Conservative Donnybrook

Genesis 25:27-34  (MRAV – modern revised American version):

27                As the boys grew up, Esau became a Democrat, a man who loved big government; whereas Jacob was a simple man, who kept to his tents.

28                The people loved Esau, because they were fond of largesse; but the founding fathers preferred Jacob.

29                Once, when Jacob was treating a wounded sheep, Esau came in from the open, with a hangnail.

30                He said to Jacob, “Give me some of that medical treatment, I am uncomfortable.” (That is why he was called America.)

31                But Jacob replied, “First give me your birthright in exchange for it.”

32                “Look,” said Esau, “I’m on the point of dying. What good will my freedoms and liberties do me?”

33                But Jacob insisted, “Swear to me first!” So he sold Jacob his birthright under oath.

34                Jacob then treated his hangnail, and Esau sighed in relief, got up, and went his way. Esau cared little for his birthright.

Having completed the race and finding that Achilles could indeed beat him to the finish line, the Tortoise handed over a check to cover his wager.

Tortoise: I trust you will take a check from me, my friend?

Achilles: Of course, Tortoise. You and I go way back. Into antiquity you might even say. In any case, I could really use the money.

Tortoise: Are you still looking for work?

Achilles: Yes. It seems there is very little call for heroic Greek warriors in today’s economy. If only we would declare war on Turkey. I could probably round up any number of Greek warrior heroes for that war.

Tortoise: Maybe you could get Norman Podhoretz to put a bug in Obama’s ear. Just remind him the Turks are Muslim. That should be reason enough for him to advocate for a war. And, at the same time, think of all the jobs that would be created for idled Hellenistic soldiers.

Achilles: I wish I knew what went wrong. I thought for sure the government stimulus would lead to prosperity. I kept hearing that every dollar of deficit spending would create $1.50 of expansion in the economy. Maybe we should have spent more.

Tortoise: That is one way. Or, we could learn from our failure and try something different. Can I ask you a question, Achilles?

Achilles: Of course.

Tortoise: Where does all of the money that the government spends come from?

Achilles: Why, it comes from taxpayers. You should know that.

Tortoise: And who does the government give the money to?

Achilles: Other taxpayers who will spend the money. That’s how jobs are created.

Tortoise: What you are saying then is that the government takes the money from one taxpayer and gives it to another to spend. This seems to be a recipe in spinning one’s wheels. Why would we do that?

Achilles: Well, Tortoise, the people from whom the government takes the money are those who are savers and the people who they give to are spenders. The government just wants to make sure that the money is being used. That way, new money is injected into the economy. It is really quite elementary, Tortoise. Continue Reading »

Ordinarily, I would take a good deal of time to point out that many here at the site have repeatedly pointed out the nakedness of the emperor. I would rehash the times Patriot-Act statists in conservative wool have been called on their leftism, secularism, and big-government authoritarianism. I would also bewail the unmitigated gall of such a character having the chutzpah to call his critics allies of Michael Moore, George Soros, and Nancy Pelosi.  I would loudly and often decry the shameless and unguarded honesty of those who reduce their philosophy to “kill” to the exclusion of sound economic policy, the sanctity of life, the sovereignty of our country, and a host of other issues. Normally. Not this time. This time I’ll let the argument you presented dismantle itself and show the readership of this blog how one-note, indefensible, and breathtakingly destructive your side is.

The article to which you linked, when read through the lenses of one conversant with history (which one would expect a self-described historian to do), demonstrated far better than I could of the bankruptcy of your side. Kagan starts out by mentioning the Great Depression. He failed to note any of the actual causes of that depression. He failed to take into consideration the “adventurism,” to borrow one of your words from a recent comment, of the United States leading up to that crisis. The economic decisions in the midst and wake of the Civil War (National banking acts of 1863 and 1864 which consolidated currency to fund the Union’s war; Federal Reserve creation in 1913; Aldrich-Vreeland in 1908, etc.) and the domestic and foreign policy decisions in the wake of the war (Reconstruction; almost immediate attempts at imperialism in Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Liberia – all of which came about due to slavery and its end; westward expansion, Indian wars, Alaskan purchase; Roosevelt’s splitting of the Republicans, his appointments to the Supreme Court, etc.; financial, monetary, and fiscal management and mismanagement), not to mention World War I, all contributed directly to the spreading thin of the American military and building resentment throughout the world.

