Someone Inspire Me, Please

Contrary to what you may have thought, I’m not dead.

I did, however, sink into a deep blue funk that gradually turned into the blackest depression. It was the depression of a man gradually becoming convinced that he was the only sane man left in a world gone stark raving mad. I have written elsewhere that my defining characteristic is my patriotism, the only non-conflicted message I received from my utterly incompatible parents. As a patriot, I knew that my country was rife with people who were Americans in a technical sense only, having entirely missed the point of the country. With gut-wrenching despair, I look around and it seems as if those are the only kind left. It sometimes seems as if those Americans who  thought and felt as I do were only a mirage. I feel so terribly alone. I am surrounded by people who look at the swarthy madman with unthinking adulation that goes beyond worship. At first, I was merely angry because I believed it would take at least 20 years to mop up the mess he would make. Now I am terrified for my children and grandchildren because I realize I was too optimistic. In a couple of months the madman has done more damage to my nation  than I had assumed was possible in a 4-year term, and he seems to just be getting started. Occasionally, people try to console me by saying that control of Congress will change in 2010 just like it did in 1994, and Obama, like Clinton, will be kept on a short leash. People, I fear that if elections are still permitted in 2 years, they will only be show elections with Acorn providing the oversight.

My usual sources of consolation, talk radio, Fox News, and certain blogs, no longer do the trick for me. They continue to preach “reasonable” measures: debate, education, pressuring elected officals with calls, letters, the ocassional well-behaved protests, and others. People, those measures are no longer adequate. That ship has sailed. Instead, these pundits and commentators bitterly denounce the people who, like me,  believe it is time to take the next step, to take a page from the enemy’s playbook and prepare ourselves  for the likely violent reaction from those that now hold a monopoly on power. We are ruled by raving lunatics that expect us to provide the fuel for our own immolation, and to be grateful for the honor of doing so. I fear that we are not just doomed as a nation, we are just doomed…period.

Someone convince me that I’m wrong. Someone convince me that there is hope.

Tell Einstein to Sit Down and Shut Up

We’ve all seen it. That bumper sticker with the Albert Einstein quote: “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”  Usually it is seen on the back of a poorly-maintained 20-year-old vehicle that belches smoke like a 19th Century smokestack. Liberals love it. One of the most brilliant physicists who has ever lived agrees with their position on war and the military. But that’s the problem now isn’t it? He was a brilliant at physics and not much else. Albert would have made a good poster child for the concept of multiple intelligences if it had been circulating back then. Few things he believed, and said, are more absurd that the quote above. It shows a profound lack of understanding of basic human nature. In fact, there is a quote from another person that says exactly the opposite: “If you would live in peace, prepare for war.”

My point? Precisely this: The world is filled with people that are bright, or at least cunning, in some area and they mistakenly believe that intelligence or cunning in one area necessarily translates into intelligence in all other areas. For instance, I have an ex that was good at math, but if you put a dollar sign in front of the numbers she couldn’t add, subtract, multiply, or divide to save her life, and her check book proved it.

My advice? Generally, don’t base your assessment of other people’s intelligence on their own assessment of it. Bear in mind that it’s quite common for someone to be a genius in one area and a blithering idiot in another. Make them prove themselves in areas outside of their expertise before you rely on them.

Specifically, my advice is to bear this all in mind until the November elections. Now that His Royal Smugness is the presumptive nominee we can expect to be treated to a display of just that sort of behavior. He is obviously bright in some ways, but the few positions he has dared to take openly show him to be incapable of learning from history, even recent history. Be vigilant, and keep an eye on the gullible around you.

The Memo Writers’s Observations on Life #2

Students at the Michael Moore Elementary School proudly display their winning entry in the Independence Day banner contest. By the way, God created dirty words so liberals wouldn’t be mute.

1. People shouldn’t drink and vote.
2. Voting for Democrats is nothing to be ashamed of, as long as you do it in the dark and wash your hands afterwards. (Apologies to Robert A. Heinlein.)
3. To liberals it will always be 1969.
4. Fifty-year-old men shouldn’t wear pony-tails.
5. Public schools have turned into giant under-staffed day care centers.
6. Left-wingers keep shrieking the same old tired talking points for the same reason that skydivers keep yanking on the ripcord of a parachute that has failed to open.
7. Why aren’t more open-border proponents studying Spanish and Arabic? They’re going to need it.
8. Liberals deeply resent the religionization of Christmas.
9. Feminists hate women.
10. Children don’t want freedom as much as they want parents.
11. Liberals think failure is a virtue.
12. Real life lesbians don’t look like the ones in the movies.
13. Most university professors have lost their key to the clue locker.
14. The concept of an objective reality makes liberals wake up screaming at night.
15. The French still think they’re significant.

Who Are All These People and Why Are They Cheering?

Years ago in my nebulous past I saw or read an item that claimed the Austrians, much like Lucy Ricardo, had “a lotta ’splainin’ to do”. Many people commonly assume that the Nazi’s annexation of Austria (the Anschluss) back in World War 2 was just another in a long line of fascist outrages from the era. No doubt that was true for many, but the fact remains that when Nazi troops marched into Austria they met, to their surprise, no resistance. Rather, they were treated to throngs of cheering locals giving fascist salutes, waving Nazi flags, and throwing flowers. The event has been referred to as the blumenkrieg-the war of flowers. The author of that long-ago piece wanted an end to the Austrian silence about those days. Most of all, he wanted to ask those cheering throngs: Exactly what were you cheering about?

I find myself asking that same question about my fellow Americans as we skip and dance blithely toward Obamageddon. An ocean of warnings about the man have gone unheeded, if not unnoticed. In a nutshell, they reduce to, “We know almost nothing about this man and the little we know is bad.” I watch my fellow Americans react to the Obamessiah and I see orgiastic scenes of my national brothers and sisters foaming at the mouth with mindless, virtually orgasmic ecstasy. I must admit, I truly didn’t realize how bad it was until an exchange I had with my best friend of nearly 30 years. I made a casual, and mild for me, comment about Obama and was shocked and astounded when he nearly bit my head off in anger. He is the most intelligent man I know. If he was sucked-in to the madness, what chance do we mere mortals have?

I have my theories about why this is, and I hope they’re all wrong. I’ve already been forced to revise my opinion about my country downward too many times already. For a man virtually defined by his patriotism, to do so is pure torture.

