Why 9-0 is a Mixed Blessing

We now have 13 unanimous Supreme Court rulings against Barack the Usurper, and conservative media outlets have been quick to emphasize the shut out in the rulings:

“Supremes Smack Down Obama Administration 9-0 For 13th TIME SINCE 2012”       ^~ Daily Caller

“Supreme Court Rules Unanimously Against Obama for 12th and 13th Time Since 2012”       ^~ National Review

“UNANIMOUS! Supreme Court Rules Obama’s ‘Recess’ Appointments UNCONSTITUTIONAL”     ~ Tea Party News Network

It’s not hard to understand why a 9-0 ruling would garner extra attention.  When even the liberals can’t bring themselves to vote with Obama, you know the overreach must be bad.  It’s only natural that conservatives would want to highlight that, so I apologize in advance for being a party pooper but I worry that undue celebration of these unanimous rulings gives us short-term satisfaction at the expense of nurturing the growing ignorance in this country with respect to the role of the court.   I say that because the added emphasis on the unanimous nature of these rulings unintentionally reinforces the notion that the SCOTUS decisions have greater legitimacy when everyone agrees.  While it’s easy to see how that thinking arises and there may be a certain element of truth there, the true and only test of a good decision ought to be whether or not our Constitution was upheld, regardless of the size of the majority.  Thus, conservatives should be asking themselves:  “Do we want to dilute the perceived legitimacy of correct but non-unanimous decisions by touting the vote count over the substance?”  The answer should be “No.”  If this seems like a petty criticism, consider that the headline on Huffington Post immediately following the Hobby Lobby decision screamed 5-4! In giant bold letters the other day (I can no longer find it).  What do you suppose they were saying to their readers?  What subliminal message were they trying to convey?  5-4 proves the decision was partisan and, therefore, illegitimate. 

Thanks to liberals the Supreme Court has progressively (pun intended!) come to be viewed in the most cynical way.  Intended by the Founders to be an integral part of our checks and balances against government abuse of power, democrats have predictably tried to turn it into a political weapon for advancing their own anti-constitution agenda.  To that end they have waged a largely successful campaign to change the way people think so that they unquestioningly accept this notion of the SCOTUS as a politicized extension of the other branches of government.  People evaluate the make-up of the court based on notions of philosophical “balance.”  They’ve been groomed to forget that the justices have a duty to uphold the law and only one side is philosophically committed to doing that.

We have a tragically precarious situation with our Supreme Court right now, that being the fact that at least four of our nine justices don’t understand or agree with the purpose of the Constitution and have repeatedly failed to uphold the oaths of their offices without consequence.  By all rights they should have been impeached long ago or better yet, never allowed on the bench to begin with.  Every conservative, particularly those with the biggest microphones, should be talking about what the Constitution says and how each ruling either upholds or undermines it, because that is the true measure of the court’s legitimacy no matter what the vote count is.

~CW

Not-so-Random Thoughts on Iraq

Once upon a time two companions embarked on an adventure in an unfamiliar land.  As they made their way through the woods they came to a fork in the road and began to argue over which path to take.  Pointing to the path on the right, the first traveler said, “I think that road leads south to the desert.  We should go left.”  The second man said, “The path on the left may lead us into unknown dangers.  We should go right.”  Unable to agree, one took the path on the right while the other took the road on the left.  Eventually the one headed south does indeed come to the desert.  Believing he can cross he keeps walking but ultimately the heat and lack of water proves too much and he becomes weak and disoriented.  Knowing he will die he thinks to himself, “My friend was smart to take the other road,” and then he perished.  The second man found himself deep in the jungle.  Walking along he inadvertently stumbles into a tribe of savages who practice cannibalism.  He is taken prisoner and as he awaits his fate he thinks to himself, “My friend was smart to take the other road,” and then he is killed and eaten.

The moral to the story is this:  don’t presume that because things didn’t work out as you planned that the road not taken would have guaranteed you sunshine and roses instead.

   

That is the basis of my message to the frothing-at-the-mouth leftists and libertarians who are cackling with glee at the chaos in Iraq and congratulating themselves for being “right” in their predictions, as in this comment (unpublished) left at my blog:

“Looks like you Neocons were wrong about Iraq after all, eh? Ron Paul and libertarians, on the other hand, have been proven 100% correct...”

