in danger and fearful?  What flaw are they suggesting he has revealed for which there will be reprisals?  Who really has a problem with his sexual preference?  Is it I, the man who thinks Collins’s personal life is not germane to any discussion about his character, skills or any interaction I might have with him?  Or is it the problem with the people who insinuate that his revelation exposes him to their pity, their disdain and their treatment of him as someone who is different and ‘special’?  I think it’s the latter.

ps – Since among the people praising Mr. Collins’s courage, homosexuality is a result of one’s DNA, how do they feel about Mr. Collins’s having ‘outed’ his twin brother who, remember your biology, shares identical DNA with Jason?

Joe Biden. OY VEY!

VP Biden’s speech at Boston memorial yesterday included these words:

“Whether it’s Al Qaeda’s central out of the Fatah, or two twisted perverted, cowardly, knock-off jihadis here in Boston.”

Tell me, Mr. VP, what is a “knock-off” jihadi?  Does that mean the bombs weren’t real and all those people aren’t in real hospitals?  The funerals weren’t real, the blood was fake, the missing limbs have reattached themselves to victims’ bodies, and there really isn’t any thing to fear from Islamist jihadists anymore because bin Laden is dead and GM is alive?  Is that what you meant to say?

Did someone on the White House speech writing staff actually write those words in a speech about why terrorists attack us?  Do they really think that way in this administration?  YES, they do.

If you can stand to be frightened out of your mind, watch this 1:25 minute video and ask yourself ‘Why is that idiot giving advice to our president?!!?’

And then, brace yourself as you remember which idiot chose him as a running mate to give himself credibility and gravitas, particularly on national security matters.

Oy vey!

More than ZERO is Too Many Terrorists

Why does the left think that it makes a substantial difference if the Boston bombers were acting in collaboration with [fill in the blank terrorist sponsors] rather than acting independently?  Do they think that they score points against conservatives if there is not explicit evidence of Islamist jihadism on a large scale in this particular episode, as if they can just close their eyes and Muslim extremists will just go away?

Why is it better that there might be pockets of motivated self-starters among evil men rather than a highly sophisticated order of mass murderers?  They have no real love of life, they just want to win the political debate about whether there is any real national threat that emanates from the Islamists fundamentalists.

I wonder: If the bombers had been from, say, Texas, had Rebel flags on their pickup trucks and were registered Republicans, would MSNBC go to such lengths to make the point that we should be happy that a couple loners were the guilty party and there is no need to generalize or otherwise impugn the cause of any large group with which the bombers were just incidentally associated.

He Does NOT Want Your Guns

A general consensus is forming around the idea that the president is angry about the outcome of the Senate vote on certain gun control measures.  He isn’t.  He got exactly what he wanted from the vote – the opportunity to demean the GOP.  He sets the tone – he called them liars from the podium in the Rose Garden.  His minions in the press play along, turn up the vitriol, refer to the opposition as cowards, patsies for the NRA, baby killers, spineless men with no leadership potential, etc . . . and it’s only just begun.  He is intentionally stirring up the mob with his speeches.

He does not give a damn about guns, he wants control.  He needs to marginalize the GOP, make them afraid to peek out of the foxhole he’s running them into, make them fear HIM and his rhetorical whippings that are amplified by the growing crowd around him.

That way, he can propose any other program or legislation he might choose, and his erstwhile opponents will either (a) go along or (b) if they stay in their foxhole, not be in office after 2014 elections, since no one will vote for a congressional representative who is either silent or a baby killer.

He wants his opposition silenced.  He does not want gun control per se, he wants to use the belligerent tone the issue creates as a hammer.   He wants to establish himself as morally superior, high-mindedly sticking up for the downtrodden masses, offering them protection from the powerful, evil people in Washington, DC who are giving money to rich billionaires and corporations.

The speech he made in the Rose Garden yesterday was the speech a manipulative community organizer makes to a gathering mob.  His petulant, angry, scolding tone against Washington insiders – coming from the most “inside” place on the planet – is galling and irksome, yes, but it’s also a warning if you’re paying attention.  The stakes of the game he’s playing are not your guns; he wants your life to belong to the state so the state can use it for the good of everyone else, use it for the good of the community, you selfish pig.