There have been any number of atrocities committed throughout history: the Holocaust, the Reign of Terror, bloody purges of all kinds, and so on. I’ve heard thoughtful people look back at history and ask: “How can an entire nation simply lose its mind?” I fear they soon we have all the empirical evidence that they will ever need.

Yawning While Uncle Sam Bleeds Out

A few days ago Condoleezza Rice stated that America would be just fine under an Obama administration. That, of course, depends on how things go down and especially on how you define “just fine”. It has been repeatedly observed that Obama is a cipher. Cipher being, for those of you too lazy to click on a free on-line dictionary is a zero; one that has no weight, worth, or influence; a nonentity; a method of transforming a text in order to conceal its meaning; a coded message. One couldn’t ask for a more thorough description of the man as we know and understand him today. He is a ghost, a phantom, a shadow in the dark at best.

You have to ask yourself, “How does a man get to be in his late 40s and the presidential nominee of the largest political party in the United States, and do it all while leaving little more than vapors as his background?”

I have been mocked by a few folks for believing that John McCain would be a good president. Which is strange, because I don’t believe that. I believe John is the classical example of the lesser of two evils. The only candidates I could enthusiastically support were the first ones eliminated, which should have told me more than it did about the state of intellectual obliviousness prevalent in this election cycle. I don’t believe that John McCain would be a good president. I just believe he’ll screw the country up less and that the mess he leaves will be fixable—mostly.

Obama is like some physical phenomenon that can’t be observed directly, atoms for example, and we can only learn about him through indirect means. The man’s critics have been accused of practicing guilt by association but when that’s all you’ve got, that’s all you’ve got. Besides, if I find out that your best friend spends most of his time hanging out with drug cartel hit men, that tells me a lot about your friend—and you. One only has to go out one degree of separation to find a myriad of two-legged cockroaches scurrying away from the light. Saul Alinsky, for example. and in his case a list of his disciples is a veritable rogues gallery in its own right.

So is Condoleezza right? Will America be just fine? As I said, that all depends. If the man gets too cocky and overreaches himself in his efforts to make America a socialist paradise and just another neighborhood in the global village, I say yes. We’ll have a few really, really bad years. The nation and Congress will realize their mistake and dig in, marginalizing him until he can be voted out of office. America would be truly just fine. We would only have wasted a few years which is small when you consider the 1930s or the 1960s and realize that, as a nation, we’ve wasted entire decades and survived.

But what about the far more likely case? Obama gets what he wants while the unthinking herds of the electorate get what they deserve. Then we get to the matter of definition. If you define “just fine” as American still existing pretty much as is at the end of his term, then yes we’ll be just fine. If you define “just fine” as the existence of some political entity calling itself “The United States of America” a century or so down the line, then yes we’ll be just fine.

But what if you define “just fine” differently? What if you define it as a constitutional republic with freely elected representatives? What if you define it as a sovereign nation-state actively seeking to achieve its best interest in the long-term? What if you define it as a distinctive English-speaking culture that stresses the traditional ideals of Western Civilization, especially the Anglo-American model? A culture that stresses individualism and self-reliance? A free-market economy where one is taxed lightly and only for direct benefits that he receives that can’t be provided by the free market, such as national defense and protection from people who think like Obama?

Well, friends if you define “just fine” that way—as I do—then we are well and truly screwed.

The more I study the man, the more concerned I become. A similar reaction to what I’ve experienced in my studies of Islam and Muslims. (The more you know, the more you wish you didn’t know.) No, Obama wouldn’t kill the country by his second day in office, nor by the end of—God forbid!—his second term. But he could very well be the guy who nicks that artery that allows Uncle Sam to slowly bleed out over the next forty or fifty years. Don’t believe it? Look back fifty years to the 1950s and what could and couldn’t be done then, what was thinkable and unthinkable.

Science fiction author Robert Heinlein wrote a number of stories described as being “if this goes on…” in nature. I submit that if the country continues on its current trajectory that within most of our lifetimes, we could all find ourselves Strangers in a Strange—and Hostile—Land.

Open Letter to September 12th People

There can only be peace when they will start to love their children more than they hate us.

Golda Meir

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one!

Charles Mackay

I had an unusual and revealing conversation with a friend back during the days of my horribly misspent youth. It was at the beginning of some momentous Republican shaking and moving, probably the election or Reagan in 1980 or the Gingrich Revolution in 1994, I forget which. During this conversation my friend and his spouse were complaining of the hostile rhetoric that was coming from the Conservative Republican side and the lack of a willingness to compromise. In short, the Right was kicking ass and taking names as we used to say in the military. I asked them if they had heard anything they had thought reasonable and they responded by singing the praises of George Will and William F. Buckley.

Now as fine as those two gentleman are, and I’ve read hundreds of their columns, these are a couple of guys who were “Born to be Mild”. Will and Bill are to politics what your grandfather was to your lifestyle in the 1970s. You remember him? The guy that calmly and rationally explained to you why you shouldn’t drink, smoke, carouse, and be promiscuous? Afterwards you smiled, hugged the man, chuckled at his naive innocence and went out partying. Until your non-rational, non-calm father caught you and royally kicked your ass.

So, naturally I explained to my friends that, though we would prefer civil discourse, we were tired of being a perpetual minority party and had realized that we had to get down in the mud and fight for our beliefs kicking and gouging as necessary. In short, we had to act like Democrats to do battle with Democrats. My friend gave me a horrified look and said, I kid you not, “No! Don’t stoop to our level!”

So, to all of you September 12th people, nice is for peacetime and this is not peacetime. I’ve heard the United States compared to a lifeboat that takes in as many survivors as it can. Well, as as anyone who didn’t go to an urban public school can tell you, if you overload the lifeboat it will capsize, so after a point you have to turn people away no matter how much it breaks your heart. Similarly, if you come to find that someone has an icepick and is poking holes in the lifeboat, you throw his ass overboard, and don’t get heartbroken about it. Now, the problem with liberals and/or Democrats, as you well know, is that they’re all about the guy with the icepick.

I know that these are our fellow citizens, for better or for worse, and that you would rather come to some sort of accommodation with them. Who wouldn’t? Unfortunately, that ship has sailed. Of course one should still be civil where possible, but if civility means compromised national security, then civility is a luxury we can’t afford.