Kagan goes on to insinuate that, because the United States seemed to somehow ignore foreign policy, Japan militarized and Germany fell under Hitler’s sway. This is howlingly funny. What we are required to do if we are to accept Kagan’s hypothesis is to absolutely and unequivocally deny that black is black, that water is wet, or that fire is hot. Aside from the fact that it was American “adventurism” (e.g., with the Great White Fleet, which further fueled a zealous desire to militarize in newly-nationalist Japan) which thrust Japan on its path toward imperialism (read about Perry’s Black Ships and the cracking of isolationist Japan, the Meiji Restoration, the Manchurian, Korean, and Russian campaigns of Japan), we can hardly be faulted for “ignoring” Germany: we had shipped thousands of American boys there to fight, bleed, die, and kill, and had established a new world-political body to deal with the German problem only 20 years before the 1933 Nazification. One could be excused for refusing to read any of the rest of Kagan’s ludicrous bombast after realizing this, but, intrepid soul that I am, I trudged on.

Kagan engaged in your least-favorite pasttime. He had the balls to criticize Ronald Reagan (gasp! the horror!) in practically the same breath as he criticized Jimmy Carter. Calling Reagan’s policy decisions about Lebanon “failed” and asserting that these policies led to the bombing of the Marine barracks is hardly what one would expect to hear you lauding. Implicit in this is the recognition that we should not have been there to get bombed. Reagan quickly and wisely realized this and did exactly the right thing: he got out and left Israel to what it was perfectly, demonstrably capable of doing: defending itself and letting Beirut and the Lebanese tend to their own damned affairs. No more Marines were killed there after that. No Al-Aqsa,  ”Quds Force,” or Hezbollah started trouble by killing Americans there. What a concept.  What were “Reagan’s failed policies” in Lebanon? Assisting a “multinational force” along with French troops and others to “keep the peace” in a sectarian civil war. What spawned the Muslim hatred and subsequent suicide bombings? Perceived American preference for Maronite Catholics and the shelling of Druze areas which inadvertantly killed civilians.

Kagan touches tangentially and seemingly accidentally upon one truth: things now are probably more dangerous for the U.S., but because of our huge overseas presence and constant “spreading of democracy” or “war on terror” or “search for WNDs” (we really do need to find those nasty World Net Dailies) or whatever they’re calling it these days, not because we are letting our guard down.

People are growing weary of the wars, growing weary of the constant misequation of the United States of America with Israel by the radical Zionists, and people are growing weary of the stubborn economic hardships put upon them by constant imperialism. Bring Americans home to defend America. Root out radical Islam here and deport it. If the resistance starts here, put it down swiftly and with no remorse. But there is no way we need to be defending South Korea from a tinpot near-dead in charge of a run-down non-entity. There is no justification for making all those “security guarantees” to states in the Russian sphere of influence. There is no way you could possibly believe that Kagan essay if you know and understand history. There is no way you can continue to call yourself a conservative and defend such Wilsonianism. It is definitionally schizophrenic, or alternatively simply mendacious, to claim to be conservative and yet espouse this baseless, historically-illiterate, radical Ledeenishness while at the same time believing it makes us safer. Your apologists split their time between appealing to how much safer we are and how dangerous it’s getting. Your side constantly purports to support “democracy” and “freedom” while working overtime - often in cahoots with outright radical socialist would-be totalitarians – to quash them through Patriot Acts, occupations of foreign countries, propped-up banking cartels and outdated unionized auto companies (remember which President started those great things?). Your side is trying to cling desperately to relevance, which is understandable. But for whom are you striving?

Hey everyone, remember me?

Just a quick note to mention, since secession is a topic that crops up here every now and then, that Daniel McCarthy has a thoughtful post up on the subject, in effect a paleo word of ambivalence on the subject.

In particular, on the issue of constitutionality in the case of the US, he writes:

The answer is that the Constitution neither allows nor forbids secession — the Constitution’s answer, in effect, is “don’t ask that question.” That’s the correct answer because responding to the question of secession in any other way would destroy the Constitution: even if only a few states secede, once the principle is granted, any state may leave whenever it pleases, weakening the Constitution to nothing. But if secession is not possible at all, the states may not leave even when the central government becomes overbearing, and if this principle is established in fact — as it has been — the result is the destruction of the federal system, rendering the Constitution a dead letter. The only way to have kept the Constitution intact was not to press the question in the first place.

