The New Republic‘s Noam Scheiber beleives that President Bush’s democracy agenda abroad may help build a Democratic majority at home. Over at TechCentralStation, I explain why I believe Scheiber’s argument is flawed.
[Open full post]Rocco DiPippo at The Antiprotestor Journal has a very interesting post about the DiscoverTheNetwork website, a guide to the political left developed by David Horowitz and others at FrontPage.
They note the following on their website:
The purpose of the DiscoverTheNetwork site is not to stifle free speech but to clarify it. We recognize that people are not always candid in what they say in public life, particularly in the arena of political discourse. Truth in political advertising would be a more accurate description of our intentions in assembling this data.
The problem of deceptive public presentation is common enough to all sides in the political debate but applies with special force to the left, which has a long and well-documented history of dissembling about its agendas.
Take the time to read the numerous comments in response to Rocco’s posting, too. They make for lively reading!
[Open full post]The March 14, 2005 edition of the Weekly Standard includes an article entitled “The Sage of Fresno: Victor Davis Hanson, down on the farm.”
Here is an excerpt:
[Open full post]Hanson places much of the blame for this decay on America’s elites, who he says have fostered a cult of post-modernism, identity politics, and affirmative action – or, as he puts it, “diversity without standards.” As a classicist, he sees this as nothing less than a renunciation of the intellectual tradition bequeathed by the Greeks.
“Multiculturism, in preference to a multiracial embrace of Western culture, has become what pulp was in the 1950’s,” he tells me…”Plato told us this was inevitable: The more you embrace a state-mandated egalitarianism for its own sake and radical democracy,…the more you will be driven to the common denominator of a therapeutic, happy-go-lucky culture, simple stories, low-brow entertainment, minimal expectations – rather than the hard work of using education to uplift the majority.”
I had the opportunity to review a very fine book on Nathanael Greene for Sunday’s edition of the NY Post. The review is here. Rhode Island must of course atone for Ambrose Burnside. Fortunately for Rhode Islanders, whenever anyone makes fun of Burnside, they can point out that, second only to Washington, Greene was the soldier most responsible for
American success in the War of Independence.
As a subjective guide to Don’s previous post, laying out facts and considerations in the case of Terri Schiavo, I offer the following anecdote from Fr. Rob Johansen, which I found via Lane Core:
[Open full post]In the course of our conversation, [a well-respected neurologist] made reference to the standard use of MRI and PET scans to diagnose the extent of brain injuries. He seemed to assume that these had been done for Terri. I stopped him and told him that these tests have never been done for her; that Michael had refused these tests.
There was a moment of dead silence.
“How can he continue as guardian?”, the neurologist said in a tone of utter incredulity. “He refused a non-invasive test? How can they be debating a life and death decision without these tests?” …
He said, “I can’t believe intelligent people are debating this woman’s life without these tests.”
Seeing that I’m among the younger set that supports President Bush’s Social Security plan, I take umbrage at Froma Harrop’s condescention:
The folks are going to stop the kids from doing something stupid. Many have known world war and a great depression. They saw the pitiful old people that Social Security lifted from the gutter. And they’ve spent a lot of time thinking about retirement.
So what if the young people are receptive to letting go of guaranteed benefits? They’re also more receptive to hang-gliding and riding motorcycles in the rain.
Besides, the children are too busy to focus on the debate over privatizing Social Security. They are working long hours and raising families. To them, retirement seems unimaginably far off.
Let’s stop there. Harrop doesn’t define “kids,” but since they’re “working long hours and raising families,” I imagine it would be safe to extend the category out to, say, thirty-five. That seems a little too old for dismissal as a bunch of uninformed hang-gliders — especially if we back up to a previous paragraph with a curious echo to the one just quoted:
The people don’t want [the President’s plan]. They want a benefit that, however modest, is guaranteed. And they see no need to “save” a program that’s fine until 2042 — and may not need much fixing even then.
Myself as a hard-working, family-raising kid, I’ll be sixty-seven that year. If it makes sense to plan for retirement at all, it makes sense to consider the state of Social Security around the time that I may (or may not) manage to retire. And actually looking at the poll that Harrop leverages for a quip suggests that I’m not alone in my concern. When she scoffs at the “mere 17 percent” who believe that a “crisis” looms, she conveniently ignores that another 55% believe that the system “has major problems.” Although she attributes skepticism about the amount of required fixing in 2042 to a vague “they,” 64% of the poll’s respondents “think the Social Security system will… be bankrupt” that year.
