Conventional wisdom is that the election is being driven by anger and blind anti-incumbent fervor. Nonsense. Overwhelmingly, it is Democratic incumbents, not Republicans, who are under siege. This is a national revolt against the Democratic governance of the last two years.
Your Pre-Election Post-Mortem - Charles Krauthammer - National Review Online
Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts
Friday, October 15, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
The Promise of Sarah Palin
Thomas Lifson in a recent post at American Thinker, expresses a disappointment in Sarah Palin's lack of ideological depth as she debuted on Fox News last week, and I agree she's not ready yet for prime time, either as a candidate for President, or as a news commentator. If I have to hear "common-sense conservative solutions" many more times I swear I'll fast-forward to the next segment on The Factor.
Having stated what I take to be an obvious truth, I want to point out to those political cognoscenti who did not grow up during the fifties, that it took Ronald Reagan a good decade to perfect his speaking and thinking skills to produce the speech he gave at the 1964 Republican Convention, one of the greatest political oratories in modern times.
While Ms. Palin gave an electrifying speech accepting the 2008 Republican nomination for Vice President, her lack of ideological depth in defense of individual rights was lost in the fellow feeling of the moment that here, at least, was a politician who understood, if only on a gut-level, the threat posed to our survival as a free society by the knavish election of that mountebank, Barack Hussein Obama, and his low compatriots in what passes today for the Democratic Party.
Fox News will offer Sarah Palin an opportunity to develop the mental toughness that comes from taking the ideological battle to the enemy, learning how to thrust, as well as to parry. She needs that cold hard steel one saw and so much admired in Margaret Thatcher of England, who relished the title, intended as a jibe, given her by the Soviets, as "the Iron Lady."
Sarah Palin may fail. But as Lifson notes, through self-education, she may come not only to see through the false intellectualism of the foolish classes who only pretend to run our affairs of state, but to arrive on the other side with a wisdom purchased by hard thought about how to create a political and constitutional order founded on the protection of individual rights.
Common-sense is fine, but I am afraid Mr. Obama would have a field day slicing and dicing her candidacy. She appears to be, however, a fast learner, and she also possesses beauty as well as brains. The beautiful may be bold, yet Americans have a right and a duty to skepticism towards those who put themselves forward to lead, and it is always tempting to dismiss beauty for the simple reason the embodiment in one person of such perfection requires a higher bar, as if to sift out the fatal flaw.
Sarah Palin is almost too much, and that sense I suspect is what fuels the alienation so many feel for her. We like our political leaders best when they successfully marshal through some great challenge,
proving to us they are worthy of our trust. We have seen, and shall continue to see what happens to leadership founded on calculated deception and its supporters' willful suspension of the critical faculty. They will now, having been so sorely disappointed, fall upon the political corpse of Obama with unseemly relish.
The folks likely to support Sarah Palin will want to see the beef, as the expression goes, and now she has a splendid opportunity on Fox News to give Americans hope our current national nightmare will end in 2012.
Do you think Sarah Palin shows true promise? Or will she be nothing more than a sideshow, a salve to our past electoral wounds, a bridge to nowhere?
Tom Anderson
January 2010
Having stated what I take to be an obvious truth, I want to point out to those political cognoscenti who did not grow up during the fifties, that it took Ronald Reagan a good decade to perfect his speaking and thinking skills to produce the speech he gave at the 1964 Republican Convention, one of the greatest political oratories in modern times.
While Ms. Palin gave an electrifying speech accepting the 2008 Republican nomination for Vice President, her lack of ideological depth in defense of individual rights was lost in the fellow feeling of the moment that here, at least, was a politician who understood, if only on a gut-level, the threat posed to our survival as a free society by the knavish election of that mountebank, Barack Hussein Obama, and his low compatriots in what passes today for the Democratic Party.
Fox News will offer Sarah Palin an opportunity to develop the mental toughness that comes from taking the ideological battle to the enemy, learning how to thrust, as well as to parry. She needs that cold hard steel one saw and so much admired in Margaret Thatcher of England, who relished the title, intended as a jibe, given her by the Soviets, as "the Iron Lady." Sarah Palin may fail. But as Lifson notes, through self-education, she may come not only to see through the false intellectualism of the foolish classes who only pretend to run our affairs of state, but to arrive on the other side with a wisdom purchased by hard thought about how to create a political and constitutional order founded on the protection of individual rights.