Sounds about right to me; the arguments on the subject that I’ve heard, pro and con, have a certain legalistic character, a tendency to take some disparate historical and legal threads and try to weave an airtight case when it can’t really be done. The subject is left unaddressed in the Constitution for a reason. But granting McCarthy’s take on the subject, is a stable, decentralized, federalist system possible at all over the long run?

This is a great visual of the $100 million that Obama has been urging his cabinet to trim from his bloated $3.5 trillion budget. The cuts are supposed to show the president’s commitment to “go line by line through the budget to cut spending” and “reform government.”

Yes. Very committed. Seeing the level of the president’s commitment, I am left only with Hope™ that government will somehow be reformed and spending truly cut. Right now the cuts seem to amount to chump Change™.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted 328-93 to impose a 90% tax on recipients of bonuses from taxpayer-supplied bailout monies. It is nice to see Congress suddenly concerned about taxpayer money for a change, or even that they recognize the money as coming from the taxpayer and not belonging to the government.

I suppose before I jump off into my rant, it is required that I offer the obligatory distancing speech from AIG. Here goes: What AIG did was reprehensible and there are plenty of bad actors among the leadership of that company that paying bonuses was questionable at best. Many of them don’t deserve bonuses for the harm their actions have wrought. However, I would stop short of suggesting that these execs fall on their swords.

Having said that, what in the hell was the House thinking? Sen. Christopher Dodd inserted a provision in the bailout contractually obligating AIG to pay bonuses to its executives (although Dodd is now pointing at Geithner as the guilty party, either way…). As a result, AIG paid out $165 milllion worth of the $173 billion it received in the bailout. (For those who don’t have a calculator handy, that’s less than 1/10th of 1%). The company was contractually obligated to make the payments and the Senate Banking Committee and Treasury Department were well aware of the fact. But, when folks like Barney Frank heard that AIG was paying out bonuses to its execs, the spittle began to fly and politicians across this great land began to grandstand and demogogue. They so whipped themselves into a frenzy, that they thought nothing of passing a bill of attainder in the House to recoup 90% of the bonuses. After all, let us not forget who that money really belongs to (and the right answer is not taxpayers). If AIG is going to try to give that money to people who are politically toxic, Congress has an obligation to reassert its authority over those funds – no matter how unconstitutional the measure it has to adopt.

The one comforting thing I think we can all take from this is the certainty that we can trust that this is limited to the bailout money. We should not worry that contracts have been imperiled by Congress’ act. We should go about our daily business entering into contracts freely, secure in the knowledge that, at least as long as the politicians approve of both parties to a particular contract and don’t perceive that any politically disfavored person is being enriched by the contract, that your contracts are perfectly safe from government interference.

Add to that Doublethink: “Its not nationalization, its protecting the taxpayer’s interests.” A la Harry Reid discussing the potential take over of insolvent bank Citi Group by Uncle Sam.  We can also include President Obama in the Ministry of Truth for his statement that he will slash the budget deficit in half.  He said this on the heels of increasing the deficit by nearly a trillion dollars!  Under Obama, the deficit climbed from $1.2 trillion or nearly $2 trillion and he hasn’t been president for even 100 days yet!  Let me get this straight, we can only save ourselves by spending more and increasing the deficit, yet “We cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences.”  Which is it, Mr. Obama?

I now leave you to spend some quality time with Jim Rogers.

Mark (Willmoore) wrote an interesting post over at Spinline in which he posed the question of whether there is hope for laissez-faire economics (in particular) and prinicpled opposition to Big Government (generally). As I am wont to do, I left a lengthy (and gloomy) comment. On second thought, I probably should have simply posted my response here (if I was going to be so windy) and left a trackback to Mark’s post. With that in mind, here is the response I left:

Mark,

I would agree with you that if there is hope to be found, it is in the prospect of an “alternative” right rising. Of course, the problem with that presecription is that, if the alternative right is to have any hope of forging a new path, it necessarily has to capture the imaginations of a large number of people. It will, in other words, have to become a new movement conservatism. Perhaps it just a failure of my own imagination, but I cannot conceive of how this will come about practically without this new movement’s descension into the same sort of party politics as led the Republican Party down its path.

Perhaps the nature of all reform is that it is cyclical. A movement rises, captures the imagination of a segment of the population, ascends to power through the formation of bloc alliances with others who share common goals, becomes a major movement, and degrades due to its love of the power that it has seized. If so, even the Paulite movement will inevitably degrade to the point where its primary goal is to enlarge its tent in order to retain power.