This political battle is not about gun control.  It’s about control.  Its about power, and in their world, it’s winner take all.  Shut up, go along or die.

Ft. Hood, Terror and Prevention

There was never a rational response to that act of terror.  No one dared say the truth; “these damn Islamists are serious, and they intend to win.”  Instead, the commentary and analysis of the event was colored, watered-down by pro forma expressions of support for ‘diversity in our troops’ and hyper sensitivity to the feelings of honorable, patriotic Muslims who serve in our armed forces.

Query:  Is not prevention of the next such act at least as important as diversity in our military or maintaining the appearance of fairness?  Is it not clear that the only way to prevent the next rampage is to make a change in policy?

Instead, the lazy line of thought in the discussion about the Ft Hood events has been “who can we punish for missing this nut’s criminal intent?”  But, no one missed it; everyone willfully ignored it.  Of course, no one will be punished or fired or sued for having let this madman continue to serve – and I’m not suggesting someone should be punished or fired or sued given the current set of rules and guidelines.  Those guidelines reward inaction, at least to the extent that non-punishment is a reward.  Prior to his acting on his beliefs, an accusation of Major Hasan would have been characterized as “a false, fascist and reactionary scare tactic of some right-wing racist nut-job” by approximately 65.895% of the people screaming for someone’s head on a platter today.  And it would have been the end of some well-intentioned investigators’ careers had they followed their instincts and outted him.

In today’s environment, any such accuser would have been forced to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hasan was a danger to society and should be incarcerated or otherwise defanged.   We know that would have been impossible; for proof, we only need look at the pseudo-sympathy directed at Major Hasan, even AFTER HE PROVED he was a danger.  Even while they acknowledge the evil of his deed, his apologists (“this wasn’t an act of terror, it was just the act of a madman who happened to be a Muslim”) act as if the degree of his derangement somehow exonerates the Obama administration.  The failure caused by having pursued a confused set of priorities with regard to preventing, dare we say it, Islam-inspired terrorism, is excused by, well, the acts of a known madman.

The alternative?  Consider something along the lines of Abraham Lincoln’s approach in the Civil War as applied to domestic terrorist suspects.  We are (or at least episodically claim to be) at war with radical Islamists (not all of them, just the ones trying to mutilate us by the thousands).  I suggest we err on the side of saving innocent American lives, yes, even at the risk of infringing on an unfortunate Muslim’s civil rights.  If the millions of the decent, patriotic, law-abiding Muslims (the ones who do not wish to mutilate ANY of us) want the heat taken off of themselves and their innocent brethren, they will help their country find and discard the bad apples.  Then we’ll relax the rules and stop profiling them at airports instead of ordering thousands of TSA agents to frisk my 13-year old and make him throw away his nail clippers.

I dare a member of Congress or the Obama Administration to propose that approach. We might discover who really is for preventing the next Fort Hood or 9/11 or Boston Marathon catastrophe and who just likes being on TV a lot.

Boston Bombs – Where is it Safe?

Bombs kill 3 and injure dozens in Boston, and, like Pavlov’s dog, the politicians line up in front of the cameras to make statements broadcast by the lapdog media.

Why?  Well, first of all because curiosity and peer pressure (“I must be informed”) induce millions of people to watch, and viewers are money in the bank for the broadcasters.  So that’s why there’s an audience; but, why the parade of politicians?  Why must a crime be transformed into a political event?  Why do the law-makers take over the airwaves, pushing aside law enforcers, assuring everyone that THEY will tell you what THEY will to to make you safe.  We have to suffer Barney Frank (retired tyrant, Massachusetts) tell us on MSNBC that we should be thankful that we have a bigger government than his political opponents want, because only a big government is able to send help in the form of police officers and ambulances.  What a creep.

Wake up people.  They want control.  They want you to fear the unknown and the unknowable and, in turn, entrust them with your very lives.  Then taking more and more of your money will seem like the only right, reasonable thing to do, since, after all, they’ll use that money to make you and your children ‘safer!’

