Politico, Gene Demby & the Lie of the “New Civil Rights Movement”

The following essay from Politico is a leftist’s attempt to convince us that the reaction we’ve seen to recent events in Ferguson and New York is a noble “civil rights movement.”  It makes for a good lesson on how leftist’s lie and spin.  The comments in red italics are mine.  ~CW

The shattering events of 2014, beginning with Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, in August, did more than touch off a national debate about police behavior, criminal justice and widening inequality in America.

There’s the first lie.  There’s been nothing resembling “debate.”  Debate implies honest people calmly engaging in a sincere examination of both sides of an argument.  Instead what we’ve seen is the opposite of debate.  Race hustlers with a one-sided agenda swarmed in and people have rushed to judgment before hearing the facts.  That’s not something to be proud of, it’s shameful, and it’s a giant step backward for this nation.  The second lie is the assertion of “widening inequality” in America.  There’s no basis for such a statement whatsoever.

They also gave a new birth of passion and energy to a civil rights movement that had almost faded into history, and which had been in the throes of a slow comeback since the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012.

There’s a good reason the civil rights movement had almost faded into history, Mr. Demby.  The original civil rights movement wasn’t about insulating blacks from the consequences of their actions, as this new “movement” is.  It was about achieving equality under the law, and that’s been done.  Your problem and the problem in the black community is that equal treatment of minorities doesn’t guarantee equal behavior by minorities.  They commit crimes at a far higher rate than non-minorities, and thus attract greater attention from the police. 

That the nation became riveted to the meta-story of Ferguson—and later the videotaped killing of Eric Garner in New York—was due in large part to the work of a loose but increasingly coordinated network of millennial activists who had been beating the drum for the past few years. In 2014, the new social justice movement became a force that the political mainstream had to reckon with.

For those who may not know it, “social justice” is leftist-speak for legalized theft and special protection from consequences and responsibility.

This re-energized millennial movement, which will make itself felt all the more in 2015, differs from its half-century-old civil rights-era forebear in a number of important ways. One, it is driven far more by social media and hashtags than marches and open-air rallies. Indeed, if you wanted a megaphone for a movement spearheaded by young people of color, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better one than Twitter, whose users skew younger and browner than the general public, which often has the effect of magnifying that group’s broad priorities and fascinations. It’s not a coincidence that the Twitterverse helped surface and magnify the stories of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner and Michael Brown.

In other words, we’d better watch out because the mischievous and misinformed can spread their lies faster and farther than ever before.

Two, the new social-justice grass roots reflects a broader agenda that includes LGBTQ (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-questioning) issues and immigration reform.

Translation:  Gays want their share of the loot too.

The young grass-roots activists I’ve spoken to have a broad suite of concerns: the school-to-prison pipeline, educational inequality, the over-policing of black and Latino communities.

You have to marvel at Mr. Demby’s skill at cramming so much dishonesty into one sentence.  The “school-to-prison pipeline” is a consequence of 50 years of liberal social engineering that’s just done wonderful things for the black community.  Now the Left’s brilliant solution to fixing the mess is to relax the laws and police enforcement in those communities.  In five years they’ll be back to tell us that blacks and Latinos are being neglected by law enforcement, their communities have turned into jungles and it’s all our fault.  Wait for it.

In essence, they’re trying to take on deeply entrenched discrimination that is fueled less by showy bigotry than systemic, implicit biases.

Wrong again, Mr. Demby.  They aren’t taking on any such thing, nor is that their goal because bigotry and bias can’t be cured by marching and threatening.  It can only be cured by demonstrating that these attitudes are based on false impressions.  The truth is that these “activists” are fighting for freedom from all accountability, and they are getting help from the usual suspects, their ever-dependable enablers on the Left. 

Three, the movement’s renewal has exposed a serious generational rift. It is largely a bottom-up movement being led by young unknowns who have rejected, in some cases angrily, the presumption of leadership thrust on them by veteran celebrities like Al Sharpton. While both the younger and older activists both trace their lineage to the civil rights movement, they seem to align themselves with different parts of that family tree. And in several ways, these contemporary tensions are updates of the disagreements that marked the earlier movement.

That’s right, Mr. Demby.  Al Sharpton is not militant or radical enough for these “young unknowns.”  That should alarm you but you’re a clueless leftist, so….

Sarah Jackson, a professor at Northeastern University whose research focuses on social movements, said the civil rights establishment embraces the “Martin Luther King-Al Sharpton model”—which emphasizes mobilizing people for rallies and speeches and tends to be centered around a charismatic male leader. But the younger activists are instead inclined to what Jackson called the “Fannie Lou Hamer-Ella Baker model”—an approach that embraces a grass roots and in which agency is widely diffused. Indeed, many of the activists name-checked Baker, a lesser-known but enormously influential strategist of the civil rights era. She helped found Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference but became deeply skeptical of the cult of personality that she felt had formed around him. And she vocally disagreed with the notion that power in the movement should be concentrated among a few leaders, who tended to be men with bases of power that lay in the church. “My theory is, strong people don’t need strong leaders,” she said.