It seems as though those of us who wish to retain our Constitutional form of government with its coincident freedoms are doomed to spend a long time in the wilderness crying out and attracting followers. And just when we begin to enjoy the fruits of those labors, we will find ourselves needing to form a new following to counter the excesses of the one we birthed. In the end, the little success that is ultimately achieved by an ascendant “alternative right” will be measured in terms of having slowed the decay of freedom and not in rolling back the abuses.

Sorry to be so gloomy. Huge spending (and ultimately taxing) packages tend to do that to me.

A new Jersey couple who named their children after Nazis have had their children seized by the state. There is no comment from officials as to why the children were seized though there have been no reports of abuse.

There is little doubt that the parents are less than perfect, even undesirable but that does not give the State any authority to take their children.  Officials in New Jersey had better provide information as to what lead to the seizure and it better be legitimate.  I don’t like the names of the children either, but that alone is not enough to rip children from their parents and destroy inalienable rights.

Stand by for updates.

The American auto industry will be taken over by a czar, a “car czar” that is.  President Bush and top Democrat lawmakers have agreed in principal to continue robbing the taxpayers while expanding the scope and power of the federal government.

Under the plan, the Bush and Obama administrations will work together to find a “suitable” de-facto owner of the Big Three.  This “car czar” will hold the strings of a purse filled with $15 billion in looted cash.  He alone will have the right to spend, demand repayment and force bankruptcy of the now federalized industry.  The power Motor City once generated will now be delivered by the Big Red Washington Machine.  In return for stealing from the taxpayers (again) and giving the funds to private businesses (again), Washington will receive a massive cut of profits (if any); A sort of steal-from-the-poor-to-give-to-the-dumb-and-rich maneuver.  Shareholders, however, are to be barred from receiving dividends or other distributions.  So, the only real winners here are the federal government, the giant and lazy unions and auto executives.  Everyone else loses big time.

Those who know me know that there has never been a bigger supporter of the American auto industry than myself.  I have never owned anything other than a Ford product.  Should FOMOCO take one penny, one red cent from this “loan” I swear I will never buy another of their products.  The same goes for Chrysler (owned, incidentally, by a CANADIAN company with plenty of money) and GM.  As crazy as it sounds, the most American thing I could do under those circumstances would be to buy…gulp…a Toyota or Subaru.  I swear it shall be done.

With the take-over of the financial markets and now the stealing of the auto industry, I have to wonder what is next.  Utilities?  Already happened or happening.  Water?  Ditto.  Agriculture?  Probably not too far off.  How far will this go until we see full fledged fascist socialism in this nation?  We are goose-stepping at an ever increasing pace.

Andrew Sullivan over at the TimesOnline penned and interesting piece.  I went looking for something sympathetic to my anger by Googling “Bush is a socialist.”  What turned up is this great article.

Sullivan starts by saying:

Finally, finally, finally. A few years back, your correspondent noticed something a little odd about George W Bush’s conservatism. If you take Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that a socialist is someone who is very good at spending other people’s money, then President Bush is, er, a socialist.

Sullivan continues:

In five years, Bush has increased it [domestic discretionary spending] 35.1%. And that’s before the costs for Katrina and Rita and the Medicare benefit kick in. Worse, this comes at a time when everyone concedes that we were facing a fiscal crunch before Bush started handing out dollar bills like a drunk at a strip club.

What really struck me is when Sullivan wrote this article, September 2005!  If he was right then, he is surely correct today!  When Bush authorizes the purchase of private bank interests, our brand of capitalism will have taken its last breath.

UPDATE:  Bush said this about 5 hours ago:  “As our nations carry out this plan, we must ensure that the actions of one country do not contradict or undermine the actions of another. In an interconnected world, no nation will gain by driving down the fortunes of another. We are in this together. We will come through it together.”

Indeed, how horrible it would be if capitalism were to work!  We must asure an end to the free market!

Below is a letter and the names of the Representatives you should send it to.  Please, help stop the socialist bail out bill!

Dear Representative:

I write you today to register my unwavering opposition to the so-called “bail-out” bill.  Previously, you courageously voted to keep this costly and negative bill from destroying the free market system and over-burdening taxpayers.  Now the Senate is back attempting to resurrect this package of institutional socialism.  If the first version of this disastrous bill was not good enough for your vote or approval then this new bill should not garner it either.  This bill would place our nation deeper into debt than the first, impede the ebb and flow of the open market and cost the taxpayers too much.