Most people have had any number of epiphanies in their lifetimes. Occasionally, some of these are virtual fist-in-the-face experiences where your realize something earthshaking or life changing, something that you just can’t believe you didn’t see before. It can be any number of things: your girlfriend has been exploiting you, that troublesome spouse never had any intention of changing, your parents have been manipulating you with intentionally bad advice, or maybe just that you were in the wrong career for the wrong reasons. Someone may have warned you along the way, or maybe you even “knew” it, but with a little “k”, on an intellectual, but superficial level. I’m talking about the experience when you finally KNOW it to the very marrow in your bones.

My most recent experience with that last phenomenon had to be with one of Rush Limbaugh’s favorite phrases. That being, “These people have to be defeated.” The people in question being the Left in general and, in our context here, September 10th people in particular. I’ve heard him say it for years now and I’ve always known he was right, but I knew with a little “k”. I figured if I stayed informed, voted for the best candidates, and had the courage to confront people spreading lies, then I was doing my part. In the years after the horrifying events of that day I’ve suffered from quite a bit of cognitive dissonance from watching the Left take undeniable facts that support no-brainer conclusions and arrive at insanely wrong answers. I just couldn’t understand it. That was, of course, precisely the point.

The rhetoric of the Left isn’t meant to be understood. It only has to confuse long enough for them to accomplish their goals. Logic and reason aren’t goals to be sought and upheld. They are barriers to fulfilling their whims and fortunately, for them, can be circumvented. We have a weakness, we logic, reason, and rationality types. We think that deep down in everybody there is a logic, reason, and rationality person just dying to get out. Unfortunately, the modern Leftist is a creature of pure emotion who genuinely considers a poor sap like you to be handicapped with “rigid linear thinking”, or as you and I call it, sanity. So what’s the epiphany? What is it that you need to KNOW?

You need to know that almost all of these people are beyond reach. You need to know that minds are like concrete, once they’ve set it is almost impossible to reshape them in any fundamental way. Furthermore, the longer it has been since the mind has set the more unyielding it becomes because you’re not just fighting an incorrect idea, you’re fighting an emotional creature that is totally invested in that idea. When people even begin to suspect that the thing they’ve dedicated 30, 40, or 50 years of their lives to is a total sham, the mind slams shut. This is a defense mechanism like the ones you see where the 70-year old scientist who was barking up the wrong tree on his research dedicates all his remaining years to denouncing the 30-year old scientist who saw the mistake. So it is with the Left. Do you really expect someone on the Left to stand up and admit, “Wow! We spent trillions and trillions of taxpayer dollars on antipoverty programs and increased poverty. Man, is there ever egg on our face!”?

So, if you want to live in a world where terrorism and rape rooms are the fault of terrorists and rapists instead of Western Civilization, KNOW this, Liberal Democrats are like zombies, you can’t do anything for them, but you can keep them from eating the brains of other innocent people. To that end I’m planning on going on an indefinite hiatus from just bitching and try to find someplace to actually”do” for the cause. I suggest you do the same thing.

Open Letter to September 10th People

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without a government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

Thomas Paine, “Common Sense”

Now that the Left, now virtually synonymous with the Democratic Party, has finally regained control of Congress, I find it amusing that they have suddenly discovered bipartisanship, civil discourse, and rational debate. The situation reminds me of my childhood when certain relatives and neighborhood hangers-on were such sticklers for rules and good sportsmanship–when they were “it”, or had the ball. Otherwise, it was a Darwinian dog-eat-dog world. Naturally, being Leftists, you think everyone but yourselves are too stupid to know whats going on. That being, of course, that now that you’re back on top you’ll be wanting to resume pretending to accept our values so that you can use them against us.

I will say only two things about your victory in the off-year elections. One, congratulations. Two, don’t make the mistake of wallowing in hubris and believing that the electorate mandated your philosophies or agendas. Our people got brutally spanked for the sin of “going native”. In other words, they started acting like you. I give you this advice only because I know you’ll never take it.

As you’ve probably noticed, you aren’t getting many takers. That’s because we have long since realized that being civil and trying to engage the Left in rational debate is the intellectual and political equivalent of bringing a dull rusty butter knife to a gunfight. Yes, grim necessity requires that we sink to your level. Sad, but necessary.

Obviously, I don’t speak for every Vast Right Wing Conspirator, but I do speak for quite a few, and we are sick of pretending that you guys aren’t idiots. Or insane, Or insane idiots. Insanity has been occasionally defined as doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome. This behavior is very nearly the Democratic Party’s perennial platform. No matter how many times your ideas fail, you are always ready to slap a fresh coat of paint on the same old disasters, give it a new name, and proclaim it to be some kind of innovation. You never seem to suspect that the only ones you’re fooling are yourselves. You remind us of the old joke about the dim-witted person who constantly beats his head against a brick wall because it feels so good when he stops.

The Gospel According to Heinlein

There is a story that circulates about an incident while the original Star Trek series was in production. In that story a certain Muslim man observes that the in the futuristic Star Trek universe just about every kind of human and even non-human is represented, except Muslims, and takes offense. When he gets an opportunity to challenge this shortcoming with someone involved in the production of the series he asks why there are no Muslims in the show. The answer? “Because it’s about the future.”

I’ve been trying to track the source of this down for ages because even if it isn’t true, it ought to be. (If you know, drop me a line.)I’ve always been very future-minded and as such a voracious consumer of science fiction (as well as fantasy), which some insist on euphemistically calling speculative fiction. An occupational hazard of being a SF fan is that people are constantly coming up to you excited to the point of incontinence about the latest new thing you had forgotten about years ago. It’s a longer term version of what happens to those of us who get our news on the Internet. You know what I’m talking about, you walked by the newspaper machine on Monday morning, look at the headline, and said, “They’re still talking about that?”

One of the most telling moments in my life was back when the Republican’s Contract with America was big news. Back then Newt Gingrich and that other guy (?) were the masterminds behind it. I’m listening to the news and I hear that they were inspired by a book. I’m cool with that. I’ve been inspired by many books. But, when asked which book it was they come back with an answer that causes the coffee I had been sipping to come shooting out of my nose like a couple of horizontal geysers. It was “The Third Wave” by Alvin Toffler. Folks, I can count on my fingers the number of books that I’ve started and never finished, “The Third Wave” is one of them. It was that lame. As an old SF fan reading that book I could only think something like, “They’re still talking about that?” That was when the book was new, when the Contract people were talking about it, it was 14 years old. Yikes.