“My theory is, strong people don’t need strong leaders,” said Baker as they look to her for leadership.

Baker’s theories on participatory democracy were adopted by later social movements, like Occupy Wall Street, which notably resisted naming leaders or spokespeople. But James Hayes, an organizer with the Ohio Student Association, said that he didn’t think of this new social justice movement as “leaderless” in the Occupy style. “I think of it as leader-ful,” he said.

“Participatory democracy” is another leftist term to facilitate the legalization of wealth transfer, because theft by another name apparently helps ease the conscience of the thieves. 

By December, some of these same uncelebrated community organizers who spent the year leading “die-ins,” voting drives and the thousands-deep rallies around the country would meet privately with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. (“We got a chance to really lay it out—we kept it real,” Hayes told me about the meeting. “We were respectful, but we didn’t pull any punches.”) A few days after that White House meeting, Hillary Clinton, widely assumed to be eyeing another bid for the presidency in 2016, nodded to them when she dropped one of the mantras of the demonstrators—“black lives matter”—into a speech at a posh awards ceremony in New York City.

“We were respectful, but we didn’t pull any punches.”  Yeah, they want their money and they want it now, or there’s going to be trouble.  Good thing these “community organizers” have a useful idiot like Hillary Clinton on their side!

All this new energy comes, ironically, as the country’s appetite for fighting racial inequality—never all that robust in the best of times—appears to be ebbing. The tent-pole policy victories of the civil rights movement are even now in retrenchment: 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, American schools—especially in the South—are rapidly resegregating; the Voting Rights Act, which turns 50 in 2015, has been effectively gutted; and, despite the passage of the Fair Housing Act, our neighborhoods are as segregated as ever. Once-narrowing racial gaps in life outcomes have again become gaping chasms.

Yeah, isn’t it “ironic” that our appetite for fighting racial inequality ebbed after the laws were changed to guarantee equal treatment under the law (and in some cases to even provide preferential treatment)?  What an amazing coincidence! 

But what isn’t a coincidence is that the “retrenchment” has come after 50 years of liberal policy that has progressively (no pun intended) turned much of the black community into government-dependent spoiled brats, Mr. Demby.  That’s no surprise at all.

At the same time, the new movement’s emergence has caused friction with the traditional civil rights establishment that identifies with those earlier, historic victories. At a recent march put together by Sharpton’s National Action Network in Washington, D.C.—meant to protest the recent decisions not to indict the officers in several high-profile police-involved killings and push for changes in the protocol from prosecutors—younger activists from St. Louis County were upset at what they saw as a lineup of older speakers on the podium who were not on the ground marching in Ferguson. So they climbed onto the stage and took the mic. “It should be nothing but young people up here!” a woman named Johnetta Elzie yelled into the microphone. “We started this!” Some people cheered them. Others called for them to get off the stage. After a few minutes, the organizers cut off their mics. (In the crowd, someone held up a neon-green sign making their discontent with the march’s organizers plain: “WE, THE YOUTH, DID NOT ELECT AL SHARPTON OUR SPOKESPERSON. HAVE A SEAT.”)

Hahahaha!  The spoiled brats are turning on their plantation masters.  I love it.

A few days later, Elzie downplayed the incident and told me that the disagreement was simply about “someone who doesn’t want to give up the reins and who has a huge platform.”

That’s right, Elzi.  Race hustling is a lucrative and ego-gratifying business.  Sharpton and Jackson and the rest of the original hustlers aren’t going to go away quietly, I’m afraid.

Gene Demby is the lead blogger for NPR's Code Switch team, covering race, ethnicity and culture.

NPR.  That figures.  These are your tax dollars at work, folks. 

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/ferguson-new-civil-rights-movement-113906.html#ixzz3O0VtTUkY

Lately when I read articles that attempt to put a credible spin on the Left’s agenda I’ve been taking a little time to peruse the comments posted by readers, and I’m seeing an encouraging trend.  Hopefully it’s not just wishful thinking on my part, but more and more it seems that readers are waking up and soundly rejecting the insanity with comments that reveal genuine disgust.  Writers like Gene Demby, who appear to have cocooned themselves in the world as they would like it to be, would be well-advised to read what their commenters have to say.

~CW

A special thanks to Crawfish for bringing this gem to the attention of Nox & Friends and allowing me the honor of ripping it apart.