Fairly quiet while things appeared to be stable, the so-called “libertarians” now cruise the web in search of the hated “neocons” so that they can gloat.  Of course, gloating is cheap when you’ve never been in a position to make the difficult decisions and never had to own the consequences, but they aren’t above it.  Why should they be?  They have no history of their own to defend, no paths they’ve been entrusted to choose between where the future was uncertain.  Still they take comfort in the tortured logic that says the failure met on one path somehow automatically vindicates the other.  Sorry to put a damper on the fun but that simply isn’t the case.  Whatever challenges there have been with respect to Iraq there is no way of knowing what different challenges we might have faced had we followed another path and not gone to war in 2003.  That is a fact.

The Iraq war and the debate that led up to it has been the perfect case study in revisionist history, thanks to democrats who were for the war until election time came and then suddenly, seeing that things weren’t going so well, they scrambled to save themselves by declaring that they’d been lied to.  So-called libertarians like “Unknown” jumped on that bandwagon and both factions pounced on what they believed to be a golden opportunity to turn the debate on Iraq into a referendum on conservatism.  Never let a crisis go to waste.  With an either-or mentality that evoked scenes from the George Carlin skit where anyone driving faster than you is an “asshole” and anyone slower than you is an “idiot,” the leftists decreed that a vote for John Kerry or Ron Paul meant you were peace loving while a vote for Bush made you a war-mongering “neocon.”  The absurdity of such a position, a basis for humor in the Carlin skit, was lost on the Left. Given what they were trying to do I found myself wanting to defend Bush no matter what the criticism rather than allow any misstep in Iraq to be touted as evidence of some broader failure of conservatism.  Such is the unintended consequence of politicizing that which ought not be politicized. 

Any reasonable debate about Iraq needs to begin at the beginning, going back to what we knew and didn’t know in the months and years leading up to the war.  It needs to consider what circumstances constitute a real threat to the U.S. and how real threats should be dealt with.  I have offered to go that route with many leftists and so-called “libertarians” who’ve come along to cry their cries of “neocon!” but in the years I’ve blogged not a single one has been willing to engage in honest debate.  Not one.  Doing so would mean having to concede that reasonable arguments were made on both sides, for and against war, and that either path had its own risks.  Alas, that kind of measured objectivity doesn’t serve the greater goal of taking out the political competition, and so rational debate has been rejected. 

Right now we are seeing the state of the world under the stewardship of the Left which, by the way, closely resembles the libertarian view.  Oh they’ll cry that they’re dealing with what was left to them by Bush, but every president inherits the world of his predecessors and it is his task to apply the talents he claimed to have and make of it what he will.  This isn’t 2010.  Obama has had five and a half years to prove to us that the path he wanted with respect to foreign and military policy is superior to that of his political foes.  I admit that I’m biased but so far I’m not impressed, to say the least.  I would love nothing more than to have a crystal ball with which to see how the world would look if Ron Paul were president.  Call me jaded but I suspect his supporters might find that the real world has its own way of undermining what sounds really swell in theory.  Maybe “Unknown” should be thankful, because as long as the presidency remains out of reach to the libertarians no one can prove that they don’t have all the answers.

~CW

Squeezing the Balloon

Whenever I hang a picture on the wall by myself all that I require is a child-sized hammer, a nail and one squinting eye.  When my husband gets involved, however, we have to drag out levels, drills, pencils, measuring tapes, stud finders, calculators, anchors, screws and other assorted tools that I can’t even name.  When we’re finished, you could hang a Sumu wrestler on my wall and he ain’t goin’ nowhere.  Once I asked the man, “If all of this is necessary, how come the pictures I’ve hung up never fall down?” to which he replied, “Because you don’t understand the laws of physics; therefore they don’t apply to you.”

As cool as it is being exempt from the laws of physics, I’m afraid I must prove him wrong.  I understand, for instance, that if I squeeze on one end of a balloon, the other end will expand as the air is forced into it.  If I squeeze hard enough, the balloon will burst as the air must find a way to escape.  It’s a simple fact.