Other results from the poll offer another lens through which to view Harrop’s statement that the “President’s plan to privatize Social Security is clearly headed for political oblivion.” Just a couple of months into a major education campaign on the issue, there’s obviously a great deal of thinking that can still be forced. It’s true that 55% think allowing “people who retire in future decades to invest some of their Social Security taxes in the stock market and bonds” would be a “bad idea.” However, that percentage is less than the “bad idea” scores for:
- “Further reducing the total amount of benefits a person would receive if they retired early” (57% bad idea)
- “Increasing Social Security taxes for all workers” (60%)
- “Increasing the age at which people are eligible to receive full benefits” (63%)
- “Reducing retirement benefits for people who are currently under age 55” (67%)
Take particular note of that last one. Given a better understanding of the options that are actually available, perhaps the 30% who believe that “most Americans would receive higher Social Security benefits than the government would provide” were they allowed to invest now would match or surpass the 40% who think their benefits would have been higher if they had invested a portion of their lifetime Social Security taxes already. If there’s that much skepticism about the future of this nation’s economy, it oughtn’t be difficult to make citizens question how the government will find the money that is supposedly “guaranteed.”
Froma Harrop may wish to convince her readers that “the quest to privatize Social Security is truly a lost cause,” but I suspect that we kids will have the stubbornness of geezers if admitting a “lost cause” makes one of our retirement. Perhaps Harrop and the rest of our elders should ask themselves whether the young’ns are truly uninformed or are just less able to see 2042 as a year that might never come.
Perhaps its cause is an irrepressible idealism on my part, but I still find myself stunned and disheartened by the stooped-to depths of political dishonesty. In this one sentence, Rep. Patrick Kennedy appeals to a completely alternate reality to score political points among people whom he assumes to be uninformed and/or stupid:
Since the president took office and began squandering the Clinton surpluses, the federal government has treated Social Security like a credit card — borrowing from the Social Security surplus to pay its other bills.
First of all, “the Clinton surpluses” never amounted to money in hand. Rather, they were projections into the future based on a booming economy. (Although, I suppose that if any body can squander something it doesn’t have, it’s the federal government.) Second of all, the money that Social Security raises each year began being filtered to the federal government’s general funds via bonds long before President Bush ever stepped into the White House.
From there, deconstructing Kennedy’s “facts” is a tedious matter that I leave to interested readers. (For example, the suggestion that “Social Security would be unable to pay full benefits in 2021, instead of 2042 or 2052,” ignores the obvious reality that Bush’s private account program is meant to supplement benefits that Social Security will eventually be unable to finance.) I offer a summary piece by Donald Luskin as a helpful antidote.
Overall, in building his phony version of political reality, Kennedy is either a dupe of his own rhetoric or a con man. The story is that Bush has been “squandering the Clinton surpluses,” in part because he tapped the Social Security trust fund, money that he “borrowed for big tax breaks.” Yet — yet! — Kennedy’s counter-proposal is “the ASPIRE Act, which would give every child an investment account at birth [for which the government would] put in a seed contribution, and match parental contributions for lower-income children.”
In other words, a Congressman who has declared that he’s “never worked a f***ing day in [his] life” prefers giving government-funded, redistributionist hand-outs to eighteen year olds to allowing working citizens to keep more of the money that they earn. A man wealthy by default wishes to ensure the importance of the government teat to the common citizen by taking money from the hands of parents, filtering it through the grubby ones of government, and then handing it back to adolescents just as they exit their parents’ legal guardianship.
Somehow, I don’t think Kennedy’s concept of “an ownership society” matches that of believers in a free market and individual independence. The difference is who does the owning, and the alternate reality that he’s striving to bring about is not one in which Americans should invest hope… or votes.
On Washington’s birthday, it is useful to remember why the founding of the United States, with its recognition of the equal natural rights of all, was such a boon to mankind. An emanation of the American Founding was religious freedom and tolerance. The folks at Powerline remind us of a particularly powerful example of the meaning of tolerance: the exhange of letters between President Washington and the Hebrew congregation of Newport. Most people are familiar with Washington’s magnificent letter, but they should also read the congregation’s letter :
[Open full post]Permit the children of the stock of Abraham to approach you with the most cordial affection and esteem for your person and merits ~~ and to join with our fellow citizens in welcoming you to NewPort.
With pleasure we reflect on those days ~~ those days of difficulty, and danger, when the God of Israel, who delivered David from the peril of the sword, ~~ shielded Your head in the day of battle: ~~ and we rejoice to think, that the same Spirit, who rested in the Bosom of the greatly beloved Daniel enabling him to preside over the Provinces of the Babylonish Empire, rests and ever will rest, upon you, enabling you to discharge the arduous duties of Chief Magistrate in these States.
Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People ~~ a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance ~~ but generously affording to all Liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: ~~
deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language equal parts of the great governmental Machine: ~~ This so ample and extensive Federal Union whose basis is Philanthropy, Mutual confidence and Public Virtue, we cannot but acknowledge to be the work of the Great God, who ruleth in the Armies of Heaven, and among the Inhabitants of the Earth, doing whatever seemeth him good.
For all these Blessings of civil and religious liberty which we enjoy under an equal benign administration, we desire to send up our thanks to the Ancient of Days, the great preserver of Men ~~beseeching him, that the Angel who conducted our forefathers through the wilderness into the promised Land, may graciously conduct you through all the difficulties and dangers of this mortal life: ~~ And, when, like Joshua full of days and full of honour, you are gathered to your Fathers, may you be admitted into the Heavenly Paradise to partake of the water of life, and the tree of immortality.
Done and Signed by order of the Hebrew Congregation in NewPort, Rhode Island August 17th 1790.
Moses Seixas, Warden
I have updated an earlier posting to report on the unbelievably anti-democratic actions late last week in the Rhode Island State House.
Speaker Murphy and his cronies are stealing our freedom in broad daylight. And they don’t give a damn.
Do you?
My wife heard last night the sad and horrible news of the death of one of her dearest friend’s daughter. We grieve for that wonderful family, whose kindness to others – including my wife – has never known any limits. Having been fortunate enough to be present at the birth of our three children, I cannot imagine anything more painful than having to bury one’s child.
And that leads to a related story about Terri Schindler-Schiavo, which has been in and out of the news for a while now. Last week, however, a posting by Greg Wallace got my attention. Here is an excerpt:
She is not dying. She has no terminal illness. She is not in a coma. She is not on life-support equipment. She is not alone, but rather has loving parents and siblings ready to care for her for the rest of her life. She has not requested death.
Yet a battle rages regarding whether Terri Schindler-Schiavo should be starved. She has sustained brain injuries and cannot speak or eat normally. Nevertheless, the only tube attached to her is a small, simple, painless feeding tube that provides her nourishment directly to her digestive system.
Her legal guardian is her husband, who already has another woman — by whom he also has children. He wants Terri’s feeding tube removed. Of course, he could simply allow her to be cared for by her parents and siblings, and get on with his life, but he refuses…
Some say that Terri’s family should “let her go.” But this is not a matter of “letting her go,” because she isn’t “going” anywhere. If, however, she is deprived of nourishment, then she would slowly die in the same way that any of us would slowly die if we were deprived of nourishment. It is called starvation.
What makes this an even more poignant human love story is the content of a written settlement offer made by Terri’s family to her husband, Michael, on October 26, 2004. You can find the letter here. In that letter, her immediate family offers to:
Take Terri home and care for her at their own expense.
Never to seek money from her husband, Michael, including from past malpractice awards. He would also be able to keep all assets from their married life.
Sign any legal documents allowing her husband to divorce her, should he desire that, while still allowing him to retain all rights to her estate upon her natural death in the future as if he was still married to her.
Allow Michael to retain visitation rights, if he so wished.
Forgo any and all future financial claims against Michael.
Michael has rejected their offer; the only acceptable outcome for him is to see Terri dead.
The love of this family for their daughter and sister is reinforced in postings here and here by fellow Rhode Islander, Chuck Nevola.
I would also encourage you to return to the family website for more on this case.
Going back to Greg’s original posting and taking the issue to a more philosophical level:
If the courts permit that to happen, then why should that permission apply only in Terri’s case? There would be no way to limit it to her case alone. Countless others would follow, and their deaths would be described as “letting them die” instead of “killing them.” Where, indeed, does the state get the authority to starve people? Court decisions permitting this lack all authority, as Pope John Paul II teaches in “The Gospel of Life” (section 72). These decisions cannot be obeyed, because they are not binding on the conscience and are in fact acts of violence.
A horrible day is upon us: Michael Schiavo will have the legal right to begin starving Terri to death today.
This ghastly outcome should be neither the values nor the law of America. But it is now on the verge of becoming just that.
What would be our response if this was our daughter, our sister or our wife? Could our response be muted just because Terri Schindler-Schiavo is a “stranger” to all of us? Why should there be any difference?
Or, consider this: What if, by some awful twist of fate, one day you personally were in Terri’s place and your family was stopped from saving your life, caring for you, and showing tender love for you? And what if everyone else was “too busy” to care?
I hope our society will find a greater respect for the preciousness of all human life – regardless of whether they are family, friends or someone we have never met. Let’s begin by saving Terri Schindler-Schiavo’s life.