Anarcho-Libertarians: So Far Behind They Think They’re First

Back in October I wrote a post entitled The Trouble with Libertarianism in which I talked about the arrogance of libertarians.  Since then I have a received a gift in the form of a psuedo-libertarian who seems determined to prove me right.  In one of his most recent comments to me he stated, “Me continuing to attempt having a rational philosophical discussion w/you would be like Einstein trying to explain physics to a Neanderthal…”  He’s Einstein and I’m a Neanderthal.  Yep, I think that qualifies as arrogance and, strangely, the fact that he sees himself as Einstein and me as a lowly Neanderthal hasn’t prevented him from wanting to engage me in discussion; nor has his high opinion of his own superior intelligence given him the confidence to debate me without resorting to all the usual games that people with a losing position tend to resort to, such as mischaracterizing my argument in order to give himself the advantage.  I kind of doubt Einstein would have done that but let’s get on to the substance of things.

I should explain that this commenter – we’ll call him ‘Henry’ – is not really a libertarian.  From what I can tell (because Henry tends to be a bit coy about it) he’s a quasi-libertarian/quasi-anarchist or, to be more precise, he subscribes to an ideology (or whatever you’d like to call it) that exists only in his dreams.  To be fair Henry would claim that the same is true of the representative republic we ostensibly have and there’s a lot of truth in that.  No one could observe what’s transpired since the birth of the Constitution and claim with a straight face that it’s worked according to plan, especially not of late.  And I understand the complaint which says, in a nutshell, that the system concentrates power into the hands of a few individuals, perhaps more than they could have achieved without the power of the system.  But Henry’s dilemma is that he has no realistic alternative.  He asks me:  “If THEY [the Founders] couldn't construct a means to keep govt. limited who can?”

Indeed.  Good question, Henry.  The answer is that nobody can, and yet government is going to exist.  That’s the rub, Henry.  Government is going to exist because it’s part of human nature.  Our old friend Webster’s Dictionary defines human nature as “the ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that are common to most people.”  Government is common to virtually all people in one form or another, so it certainly fits the description.  Your failure to accept this fact of human nature lends support to the second weakness of libertarianism that I mentioned in my post on the subject, so thank you again for chiming in. 

What I find interesting is the strategy of the anarcho-libertarians wherein they attack and attempt to marginalize the framers of the Constitution rather than simply put forth their own ideas for an alternative.  Apparently they believe that Americans’ allegiance to the Constitution and the representative republic put in place by the Founders is all owing to our irrational worship of the Founders, and those of us who don’t possess their Einstein-like minds are incapable of seeing it for the sham that it is.  The truth is that the Founders not only understood the perseverance of human nature both good and bad, they also had no illusions about the fragility of the republic. 

James Madison said:

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.” (The Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 51, February 8, 1788).

Alexander Hamilton said:

“As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature; it is what neither the honorable member nor myself can correct. It is a common misfortunate that awaits our State constitution, as well as all others.”  (Speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June, 1788).

Samuel Adams said:

“[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.”  (From an essay in The Public Advertiser, 1749)

So there was never any pretense that the Founders were promising perfection.  They went out of their way to warn that government is only as good as the people.  And the Founders’ intelligence?  I happen to believe, based upon what I’ve seen and read, that they were a pretty intelligent group, but that’s not necessarily what’s most important.  These men wrangled for years, perhaps decades, over the question of how to create a lasting system of self-government.   In that process they argued and debated and THOUGHT.  They concluded, rightly so, that the stateless, government-free existence you envision is impossible.  In other words, the Founders were light years ahead of you and your anarcho-libertarian friends, not the other way around. 

As for comparing yourself to Einstein, Einstein didn’t just come out and declare that Isaac Newton was wrong and then disparage Newton and beat his chest over his own superior intelligence.  He put his theories out there so that they could be critiqued and tested.  I’ve seen nothing like that from you. 

If you’ve got a better plan, let’s hear it – in detail.  I won’t hold my breath because I’ve been through all this before with the last anarcho-libertarian.  He at least tried to rise to the challenge and put forth some ideas on what he would do differently than the Founders did.  Problem was it was still just government by a different name, and he took great exception to my saying so.  No one likes having their precious prejudices challenged. 

I’m willing to give you one last shot for a fair and honest debate.  If you think I’m uneducated, then by all means educate me.  But if you come back with a bunch of smarmy “LOLs” and other nonsense then we’re done here, Einstein. 

~CW

Truth: Enemy of the Progressive Agenda

I once had a friend whose life was a series of problems.  She had lost her job, had lost her home, she was eighty pounds or more overweight and her marriage was falling apart.  We had developed a friendship when our young sons became close buddies and over the years, as she struggled through one crisis after another, she would ask for my advice, then promptly ignore whatever I told her because all of the solutions to her problems involved facing certain truths that she didn’t want to face.  She was overweight because she ate too much of the wrong things.  She had money issues because she was reckless with her spending.  She had marriage problems because she was mean to her husband (and the extra eighty pounds didn’t help).  What she really wanted was someone to tell her how she could still do all these things and be slender, financially sound and happily married.  Needless to say I failed in that capacity, but I learned a valuable lesson of my own:

No problem in this world can be solved if people refuse to see or acknowledge the truth. 