So, to me, it comes as no surprise really that just about everything that pops up in the news, Robert Heinlein has written a story about it, or a story similar to it. I don’t recall any stories he wrote about friction with the Islamic world, he may have, but he did write at length about conflict with the communist world. However, since by adding Allah to communism you pretty much get Islam, the lessons can be applied.

First lesson: It’s time for the present members of the “Nuclear Club” to consider the fact that it may be time to stop disassembling nuclear weapons and start reassembling them. If the Islamic world goes nuclear, we won’t be able to depend on Mutually Assured Destruction to stop them. It only worked against the communists because, whatever their faults, they weren’t suicidal. Folks like Lenin and Stalin wanted to live in the world after they conquered it.

Second Lesson: In his writings, Heinlein pointed out that in a conflict against the Asian “hordes” there would be no way that American mothers could produce enough boy babies fast enough to save us. In effect, we needed an equalizer. Now, if we look at the population of the Muslim world in comparison to our own you can still see the “Saracen hordes” that so terrified our ancestors. Now, imagine those superior numbers with the proverbial big stick and crazy enough to use them.

Third Lesson: Even if we weren’t conquered or blackmailed into some kind dhimmitude, we still would have to change our way of life. Whatever our current leadership’s good qualities, the position that “if we change our way of life, then the terrorists win” just won’t cut it. In an age of suitcase nukes we would have to expend considerable energy just to keep from being a good target. In one of Heinlein’s stories, if memory serves me, there was a scenario where the entire nation was being de-urbanized for just that purpose. The cities were being emptied and spread out evenly across the land so that no one place would be better than another for killing people and destroying infrastructure.

Fourth Lesson: We’ve all seen the 20/20 hindsight historian weeping, moaning, and wringing their hands in grief over how blind our ancestors were. How could they have not foreseen the horrific carnage of the Second World War? Didn’t Hitler give us fair warning in his book Mein Kampf? Couldn’t anybody have taken the time to translate his speeches and the abundant Nazi literature into English and spread the word? Weren’t his minions screaming their bloody intentions into every microphone they could find? Why yes, they were, and you’re going to feel really silly trying to explain to your wife’s daughter by the local imam why you weren’t able to apply the lessons of history to blood-smeared fanatics standing in front of burning buildings and cars and holding signs in English that read something like, “Islam will destroy you all”, or “Submit to Allah or die, Infidel!”

Top 10 Reasons Liberal Democrats Fear Social Security Reform

Top 10 Reasons Liberal Democrats Fear Social Security Reform

The Savior of All Working Men and Women
Bow down and worship me Republican dogs.

1. If Social Security dies they’ll have to admit that nothing good came out of the New Deal.
2. The ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt told Hillary it was a bad idea.
3. Concern that the elderly can still swing a bat.
4. They’ll lose their best means of disguising tax increases.
5. It’s fun to watch retirees grovel for help.
6. If things get better it will be even harder to convince the voters that they can’t live without the Democratic Party.
7. Reagan thought it was a good idea.
8. Osama bin Laden sent an e-mail saying that Allah thinks it’s a bad idea.
9. The fervent belief that transfer payments are good for the economy.
10. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ghost told them if they would save it he would run for another term.

Are The Muslims 10 Feet Tall?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among some of my fellow citizens. It reminds me a great deal of the way some people viewed the Soviets back before their collapse. To judge by what was in the popular media back then we were doomed. Our only real option was to put off the inevitable as long as possible. The inevitable outcome of being swallowed up by the vastly more moral, if not superior Communist/Socialist juggernaut.

Back during the 1980s I came across a rather refreshing article titled something like “Are The Russians Ten Feet Tall?”. The article argued that far from being the invincible supermen that Americans feared (or in some cases adored). The Soviets were in serious trouble. Sadly, I don’t remember many particulars of the story. Mostly I just remember feeling relief at some sign that I might not wind up working on a collective farm somewhere after all.

Now I hear from time to time the same sort of thing being said about the Muslims: They can’t be contained or defeated. There are too many of them. They are too fanatical. They are more dedicated and so forth. While we Westerners are too fat, lazy, stupid, ignorant, agnostic, ambivalent, etc. to preserve ourselves. I’ve even heard a co-worker once state that we deserved to be conquered and oppressed as punishment for what we have “done” to the rest of the world. I don’t know about you, but I’m sure that the statute of limitations has run out on colonialism, Indian wars, slavery, etc.

Like most of you I’m sure, I’ve been continually researching Islam and the Muslim world and I find a lot of chinks in their armor that could be exploited, if only we lived in a society that exploits its advantages. One of these is Muslim (or at least Arab) disdain for physical labor. It’s my understanding that starting at the bottom and working your way up is an unfathomable concept to most. I’ve read that its not uncommon for an otherwise able-bodied man to sit around unemployed for 10 years, smoking and quaffing coffee at the local coffee shop while waiting for “suitable” employment (e.g. management).

Another I’ve heard and read about is their penchant for physical cowardice. Naturally, some will raise the specter of suicide attacks as proof that they are very brave indeed. I believe that is false on a numbers of counts: first, although there are obviously far too many people willing to be suicide bombers, the numbers pales in comparison to the number of Muslims available take the job (plus I consider suicide bombing to be evolution in progress); second, we must bear in mind that the numb nut actually believes he is on his way to have exclusive sexual access with 72 women for all eternity, I suspect that instead of brave he may simply be horny; third, if you’ll recall the first Gulf War, you’ll remember the droves of enemy soldiers scratching and clawing at each other in order to be first to surrender, sometimes to unmanned reconnaissance drones. The Gulf War presented an opportunity for every supply clerk and mess cook to be a Sergeant York.

There is another area that could be exploited, though I’m sure it will be denounced as cynical and mercenary. That is playing on the fault lines that run through the Muslim world. Sunnis and Shiites despise each other almost as much as they hate us. It seems like the only thing they can agree on is Kurdish genocide. The Wahabbis are nuttier than squirrel excrement and the world tends to forget that the Iranians are not Arabs, but rather Persians and have long considered the Arabs to be little more than hairless monkeys. We could play on that. I know it probably makes me a “bad” person, but I’m not so sure that civil war in Iraq is such a bad thing. Muslims killing Muslims is the epitome of the win-win situation.

