Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Barack Obama, Intellectual Coward



When the 2016 State of the Union was coming up the guest panelists on one of the news shows enjoyed making predictions on the number of straw-men arguments Obama would resort to, as they chuckled and shook their heads over his infamous penchant for proudly slaying the artificial boogeymen of his own making.  It’s quite a sad state of affairs when the President of the United States can be counted on to puff himself up and respond to his critics with lies and false arguments in a national address, but that just so happens to be the reality, and it isn’t funny. 

Straw-man arguments and lies are the refuge of those who fear that their arguments can’t stand up on their own, just as brass knuckles and switchblades are the refuge of fighters who doubt their ability to hold their own in a fair fight.  As a blogger I’ve dealt with this tactic countless times in my futile attempts to sincerely debate with liberals and libertarians.  They predictably accuse me of wanting the poor to starve or of being a cold-hearted war monger in order to avoid arguing with the actual substance of what I’ve said.  It often reminds me of a comical scene from the movie, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” in which the townspeople dress a woman up as a witch, fake nose and all, in order to……wait for it…..… prove that she’s a witch!  


We laugh at the absurdity of it and yet it’s not too far removed from realty, which is precisely what makes it so funny (didn’t the enemies of George W. Bush concoct fake documents to prove their criticism that he didn’t fulfill his service requirements?).  Why would the townspeople go to such great lengths to make the woman into a witch rather than simply accept that she’s not a witch?***  Answer:   Either they have more sinister motives relating to this woman or they don’t want the mental discomfort of invalidating that which they’ve come to believe, because our prejudices are very precious to us.  Either way it brings into question both their character and their conscience.  Chew on that for a while.

Back to Barack Obama.  His leftist supporters would have us believe that he is a man of great intellect, and his patronizing, cocky demeanor suggests that he believes it as well; but his routine and intentional reliance upon lies and straw-men ultimately reveals the truth:  he’s an intellectual coward who lacks confidence in his ability to prevail on the strength of his own positions.  His fears make it necessary to injure his opponents before the fight by mischaracterizing their arguments and by misrepresenting the facts. As with my liberal and libertarian adversaries, I cannot fathom there being any satisfaction in winning this way, but more importantly Obama’s supporters need to ask themselves why.  Why dress your opponent as a witch rather than simply admit they’re not a witch?  What darker motive is in play, and should I be worried?  Answer:  Yes.  And you should be scared.


~CW


***Note to Monty Python fans:   I realize that in the movie the townspeople, through some very convoluted reasoning, conclude that if the woman is a witch she will weigh the same as a duck, and lo and behold it turns out that she does.  Please be advised that this does not change my point!  :)




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Thursday, January 14, 2016

Losing the Power of ME


The spark that inspired this post occurred several years ago when I attended a city council meeting in my town on the subject of widening the road that abuts my neighborhood.  I happened to be in favor of the widening but most of those present appeared to be against it (because tripling the population without expanding the roads somehow preserves “quality of life”).  A woman whom I recognized from my neighborhood got up to speak and began by saying, “I think I speak for everyone here when I say we are not in favor of this plan.”  This made me pretty angry.  Who was this stranger who presumed to speak for me?  How dare she? 

Since that time I’ve had to battle others who’ve attempted to usurp my power by virtue of some real or imagined association.  I was on the board of my HOA when the adjacent farm land became the subject of debate regarding its development.  A home builder was asking the City to re-zone the land from low density to high density so that he could squeeze more homes onto the site.  Needless to say many residents in my neighborhood were opposed to this.  At my urging, however, the Board took no position on it, and this did not sit well with some of the homeowners.  Essentially what they wanted was for the Association to fight the plan.  I had to explain that the HOA exists for the expressed purpose of maintaining the common areas of the neighborhood and enforcing the covenants – period.  It is not our duty to fight this battle but more importantly it is not our right to presume to speak for all of the homeowners with respect to what happens with the land next door.  What about the residents who were okay with the plan (and there were some of those)?  Sadly, the principle that each person owns the right and freedom to choose to be the sole spokesperson on his own behalf is a foreign concept to some. 