That may seem self-evident and many readers may be thinking, “Gee, thanks for that great revelation, CW;” but the reality of life in America as we know it today certainly suggests that this simple and basic bit of wisdom is absent in epidemic proportions.  Politicians and other talking heads, particularly those trying to separate us from our power and our wealth, bombard us with fast talk and lofty, lengthy speeches in the hopes that Americans will forget or ignore the simple truths that render their extravagant promises impossible.  The people who lie to distract you from reality aren’t capable of solving your problems, nor do they have any real intention of doing so.  Liars don’t usually lie to be helpful.  Now you may be okay with that if you’re one of those people who feign anger over perceived problems like poverty, racial and gender inequalities, decline in education, or any of the other myriad difficult issues we now face.  If so I would just ask that you spare the rest of us the trouble of entertaining your insincere concerns.  Go stick your head back in the sand.  This piece isn’t meant for you.  The rest of you may read on.

When Larry Summers had the audacity to make the politically incorrect (but factually true) assertion that women weren’t as interested in math and science fields as men and that this was the primary reason for the shortage of women in these fields, he was viciously attacked by those on the Left as if he had committed some horrible sin.  It didn’t matter to them that it was true.  He wasn’t allowed to say it.  Facing this truth and similar truths about the different skills, interests and aptitudes found among different genders might go a long way to broadening our understanding of perceived inequalities, but that, of course, is why we mustn’t be allowed to go there.  The perception of discrimination serves the interests of those on the Left and women who want preferential treatment, and therefore we must hear no truth, see no truth and speak no truth when it comes to gender differences.

Leftists in this country and around the world spend a lot of time denouncing us as a violent country and in particular crying over the victims of “gun violence.”  Gun homicides are high here compared to some other nations, that’s true, but you would think someone sincerely interested in understanding and solving the problem might take the time to examine the patterns of these homicides to understand why we’re different from countries that are held up as being more civilized than we are.  Unfortunately that kind of exercise leads to something that the Left fears more than anything:  the truth.  Gun homicides among whites in American are only slightly higher than those in countries that the Left points to as evidence of our comparative barbarity.  It’s only when you factor in the gun homicides among blacks, which is some seven times higher, that the truth becomes a bit clearer.  The reality points to a problem in the culture of inner-city blacks, not a problem with us as a nation or a problem with guns in general.  But shhhhh.  Don’t go there.  You’re a racist if you do.  And so the problem remains unsolved, and it will stay that way because the ‘progressives’ don’t really want to solve it.  I guess that’s too bad for blacks, since they’re largely the victims of black gun violence.  Oh well.

And what about the problem of poverty?  If you believe those on the Left, poverty is an artificially induced condition resulting from corporate exploitation, racism and a system designed to favor the wealthy.  Each of those may hold a grain of truth, but all are dwarfed in comparison to the primary reasons for poverty, all of which are either self-induced or inherent in the individual.  The notion that people might be responsible for their own poverty because of the choices they make in life with respect to education, employment (or lack thereof), marriage, pregnancy, spending, drugs or anything else is unsettling to liberals who hate anything that smacks of personal responsibility.  Leftists who value power above anything else know that it’s hard to elicit loyalty in the form of votes when you hold people accountable for their actions.  It’s much more rewarding to pretend the problems are someone else’s fault.  And the notion that some people are simply incapable of achieving more than poverty or that poverty is a temporary condition depending on one’s stage of life?  Well those topics are taboo as well.  So instead the Left devotes its efforts to “solving” poverty by transferring wealth aka legalized stealing, which of course simply moves the players around on the board and does nothing whatsoever to tackle the real causes of poverty.  That’s too bad for some who might actually be helped to escape the cycle of poverty by being forced to face the truth, but oh well.

Ferguson is only the latest example where self-imposed blindness to the truth stands in the way of what the complainers profess to want.  Supposedly we are concerned because unarmed black youths are being routinely and disproportionately cut down in the streets by trigger-happy cops.  To whatever extent this is true, it too has no hope of being resolved due to the lies being told by the Left to themselves and to the world.  Any group that demonstrates a higher propensity for crime and violence is naturally going to attract greater attention and suspicion from police.  Males in general, black or white, face greater scrutiny from police than women do because men categorically commit the vast majority of crimes, particularly violent crimes.  Their presence, particularly in charged situations, is going to naturally raise the adrenaline levels of most cops, and that’s going to lead to more violent confrontations whether deserved or undeserved.  The solution to that is to change the perception, which requires that you begin creating a new type of history, which requires a different culture in the black community.  Stop tolerating bad behavior.  Stop propping people up with welfare and rewarding them for having children out of wedlock.  Let their energies be focused on working and surviving instead of trouble making.  That’s the only genuine and lasting solution to the problem of black males being disproportionately sent to prison or to the morgue.  Anyone who is suggesting otherwise has no sincere interest in seeing that dynamic change, and it’s time to take a closer look at their motives.