Exploring Two of Hillary Clinton’s Multitudinous Faces

Memorandum

From: The Memo Writer
Topic: Hillary Clinton’s Sudden Concern for High Fuel Prices

Abstract: News reports today indicate that Hillary Clinton has issued a recommendation that the government release fuel from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for ease rising prices. Management has noticed that, as usual, this cynical gesture has generated an epidemic of warm fuzzy feelings and a plague of giddy “aws” from staff with short memories. Staff members with longer memories but suffering from Chronic Political Gullibility Syndrome are experiencing anxious feelings they can’t identify. To alleviate these problems, management requires all USA staff to read the following:

Item 1: Hillary’s suggestion is pure political posturing. Hillary, and others like her, have always maintained that Americans pay too little for fuel.

Item 2: Liberal Democrats are notorious for waxing poetic about the “$5 to $7 per gallon” that Europeans pay during price run-ups.

Item 3: Any Liberals objection to the present run-up is because none of the run-up is the result of the heavy additional taxation they recommend during period of low fuel prices.

Item 4: The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, born in a fit of crisis-induced political posturing, is for emergencies. Emergencies are understood to be disruptions in fuel supply that would immobilize the military and law enforcement, disrupt shipments of food or medicine, or that shut off the heat and lights in January. Your vacation to Maui will never qualify as an emergency no matter how big of a fit you throw.

Item 5: The reserve isn’t as big as you think. As of November 8, 2007, the SPR has 694.7 million barrels of crude oil stored. Management knows that number sounds big, but if withdrawn at the maximum possible rate, the reserve would be exhausted in 57 days. Just in case you’re a registered Democrat, that’s less than two months.

Item Six: Presently, the United States imports about 12 million barrels of oil per day—that’s per day! The SPR only has the capacity to withdraw 4.4 million barrels per day. A total disruption of our imported supply would result in a fuel deficit of approximately 8 million barrels a day—per day! For those of you who weren’t alive in the 1970s, or were too young to remember, let the voice of experience tell you that a smaller deficit sucked more than you can possibly imagine.

Item Seven: A politically motivated release of fuel from the SPR will do nothing to make the situation better, it will only make you feel better, just like all previous politically motivated releases.

Item Eight: By now you’ve probably asked: If all of this is true, then why does Hillary want to do it? The reason is that most of you think short term while Hillary, for all of her other faults, thinks long term. Hillary wants to be president. Why? Because it is the ultimate position in the world for engaging in social engineering, which has always been Hillary’s goal in life. To be president, she has to get elected, at least for now. She doesn’t want to face an election with a populace paying $5 or more per gallon for gasoline. Especially not against an opponent on record as advocating increasing domestic fuel supplies and refining capacity.

Item Nine: Hillary, just like Bill, doesn’t give a damn about you and never will. After she is safely ensconced in office, she will be perfectly content to let all of you, even you loyal Democrats in the Rust Belt, freeze to death in the dark. It will be a small price to pay to realize Hillary’s Utopian vision for the world.

Item Ten: Most of the crude oil held in the SPR is highly polluting “sour” crude. So, at least for a little while, you’ll have to choose between cleaner air and luxuries like electricity and transportation.

Item Eleven: As long as the Champagne is chilled and the engines on Air Force One are singing happily, you will only matter for one day in November every four years.

Management recommends you study and remember these items as there will be a test given on November 4, 2008.

Unexceptional Americans

Who are the Unexceptional Americans. Unexceptional Americans are those pseudo-Americans who strive to place the brass ring of mediocrity within reach of every fellow citizen.

I’ve been reading up some on the concept of American Exceptionality. It’s probably easier to explain than define as shown by this quote from Wikipedia:

American exceptionalism is the idea that the United States and the American people hold a special place in the world, by offering opportunity and hope for humanity, derived from a unique balance of public and private interests governed by constitutional ideals that are focused on personal and economic freedom. Political science defines it as a presence of unique traits in the United States, such as high levels of religiosity and the failure of socialist parties, that do not correlate with national characteristics in other industrialized and democratic countries.

Or, in a nutshell, we’re a unique people doing things in our own unique way, and it works for us so well that we think that we should serve as a role model for the world. If you’re a Leftist, this is a bad thing. Even if they aren’t aware of it, I believe most Americans operate under some form of this philosophy. Unfortunately, few of them own networks or newspaper conglomerates—or have tenure for that matter.

As a nation, we’re pretty much the closest thing the world has ever seen to a meritocracy, though we fall far too short, far too often. If you’re a Leftist, this is a bad thing. The idea that things should be distributed to people on the basis of merit boggles many a Liberal mind. Just like the concept of a person who works twice as much getting paid twice as much.

Why would the United States be unique among nations? Because it is the Enlightenment’s only child. I found this best stated while reading some Objectivist material (Rand, Peikoff, and the like). It was said that the United States was “the last dying gasp of the Enlightenment”. Soon after that the intelligentsia would be thumbing their collective noses at Enlightenment ideals and the world would be hearing about the proletariat, class struggles, bourgeoisie, noble savages, etc.

The problem is that the Left, for all their education and worldliness, never really picked up on the fact that the institutions of the United States, with the possible exception of religion, are the new kids on the block. Throughout history, the Left, or their equivalents in other times, keep “repainting” and “renaming” the same old crap and then convincing themselves it’s “new and improved”. In the Leftist Nirvana, some people exist for the sake and convenience of other people and are coerced to due their duty in that regard, usually those cursed with intelligence and ability.

In our nation of course we have (at least partially) capitalism, property rights, universal suffrage, democratically elected representative republicanism, checks and balances, a civilian controlled military, limits on police power, and too much more to mention. These are the new ideas historically speaking. No matter how hard the Left tries to convinces us otherwise.

This is all a good thing. I like the idea of living in a country where I can make my own mistakes and make my own way and even start all over again if need be. I have never understood why most people want to blend into the herd, seem to crave the anonymity in fact. I don’t know. Maybe being a Liberal in the United States is like being a Muslim in the 21st Century. It’s hard to hang onto your most basic values and beliefs when everything around you proves that it’s a lie. What do you think?

A Gold Watch for Hitler

I think it has been pretty firmly established that Hitler was a pretty rotten guy. After all, we’ve been badmouthing him since the 1930s, the 1920s for some of our older folks. As a matter of a fact, he’s been dead for 60 years and we just can’t shut up talking about him, even though his government has been defunct and unable to implement policy for all that time.

