The New Clarion

I just drove home from babysitting my one year old granddaughter and heard on the car radio that Republican Senator Arlen Specter has joined the Democrat Party. This does not shock me in any way.

According to this CBS report:

“I am not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate — not prepared to have that record decided by that jury, the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate,” Specter said.

In other words, to hell with those who elected him. Staying in power is more important. He also said that his political philosophy was more in line with the Dem Party than the Repubs. Certainly no surprise there. Obviously the present power and control of the Democratic Party seems irresistible to him especially if in his meeting with Obama he got a promise that there would be no Dem opposition in 2010.

The left media is giddy with reports that this is some kind of death blow to the Republican Party. I doubt it is that serious but I really don’t care if it is. The Republican Party no longer stands for anything. They only want to oppose Democrats for the sake of gaining power.

I doubt that this will be any kind of wake up call for the R-Party either. Likely, they will conclude that they haven’t been religious enough, or anti-business enough, or compassionate enough or some other such nonsense. Look for them to try and take over the upcoming tea parties and champion the anti-tax, anti-nationalization feelings therein.

I do think now would be a good time to send lots of letters to Republicans letting them know that they are out because they will not ruthlessly champion individual rights. They routinely go along with the Democrats philosophy that the needs of some trump the rights of others. IOW, they don’t know how to advance the moral argument for capitalism and as long as they don’t they can stay out of power.

Powerline writes:

You are about to become the proud owner of a controlling interest in General Motors–well, you and tens of millions of fellow taxpayers, anyway. A deal has been struck that tries to keep GM out of bankruptcy. As I understand it, the deal is contingent on GM providing a turnaround plan that is satisfactory to its new owners–us–by June 1.

Larry Kudlow writes:

What is going on in this country? The government is about to take over GM in a plan that completely screws private bondholders and favors the unions. Get this: The GM bondholders own $27 billion and they’re getting 10 percent of the common stock in an expected exchange. And the UAW owns $10 billion of the bonds and they’re getting 40 percent of the stock.

I have one question. How is this transfer of wealth different from the Bolsheviks seizing a “bourgeois” business to give it to “the proletariat”? The legal formalities differ, and the communists were upfront and proud of what they did, whereas American politicians must work in lies and euphemisms that they know a sympathetic media will not examine too closely.

TARP Looking More Criminal by the Minute

Ya think?  Tel me, Mr. Luskin, how it could possibly have been otherwise?

Via Billy at two–four.net, who puts it down succinctly:  “If you have to ask, then you’re not even in the game.”

This being the week of Earth Day, itself a product of junk science, I thought two more examples of same would be in order.

Junkfood Science has a remarkable post by the name ‘Rejection of science squared’. What’s amazing is that any paper or journal would be willing to publish such a speculative, assumptive, wishful thinking article. Or that somebody was willing to finance a study like this. I don’t think palm readers and clairvoyants use that many weasel words.
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Watts Up With That? (WUWT) has a guest post by Steven Goddard on the contradictory reports of the climate change alarmists which says in part:

Last weeks’ top Antarctic AGW story was :

Antarctic ice melting faster than expected

due to CO2, of course.

This week the #1 story is :

Antarctic ice spreading

but the increase in size is due to “stratospheric ozone depletion” which is of course also caused by man-made gases.

Except that’s not quite true as Mr. Goddard explains.

“Oh, and one minor problem with the ozone hole theory ”The ozone hole occurs during the Antarctic spring, from September to early December” – but the positive ice anomaly occurred during the autumn and winter (March through July) as represented by the red line below.”

The enviros will always find some reason to blame man for every problem real and imagined. How can it be otherwise since man is so evil and depraved by nature? Sigh. It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that Earth Day is also the birthday of communist leader Vladimir Lenin. In fact, the first earth Day was picked to be on his 100th birthday. Not much love for mankind there.

How does Obama manage to get everything wrong? In economic policy he wants more government intervention and massive spending increases. This does not lead to prosperity. In foreign policy he has apologized for America, befriended America’s enemies and snubbed her friends. This does not lead to security and peace.

Is he incompetent? Does his lack of experience doing anything but rabble rousing and running for office make him inept?