People need to understand that political correctness isn’t about politeness.  It’s an intentional strategy to keep the truth from being spoken out loud so that it doesn’t have to be faced, and so that people who engage in bad or destructive behaviors can continue to do so without anyone annoying them about it.  Any time anyone goes out of their way to avoid the truth or to keep it from being discussed, that person has another agenda to push.  That’s the Left’s game in a nut shell.  Unfortunately too many on the Right go along with the game, bowing to some misguided notion that one-sided rules of political correctness must be respected.  Instead of insisting that the truth be faced, they tread in aimless circles around it, and the results speak for themselves.  The country is a mess and it’s going to stay that way until someone insists on the truth.

~CW

http://hardnoxandfriends.com/2014/12/04/truth-enemy-of-the-progressive-agenda/

The Trouble with Libertarianism

I am the Secretary for my homeowners’ association.  Before you start pelting me with rotten tomatoes or yank my H&F contributor privileges, please hear me out.  We had our reasons for opting to live in this neighborhood but ultimately my reasons aren’t important and no one should have to justify what appeals to them about where they choose to live.  What matters is that no one unduly imposes their vision of happiness on anyone else, and as we all know HOAs have a reputation – sometimes deserved, sometimes not – for doing just that.  Here in Texas growing anti-HOA sentiment led to a mini revolt that culminated in an overhaul of the state’s laws governing HOAs in 2012.  Under the banner of “reform” and cries for liberty Texas adopted a number of changes, expanding the code that deals with HOAs to 47 pages containing nearly 13,000 words.  Texans are supposed to be thankful for this ‘release’ from tyranny.  Call me an ingrate if you will but I see things a bit differently.

The neighborhood where I live was planned as an HOA from its inception, which means this particular HOA wasn’t forced on anyone, and as I wade through page after page of regulations we now have to follow on top of our own by-laws I am left to wonder:  Whatever happened to freedom of association?  If a group of like-minded homeowners with a shared interest in creating a certain type of living environment want to form an association for that purpose, what gives others the right to say we can’t or to impose onerous rules and regulations that make it overly burdensome to do so?  Imagine if a group of ‘free-speech’ activists began targeting sites like Hardnox & Friends, demanding, in the name of liberty, that anyone be allowed to post articles and imposing a list of rules and regulations that, to their way of thinking, better protects the free speech rights and thus the liberty of other individuals.  Such crusades, I am finding, are often more about imposing one group’s preferences with respect to liberty at the expense of someone else’s notion of liberty.  Pushback against increasingly tyrannical HOAs seems to have been answered by another form of tyranny masquerading as preservation of liberty (BTW, why not simply have a law that prevents Associations from forcing pre-existing homeowners into HOAs or from amending their CCRs without a super-majority?  One simple sentence.).

Whether we like it or not the exercise of individual “rights” is in many respects a zero-sum game.  My “right” to drive my car as fast as I want must be balanced against your “right” to be reasonably safe on the road; my “right” to enjoy loud music late at night must be balanced against your “right” to sleep or just enjoy a bit of peace and quiet on your own property.  Outside of what is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, no one can always have 100% of what he wants without stepping on the “rights” of someone else, which is why libertarianism can be a tricky thing and why I’m troubled by what looks to me like a growing movement in that direction.  As we increasingly hear people proudly proclaim, “I’m a fiscal conservative and a social libertarian,” now seems like a good time to examine what that means.

What exactly is a libertarian?  Just like the term “conservative” the label tends to be co-opted by groups and individuals seeking to mold it around their own unique beliefs, and dictionary definitions seem to have little relationship to reality, not to mention that even those are all over the place.  Keeping in mind the oft invoked “social libertarian” phrase I would distinguish conservatism from libertarianism this way:

Conservatism advocates limited government and the inviolability of individual rights while at the same time also recognizing the importance of and giving great deference to the preservation of societal systems and mores.  It recognizes that neither the individual nor societies can exist without one another, in the same way that Siamese twins who share vital organs depend on each other’s good health.  A certain amount of harmony is essential within society in order for individuals to flourish and for the continuation of mankind to be ensured.  It is, in short, an adult’s ideology; it accepts reality and the need to sometimes sacrifice short term satisfaction for long term prosperity and security.

In contrast, libertarianism places much greater weight on the “rights” of the individual, to the point of sometimes dangerously ignoring what’s necessary to preserve and nurture society.   While it is immensely nobler in motive than liberalism, it shares two of liberalism’s more unfortunate traits, the first of which is arrogance.   Arrogance is when an unremarkable community organizer/politician presumes to “transform” a government founded by some of the best minds in American history, or when the wife of a president presumes to know more about feeding children than parents and schools that have been successfully feeding children for centuries.  Likewise, libertarians are known to be arrogantly dismissive when it comes to the lessons learned and imparted by past societies.  Like the new manager who fails to get to know a business before insisting on drastic changes, libertarians are unconcerned that past societies have universally rejected behaviors like prostitution and recreational drug use, or that they heretofore unanimously restricted marriage to opposite genders.  The adult stops, observes and asks, “Why?”  The child plows ahead without pausing to consider what potential dangers lay ahead, or perhaps assuming that any dangers won’t affect them.