Human nature and society are a lot like the air in that balloon.  People react to circumstances in very predictable ways and, left to their own devices, they will find a way around the obstacles that are placed before them, even if that means bursting the balloon.  If, for instance, the gov’t tries to reign in the cost of Medicare by reducing payments to medical providers, those providers will restrict their availability to such patients and/or will pass the shortfall on to non-Medicare patients by charging them higher prices.  Artificial constraints on Medicare act like pressure on a balloon, resulting in higher fees and insurance rates for everyone and opening the door to a duplicitous form of wealth transfer.

When the housing market went bust, liberals got busy trying to figure out ways to “protect” people from the consequences of their bad choices or the bad choices made by others that led to the bust.  They went to work meddling with the ability of banks to foreclose and to do what they naturally would to protect themselves, and this led to consequences for people far removed from the original transactions.  The balloon burst and the losses that banks were forced to absorb were passed on like escaping air to investors and other consumers in the form of higher fees, tighter credit and economic contraction. 

We can look at example after example of the unintended or INTENDED consequences that occur when those on the Left start messing with the balloon, squeezing it, pumping more air into, trying to make it into something it was never intended to be, until the balloon bursts.  On the horizon we see Obamacare, the trillion-dollar student loan mess that’s looming, welfare and other major crises-in-the-making, but for now I want to talk about illegal immigration because it’s the one crisis that many Republicans seem most clueless about. 

Immigration laws exist for a reason, most people understand that, and to paraphrase an astute observation made by Dana Perino of “The Five” the other day, a country without borders isn’t really a country.  That’s a simple but powerful truth.  America’s immigration laws, albeit tainted over the years, were designed to protect this nation and to ensure its sovereignty, its economy and its culture and traditions.  At least that’s what an immigration plan ought to do, correct?  A plan that’s properly enforced results in a balloon of a certain manageable size, and if and when the pressure gets to be too much due to demand the natural and ideal outlet, assuming that the forces are in place to keep the balloon intact, is for continual re-evaluation of and potential adjustment to our immigration policies.  Do we need more short-term or long-term workers?  What kinds of skills do we need?  Is immigration growing our resources or putting a strain on them?  All of those questions could be considered and debated with the proper deliberation and study they deserve when the balloon is treated with care and the air within it controlled but of course it’s too late for that.  Predictable forces from inside this country, including the unbridled appetite for cheap labor, bountiful rewards in the form of American taxpayer-funded services arranged for by the Left (and abetted by some who claim to hail from the Right) and neglect of the border combined to create unchecked demand that far exceeded the capacity of the balloon.  Illegal immigrants, like the molecules of air that were contained inside, have escaped and spread like water from a bursting dam, and the engineers who might have taken the time to carefully re-design or reinforce that dam are running to and fro, scrambling to catch up with the water everywhere it chooses to go in a hopeless effort to prevent the floods and erosion that are sure to come.

I may be no physics genius but I know a balloon that’s being stomped on when I see one, and right now there are balloons popping left and right. 

Can you hear them?

˜CW

What is a “Conservative?”

Over the past twenty years or more there’s been a growing debate over what qualifies someone as “conservative” in the context of politics and philosophy towards government.  It’s not unusual to see two people supporting opposite sides of a policy while both label themselves as “conservative,” but as we all know, if “conservative” means everything, then it means nothing. 

Here’s what I know:  conservatism goes much deeper than policy.  Policy should derive from philosophy and philosophy should derive from beliefs.  The founders of this nation, through discussion, argumentation and debate, identified a shared belief system, and as they built the framework for the country and the Constitution they challenged each other to demonstrate that their ideas for that framework were consistent with that shared belief system.  That’s what needs to happen now as we debate the meaning of conservatism.  It’s what we should continually be doing.  Thus, if I had to define what I see as the basic belief system that identifies a conservative (politically speaking), here’s what it would be:

A true conservative understands and believes in the laws of human nature.

Self-interest, self-protection and self-reliance as well as less attractive traits like selfishness, the drive to dominate others, the inclination to steal or take advantage of others, the inclination to do evil, the inclination to work/manipulate the “system” and many other traits are all part of human nature.  These are patterns of behavior that exist universally in every society.  No government can succeed that ignores these realities.