Or is it that he has the best intentions, but does not understand that consistently following altruist-collectivist-statist premises leads to failure? Is he so stupid that he cannot see how his policies will lead to disaster?

Stupid or incompetent? That is the question. Or… could there be a darker explanation?

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Environmentalism today is more about misanthropy and human sacrifice than it is about saving nature. Saving nature is only the rationalization behind a more insideous motive, hatred for man’s mind. Here are some quotes from the horses’ mouths.

At the website Environmentalism.com are these three quotes, (with a link to even more):

Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.

—John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.

—Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First!

I know scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn’t true. Somewhere along the line … we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth…. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. (source: “Mother Nature as a hothouse flower,” Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 22, 1989, p. 10.)

—David Graber, biologist, National Park Service

The above quotes show that the leaders of environmentalism place little or no value on human life and do not regard man as part of nature. But this is not just a small insignificant sample. There are many more at for example the conservative site Free Republic. Such as this quote which reveals the real inner motive of those who hate man:

“We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion — guilt-free at last! — Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue”

Such is the power of guilt. It turns men against their own species, against themselves.

And how do you get men to accept an unearned guilt? By referring to nature not as nature but as ‘the environment.’ Get them to think they are responsible not only for their own environment but for everyone else’s as well. Don’t talk about the fact that environments are regional and local. Get them to accept the idea that their environment is global and therefore a man in Michigan is responsible for environmental damage in Peru. Make him feel guilty for that damage and he will not resist your demand that he atone for his guilt by handing over his money and freedom, or to support government policies that accomplish the same thing.

I think one of the best concretizations of the true nature of environmentalism that I’ve found is this Wondermark comic:

Earth Day (and the movement that goes with it) isn’t so much about bringing humanity up to the level of the Jetsons or Star Trek as it is of reducing our presence back to the Flintstones.

Earth Day is hear once again and so are the calls for human sacrifices. Humans, we are told, must give up their technological way of life for a more austere one in order to save the planet. But saving the planet is not the real goal of the environmentalists. Human sacrifice is the real political and moral goal. Not sacrifice to achieve any desired end, but sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice, sacrifice as a way of life. The thing to be sacrificed is man’s mind.

Notice how any suggestion that modern technology be used to save nature is met with indignant hostility. Observe that the peasants of Africa are not required to make sacrifices. They are already right where the enviros want them, close to nature–starving–and are already sacrificing the only thing they have to sacrifice, their future.

Environmentalists hold that all living organisms have an absolute, unconditional right to exist, except one–man. It is only man that must sacrifice his nature, his way of life, his happiness, his survival to all the plants, bugs and creatures of the planet. Man has no right to survive according to his own unique nature–which is by means of his reasoning mind. Make no mistake about it, the assault on man is an assault on reason. The protection of nature is only the excuse, the rationalization they use to attack man’s mind.

Earth Day should be renamed ‘Man Day’ to celebrate man’s mastery and therefore control over his environment. If the enviros really were concerned about nature they would champion laissez-faire capitalism, the only system that can provide for the survival of both man and nature.

Andrew McCarthy writes about the Department of Homeland Security’s report about “rightwing extremism.”

For eight years, we’ve been treated to hysterical rhetoric from Democrats, including Barack Obama, about the scourge of “domestic spying.” Now that the Obama administration is openly calling for domestic spying — the real thing, not the smear used against President Bush — they’re suddenly silent.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in coordination with the FBI, has issued an intelligence assessment on what it calls “Rightwing Extremism.” It is appalling. The nakedly political document announces itself as a “federal effort to influence domestic public opinion.” It proceeds, in what it acknowledges is the absence of any “specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence,” to speculate that “rightwing” political views might “drive” such violence — violence, it further surmises, that might be abetted by military veterans returning home after putting their lives on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan. And for good measure, in violation of both FBI guidelines and congressional statutes, the Obama administration promises scrutiny of ordinary Americans’ political views, speech, and assembly.