I once read some sage who stated that a problem of modern society is that old Adolf was evil made flesh and that with his death Hitlerian evil was effectively banished from the Earth. That’s not true. Adolf wasn’t the first “Hitler” and he wasn’t the last. Compared to gems like Pol Pot, Hitler’s percentage of his own population wiped out makes him look like a piker.

I, for one, am getting sick of Hitler references when there is so much fresh evil in the world. How refreshing would it be if the next time someone who couldn’t refute one of your arguments called you a “damn mullah” instead of a “damn Nazi”. I’ve even heard on some Internet forums they have a Hitler Rule that says whenever someone compares someone else to Hitler or calls him a Nazi, the discussion thread is considered officially dead.

So, I say we give Adolf and his Scary Men a metaphorical gold watch and move on to current and fresher hells. A wonderfully descriptive term has been coined for our most worrisome enemies: Islamofascists. Never has a new term captured its target concept so well. Naturally, the Left (big fans of the Hitler/Nazi analogy) objects to the term. I think it’s illustrative to review what Fascism is. My dictionary defines it as:

A political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

If one substitutes the term religion for the phrase nation and often race, you will find a description that sounds creepily familiar. I have read of Islamic clerics who state explicitly that the American idea of separating church and state is incomprehensibly ludicrous, because (paraphrasing) “Church IS the State.” This is a political philosophy, movement, or regime that has been known to execute women for wearing make up.

Political Correctness be damned. It isn’t a sin to know who the Boogeyman is.

It’s Not Racism—It’s a Software Problem

It’s a pity that we don’t teach rhetoric in school anymore. Not too long ago it was considered one of the 7 constituents of a good classical education. These days not much is left of that curriculum and what is left has been bled dry of substance by pseudo-enlightened teaching methods.

I’ve taken a course on rhetoric, which was helpful, but I’ve learned the most about it by countless hours of pondering mind-bendingly inane pronouncements trumpeted by people who should have known better, and the enthusiastic and unbelievably uncritical acceptance by all the nodding heads in attendance.

The best working definition of rhetoric that I’ve come across is as follows: The art and science of persuasion. Note that word: persuasion. This has nothing to do with logic or logical argument whereby, if properly done, one arrives at a correct conclusion. Rhetoric is convincing someone that some conclusion is the correct one whether it is or not. Considerable rhetoric has been expended talking teenage girls out of their virginity in the backseats of cars. Just about any abandoned single mother struggling to get her life back on track will tell you that going along wasn’t the correct conclusion.

It’s been a long road for me, but I’ve figured out our adversaries well enough that I can spot the flaws in the reasoning and their rhetorical legerdemain fairly easily. However, I see many good folks around me struggling with the Left’s tricky arguments, then shrugging their shoulders and going on, leaving the asinine pronouncements unchallenged. For all our good qualities, American’s lack of ambition toward intellectual rigor is a serious national flaw. One that scares me more than a little.

Leaving the jargon aside for the time being, I’ve noticed two things that people on the Right/Conservative/Libertarian side need to watch out for. First are false dichotomies, or taking something that has to be considered as a whole and splitting it into parts that can’t stand on their own so as to knock them down more easily. Second is the flip-side of the first. Taking separate elements and deliberately conflating them so as to use valid (maybe) criticisms of one to drag down the other. All of which brings me to my point. Racism, culturalism, nationalism, and any other number of –isms are frequently entirely separate issues that need to be considered, debated, and accepted or rejected as separate entities.

Conflating racism and culturalism is one of the biggest problems today and a current favorite rhetorical tap dance of the Left. The Left insists on treating these as two sides of the same coin making it impossible to condemn one without condemning the other. This, of course is insane in general, and never more insane than when it is applied to the United States.

Racism against Hispanics? Hispanics are not a race. The word itself has traditionally meant Spanish-speaking, thereby referring to a linguistic group as opposed to a genetically similar group of people. A conveniently forgotten fact is that Spain, the source of Spanish, is a Western European country, further west than England, the source of the “Gringo” language. Spaniards are Caucasians.

What about Latinos, as in Latin America? Well, what about it” In Latin America ethnicities range from pure Caucasian (who are the elites that run the show and own just about everything), through pure Amerindians, through Mestizos (mixed race people) to black folks. Besides, I’m not so sure we should call it “Latin” America. After all, for the Amerindians, they didn’t pursue anything Latin, it came and conquered them.

What about Islam? The same principal applies. Racially, Muslims range from the whitest of Caucasians in Eastern Europe, a relic of Islamic imperial conquest, to the darkest of Africans on that continent. Islam is not a race; it is a fascist ideology masquerading as a religion.

When I try to explain the difference to someone, I usually use a computer analogy. Culture is to race as software is to hardware. Despite what poverty pimps and professional grievance-mongers may tell you, racism is all but beaten and progress is still made everyday. If the Republican Party is the Party of hate and the status quo, why are so many of them begging a black woman to be their presidential candidate in 2008? Why did Walter Williams, a famous and distinguished black economist, go on the radio and announce to white liberals, “You’re forgiven, you can stop acting stupid now”?

You would have to have been living under a rock to avoid people of minority persuasions that have long since disproved the “hardware” theory of racism. I have met people of all races who are significantly smarter than I am, and I dwell on the lonely fringes of the right side of the bell curve.

So what is the crucial difference? Software. Or as it applies to human beings—culture. Millions of people want to immigrate to the United States to partake in its freedoms, material wealth, and opportunities. Sadly, many of these folks no longer want to assimilate. In fact, they consider it an outrage that they would be expected to do so. Rather the existing culture is expected to change to accommodate their presence. In essence they expect this country to load their cultural “software” over our own. All this reminds me very much of my experience teaching in a rural school. Frequently, parents would move there hoping to get their children away from the bad big city influences. More often than not, those children were the big city influences. I recall one girl in particular who lasted only 4 days before being arrested for dealing cocaine.

So, what does this all mean? I suppose somebody has to have the guts to say it, so I will. Mexicans, your hardware is fine, just as good as anybody else. Your software, on the other hand, sucks. When you come here, legally of course, check your cultural baggage at the door.

There’s an old saying that says something like, “If the people knew what it was that they wanted, they wouldn’t want it.” The same applies here. If American culture is swamped and displaced by Mexican culture, or just about any other for that matter, in 10 years this country will be a “has-been” like France. In 20 years it would be a Third World nation. Then who would the rest of the world “borrow” money from then?