Please, for the sake of your constituents, all taxpayers and every American do not lend your support to pass this bill.  A vote to pass is tantamount to a vote for socialism in many forms.  We, as a nation, will ride through this current financial hardship if given the time and space to do so.

As a good steward of my family’s finances, as one that did not get in over my head with large debt or abuse credit, I view this bill as an assault on my good name, financial status and years of hard work and toil.

Again, I implore you to again vote to turn back this terrible bill.  I know you will do the right thing.  Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
YOUR NAME

Continue Reading »

In a ruling that is sure to rile up liberal elites the German Constitutional Court has stuck down regional smoking bans, finding them unconstitutional. Of particular importance in their decision was the protection of local corner bars who are unable to provide the separate spaces for smokers that larger establishments easily offer. Not only does the decision allow smoking but it also protects the local pub. Talk about German efficiency.

…I’m just venting.

I received my latest mortgage bill and they informed me that my escrow had increased by $135 per month. Some of you who live in high priced housing markets might not see this as a big deal, but $135 represents a 17% increase in my housing expenses. If your monthly mortgage bill were $1,500 per month, that would amount to a $255 per month increase…an additional $3,060 per year…that was NEVER budgeted. The bottom line is that no one budgets a 17% increase in their monthly mortgage payment when they purchase a house.

On top of that, this is not the first increase that we have absorbed. This latest 75% increase in taxes, which precipitated the latest escrow increase was presaged by a 100% increase two years prior. In other words, our taxes have increases in three years by 250%. This would amount to an annualized increase of 51.829% a year.

I have no idea how my elderly neighbor who has lived in her house forever might be able to adjust the government’s late avariciousness, but I can only imagine that it will eat into her ability to stay independent of the government dole (not counting social security). I have said it before; I will say it again: property taxes are immoral. When retired people are thrown out of the houses they’ve owned for a decade, the veneer of legitimacy for property taxes is called severely into question. The plight of the elderly is instructive: We never truly own our property; we only rent it from the government. It is all the worse while we are still attempting to purchase our property from the bank.

What is worse is that in Indiana, as I’ve chronicled, the populace rose up in protest against usurious property taxes last summer. In response, the legislature, at the governor’s behest, voted in a 1% cap on taxes of a property’s assessed value. Nonetheless, that cap does not go into effect for 2 years (in which time the legislature may very well reverse itself as passions subside). Meanwhile, the populace of Indianapolis must spring for an unexpected and unfair increase of its government levy. Now the populace of Indianapolis is silent…only 50 people appeared at the latest protest. We are like frogs who have been inured to the heat of the taxes which have been applied to us. I used to have a friend who would say, when we played Monopoly as kids, “Money is like butter. Put a little heat under it and it melts.” Today I would counter that if that heat is gradual enough, those whose money melts away will never even realize that it’s happening.

But, it is happening nonetheless.

It makes one severely question the propriety of government education given the fact that the schools account for more than half of the property tax levy. Surely the Catholics (or virtually anyone else who is not the government) can do it cheaper. And, all indications are that they would do it better!

UPDATE: Lest anyone take issue with the dollar amount of my taxes which are discernible from the numbers I’ve given, it would be well to give some background. My neighborhood is one which is fully developed. We are not building schools. We are not building roads. I live in an urban area. No one would, in good conscience send their children to the schools here unless they could not afford private schools. One of the attractions when we moved in was that private schools were attainable because the taxes were low. Now that is out of reach. A young family which moves into this neighborhood, unless they are wealthy, would be forced to send their children to the public schools which are ranked among the worst in the nation. Worse, their children would likely be the victims of crime as a result of their attending these schools. The only conceivable outcome in the face of these tax increases are massive degradation of property values and the subsequent flight of those who are able to flee to outlying, more stable, neighborhoods. All of the progess which this neighborhood has experienced in the last 20 years will be erased as a result of tax policy.

If one is inclined to say, “you pay so little,” keep in mind two things. First, property values in Indianapolis are much lower than in other parts of the nation. The average house price in my neighborhood is around $130,000 – and this is not a horrible part of town – indeed, I live in a desirable part of town. If you pay more in taxes, consider what your house is worth. Second, consider how you would feel if your taxes increased by 250% in the space of 3 years, regardless of where you started.