…

The insinuation: If you think the federal government has gotten too big, if you believe that the Tenth Amendment (“the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”) is still part of the Constitution, if you are concerned about unborn life, or if you want the immigration laws of the United States enforced, you are a terrorist waiting to happen. If you are resistant to immersion in the global community because of “the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers,” you are a potential subversive. If you are concerned that the government might interfere with your right to legally purchase and possess firearms, you are on the federal radar.

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In general, I don’t put any stock in what an actor says about politics. The following video with Janeane Garofalo {via} is nothing I haven’t read in the leftist blogospere; what makes it unique is having it all in one place and making Keith Olbermann seem cool-headed in comparison:

I enjoy these things because it reminds me how impotent and ignorant our opponents are. (Warning: there’s some vulgar innuendo, naturally.)

I had not planned on attending the Tea Party at the Capitol in Phoenix, Arizona because of conflicting dinner plans. Mere hours before the event, those plans fell through so I had to put something together as quickly as possible. I printed out Myrhaf’s excellent analysis and made 100 copies to pass out. If I had had time, I would have brought a table and handed out the cases of literature I got from the Ayn Rand Institute when I ran a campus club a decade ago.

I don’t know what I was expecting but I wasn’t prepared for the sight of thousands of people waving signs and listening to passionate defenses of liberty and freedom. For a few moments, it was heady times. It reminded me of the only other time I took part in a public political event: volunteering for the Steve Forbes primary run in 1996.

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This video clip of CNN reporter Susan Roesgen arguing with and lecturing to a protester at the Chicago Tea Party has been widely posted on a number of blogs. If you have not yet seen it, definitely take a moment to do so – this reporter, as well as anchor back in the studio at the final moments of the clip, are an excellent look at the mindset and attitude of the Walter Duranty media.

If CNN had an ounce of journalistic credibility left it would immediately terminate Susan Roesgen, give a warning to the anchor back in the studio and issue an apology both to the protesters in Chicago and to its audience. But I seriously doubt that will happen. My guess is Susan Roesgen accurately reflects the attitudes and views of her editors and CNN management.

Anyhow, my reason for posting the clip here is to make the following observation: Observe that what really sets Roesgen off is when the protester took offense at Obama quoting Lincoln on grounds that what Lincoln actually stood for was liberty.

Something I have noticed over the years is that, whenever I have had discussions with Leftists and brought up the authoritarian nature of their agenda and its totalitarian implications, they are often thrown into what Ayn Rand referred to as a “blank out” which she defined as “the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think — not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know.”

Sometimes the “blank out” takes the form of the Leftist suddenly wanting to terminate the conversation, usually by tossing out a final insult and making a statement to the effect that one is “hopeless.” Sometimes it takes the form of desperately trying to change the subject. And sometimes it takes the form of a sudden outburst of hostility and rage. In the case of Susan Roesgen, we see all three.

I suspect that the reaction of hostility and rage is usually the result of the person not being able to successfully blank out fast enough thus allowing the offending fact of reality to actually get past their defenses and though to their consciousness. Hostility and rage is their way of attempting to forever bury that which they momentarily grasped. Those who are able to successfully blank out before the implications fully hit them are usually able to maintain self-control and simply change the subject or walk away.

Had the protester in the video been more explicit about Obama’s authoritarianism, had he carried a sign stating that Obama was a thug, it would probably have had little impact in terms of unnerving Roesgen. Such explicit statements would have been dismissed out of hand as proof that the protesters were right wing bumpkins and boobs from flyover country who drink the sort of coffee served in truck stops and gas stations and thus should not be taken seriously. The danger for people such as Roesgen is the workings of their own mind when the implications of what they are seeking to avoid knowing sneak past and sink in.

My guess is that, between some of premises displayed by the better posters which were evident in great number at these Tea Parties and the protester’s implicit suggestion that Obama is anti-liberty, for a brief fraction of a second, Roesgen’s mind was able to put two and two together and she understood exactly what the Tea Party was all about. That was the moment that set her off and her reaction to it was so intense that she completely dropped any pretense at journalistic professionalism. Even by twisted Walter Duranty media standards, it is unacceptable to “lose one’s cool” on camera.