Paul Tibbetts: May God Give You Fair Winds and Following Seas

I was pondering what to post on today and not having much luck. Then I stumbled upon a site where a standard issue Lefty psychobitch pronounced Paul Tibbetts, the recently departed pilot of the Enola Gay, a coward who died a coward. I would give you the link but I don’t want to send the skank any traffic.

If you don’t know, and if you don’t you just indicted the American education system, the Enola Gay was the name of the bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Tibbetts never expressed remorse at what had been done. He famously said that he had never lost a minute’s sleep over the mission. The Left in general and peaceniks in particular hounded the man his whole life, positive that it would only be a matter of time before he relented and begged someone, presumably the Japanese, for forgiveness. He never did and he shouldn’t have.

Why shouldn’t he? It’s simple. The Japanese of 1945 had it coming. It doesn’t matter how nice the Japanese of 1890 were, nor does it matter what good allies the Japanese of 2007 are. The Japanese of 1945 had it coming, big time. As a nation, we deserve world accolades for being forgiving enough to stop at two. To paraphrase the common man of the era: There was a war on buddy.

The mental midget who denounced Tibbetts is representative of the kind of attitude that will results in untold thousands of unnecessary deaths in our current war. I’m talking about the deaths of us, and our allies, of course. The deaths of the enemy don’t matter. Why? Because the bastards have it coming. Real Americans have no obligation to die for the fantasy world ethics of the Left.

General Tibbetts, I know that you were an Army Air Corps and Air Force veteran, but as a former Navy man, I wish you fair winds and following seas as you pass into the beyond.

Getting in Touch with Your Inner Barbarian

People attempting to sound wise frequently say to take all things in moderation. That’s not quite true. I don’t think axe-murdering or gang-raping are made any more acceptable by pacing yourself. I think it might be better to say don’t take good things to excess, but that has problems of its own. Telling your wife that you’ve been moderately faithful to her will like make you extremely celibate. Such are the perils of nuance.

The Pseudo-Intelligentsia of the Pseudo-Enlightenment of the last several decades have been telling us that there are no absolutes, that all morality (and history for that matter) are relative, and subsequently depend on their context. That is, right and wrong are different things for different people. The absolutes that came crashing to the ground on 9-11-01 only made them more shrill in their moral equivalence. Sympathy for the Devil is the “civilized” mode of thinking.

The problem is, there have been all kinds of civilizations. From those that have gladiatorial games or run gulags to pacifist states that try to mind their own business. The American Republic has a distinctive culture, and it’s a good one too, however much that statement might make the Left wail in protest.

Our nation won’t be saved by nuance and half-measures. Certainly diplomacy should be given a chance, but not an endless series of chances such as we have seen in the past. That’s why we, as a nation and as individuals, should get back in touch with our inner barbarians. Those simple folks that live inside of us all and believe in saying what needs to be said, doing what needs to be done, and cracking a few heads if simpletons get in the way. After all:

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.–Barry M. Goldwater

Progressive = Liberal = Socialist

If you’re like me (and if you are congratulations!) you probably have a hard time deciding if Leftists are dumb and/or crazy and/or evil. I’ve been conducting an informal poll of left-of-center folks since I was a teenager. I just ask questions and keep a running tab in my head on some of the more interesting answers.One of the questions I ask is, “When you achieve your goal of establishing a far left/socialist/communist government what will you do for a living?” I always get the exact same answer. Do they plan to work on a collective farm? Nah. Do they plan on working at the centralized napkin factory? Nah. How about working in the nationalized health care field? Double nah! They always answer the same way and without exception,”Oh, I would work for the government.” Most of them give you a look that says they can’t believe you even had to ask the question.

What’s my point? Simple, proponents of a big and intrusive government always picture themselves in a power wielding position, without fail. Never as the poor gullible sap who has to support the whole gargantuan bureaucracy on his back. So, as many right-wing radio talk show hosts say, it’s all about power, who has it and who doesn’t.

Top Ten Reasons Liberals Fear Religion

1. God failed to get advice and consent before appointing this Jesus guy.
2. He strikes people dead when they try to filibuster Him.
3. The clergy have poor fashion sense.
4. Christians naively think just 10 rules pretty much sums it up.
5. That Pope guy just doesn’t get simple concepts like moral relativism.
6. The flock refuses to ask them for forgiveness.
7. Narrow-minded Christians get hostile when they try to deconstruct the Bible.
8. Christendom hasn’’t updated their core beliefs in over 2000 years.
9. God defies conventional wisdom by insisting that there is a time for war.
10. Jesus was a blue-collar worker and didn’’t go to an Ivy League University.

Public Education Must Die!

But why must public education die you might ask. Because we’ve reached a point where there is no hope for it. Much like the last days of the Roman Empire or the last weeks of the Third Reich, things would have to get much worse before they could get any better. Undoubtedly, I’m not the foremost expert but I do have empirical first-hand experience. A few years ago I felt an unfamiliar sensation that I didn’t recognize. In retrospect I think it was an altruistic impulse. Nevertheless, I did a mid-life career switch, went to graduate school and got certified in three scientific areas. Over a four year period I worked in three school districts and came out convinced that we desperately need vouchers and/or to have the public education system completely dismantled.

My first clue came while attending a mandatory “training” meeting. After a few minutes I said to myself, “My God! These people think the problem is the solution.” The second clue when I asked my fellow teachers why they got into the profession. Few of them said educating the young and none of them mentioned their subject areas. Virtually all of them mentioned such things as: helping them to be a better person, guide them to the right path, teach them how to think, nurture their self-esteem, et cetera. All of which sounds noble until you remember these are the same people that hand out condoms to underage kids. I’ve decided the name of the Major should be changed from Education to Social Engineering.

It would be unfair, however, to paint all teachers with this brush, or even the teacher’s bane—principals. Many are excellent at what they do and they’ll get right to it as some as the finish all the non-educational busy work mandated by various governments. Does April work for you? Good teachers get buried under big bureaucracies concerned primarily with self-preservation. Of course, the reason those bureaucracies are so concerned is the fear that parents will deliver a hammer blow lawsuit to their heads. Parents believe that as taxpayers they have a right to say how public schools are run which is true enough I suppose. The problem is that parents that have received the Earned Income Credit every year since its creation consider themselves taxpayers instead of tax spenders.