A true conservative believes in the laws of natural consequences.

When you insulate people from the consequences of their actions you remove the natural incentives for them to do the right things.  It’s really that simple.

A true conservative respects the rights of others to life, liberty and property, with reciprocation.

The mere fact of your existence does not entitle you to the fruits of my labor, and vice versa.  You respect my rights and I will respect yours. 

A true conservative believes in the absolute necessity of justice, fair laws and abiding by the rule of properly enacted law.

In the absence of that you have systemic corruption and tyranny or chaos.

A true conservative instinctively understands the necessary role society plays in the success and perpetuity of the individual.

Forming societies is part of our nature and is integral to the survival of humankind.  A just, moral and well-defended society enriches the individual; and resilient, self-reliant, moral individuals create strong societies.  It’s symbiotic.  Unlike conservatives who respect and nurture this relationship, Liberals and libertarians undermine it, either intentionally for their own gain or through ignorance and immaturity. 

A true conservative believes in personal responsibility.

If every adult took care of his own needs and those of his family there would be no justification for big government.  Perhaps this is why “progressives” encourage just the opposite.

A true conservative knows that the only means to successful self-government is through open, honest debate.

A salesman doesn’t need to lie or resort to gimmicks when he’s selling a really good product, and a consumer isn’t really making a free choice when he’s lied to or when information is withheld from him.  Beware of those who refuse to engage in honest debate.

A true conservative believes that charity begins at home.

“Charity” is not when a you tell other people how to do good or force them to give.  It’s when you do good or give yourself.

A true conservative has the conscience of a conservative.

A reluctance to lie, cheat and steal, even in the face of opponents willing to do so, separates a conservative from a wannabe. 

A true conservative believes in the sovereignty of his nation and the inalienable right to self-defense.

If and when you give these up you have forfeited your freedom.

If you believe in these basic tenets, the policies will write themselves.  Furthermore they will be largely consistent from one “conservative” to the next.  Take illegal immigration.  If you believe in the rule of law, the laws of human nature, the laws of natural consequences and state sovereignty, then the only logical position on illegal immigration is to oppose any suggestion of amnesty, as this defies the rule of law, ignores the laws of human nature, nullifies the law of natural consequences and makes a laughing stock of state sovereignty.  I grant that not every issue will be clear, but that’s where the debate comes in.  Prove to me that your position is consistent with the conservative beliefs we share and I won’t question your claim to conservatism.  If you can’t do that, all bets are off.

˜CW

Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say

Last month my friend Kathy posted a piece on democrat lawmakers in Connecticut attempting to ban the serving of whole or 2% milk in private daycare centers (“Connecticut Dems Want Milk Control”).  As Kathy astutely noted, republicans were missing the bigger picture by attempting to argue the merits of fat content in milk rather than asserting that it’s not the business of the state to decide what kind of milk is served by private childcare centers.  It’s hard to say whether Connecticut republicans have misplaced their conservative principles or whether they thought a fight based on the science would be easier to win.  Both prospects are highly disturbing.  But if it’s the latter case it demonstrates the problem with forsaking principled arguments in favor of trying to win by shortcut.  Once you allow the argument to be about the science of milk rather than the limits of the state, you’ve lost what matters most.  If the state can presume the right to decide what type of milk is served in private childcare centers, it can presume the right to decide just about anything that goes on in a private business.  That’s the danger of choosing the wrong argument to fight your battles.

I recall one typical family Christmas after John Kerry lost the 2004 presidential election to George Bush.  My liberal brother-in-law was opining on the reasons that Bush was a bad choice for president.  After the standard “Bush-lied-people-died” mantra didn’t prove persuasive enough he began parroting the democrat line about Bush being just a “C” student. “Did you know John Kerry was also a ‘C’ student?” I asked.  Silence.  (That’ll teach him to rely only on the MSM for information).  “Did you vote for John Kerry?” I sweetly asked.  This was his response, and I quote:  Blink.  Blink, blink.  Gotcha dear brother.