These experiences opened my eyes to the reality of the fragile nature of individual power and liberty.  We are in a constant struggle to preserve our own power, often in ways that we don’t even realize; which leads me to Lesson #1:

Any time you attach yourself to a group for one purpose you become vulnerable to those who would syphon away your power by hijacking the mission of your group, party or association, and this will come at the expense of your personal liberty.    
 
A prime example of this is the labor unions.  Supposedly created to bargain with employers on behalf of employees, unions are notorious for using (or should I say abusing) the power and money trusted to them to advance the political agendas and power of its leadership without regard to the personal political inclinations of its members.  What you gain in work benefits comes at the great cost of empowering those who wish to control the bigger picture. 

And then there are groups like the AARP.  The AARP began as an association of retired teachers needing health insurance but has since grown exponentially in membership and in political influence by expanding its services to offer a broad range of discounts and other benefits.  It admits to (or should I say brags of) being an advocacy group but frequently advocates on the side of issues and agendas that starkly conflict with the principles and ideals of many of its members, who may not realize what’s going on.  Those who agree with the AARPs activist agenda are enjoying greater power at the expense of those who don’t, and this same dynamic is going on in thousands of organizations throughout the country. 

Corporate executives are getting in on the game now too.  Not long ago Overstock.com issued a statement about “the company” standing in support of same-sex marriage, as if its employees are no longer entitled to their own views on the subject and must adopt the group view dictated by Overstock’s executives.  What brought this on?  Was there some issue about Overstock selling a rug or couch to a same-sex couple?  What gives Overstock’s management the right to presume to speak for all of its employees on an issue like same-sex marriage?  Whatever happened to each individual speaking only for themselves?  Ditto for Starbucks on the subject of race and every other company that has the audacity to presume to speak for all of its employees on matters of personal opinion unrelated to their work.  It’s a peculiar and perverse new style of corruption, in my humble opinion.

All of us are susceptible to the temptation to take power that doesn’t rightfully belong to us, there’s no doubt about that; but can anyone debate that those on the Left have elevated this loathsome practice to an art form?  Consider this quote from the Communist Party USA website:

One of the most crucial ways of increasing the strength and unity of the working class as a whole is organizing the unorganized. Working-class unity depends on uniting all the diverse sectors of the multiracial, multinational working class in the U.S. … Speeding up the organization of unorganized workers is one of the most important challenges to labor and all progressive forces.”

“…and all progressive forces.”

“Unite.” 

“Organize.”

Turn your power over to us and sell us your soul for a few more easy dollars.  And the only question people ask is, “Where do I sign?” before the years go by and then they begin complaining about the sad state of the world.  So here’s Lesson #2:

Like flies to a dead body, every group or association that creates the opportunity to usurp the power of individuals and place it into the hands of a few will inevitably see progressives creep their way into leadership positions.

What’s most frustrating is that we don’t always have a choice about the associations we become party to.  Everyone has to belong to the club of citizenship somewhere, so it’s no surprise that the Left persistently preys on this special opportunity to rob us of our individual power and liberty and take it for themselves.  Just listen to Barack Obama in Tuesday night’s State of the Union Address (or as I prefer to call it, The Annual Scolding of all Non-Democrats) as he detailed a long laundry list of what he and his leftist cohorts have unilaterally decided our membership now obliges us to do or to give:

  • “We” must provide “free” college
  • “We” must retrain people who lose jobs (in addition to providing unemployment benefits) and provide “wage insurance”
  • “We” must reward the businesses that Obama & Company approve of
  • “We” must cure cancer
  • “We” must prop up Obama’s donors in the “clean energy” industry
  • “We” must invest in the future (they’ll define this for us)
  • “We” must manage “our” coal and oil resources (which means they will manage it for us)
  • “We” must put aside our instincts and ignore the reality of radical Islam


None of these things, and so much more that’s been demanded from us over the decades, were part of the bargain when the Constitution was ratified, of course.  And yet we live under the illusion (or pretense) that the Constitution acts as the by-laws for our little club.  So Lesson #3 goes like this:

The power of WE usually comes at a cost, and that cost is the power of ME. 