Who do I blame? Sorry, it you parents. I know you feel ganged up on and were hoping for something else, but not liking the truth won’t make it go away. The thing that discouraged me enough to give up teaching and give up that idiotic altruistic impulse was the sad realization that, for you guys, schools are just vast day care centers. During the summers how often do you hear a mother say that she wishes school would start she’s worried that Johnny is forgetting his Algebra? Don’t be silly, you never hear that. But I have heard mothers say, “I can’t wait until school starts so I can get these damn brats out of my hair.”

Let’s face it. It’s a wonderful country but it has a strong and unfortunate anti-intellectual streak in it. People are suspicious of people who are “too smart” and occasionally even discriminate against them. Isaac Asimov referred to this as lacking a “good wholesome American stupidity”. That being so, why do people tolerate the public education system? After all, people with no children are heavily taxed to support them. If you are subject to a levy on your home and don’t pay it you can lose your house. In effect the public education system is extorting money from you.

Apologists for this system have traditionally claimed that educated workers and consumers benefit everyone. Tell this to any employer that has hired a recent high school graduate who can’t read, write, add, subtract, multiply, or divide and expects at least twice what the job actually pays.

In the end, the dirty little secret that almost no one has the guts to say out loud is this: People support the public education system because it provides free (to them) child care and tax-supported sports teams to root for. Pretty much nothing else. Even better it provides them with the chance to claim it’s all for the children. Are you looking for a fight sometime? Try to tell somebody otherwise.

Stop Giving Political Parties and Movements Adjectives for Names

Just exactly what is this conservative vs. liberal thing? This is a harder question than it may seem at first glance because, like so many things in life, meanings of words and phrases aren’t static. Tell someone today that another person is a conservative and he will mostly likely be able to tell you many things about that person’s political, religious, and moral philosophy, maybe even about that person’s taste in literature and entertainment. The same can be said for describing someone as a liberal.

The problem comes when you examine history and learn about how those people viewed themselves. You’re confronted with the realization that what is meant by those two terms has flipped to a great extent. Today’s liberal just might be yesterday’s conservative and vice versa. I think that to understand what’s going on you have to look at what the words meant as adjectives before they were transformed into nouns.

Taking a quick look at the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary I find the following definitions (among a few others) for the word liberal: marked by generosity: openhanded: given or provided in a generous and openhanded way: ample: not literal or strict: broad-minded: not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms. Reading this people might say “This is liberalism? Then where do I sign up?” I know that’s what I would think.

Conversely, conservative is defined this way: tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions: traditional: marked by moderation or caution: marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners. This could be either good or bad depending on your perspective but it doesn’t sound too exciting, even to me.

A strange thing, however happens if we look at what the word liberalism traditionally has meant: a movement in modern Protestantism emphasizing intellectual liberty and the spiritual and ethical content of Christianity: a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard: a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties. If that sound familiar, there’s a good reason. It pretty much sums up the definition of modern day conservative belief and practice.

So how do we reconcile this apparent contradiction? The answer is both easy and hard. You have to interpret the terms in their historical context. In simpler terms you have to judge by what was meant when the words were originally spoken, not by what they might mean now in the political correct intellectual vacuum or our day. My own shorthand definitions are as follows: a liberal wants to change things; a conservative wants to preserve things. When times change but our terminology doesn’t, the terms swap meanings. So yesterday’s liberalism is today’s conservatism.

he creation of our country was the last dying gasp of the Enlightenment. The beliefs held by our founding fathers and most of the intellectuals of the time are sometimes referred to as classical liberalism to differentiate from modern liberalism, which is a very different creature. So if liberals want change and these guys were old-school liberals what change did they want? They wanted to live in a republic instead of a kingdom, democratic (small d) rule instead of absolute monarchy, reason instead of mindless emotion, free will instead of religious coercion. The list goes on. At the time, this wasn’t just change, it was radical change.

Many of these fine folks assumed that the United States would remain an agrarian nation, filled with gentleman farmers and the occasional craftsman. But latter day liberals wanted to change that established order and do something innovative. They wanted to massively industrialize the nation and secure the blessings of capitalism, so to speak. To the modern mind, this sounds an awful lot like one of those rascally conservatives.

Over time these radical changes became the established way of doing things. In effect, they became the new old-school. So when the anti-industrial, anti-capitalism backlash came it came along with a new flavor of liberal, that of a different group of people who wanted change. After a long and valiant struggle for their cause they prevailed. These folks reigned supreme in the United States from the Red Decade, the 1930s, to the 1990’s. The people that labored for so long to sweep away the establishment had become the new establishment. Unfortunately for them, they never noticed the change.

So what happened? Once this particular breed of liberals got many of their policies in place they wanted to preserve what they had accomplished; wanting to keep things as they were naturally made them the new conservatives in practice even if not in name. For some reason, I’m guessing force of habit, we continue to call these folks liberals. Meanwhile, conservatives wandered like a metaphorical Moses in the political desert for decades. When some effective leadership finally surfaced, we began to agitate for what? Change of course, which made us de facto liberals (classical ones anyway) but we continued to be known as conservatives. It is my view that both factions are currently mislabeled with a name that is more applicable to the other, at least for now.

We conservatives, as we are currently known, have seen some glorious things happen. I was always confident that someday the Left would be beaten back and cooler heads prevail, but I never expected to see so much change so fast, especially not in my lifetime. The victories are made all the sweeter by watching our rivals implode before our very eyes. Amazingly, their response to defeat has been to press the self-destruct button even harder.

It will undoubtedly be many years before the members of the Liberal Orthodox religion can wrap their heads around the consequences of their failure to adapt. These tragic souls continue to mistake the problem for the solution, much like public education. This blindness gives us a great opportunity to advance our cause but it won’t last forever. Eventually, the current liberal leadership will fade away and will be replaced with younger, more vibrant, thoroughly frustrated, and unbelievably motivated people. They will once again be liberals in essence as well as in name. By the time this happens, we will likely have achieved many or most of our goals and want to keep it that way. We will be true conservatives again. It is imperative that we not get complacent. Modern liberalism has great allure for most young people and the less experience and maturity a person has the appeal of liberalism is that much greater. We must remain active, engaged, and involved if our present good fortune is to continue.