Hogwash.  Laws and politicians can not prevent crime, they can not banish evil from the land and free you from fear.  Laws are enforced, law breakers are punished to deter crime, but laws do not magically cleanse the criminals’ hearts of the tendency to commit acts of terror.  Thicker law books do not convert jihadists and madmen into angels.  We must resist the temptation to outsource our responsibility for protecting ourselves to the bogus security offered up by the brute force of the state.  The level of state action necessary to ‘end’ crime will stifle ALL of life and render your life pointless.

In your community, your family, your friends and neighbors – that’s where safety resides, that’s where you will find comfort and security.  To imagine that Washington, DC, a rapid deployment SWAT team, a bigger, better-armed police force or more intrusive searches, metal detectors and screens can protect you is to invite tyranny into your life.  For the love of life, eschew their offers of comfort and security; it’s most certainly a net, but its end is a prisoner’s life, not safety.  Their version of safety will take the form of boundaries and limits on freedom that are essentially shackles.

Say NO.

When is Then?

In the Imperial City, Washington, DC, the emperor isn’t the only nudist. One group that is particularly painfully aware of this problem are entrepreneurs who make their lives in sight of but not as part of the small, highly compensated cadre that oversees and directs the disposition of $3.6 trillion (and rising) of someone else’s money each and EVERY year.

The business people who live among those moochers are beginning to resent (not to say envy) the lobbyist’s big house, limo driver, and precocious, ill-behaved kids. They detest that the political class produces nothing, save a generation that expects to inherit a claim on political power – think Al Gore and Evan Bayh. They resent that the cycle is self-perpetuating, since seniority is tantamount to tenure, and power increases in direct proportion to the quantity of favors given and, consequently, favors owed. They abhor that even a tiny voice in the disposition of $3.7 trillion is an enormous, indefensible and unjust level of power over people’s lives, and they regret that access to that power is auctioned to the highest bidder.

It’s not that the lifestyle purchased with those auction proceeds – indirectly your tax dollars – for the political class is better than the lifestyle of a wealthy people anywhere else in America. Rather, the people who witness the mooching are made despondent by the spectacle of unearned opulence. They despair because they know that without his power to compel others to pay for his luxurious fringe benefits, the soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader from Kentucky, for example, would likely be mucking stalls at Churchill Downs – no offense to farmhands in Louisville.

And, the business people not dependent on the favors and protection rackets controlled by the political class cringe when lectured by careerists like Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Chuck Schumer, or well-connected corporatists like Jeffrey Immelt and Jamie Dimon, on business matters as they relate to public policy. Their contempt is heightened because they know that former Congressman Frank and those corporate shills are selling and buying, respectively, protection and exemptions from tens of thousands of pages of laws and regulations that ensnare the small-business community and stymie productive endeavors. The more pages written into the federal register, the more expensive are memberships in the US Chamber of Commerce and The Pharmaceutical Manufactures Association, et.al., as it takes their insiders’ knowledge to navigate the maze of laws and the halls of Congress without tripping the wires or falling into the traps. The president of the US Chamber’s $4 million pay package, fringe benefits, and grandiose office a couple hundred yards from the White House are a function of his and his staff’s unquestioned ability to get the attention of any and every ‘important‘ fellow nudist in Washington, DC.

Success in DC is defined as having the power to take money from that guy and give it to a purportedly more deserving group of rent seekers while letting just enough crumbs fall into the right hands to buy the votes needed to retain power. Businessmen know that for anything to be taken, it has first to be produced.  They know that reallocating wealth is not an alternative way of creating it. The Washington lies will continue until they can no longer, until we’ve drained all there is from the well, then, and exactly THEN, everything you love and cherish will end.

Freedom-loving Americans are angry because they know it’s almost THEN o’clock.

What motivates politicians?

There are among the political class constant complaints about the inefficiency of grid-locked government.  The complaints come from left and right, depending upon the agenda of the complainer.  They must want to do more and better things, huh?  They must have the “general welfare” in mind when they plead for more power that they’ll use to do good things for you and your neighbor, right?