The moral to the story is this:  false arguments are a sure-fire way to make you look like a silly hypocrite.  My brother-in-law’s big problem with Bush was not his grades or his supposed “lies” over Iraq.  He disliked Bush because Bush is a republican and the brother-in-law is a liberal democrat.  Perhaps he didn’t want to defend that broader position (who can blame him?) but whatever the reason he ended up with egg on his face. 

Unfortunately he’s not the only one that’s fallen into this trap.  Republicans have a history of setting themselves up for a smack down by relying on arguments that really have little or nothing to do with their position.  When Barack Obama ran for POTUS in 2008, for instance, I knew immediately why I opposed him:  he was a hardcore leftist and all that this implies.  Isn’t that reason enough?  In fact I was optimistic after he won the nomination because I saw it as a grave miscalculation by democrats.  Regardless of how easily Americans are fooled most consider themselves to be conservative-leaning.  We needed to steer the debate to a choice between liberalism (i.e., socialism, the nanny state, big government, weak national security) versus conservatism (i.e., free market economy, the Constitution, small government, self-reliance, national defense), and we would win.  Of course we blew that right away by nominating someone who was unqualified to make the argument for conservatism.  The next mistake was to oppose Obama on the basis of such things as “inexperience.”  It blew up in republican’s faces when McCain chose Sarah Palin for a running mate and suddenly the sincerity of our concern over “experience” came into question.  We became immersed in an unhelpful sideshow debate over who was better qualified, Palin or Obama. 

The fact was, Obama’s inexperience was never the reason that republicans opposed him.  An experienced leftist is every bit as bad as an inexperienced leftist, so it was a distractive argument from the get-go, and such arguments always come back to bite.  ALWAYS.  Framing the debate on experience in a battle between a republican and a hardcore democrat is like arguing over whether a Porsche is better than Yugo based on the performance of the windshield wipers.  Okay I’ll grant you that McCain was no Porsche (he might be an Edsel…), but hopefully you still get my meaning.  Furthermore the “inexperience” argument is likely to come back and haunt us when we consider our next nominee from a pool that may include men like Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.  There’s no doubt democrats will remind voters that experience was ostensibly important to republicans in 2008, and this will be a blow to our credibility.

Nowadays the talk is about Hillary.  I don’t want Hillary to be POTUS.  Is this because of the Benghazi disaster?  No.  Is it because of concerns about her health?  No.  Is it because she had no accomplishments as Secretary of State or because she sponsored no noteworthy bills as a U.S. Senator?  Nope.  I don’t want Hillary to be POTUS because she’s a leftist, and all that this implies.  If Benghazi had never happened, Hillary would still be a leftist and I still would not want her as POTUS.  Ditto for Whitewater and all the rest. The beauty of knowing why you’re against something or someone and then staying true to that argument is that it will never come back to bite you.  If the Left manages to spin Benghazi or republicans blow the investigation and if Hillary’s doctor gives her a clean bill of health (he will), she will still be a leftist at the end of the day.  She is Obama on Geritol, that fact will never change.  That doesn’t mean Hillary’s record doesn’t matter, in fact it’s all related in the end.  But the primary case against Hillary is the mental disease of liberalism, in this writer’s humble opinion.  Everything else is icing on that cake.

˜CW

Eight Reasons Why I’m a “Denier”

#1.  The science is not persuasive.

I am not a scientist, nor have I conducted any personal studies on climate (and neither have you), so I’m not going to presume to put forth a lengthy, comprehensive analysis of the science and theories relating to man-induced “climate change.”  What’s most compelling to me are the unanswered criticisms to the assumptions, methodologies and conclusions of the believers.  Sweeping predictions and conclusions have been made based on a fraction of a sliver in time, that fact is indisputable.  Computer modelings that require assumptions on a wide range of variables form the basis for far-reaching conclusions in an industry that often struggles to accurately predict next week’s weather.  But perhaps the most compelling reason to question the conclusions of the believers with respect to the science is their failure or refusal to adhere to accepted scientific methodology. 