You can never escape the club of citizenship, so if you cherish your individual liberty and power you’d better stand up and defend the Constitution … and never stop.


~CW



Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Judge Judy and the Truth about “Public Assistance”

One of the reasons the progressive puppet masters love big, centralized government so much is because it makes it easy to hide the systematic corruption that they’ve engineered.  Massive amounts of wealth can be neatly extracted from hard-working, tax-paying citizens and transferred to people who are lazy and corrupt without agitating taxpayers too much, since they never really see where their money is going.  That’s because taxpayers generally live in a separate world from the low-lifes who steal from them, staying cheerfully insulated from the ugly reality that threatens their futures.  The anonymity of it all enables leftist elites like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi to talk in altruistic terms about “spreading the wealth,” and “…extending the vital lifelines for struggling families…” so that liberals can happily pat themselves on their backs and conservatives dare not protest too much.  But the reality of what’s happened with those hard-earned tax dollars under the guise of liberal charity should give even the most brain-dead liberal a sick feeling of repugnance.  That’s where Judge Judy comes in.

On Judge Judy, viewers can see a daily parade of pigs at the government trough, thanks to the Left and with special thanks to the Obama Administration.  You’ll see “students,” young and old, squandering their student loan money on cars, gifts, vacations…you name it.  Anything but school.  So what?  They’re betting they’ll never have to pay it back and they’re probably right.  Who needs an education any way when the taxpayers can be forced to support you whether they want to or not? 

You’ll also see a shockingly high number of show participants receiving disability checks, even though it’s clearly obvious that they’re healthy enough to work in some capacity.   Under Obama’s watchful eye of the public treasury, nearly anything qualifies as a “disability.”  Just recently I watched an episode where a 19-year old man was receiving “disability” payments because he had lost two family members (years apart) and was deemed to be traumatized.  That’s on top of the Social Security benefits he receives, mind you.  Mild autism?  You’re disabled.  Dyslexic?  Prone to hangnails? I don’t know but you may as well try. 

On Judge Judy you’ll see grandmothers who get paid by the state (i.e. you) to take care of their deadbeat children’s children.  You’ll see tattooed baby-mommas suing their tattooed baby-daddies for stealing their big screen TVs while learning that your tax dollars are supporting them and their children.  You’ll see lots of people who make a living taking care of grandma or Aunt Edna, because they’ve discovered that the state (i.e. you) will pay them to do it.  Oh, and let’s not forget the income tax “refunds” for people who paid no income taxes.  I see lots of those. 

These are the real people to whom your wealth is being transferred.  They can’t get a job, but they’ve managed to learn how to milk the system.  No one is checking to see if they really are disabled, or if they’ve recovered from their “accident.”  No one is checking to see if they’re really in school, working on that degree.  Judge Judy does her best to expose them for who they are and embarrass them but most don’t get it or don’t care.  Relying on the kindness of strangers, especially when you don’t need it, is not the humbling experience it used to be, especially when the stranger (i.e. the federal government) has been stripped of any human qualities.

I know all too well that there really are those who are truly in need.  My brother is one of them.  Mentally ill and absolutely incapable of supporting himself he’s had to rely on Social Security most of his entire adult life.  His experience and his need only make the Left’s intentional raping of the treasury that much more tragic and appalling, for ultimately he and others truly in need are the ones who will suffer when the pigs eat the trough dry, and American’s compassion has hardened into cynicism. 

Bryce Covert, a leftist writer for The Nation, wrote not long ago: 

“The Hillary Clinton running for president today as a champion for families struggling to get ahead necessarily has to be one concerned about poverty. It’s well past time for her to acknowledge how we have failed the poor.” 

Covert has absolutely no clue about how right he was.  The Left has failed the poor and everyone else.

If it was within my power, Judge Judy would be required viewing, at least for high school and college students and perhaps liberal journalists too, because they need to see the ugly truth of who their wealth is being “shared” with and what constitutes “struggling families” in the eyes of the Left. 


~CW