I beg to differ, but first some background.  A just government is not supposed to be efficacious, as it should not be doing anything that is measured in such terms.  Government is not meant to be powerful or decisive in matters other than basic questions of law (See F Bastiat- The Law).  In all other matters – religion, commerce, culture, social customs and life in general – the federal government was designed and constituted to be silent, powerless and irrelevant.  The government, the republic bequeathed us by the founders was meant to be an impartial enforcer of laws that are limited to the sole purpose of protecting every man’s natural right to sovereignty over his life – his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Pretty basic.

Any federal action that breaches that principle is an unconstitutional act of tyranny and is properly met with staunch opposition.  Resistance to the ever-increasing role the government is arrogating unto itself is the essence of the conservative opposition to the Obama administration in particular and the federal government in general.  That resistance is rational, moral, just and very well-grounded and supported in the philosophical teachings of many of the greatest thinkers in Western history.

Yet, the statists – Democrats and Republicans alike – constantly express shock and dismay over any and all political opposition based on the principal that more government necessarily means less freedom.  They scoff at the idea that protection of individual liberties is the singular role of government and that state welfare – taking from one man for the sake of another – is tantamount to theft and is antithetical to the concept of freedom.  They laugh at a defense of a man’s right to protect himself and his property with a gun.  They shriek at the mere mention of the concept that a free man will perform heroic acts of benevolence even when there is no gun to his head.  They can not grasp the idea that production, the very purpose of life, is benevolent in and of itself and that trade and commerce are the only sustainable (indeed, they are self-sustaining) means of minimizing human suffering.  They demean and demonize any one who refuses to roll over and play dead in the wake of their attempts to make the government increasingly intrusive in our lives, as if their agenda is sacrosanct and beyond reproach, because they can point to a poll or survey that says a majority wants more ‘free’ stuff to be given away by Uncle Sam.  No explanation needed – ‘We won the election!’

So, what is behind the political class’s stated objective to give us better government, more bang for our tax buck?  They mock liberty, they dismiss rational defense of freedom and small government.  That leads to the conclusion that this tendency of theirs is explained by one character trait – a lust for the power to control outcomes, an unquenchable desire to own the lives of other men.  Armed with that truth, no amount of disdain and bile-filled rhetoric shall ever deter your opposition to their attempts to own and control the lives of people.

Damn the torpedoes.  Stay the course.

NRA vs Hollywood – A Truce

Campbell Brown suggests (in this Wall Street journal OpEd) that Barack Obama use the power of the presidency and “show some real bravery by taking on Hollywood” to improve the content of its television and movie productions in addition to brow beating the National Rifle Association into submission.

I have a better idea, Ms. Brown.  Let’s get the government out of the culture, out of our lives in general.  Imagine if every problem – whether it’s a lack of quality TV, internet connectivity, or inadequate access to birth control and Viagra – were not deemed proof of a need for another law or regulation?  What if we let 325 million people go about solving the problems of their and their neighbors’ lives while resisting the conceit that 536 men and women in Washington, DC have enough information and knowledge to make life safe and prosperous for the rest of us, but only if we send them enough of our money?  Maybe we could refrain from bringing to bear the brute force of the law to coerce men constantly to adjust their lives in ways that are against their self-interest and contrary to their free will?  Is it possible that 325 million people possess more wisdom than Harry Reid, John Boehner and their cronies on Capitol Hill?

A just, moral set of laws has as its sole purposes punishing the taking of property or life and enforcing contracts between or among free men and women (see F. Bastiat, The Law, 1850).  To beseech the government to use its power to compel certain ‘good’ behavior is to ask for tyranny.  Such a plea is the product of minds that have failed to grasp the profound power, morality and justice that derives from individual sovereignty and liberty restrained only by an unyielding respect for the inviolate freedom of other men.

Ms. Brown, let’s call off the dogs, let’s leave the president and the state out of moral, cultural and social questions.  If you desire to influence someone’s behavior, go ahead – organize a boycott, send letters, march with signs, make speeches . . . but let’s not invoke the force of law.  Please.  I swear I won’t, so long as you do not threaten me or mine, ever send the law after you.