The second trait libertarians share with liberals is an unrealistic view of human nature.  Just get government out of the way, they tell us in their quest to be freed from the limits society imposes on them.  People will behave themselves, you’ll see.  If that were true then there would have been no impetus for the laws we have.  If people didn’t drive recklessly we wouldn’t need speed limits.  If people didn’t litter, we’d need no laws against littering.  Didn’t we just have a nurse who had been exposed to Ebola ignore the risk to others so she could travel?  Does that episode support or disprove the notion that people can be trusted to think of others before they act?  The reality belies the spin and leads me to conclude that libertarianism isn’t so much about the principled quest for freedom for all but is instead about protecting the “right” to do whatever the hell one wants regardless of the impact on anybody else.  Conservatives fear government because all too often it places power in the hands of the wrong people.  Libertarians don’t like government even in the hands of the right people, which in theory is all of us.

Libertarianism sounds good.  Heck, who isn’t for liberty?  But the question is:  how does one define liberty?  If I’m legally forced to recognize same-sex marriages, is that liberty?  If my neighborhood is overrun by drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes whose “rights” I am commanded to respect, is that liberty?  If I and other like-minded individuals want to form our own community with mutually agreed-to rules but others say we can’t, is that liberty?  If my nation’s hands are tied against preemptive acts of self-defense, is that liberty?   These are the questions that make me discomfited by the “fiscal conservative, social libertarian.” 

~CW

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If It Walks Like a Duck….A Commentary on Conspiracy Theories

A perp walks into a bank and robs it.  The teller claims the perp was a duck.  When police look at the surveillance video, the image shows a small, feathered creature with webbed feet waddling up to the teller and quacking instructions to her through its bill.  The police logically conclude that the perp is indeed the one duck who resides in the town.  They get a warrant and search the duck’s nest and sure enough – there’s the money.  But wait!  Someone comes forward to say it can’t be the duck, because they’re sure they saw the duck on the other side of town at the time of the robbery. 

And so the conspiracy theories begin. 

Maybe the video tape was doctored by the bank because the bankers stole the money and planted it in the nest to frame the duck! 

Maybe the entire police department is lying because they stole the money and they’re trying to blame the duck!

Maybe, maybe, maybe…

Whether it’s the assassination of JFK, the “disappearance” of Elvis or the horrific events of 9-11, conspiracy theories seem to have burgeoned into their own cottage industry, and call me a party pooper if you want but I tend not to be a fan.  It’s not that I believe conspiracies never happen, I know they sometimes do; but this trend of translating any questionable or missing piece of evidence into an elaborate plot that ignores both the known facts and common sense is very disturbing for a host of reasons, starting with its potential to wrongly ensnare and tarnish innocent people.  Imagine being a member of the Bush administration following 9-11 when it was suggested by some that Bush and others orchestrated the events of that day.  Consider what such theories imply, not just about them but also about the people peripherally involved or those who painstakingly investigated the events of 9-11.  Were they abettors to this terrible crime?  Are they liars?  Were they grossly incompetent?  Those are damning accusations, yet you can’t accept the conspiracy theories and come to any other conclusion. 

Conspiracy theorists aren’t required to observe the standards of reasoning and proof that tend to naturally lead official investigations in the right direction.  In the duck scenario, for instance, it would be much harder to credibly point to other suspects if you were required to explain to a jury why you discounted the video evidence and the testimony of the teller who was robbed in favor of the testimony of someone who could easily have been mistaken about some incidental sighting of the duck.  Given what’s at stake for others it behooves us to engage in a little self-policing before jumping into the conspiracy boat.  The people who perpetuated the 9-11 conspiracy theories, largely a who’s-who list of Bush-hating leftists, were clearly not motivated by a quest for the truth but were instead, consciously or subconsciously, trying to turn any unresolved question from that day into a convenient indictment of the man they hated, and they didn’t care who was sacrificed in the process.  I’d like to think that conservatives are better than that but the signs don’t always point that way.

Yesterday I turned on the radio in my car and heard a few minutes of the Michael Savage show.  The discussion apparently centered on Obama’s announcement that he was sending 3,000 troops to Africa to help deal with the Ebola epidemic.  A woman caller seemed to suggest that she believed this was part of a broader scheme to bring Ebola to the U.S.  She also suggested it was possible that the epidemic had been intentionally manufactured and introduced in Africa to initiate the scheme.  To Savage’s credit he quickly dismissed that suggestion, but this was followed by a caller who believed this was a plot to undermine the military.  It was disturbing to hear such calls and to know that they will help form the impression listeners have of conservatives. 

