23 September 2010

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO LIBERAL PATRIOTISM?

A left-wing professor in Illinois objected to a crowd shouting “USA” at a football game because it might “offend Muslims.” In this case the Muslims are getting a bad rap from this leftist dog as being unpatriotic. But it brings up a larger question. There was a time when at least every one could agree on flag and country. Now there are people who actually object to our national symbols as offensive. Thus the people being “offended” are not Muslims but liberals.

One would have thought that the election of Obama would have brought some resurgence in patriotism on the left, but on contrary, internationalism rules the day from White house on down. This is a pretty sad state of affairs and was not always the case. Once there was “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and Roosevelt during World War II. This shared patriotism continued at least through the Presidency of John F. Kennedy, but then the left went over the cliff in the 60s and now actually opposes patriotic display and expressions.

In this respect it is no surprise that most of the armed forces and casualties are from “red” states, or more precisely “red” counties. By the way how did the right become “red,” a color that was always associated with the left and communism? I remember when it was “better to be dead than red.” I think it was actually based on the colors chosen for the election board on NBC or one of the network news programs. We apparently are stuck with it now. In any case it is clear there are people on the left who are filled with loathing for Americans and our way of life, particularly in universities, where tenured radicals rule. I wish they’d leave the country.

22 September 2010

POLITICAL PASSION

Nutty ex-President Jimmy Carter, has pronounced that the country is more divided today than at any time since the Civil War. This is factually incorrect. There were over 600,000 dead in the Civil War. Where are the casualties in the “culture war?” Furthermore, anyone who was around in the late 60s/early 70s knows that the country was far more divided then than it is today. Indeed the same people on both sides are still around, and yes, still divided. The difference today is that there is alternative media. Back then, the news was owned by the three liberal networks and the NY Times, and the whole narrative was told from a left-wing perspective. Thus they wrote of i.e. the “youth,” the “women” etc. as if all had the same viewpoint, never acknowledging that there were plenty of us on the right. The effect of this myopic monopoly back then was to alienate the public and increase support for the right, leaving the elites in shock when it turned out there were far more conservatives than they could have imagined.

While what is happening today is similar from the elite standpoint, it is nowhere near as intense as four decades ago. The news monopoly has been broken, and even as the establishment controls a shrinking piece of the pie, there are media alternatives today that lean right. Political differences at the ideological level are fundamentally a clash of values. There is no lower common denominator and that is why we have politics- to settle these divisions in a civil manner. Values in and of themselves are not rationally derived, but stem from family, custom, and belief. The establishment media and academia have continuously portrayed the values of the right as “irrational,” never realizing that their own fundamental values also have no rational basis.

After decades of ideology I have come to realize that it can lead to a type of tunnel vision. That is to say that politics dominates all discourse and judgment and is the prism through which the world is viewed. It involves focusing on one topic- politics, with religious fervor, to the exclusion of everything else. This sort of behavior is actually far more characteristic of the left than the right, because they are the ones who politicize everything and attempt to bring all aspects of life into the public sphere. The right reacts when is basic values are challenged, but it is the left that has made every aspect of life political. The right recognizes a far larger private sphere that ought not to be political, whereas the left wants to subject everything to public policy. This sort of fanaticism results in failing to see the interwoven complexity of things and how millions upon millions of individual decisions are the crux of real life. Ironically it is the “liberals” who are most intolerant. They look at everything in political terms, so that in coming upon something new the first question they ask is where this thing or person stands politically, even though it may be totally apolitical to everyone else. They cannot escape the ideological lens, so that ironically the “progressives,” as they now call themselves, are the most illiberal people on the planet. Conservatives are the true liberals, and indeed in virtually every other place in the world what Americans call conservatism is considered “liberalism.” Milton Friedman spent his life trying to rescue that term but never succeeded. Perhaps it is time to explore the true meaning of liberalism.

Meanwhile the “progressive” establishment media continues to portray the Tea Party as a kind of lunatic fringe that is irrational, extreme, etc. In fact given its focus on government spending, excess, and debt, which are undeniable facts, the Tea Party is actually tone of the most rational movements to ever come along.

11 September 2010

THE TWO 9/11s

I will never forget the reaction of people in New York on September 11, 2001. Most broke into spontaneous chants of patriotic songs or chants of USA, but in Union Square the people started singing “Imagine.” That more than anything symbolized to me the divide between left and right in this country, or more accurately between the left and the rest of the country. Not surprisingly we see the same division on the location of a mosque at ground zero, nine years later.

For the left, the United States is a deeply flawed society responsible for most of the evil in the world. That hard core amounts to those not part of the 88% that approved of George Bush after 9/11 in a moment of national unity and resolve. Yet improbably, nine years later “Imagine” made its way to the White House and contributes to the current unpopularity and mistrust of this administration.

No matter how much we might wish to stand down, there will always be evil in the world, sometimes controlling governments, sometimes revolting violently against them, but with a constant disregard for human life and joy in mass murder. We did not “bring this on ourselves;” it came to us. There are only two choices- surrender or fight. There is no middle way with this enemy. No matter how painful it is to revisit, we must keep alive the horrible images of innocent bodies jumping from the burning towers to remember what we are up against, even as we finally begin the process of rebuilding the WTC site.

Hollywood has noticeably been AWOL on this, and if anything has produced anti-American propaganda. The old patriots who once controlled the studios and built the industry are long gone. There was one production that was truly excellent in laying out the facts. It was “The Path to 9/11” which aired on ABC. However they have refuse to rerelease it or produce it on video to avoid offending the Clintons, even though the show did not particularly blame them outside of laxity in government agencies.. It was an objective and sobering account. Everyone should call on ABC to release this production in its original format

02 September 2010

FAREWELL TO MEN

A recent survey indicated that women 22-34 now out earn men in their age group. This is largely a result of being better educated, as women now outnumber men in college. The social implications of this are profound and do not bode well for women as well as men. If women are better educated and earning more than their male peers, the prospects for finding a suitable mate are significantly reduced. The pool of marriageable men simply isn’t large enough. This also results in an increase in dysfunctional males avoiding, or unable to assume responsibility, and is a contributing factor in the rise in illegitimate births. The problem is less acute for affluent, college-educated couples who will go on to traditional social arrangements. But it also leaves an increasing underclass of fatherless children, who in turn will likely father and abandon children of their own.

This is exacerbated by the liberals war on traditional males. Nowadays in movies and tv shows we routinely see women kicking male butts, which is pure fantasy. It is a product of sissified Hollywood. Long gone are men like Clark Gable and Gary Cooper, never mind John Wayne. They have been replaced by boys or fools that never grow up. Where are the positive role models for young men? This is not simply a male complaint, for I cannot believe that women want these types for partners.

As the male role continues to be diminished we inevitably run up against the natural world, with destructive consequences. These conditions are only possible in civilized societies with the rule of law, but they are but a moment in the history of our species. Such a sudden shift is bound to have a profound effect on the psyche by upending all that has been built into us over countless thousands of years. I am not arguing for any government solution to a problem it has contributed to, but a cultural shift back to understanding what it means to be a man.