Observe that Roesgen engaged in all of the three forms of blanking out that I described – she tried to change the subject (“What does this have to do with your taxes?”), she became hostile and, finally, she attempted to run away from the whole thing by ending the broadcast on the excuse that “since I cannot really hear much more and since I think this is not really family viewing, [I will] toss it back to you Karen.”

Ultimately, this is a good thing and Susan Roesgen has done the people she so desperately hates a huge favor. Displays such as this make it more and more difficult for decent, busy people who do not pay close attention to politics to realize that Leftist arrogance and Leftist media bias is more than a mere sore loser sort of Right wing accusation and that something is very wrong. Displays such as this only helps motivate those who do realize what is happening to become angry and speak up. Nasty people like her are the greatest recruitment tool the Tea Party movement has. Above all, displays such as this are a good example of why anybody who grasps at whatever level the connection between big government and tyranny should call a spade a spade as opposed to self-censoring one’s statements in order to conform to the unspoken requirements of being perceived as a “moderate.”

I joined thousands of other protesters yesterday at the “Tea Party” protest at City Hall Park in downtown New York. My sign read on one side, “Reason & Capitalism. No Creeping Socialism!” On the other, it read, “Ayn Rand Is Right.” I saw many signs referring to Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand. One Objectivist joined me with his sign that read, “Who Is John Galt?”

We found a strategic spot right alongside Broadway. Many busloads and carloads of commuters got to see “Ayn Rand Is Right” and “Who Is John Galt?” on their way home from work. One person asked us who John Galt was. We told him that if he wants to understand what is wrong with the world and what should be done about it, read Atlas Shrugged. He said he would.

I was pleased overall by the event. It was remarkably secular. There were few references to God and the conservative Republicans only showed themselves in a tentative manner. (I think they know how responsible the Bush-era Big Government and Religious Right Republicans are for the crisis we’re in.)

Overall, the impression I had was one of a true grassroots protest. People were angry at the violation of our rights. People expressed it in terms of outrage over spending and taxation.

The speakers weren’t very good overall, but they were sincere and angry.

This is the first protest I have ever gone to. I have always thought that the battle of ideas is won through conventionally intellectual pursuits: writing and teaching.

But there is a time to speak out in the form of a protest. This was one of those times.

I hope we see more Tea Parties.

Thank you, Rick “Sam Adams” Santelli for issuing the clarion call that was heard around the country.

As fast as Obama is moving America toward fascism, the opposition is moving just as fast. The Tea Party movement has taken off, Atlas Shrugged recently hit #1 at amazon, and yesterday, for the first time in memory a governor talked about… seceding from the union.

Wha…? Seceding from the union? Is this a joke?

Governor Rick Perry of Texas said his state can leave the Union if it wants to.

I’m dubious. A governor should not say something like this unless he is serious. How serious is Perry?

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I attended the Tea Party in downtown Dallas – one of several that were held yesterday throughout the Fort Worth/Dallas Metroplex.   I am not good at guessing crowd sizes – local media reports say that “several thousand” attended the downtown Dallas event.  The Fort Worth event was held in a stadium where it is easier to make a count and that attracted over 4,000 protesters.   Several events in the suburbs had crowds that local media outlets say ran into the  several hundred.   While Fort Worth is home, I attended the Dallas event as it was closer to where I work and was the largest and best publicized one in the area and the one most likely to get media attention. 

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In my last post I linked to Paul Krugman’s column in which he calls Republicans and the Tea Party protests “crazy.” Today more liberals look at the Tea Parties and see insanity. There’s nothing wrong with America that could possibly invite protest! These people must be crazy!

Marc Cooper writes, “Anti-Obama Taxpayer Tea Parties steeped in insanity.”

The Tea Party movement, more than anything else, is a rather garish display of a Republican right that seems to have lost not only the national elections but also any semblance of political bearings. Staying on this course, the GOP risks — in the words of one pundit — becoming “the Talk Radio Republican Party.”

I love it when leftists give Republicans advice. Somehow it always comes down to, “If you don’t conform to us, you will suffer.”

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During the ’08 campaign, one of the things I hoped we would see in an Obama presidency was a repeat of the Clinton years: a Democrat president harried and made ineffectual by the Republicans in the legislative branch. I am beginning to think it will not happen. Instead of Clinton or Carter, Obama could very well be another FDR — a president who does great damage to the country with his big government initiatives, but retains the love of the people with his smile, his positive rhetoric and a fawning liberal media.