Common-sense is fine, but I am afraid Mr. Obama would have a field day slicing and dicing her candidacy. She appears to be, however, a fast learner, and she also possesses beauty as well as brains. The beautiful may be bold, yet Americans have a right and a duty to skepticism towards those who put themselves forward to lead, and it is always tempting to dismiss beauty for the simple reason the embodiment in one person of such perfection requires a higher bar, as if to sift out the fatal flaw.
Sarah Palin is almost too much, and that sense I suspect is what fuels the alienation so many feel for her. We like our political leaders best when they successfully marshal through some great challenge,
proving to us they are worthy of our trust. We have seen, and shall continue to see what happens to leadership founded on calculated deception and its supporters' willful suspension of the critical faculty. They will now, having been so sorely disappointed, fall upon the political corpse of Obama with unseemly relish.
The folks likely to support Sarah Palin will want to see the beef, as the expression goes, and now she has a splendid opportunity on Fox News to give Americans hope our current national nightmare will end in 2012.
Do you think Sarah Palin shows true promise? Or will she be nothing more than a sideshow, a salve to our past electoral wounds, a bridge to nowhere?
Tom Anderson
January 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Invitation to Defend Rights Now
Defend Rights Now supports individual rights in all areas of society, from defense of Americans on the national and international level, to the individual right to self-defense, not only against government, but against criminals.
The two areas are, of course, intimately connected. When Americans speak out about their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, they speak both of the people's check on the power of the federal, state, and local governments, and the people's right to defend their lives and their property against local thugs and criminals who attempt to prey upon them.
The Founders wrote the Constitution to protect the people from government, to create a political system where government became the servant of the people, not their ruler. That effort resulted in a pattern of civilized society in which--for the brief span of some hundred and fifty years--physical force was banned from human relationships.
The concept of individual rights gave birth to a free society, so it is with the destruction of individual rights modern enemies of freedom must begin, and they have been working hard to accomplish just this goal since the beginning of the New Deal in the 1930s.
Defend Rights Now defends and promotes individual rights within this larger political context of national politics and culture.
To violate an individual's rights means to compel him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values, and basically there is only one way to do it: by using physical force. Potentially there are only two violators of individual rights: the criminals and the government. The great achievement of the United States was to distinguish between the two--by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the first.
The enemies of freedom work daily in the news media, in the political parties, in colleges and universities--in government--to corrupt this distinction ideologically and politically. Defend Rights Now investigates this corruption and helps provide the ideological tools required to combat it.
Defend Rights Now, in guarding the individual's right to act on his or her own judgment, seeks to help people not only to protect themselves from government, but to suggest situations and techniques in which women, in particular, can protect themselves against personal assault from criminals.
Psychological studies suggest people tend to believe they are less responsible for events that occur in their lives when those events happen outside their immediate control. Yet a person letting "things just happen" may through such bias indirectly cause those events as if she took active steps to put herself in danger.
For example, when a women pulls into a parking garage, parks, then gathers up her purse, perhaps a briefcase, her cell phone, her keys, probably the very last thing she is thinking about is the possibility of a man just hidden out of her sight, waiting for the opportunity to knock her down, steal her pocket book, her personal computer, or, even worse, assault her sexually.
When a woman trains herself to become more aware of her immediate surroundings as she goes about her daily activities, she acts to protect herself in the most effective way she can.
If she carries with her at all times some form of non-lethal self-defense weapon, such as a Pepper Spray or Stun Gun, she greatly enhances her ability to protect herself and any children who may accompany her.
Time and time again, the use of such non-lethal devices has proven to be an effective means of self-defense against personal assault, and in the hands of police, an effective, non-lethal alternative to deadly force in many situations.
That these self-defense weapons do not use deadly force means a person doesn't face the possibility that she could actually kill another human being.
For those who wish to enhance their ability to defend themselves from criminal assault, Defend Rights Now provides links to JustStunGuns, an internet store offering the widest range of effective, but non-lethal, self-defense tools currently available, as well as information about their safe and legal use.