Proven or accepted science has an established protocol in the modern world, namely the “scientific method.”  Under the scientific method you form a hypothesis based on observations and then you test the hypothesis to see if it stands up.  Scientists have been testing their theories on what was first man-made global warming (now “climate change”) for years now, and they’ve made predictions based upon their theories and computer models.  Their predictions have not come to pass.  According to the methodology this means the theory failed and the next step should be to revise the theory.  Instead the believers simply changed the terminology from “man-made global warming” to “human-induced climate change.”  Something is amiss if you don’t question the science based on that fact alone, which brings me to point #2.

#2.  “Science” should not be ideologically or culturally driven.

Something is clearly wrong when a debate that is ostensibly rooted in science just happens to be strongly divided along party or ideological lines.  That kind of coincidence doesn’t happen in a world where people are being objective and open-minded, as real science requires us to be, and I find it astonishing that people – the investigative news media types in particular – have shown such little interest in understanding this phenomenon when it undoubtedly goes to the heart of this debate.  To the extent that it is brought up, moderators incorrectly ascribe moral equivalence (the ‘Right’ doesn’t believe the science because it doesn’t care about the environment; the ‘Left’ believes the sciences because they do care about the environment).  We can debate all day about who is ignoring or manipulating science for the sake of ideology, but the bottom line is that the burden of proof lies with those who put forth the theory.  That’s how real science works.  In the years since this debate began I have not heard a single liberal/democrat ever question the validity of the science despite the criticisms described above (and I’m sure there are yet more criticisms that I missed).  That none would express even the least bit of skepticism in the face of valid criticisms defies all logic and points to motives that have nothing to do with science.  To quote an astute and anonymous blogger:  “You probably wouldn't be the brightest crayon in the box if you blindly accepted every scientific theory that was ever announced.”

#3.  The unconcealed hypocrisy of the “climate change” alarmists.

If a man implores his wife to be more frugal because he’s worried about their finances but then he continues to spend like a drunken sailor on himself, what would a reasonable person deduce about the sincerity of his concerns?  Do you really need time to think on that?

We are continually scolded and lectured to by people like Barack and Michelle Obama, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, left-leaning billionaire businessmen and leftwing Hollywood celebrities whose clear but unspoken message is, “Do as I say, not as I do.”  The enormous and ever-expanding carbon footprints of these people can only mean that they either don’t believe a word of their alarmism or that the whole point is to control the rest of us.  There can be no other explanation.

#4.  From “Global Warming” to “Climate Change:” The conveniently evolving terminology.

This one requires no explanation. 

#5.  The falsehoods.

Supportable scientific theories don’t require the doctoring of statistics or collusion over the message.  Enough said.

#6.  The Left’s insistence that “The Debate is Over!”

Seems like every day I open a newspaper only to see people declaring that the debate over the earth being flat is “over,” or that the debate over the theory of relativity is “over.”  NOT.  No one feels the need to repeatedly remind us that the debate on these theories is over because those debates truly are over.  The fact that the man-made climate change alarmists have taken to interrupting the ongoing debate to declare that “The debate is over!” proves two things:  (1) That they’ve failed to definitively prove their case with science (in which case the debate really would be over); and (2) that they intend to illegitimately usurp the power of the government that belongs to ALL of us in order to push for policies that only they support. 

I’d also like to point out the absence of any real-time, one on one debate, which I find incomprehensible given the fanatical dedication some profess to have in this supposedly looming crisis.  People who are confident in their positions generally relish the opportunity for serious debate, they don’t run from it.

#7.  The proposed “solutions” don’t actually resolve anything other than the perceived problem of our wealth and prosperity.

The one thing the “alarmists” and “deniers” agree on is that all of the proposed regulatory changes to ostensibly combat the effects of human-induced “climate change” will have little to zero chance of reversing it, yet it will impose enormous costs on Americans.  This is true regardless of whether you believe change can’t be effected because humans are not the source of changes in the climate or because you honestly acknowledge that we make up just a small part of the globe and without a worldwide, cooperative effort (which we are never going to get, by the way) we stand no chance of impacting the climate just through our own efforts.  The economic realities are why the Kyoto Protocol was rejected by the entire senate when first proposed in the 1990s (that’s correct, not even a single Democrat bought into it).  Given the absence of measurable warming over the past 17 years and other indications that the theories on “climate change” don’t add up, it would be nothing short of economic insanity to allow ourselves to be shackled by what the “experts” on the Left (i.e. politicians) are trying to harness us with.

