The New Clarion

The Tea Party movement represents the best hope of halting the federal Leviathan. We have written many words on the subject. In fact, several of us have participated in events for the first time in our lives. However, the whole affair elicits trepidation and pause. While a lot of the slogans, statements, and views are refreshing and spot on, a popular movement attracts those who would get out in front of it and use it to achieve real power.

Its decentralized nature is a blessing and a curse. The lack of central leadership means that no one person or group controls the message; its fractious nature engenders distrust of anyone who would try to do so. In a way, this makes the tea party a marketplace of ideas: the best ones garner the support and crackpots get shunted to the periphery. But with this dispersion comes the risk of a tent too open, unprincipled and unable to advance its ends effectively. The tea party movement rallied in support of Scott Brown’s election to the Senate to replace the late Ted Kennedy. He scared the dickens out of the Administration because he could play a pivotal role in blocking their agenda. But he’s already playing politics as usual, and displaying his superficial support for limited government. These sorts of hollow victories will continue to plague the tea party movement until and unless it firms up its core set of principles.

(more…)

The left has gathered itself, picked itself up and brushed itself off about the Ground Zero Mosque issue. For months it seemed that only opponents of the mosque were saying anything about it. It was not an issue on the left until their man in the White House spoke up about it. Now the left is fighting back.

Now, when I write “fighting back,” what do you think this means? Does it mean assembling air-tight philosophical, political and economic arguments grounded in empirical facts? Or does it mean name calling and smearing the other side?

Yes, you guessed it. Josh Marshall explains it for you:

The institutional Republican party has fully (though with some notable and honorable exceptions) hoisted its sail to xenophobia and religious hatred. And as Halperin notes, at least for motivating their own voters, it’s simply good politics. This is not something anybody happened into.

Well, there you go. Those creeps on the right are appealing to xenophobia and religious hatred because that works with the stupid American people. Marshall’s argument is classic leftist thought: forget any subtleties of the issue, just cut to what is important — how the immoral GOP manipulates the American masses with their lies.

Eugene Robinson argues along the same lines:

Lies, distortions, jingoism, xenophobia — another day, another campaign issue that Republicans can use to bash President Obama and the Democrats. First it was illegal immigration. Now it’s the so-called “Ground Zero mosque,” which is not at all what its opponents claim.

(more…)

A new book, The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled The World’s Top Climate Scientists by Roy W. Spencer argues that global temperatures are determined by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation rather than man-made CO2.

Claude Sandroff sees this book putting the anthropogenic global warming idea in the grave — if people listen to Dr. Spencer, and with MSM serving as the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party, that’s a big if.

At the end of Spencer’s careful analysis, a simple picture emerges. The PDO is a long-lived ocean-to-atmosphere heat transfer process (similar to the better-known El Niño and La Niña) but of much longer duration. Cloud cover decreases significantly during the positive PDO phase, allowing more sunlight to reach the earth’s surface. In the ocean, this extra energy is stored as heat. In its negative phase, the PDO acts in reverse and cools the atmosphere. And all of this occurs in roughly thirty-year cycles. While this mechanism is operating, mankind is dumping a small, vanishing amount of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Big deal.

It’s outrageous that buffoons like Al Gore have led this nation to the brink of Cap and Trade legislation that would devastate the economy in the name of a fantasy.

(more…)

According to this article in the Washington Times, Kenyans are voting for a new constitution. I did a search for a copy of it and found one here.It’s a long document and it seems to be trying to address every possible contingency. While I haven’t read the whole thing, there are some things I like in it but far too many I don’t. I’m afraid the fingerprints of collectivism and a really bad epistemology are all over it leading to contradictions and and just plain wishful thinking. (more…)

At a polling place yesterday Aug 3rd I was handing out literature for a Republican candidate who is running against the U.S. House seat of lifer Democrat Sander Levin whom I want out. I took a lunch break at home and decided to catch up on my email. (more…)

I went to the doctor today. At the check-in desk a sign read, “ID REQUIRED. For your protection, the federal government requires that all patients provide photo identification when presenting for an appointment.”

A chill ran up my spine when I read that. Several questions came to mind:

1) What gives the federal government the right to dictate that all health care providers look at an ID?

2) Why would the federal government think this law was needed?

3) Why is it for my protection? If someone gets medical care under my name, that’s the clinic’s problem, not mine, is it not?

(more…)