To help people become more aware of common situations in which they would enhance their ability to defend themselves from personal or criminal assault, Defend Rights Now links to news stories where those situations arise and explores how people might use such self-defense weapons most effectively.
Defend Rights Now welcomes reader comments, suggestions, and questions.
Tom Anderson
January 2010
The two areas are, of course, intimately connected. When Americans speak out about their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, they speak both of the people's check on the power of the federal, state, and local governments, and the people's right to defend their lives and their property against local thugs and criminals who attempt to prey upon them.
The Founders wrote the Constitution to protect the people from government, to create a political system where government became the servant of the people, not their ruler. That effort resulted in a pattern of civilized society in which--for the brief span of some hundred and fifty years--physical force was banned from human relationships.
The concept of individual rights gave birth to a free society, so it is with the destruction of individual rights modern enemies of freedom must begin, and they have been working hard to accomplish just this goal since the beginning of the New Deal in the 1930s.Defend Rights Now defends and promotes individual rights within this larger political context of national politics and culture.
To violate an individual's rights means to compel him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values, and basically there is only one way to do it: by using physical force. Potentially there are only two violators of individual rights: the criminals and the government. The great achievement of the United States was to distinguish between the two--by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the first.
The enemies of freedom work daily in the news media, in the political parties, in colleges and universities--in government--to corrupt this distinction ideologically and politically. Defend Rights Now investigates this corruption and helps provide the ideological tools required to combat it.
Defend Rights Now, in guarding the individual's right to act on his or her own judgment, seeks to help people not only to protect themselves from government, but to suggest situations and techniques in which women, in particular, can protect themselves against personal assault from criminals.
Psychological studies suggest people tend to believe they are less responsible for events that occur in their lives when those events happen outside their immediate control. Yet a person letting "things just happen" may through such bias indirectly cause those events as if she took active steps to put herself in danger.
For example, when a women pulls into a parking garage, parks, then gathers up her purse, perhaps a briefcase, her cell phone, her keys, probably the very last thing she is thinking about is the possibility of a man just hidden out of her sight, waiting for the opportunity to knock her down, steal her pocket book, her personal computer, or, even worse, assault her sexually. When a woman trains herself to become more aware of her immediate surroundings as she goes about her daily activities, she acts to protect herself in the most effective way she can.
If she carries with her at all times some form of non-lethal self-defense weapon, such as a Pepper Spray or Stun Gun, she greatly enhances her ability to protect herself and any children who may accompany her.
Time and time again, the use of such non-lethal devices has proven to be an effective means of self-defense against personal assault, and in the hands of police, an effective, non-lethal alternative to deadly force in many situations.That these self-defense weapons do not use deadly force means a person doesn't face the possibility that she could actually kill another human being.
For those who wish to enhance their ability to defend themselves from criminal assault, Defend Rights Now provides links to JustStunGuns, an internet store offering the widest range of effective, but non-lethal, self-defense tools currently available, as well as information about their safe and legal use.
To help people become more aware of common situations in which they would enhance their ability to defend themselves from personal or criminal assault, Defend Rights Now links to news stories where those situations arise and explores how people might use such self-defense weapons most effectively.
Defend Rights Now welcomes reader comments, suggestions, and questions.
Tom Anderson
January 2010
Monday, November 10, 2008
Republican Postmortem
When Reagan was elected president in 1980, he put together a coalition of (for want of better terms) Christian fundamentalists, economic libertarians, and national-security conservatives. A future Republican electoral success cannot pretend the economic libertarian leg of this coalition does not exist.
The current president, because of the Iraq War, because of his tax policies, and because he successfully energized social conservatives by invoking their fear and contempt for homosexuals, managed an electoral success in 2004, a success that unraveled in 2006 with the Democratic victory in the House and Senate, largely over Bush's grotesque incompetence in executing the War, although Bush's extravagant and irresponsible spending policies and the political corruption of so many Republican politicians played a role.