#8.  I possess common sense.

Over the decades we’ve witnessed the frantic ringing of alarm bells over many things that didn’t ultimately pan out, including fear of “global cooling” which is well-remembered by skeptics but apparently forgotten by the current set of alarm-bell ringers.  Common sense would thus dictate that we proceed with caution, particularly when our economic security is involved.  Furthermore, when someone has a reputation for dishonesty, which the Left most definitely does (“If you like your plan you can keep your plan!”) common sense demands that you be wary of what they’re trying to sell.  Follow the motives. 

˜CW

Who’s “Partisan?”

We hear a lot these days about “partisan politics,” and you’re going to hear it even more, but like so many other parts of our language the term “partisan” has been massaged over the years to alter its meaning and shield those on the Left from the consequences of their own bad behavior.  “Partisan,” according to my old Webster’s Dictionary from college, is defined as:

 “A firm adherent to a party, faction, cause or person; especially one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance.” 

To be labeled as “partisan,” therefore, would not be a compliment.  In fact, to anyone with a conscience it would be and should be a stinging insult in the context of how it’s typically used.  Thus the term became a problem for democrats who like to portray themselves as pure of heart and fair, even when they’re acting in a clearly partisan way.    When Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath and obstructing justice in the Monica Lewinsky affair, for instance, the action was denounced universally throughout the left-leaning media as “partisan.”  As I’m sure all of us recall, that insult was directed at republicans and was meant to taint the proceedings as a prejudiced and purely political attack.  The reality, of course, was that Clinton DID lie under oath and DID attempt to obstruct justice, so who was partisan – the party that sought to hold a lying president to account or the party that sought to protect a lying president regardless of his misbehavior?  It was democrats, not republicans, who showed a “blind, prejudiced and unreasoning allegiance” to their party’s leader.  And so the leftwing media took it upon themselves to intentionally misuse (and thereby redefine) the word “partisan” to refer to any action taken by one party against a member of another party, regardless of its merits. 

Whoever controls the language controls the debate.

Fast forward to 2014 and Wikipedia now defines partisan this way: 

“In politics, a partisan is a committed member of a political party.”

Hmmm…that’s an interesting evolution.  In other words, now every member of a political party, regardless of his actions, is a partisan.  See how that works?  But notice that the old Webster’s definition is used by the media to apply to what republicans do, while the new Wikipedia version always applies to democrats. 

Never underestimate the deviousness of the Left.

These days the Benghazi investigations and the recent formation of the select committee, in particular, have rekindled the old indignant cries of “partisanship” by the democrats and their rabid friends in the media.  Amid the obvious missteps (lax security), failures (Americans dead and injured) and mistruths (the infamous video protest that never happened), somehow we are supposed to see moral equivalence on both sides of the Benghazi issue, even though one side seeks to know the truth while the other seeks to sweep the truth under the rug. 

Heads we win, tails you lose.

I’m not going to claim that partisanship is solely a sin of the Left.  Everyone’s guilty of prejudicial behavior towards the other side now and then, myself included.  But every act is not automatically a partisan act simply by virtue of who the target is or who the accusers are, and we should not sit back and quietly accept such mislabeling and abuse of the English language, yet we do.  ‘News’ anchors throw the word around right and left when conducting interviews, with never an objection raised.  “Partisanship” has become to politics what cries of “racist!” are to race:  a defense mechanism intended to insulate some (guess who?) from accountability for their actions.  Thus when Obama lies and blatantly disregards his oath to uphold the Constitution, those who object are declared either “partisan” and/or “racist” when of course the exact opposite is true.  A president – any president – should be expected to be truthful and to uphold the oath of his office, and anyone who objects to such accountability is the partisan. 

I understand this won’t change anything.  Dishonest tactics make up the playbook for democrats and that’s always going to be the case because that’s the only way they can win.  But WE don’t have to play along with the pretense.  We can take every opportunity to expose their tricks to the light of day, and that’s what my mission is here, today and every day.

˜CW