Generally speaking, the simplest and most logical explanations lead to the truth of what’s going on.  No doubt there are valid criticisms as to the wisdom of sending U.S. troops into a country infested with Ebola and it might be fair to speculate, based upon his history, that Obama isn’t concerned about the risks this presents to our soldiers, but a diabolical plot intended to bring an Ebola epidemic to the U.S.?  Come on.  That is the stuff of James Bond villains, the stuff that we find greatly entertaining because it is so far removed from reality as we know it.

Complex Orwellian plots and multifarious conspiracies really aren’t necessary in order for the Left to achieve their objectives, and this is painfully demonstrated to us on a daily basis.  Why engage in a fiendish plot to bring Ebola to this country or to destroy the military when you can legally (for the most part) harness people’s own natural nanny-state inclinations to achieve the bulk of your goals pretty much out in the open?  It makes no sense. 

I am not suggesting that there isn’t a whole lot of lying, secrecy and nefarious dealings going on.  On the contrary, I understand as well as anyone that scheming and dishonesty pervade government, particularly leftwing administrations whose goal is to control and harness the earning power of some to buy the loyalty of others.  It requires a great deal of manipulation and orchestration to accomplish that.  There is, however, a not-so-fine line between being justifiably wary and watchful of government and letting your imagination go too far.  You can only cry wolf so many times before no one takes you seriously.  Already the words “conspiracy theory” elicit eye rolls and images of red-eyed bloggers furiously typing away in their mothers’ basements.  That’s a tragedy for the genuine conspiracies that will be uncovered and then perfunctorily dismissed, but it’s the price that comes with the loss of objectivity.  I’m sure I’ll win no popularity contests with this post, but sometimes when something walks and quacks like a duck it really is just a duck.

~CW

Why We Should Abolish the Minimum Wage

A free market economy depends upon the unhindered ability of all participants to pursue what they believe to be in their own best interests, hence the word “FREE.”  If I have something to sell that I think is worth $100 I don’t have to sell it to you for $50 and you cannot be forced to buy it from me for $100.  Each of us can decide how badly we want either the money or the goods when choosing whether or not to negotiate.  If we ultimately settle on a price of $75 with no one being physically or legally coerced into such a trade, then it can logically be assumed that each of us believes we have made a deal that maximized our trading power, because if we could have made a better deal elsewhere we would have done so. 

The mandate of a minimum wage undermines the free market by depriving people of the option to engage in a trade that could optimize their own best interest.  A person who lacks work experience or skills and would be willing to work for less than the market rate in order to obtain those skills may be prevented from doing so by a mandated minimum wage.  Likewise an employer who can’t afford or simply doesn’t want to pay the going rate and would be willing to relax his requirements in exchange for paying someone less than market rate has no such freedom with a mandated minimum wage.  All this begs the critical question: 

What gives the federal government the right to deprive people of the basic freedom to trade their labor for any price that they’re willing to take or the freedom to hire someone who would willingly accept their offered price? 

I would contend that our government has no such right, irrespective of the fact that it’s been using its might for some time now pretending as if it did.  The assertion of OUR rights to be free from government interference in commerce between willing participants should be the first line of defense for conservatives against the mandated minimum wage, because to take any other approach is to first make the fatal mistake of conceding the government’s right to establish a minimum wage, and then we’re simply arguing over how much, as is the case right now.  One person’s failure to obtain the skills, education or experience to earn a decent living shouldn’t entitle them to rob others of their freedom to pursue their own best interests in the free market, but that’s exactly what happens with a mandated minimum or “living” wage.

Unless it’s based on the free market, the amount of money that anyone thinks he deserves to earn is entirely arbitrary.  You are welcome to believe that your labor is worth, say, $50 an hour; but if nobody values your skills enough to pay you that amount then by definition, you’re not worth it, regardless of whether that’s the amount you need to support yourself or not.  Someone who washes windows for a living is not worth more pay because he’s trying to put himself through Harvard or because he’s supporting nine children, yet this is the type of argument that liberals always use to justify mandating and continually increasing the minimum wage.  “A family of four can’t live on minimum wage!” they cry.  If I shouldn’t have to pay the window washer an arbitrary $50 an hour so he can put himself through Harvard why should I have to pay the burger flipper an arbitrary $15 an hour because he has three kids?  A job is worth what a job is worth, whether it’s a 16-year old flipping burgers earning fun money or a 31-year old flipping burgers supporting a family.

Alas, liberals have already managed to convince enough Americans, Left and faux Right, that somewhere within the Constitution the government was given the power to deprive people of the right to engage in mutually agreeable commerce and they’ve established a completely arbitrary minimum wage.  I can only assume this was done in the name of the regularly abused “general welfare” language, but if that’s the case then this simply means that the policy fails on both a constitutional and a logical basis, because it’s easy to demonstrate how the minimum wage is harmful – not helpful – to the “general welfare.”