Libertarians in this coalition had no candidate in the 2008 election. As a libertarian myself I still pulled the lever for McCain, but that was simply a vote against Obama. Why? It was virtually impossible to make a positive intellectual case for McCain. McCain knows nothing of economics it seems and he apparently feels embarrassed by social conservatives. Frankly, I am impressed that he received as many votes as he did.
McCain and the Republicans actually lost the tax issue to the Democrats in 2008, having ceded it to Obama's now famous "95% tax cut" rhetoric.
As a libertarian I come to the issues that energize social conservatives from a different point of view than they.
I seek limited government and quite frankly I could care less what anybody does in the bedroom or what they do with their bodies. Individual human beings, in my thinking, "own" their own bodies and lives and should have their natural rights recognized and respected by the law.
Unfortunately, on such issues as a woman's right to choose, the right of individuals to form a marriage contract, and the right to consume whatever they wish in the nature of foods, medicines, drugs, etc., are subjects about which social conservatives and libertarians will disagree profoundly.
As a libertarian I ask myself how could I possibly ally myself with people who believe they have moral right to deprive me of my right to life, that is, my right to live my life the way I want to, so long as I respect the equal rights of others?
Let's be clear. The only reason to do so is because the collectivists on the Left are even worse in their disrespect for individual rights than are the social conservatives on the Right.
Social conservatives, if they value their economic freedom and want to have a chance at future electoral victory, might consider showing a little more respect for the economic libertarians that made up the original Reagan coalition.
On the other hand, it is possible libertarians may be able to forge some sort of coalition with voters who have voted Democratic in recent elections but who have no stomach for socialism.
Until and unless social conservatives realize that the libertarian leg is as disgusted with religion-based governmental intervention into a person's most personal and private life, as they are with the libertarian commitment to individualism, the Republican Party will not be able to reclaim Reagan's authority and Reagan's active belief that the only justifiable purpose of government is the protection of individual rights.
The current president, because of the Iraq War, because of his tax policies, and because he successfully energized social conservatives by invoking their fear and contempt for homosexuals, managed an electoral success in 2004, a success that unraveled in 2006 with the Democratic victory in the House and Senate, largely over Bush's grotesque incompetence in executing the War, although Bush's extravagant and irresponsible spending policies and the political corruption of so many Republican politicians played a role.
Libertarians in this coalition had no candidate in the 2008 election. As a libertarian myself I still pulled the lever for McCain, but that was simply a vote against Obama. Why? It was virtually impossible to make a positive intellectual case for McCain. McCain knows nothing of economics it seems and he apparently feels embarrassed by social conservatives. Frankly, I am impressed that he received as many votes as he did.
McCain and the Republicans actually lost the tax issue to the Democrats in 2008, having ceded it to Obama's now famous "95% tax cut" rhetoric.
As a libertarian I come to the issues that energize social conservatives from a different point of view than they.
I seek limited government and quite frankly I could care less what anybody does in the bedroom or what they do with their bodies. Individual human beings, in my thinking, "own" their own bodies and lives and should have their natural rights recognized and respected by the law.
Unfortunately, on such issues as a woman's right to choose, the right of individuals to form a marriage contract, and the right to consume whatever they wish in the nature of foods, medicines, drugs, etc., are subjects about which social conservatives and libertarians will disagree profoundly.
As a libertarian I ask myself how could I possibly ally myself with people who believe they have moral right to deprive me of my right to life, that is, my right to live my life the way I want to, so long as I respect the equal rights of others?
Let's be clear. The only reason to do so is because the collectivists on the Left are even worse in their disrespect for individual rights than are the social conservatives on the Right.
Social conservatives, if they value their economic freedom and want to have a chance at future electoral victory, might consider showing a little more respect for the economic libertarians that made up the original Reagan coalition.
On the other hand, it is possible libertarians may be able to forge some sort of coalition with voters who have voted Democratic in recent elections but who have no stomach for socialism.
Until and unless social conservatives realize that the libertarian leg is as disgusted with religion-based governmental intervention into a person's most personal and private life, as they are with the libertarian commitment to individualism, the Republican Party will not be able to reclaim Reagan's authority and Reagan's active belief that the only justifiable purpose of government is the protection of individual rights.
Tom Anderson
November 2008
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