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I  happened to be walking past the Ayn Rand selections in the fiction section of a bookstore last night and spotted an edition of Anthem that I had not seen before. When I opened it up,  I noticed a passage from Ayn Rand’s introduction to the book’s 1946 edition that I had forgotten about and which struck me as being extremely timely in today’s context:

The greatest guilt today is that of people who accept collectivism by moral default; the people who seek protection from the necessity of taking a stand, by refusing to admit to themselves the nature of that which they are accepting; the people who support plans specifically designed to achieve serfdom, but hide behind the empty assertion that they are lovers of freedom, with no concrete meaning attached to the word; the people who believe that the content of ideas need not be examined, that principles need not be defined, and that facts can be eliminated by keeping one’s eyes shut. They expect, when they find themselves in a world of bloody ruins and concentration camps, to escape moral responsibility by wailing: “But I didn’t mean this!”

Those who want slavery should have the grace to name it by its proper name. They must face the full meaning of that which they are advocating or condoning; the full, exact, specific meaning of collectivism, of its logical implications, of the principles upon which it is based, and of the ultimate consequences to which these principles will lead.

They must face it, then decide whether this is what they want or not.

Isn’t that a perfect description of today’s liberals and self-described moderates?   I say “liberals” as opposed to “Leftists” because Leftists are those who already have decided that slavery is what they want but dare not call it by its proper name lest the people they wish to enslave catch on.  

One positive trend I have noticed recently is that, despite whatever disagreements I might have with them, a number of conservative commentators, especially on talk radio, are beginning to call a spade a spade.    When I first became aware of politics as a teenager, one of the things that frustrated me was the fact that there was, at the time, an almost unspoken rule even among staunch conservatives that to refer to socialism as “socialism” in public was a huge no-no that would immediately place one in the ranks of the kook fringe.    

Today, even New York Times reporters dare utter the word and question the President about it.   Some commentators are  beginning to use terms such as “authoritiarian” and “collectivism” and radio talk show host Mark Levin has been regularly using the term “statist” over the  past several months.   Such terminology is not only accurate, it is very much needed right now. Accurate terminology makes it more difficult for the better sorts of liberals and moderates to continue practicing their evasion and it enables those who usually do not pay all that much attention to politics to more quickly grasp what is going on and what is at stake.  

The only downside is that it does have the effect of further radicalizing and emboldening the Leftists.  People who have no illusions that what they are after is  slavery  and power for the sake of power are far less squeamish when it comes to “breaking a few eggs” in order to make their omlets.  We can only hope that as the Leftists become increasingly bold and thuggish sufficient numbers of liberals, moderates and non-participants still have within them what it takes to wake up and realize what is happening.

I cannot help wondering if President Obama’s first reaction to the news of the rescue of Captain Phillips from Somali pirates was anger. Now he cannot use this hostage crisis to pressure the Senate into ratifying the Law of the Sea Treaty, one of those international laws that would further bind America to the will of the rest of the world.

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We are seeing a lot of people or groups being denounced these days for “extremism” or “extremist rhetoric.”   As Ayn Rand pointed out long ago, in her article “Extremism” or The Art of Smearing, holding an extreme position is not immoral.  It is only the substance of the position one holds that can be good or evil.  To be extreme in one’s position merely means one is being consistent – and it is this consistency that is being denounced, whether the people using the label realize it or not.  The implication is that only “moderates” (another anti-concept) are good, while the “extremists” are evil.  And what does being a “moderate” actually mean?  Pragmatism.  

If “extremism” is by definition immoral, than all laissez-faire capitalists are immoral.  All advocates of inalienable rights are immoral.  We are being equated with the murderers of al Qaeda, and the irrational religionists of the conservative movement – because we are “extreme” in our defense of individual rights, just as they are extreme in their quest to murder all who will not submit, or in their advocacy of creationism.

I don’t know if all of those using the smear label “extremist” realize what it implies.  If not, they should examine the issue more closely, and use language more precisely.