Some time ago I wrote a post about truisms (Truisms:  The Case against Liberalism), the inescapable and unchangeable rules of life that we ignore at our own peril and, much to our shame, to the peril of future generations.  Truisms are like gravity; you cannot avoid it simply by refusing to acknowledge that it exists, but it can be amusing to see people try.  What’s not amusing, though, is the predictable destruction brought upon this nation by democrats who ignorantly and/or willingly ignore basic truths when pursuing policies that affect us all.  The mandated minimum wage is a shining example of this.

Truism #1 – The more you reward certain behaviors, the more of them you’ll get.

As in my original post I challenge anyone to argue that this statement isn’t a fact, just like the law of gravity.  Now, what are you doing when you guarantee a minimum wage to someone who has made no effort to acquire the skills, experience or education to command a higher wage on their own merits?  That’s right – you reward them for remaining unskilled, uneducated and inexperienced.  That’s a great idea for the “general welfare,” isn’t it? 

Truism #6 –The law of natural consequences is necessary to a functional society.

The beauty of the free market is that it naturally rewards people who have or who acquire the talents, experience and skills we value, thereby encouraging more people to hone these valuable skills.  Given that no one owes you a living, this is unarguably a win-win for everyone.  It gives people the incentive and opportunity to make the most with what they have.  On the flip side, the free market has a way of discouraging behaviors that are personally and societally destructive.  In a truly free market (and without government assistance, which is a whole other topic) people are naturally forced to make smarter choices about careers and lifestyles that lead to greater personal responsibility and less risk to others that they will end up paying the price for your mistakes and failures.  This might be less enjoyable for the least responsible and ambitious amongst us, but certainly it is best for the “general welfare.”

Your average fifth grader can look at the images of angry fast-food workers marching around with signs demanding a higher minimum wage and compare that to people trying to achieve the same financial goal through education and job advancement and that fifth grader can tell you which way is better for the “general welfare.”  If only they could explain it to the average liberal.

~CW

How to Train Your Democrat

Dog trainers will tell you that the most important tool for training your dog is the tone of your voice.  By changing the volume and tone of your voice you can communicate a wide array of different messages to your dog and help to make him a better, more obedient pet.  So important are vocal tone and volume, in fact, that the actual words you speak are often irrelevant.  Except for a handful of commands to which the dog is trained to react, volume, tone and pitch will most likely dictate his response to your commands.

Recently I’ve noticed with great fascination that this works on democrats as well.  Their masters can tell them anything, and even if it is clearly untrue or defies basic logic, as long as the words are delivered with the proper technique democrats will respond as trained.   Tell them, for instance, that “You didn’t build that!” and as long as there is angry conviction in your voice it won’t matter that they DID build that.  They will respond on cue and bark along obediently.  Defiantly shriek, “What difference, at this point, does it make!” and they will howl in agreement despite the fact that the true story of the Benghazi attack and the tragic deaths of four Americans really does matter.

Just the other day Debbie Wasserman Schultz angrily told women democrats, “What Republican tea party extremists like Scott Walker are doing is they are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back.”  Really?  Walker, of course, was the one who freed Wisconsin women from the grip of the union thugs, but the obvious absurdity of her statement was ignored by the lefty ladies so well-trained to salivate at any gratuitous comparison of republicans to cavemen.
And who could ever forget Bill Clinton?  Apparently his raspy southern accent and “charm” (ahem) were enough to convince democrats that a man with a long and sordid history of mistreating women was sincerely compassionate about women’s causes.  Bill Clinton was, in the words of top dog democrat Barbara Streisand, “just swell,” and the old southern charm is still working today as evidenced by the abundance of puppy love that still surrounds the aging woman abuser.

The true master, though, has to be Barack Obama.  He is the ultimate democrat whisperer, and could probably convince them to hop up in the car and go to the vet to be neutered without pain meds just by doing his bobble-head walk and broad grin at the same time.  Professor Obama waggles his dainty finger, furrows his brow and invokes a scolding tone to inform the dogs – er, excuse me – democrats, that congress won’t act (translation:  they won’t do his bidding) on this or that , and right on cue they erupt in angry barking as if his indignant tone suggests he speaks the truth.  Then he sticks his nose in the air and declares with just the right mix of defiance and resignation that he must make the ultimate sacrifice and “act alone,” and they clap like trained seals while he shreds the Constitution, their Constitution.  Empty promises delivered in loud, flowery rhetoric are all that’s needed to make democrats sit up pretty and beg with their tongues hanging out.  Confidently delivered untruths about the economy, Obamacare or our withdrawal from violence around the globe are predictably met with drooling, panting and vigorous tail wagging.

Good dogs.

 ~CW