I am not arguing that I am paying more than anyone else. I am not. I feel for Bill who lives in Southern California (and SM who lives in NYC) and often tell him (them) he (they) should move to Indy where taxes are low (although in good conscience I may have to cease those enticements). I specifically chose the neighborhood I did because the tax burden was low. In the interim, my taxes have increased almost four-fold in the course of four years. That is the benchmark against which to measure my pain. Imagine your taxes increasing in like manner and imagine your reaction – that is all I am saying.

Andrew Cline wrote an amusing article for The American Spectator on the passage of a disastrous farm-welfare bill.  If you are not a farmer, this is the only joy you will get out of this bill’s passage.

The good folks over at Citizens Against Government Waste released the 2008 edition of their annual Pig Book.

Hillary Clinton loves pork! In 2007, she took 281 earmarks totaling an astounding $296.2 million.

Barack took 53 earmarks totaling $97.4 million. At least we can put to rest the notion that Barack Hussein Obama is a secret Muslim.

On the other hand, John McCain, in 22 years in the Senate, has NEVER taken an earmark. The difference in this year’s election is stark. We may not agree with everything McCain stands for, but on this issue, he is as conservative as they come.

It is California after all.

Now, thanks to Justice Walter Croskey and two of his fellow appellate judges, California has made a serious bid to be recognized as the King of the Regulatory States (although such an appellation may be too patriarchal to be politically correct – perhaps Monarch of the Regulatory States would be better and less sexist). Last February 28, the California Court of Appeals ruled that it is illegal to instruct children without a certification from the state, effectively outlawing home schooling. According to Justice Croskey, “parents do not have the constitutional right to home school their children.” In fact, “[b]ecause parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling within the provisions of these laws, parents who fail to do so may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program.”

Apparently the Court has been itching to placate the teachers’ union for some time, because the justification for this sweeping ruling, affecting 166,000 families, was a single incidence of child abuse of a homeschooled child. Repeatedly throughout the decision, the Court states that parents have no constitutional basis for opting out of the public school morass and that these cases do not present a federal question (at least in the Ninth Circuit). I know quite a few people who home school their children and generally they do it out of religious conviction. In fact, the family under California’s boot did assert their First Amendment right about which the Court stated:

The parents in the instant case have asserted in a declaration that it is because of their “sincerely held religious beliefs” that they home school their children and those religious beliefs “are based on Biblical teachings and principles.” Even if the parents’ declaration had been signed under penalty of perjury, which it was not, those assertions are not the quality of evidence that permits us to say that application of California’s compulsory public school education law to them violates their First Amendment rights. Their statements are conclusional, not factually specific. Moreover, such sparse representations are too easily asserted by any parent who wishes to home school his or her child.

Apparently, before a person’s religious rights may be recognized in California, the burden is on the person asserting them to prove their genuineness. This Court is telling parents that the regulatory power of the State is sufficiently powerful to countermand their right to their exercise of  religion and the rearing of their children in that religion. Especially if one simply asserts their right without justifying why the State should allow you to exercise it.

Let us hope that transfer is granted and this terrible decision is rectified at the California Supreme Court soon. If not through the courts, then the legislature. But, it would be nice to think that a court of law can still exercise some self-restraint.

I read this on the Corner and immediately thought Mr. Steyn was being dramatic. There is no way that England padded the streetlights on an entire street to protect engrossed text-messagers from injuring themselves.

Right?

The USDA announced the recall over 143 million pounds of beef from a southern California meat producer/packer. The recall has scared many from buying or consuming beef products. The scare rippled through the nation, over the seas and on to foreign shores. The largest recall prior to the current was of only 35 million pounds! This recall truly is monumental. The question is, was the recall justified? Continue Reading »

 James Poulos of Postmodern Conservative has endorsed Romney and Obama for the nominating constests. Poulos on Obama:

The best way to standardize respect in this country is to standardize citizenship, and return to citizens the ability to administer their shared affairs together face to face. For all his liberalism, Obama is unique in his ability to inspire the desire for that kind of respect and real political participation. … There is a profound desire in the culture today to escape from politics and citizenship — to enjoy the feeling of togetherness rather than do the hard work that makes togetherness worthwhile. Obama’s style and substance tempts and rewards this desire. But it also tempts and rewards its opposite. … Obama inspires people to not abandon politics to the experts, to recognize the goods of taking control of their own lives to common purpose. I may disagree with him on nearly all the issues, but I earnestly hope that the chance he presents, especially on the left, is seized before all the life of true citizen politics is drained away.

I see little evidence that Obama’s brand of governing would inspire such “true citizen politics.” Continue Reading »