The New Clarion

The Friday Jan 6th print edition of the Detroit Free Press carried an oped by Leonard Pitts Jr of the Miami Herald titled “Ron Paul is foolishly consistent in his extremism.” He starts it out with this Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” I’ll skip the fact that there may be some debate over the contextual meaning of that quote in some circles and just focus on how Mr. Pitts uses it as received wisdom. I will quote a few passages with my comments in brackets. (more…)

It’s that time of year again when I put together my list of a dozen or so headlines I would like to see in the New Year 2012. I normally do this on New Years Eve day. But Obama and both political parties have left so much to be desired that yesterday I could have had several dozen items. Now, reduced to an essential dozen I like to count at night instead of sheep, here is the list:

1. Obama loses election
2. Republicans take Senate and add to House
3. ObamaCare repealed
4. Dodd/Frank repealed
5. Sarbanes/Oxley repealed
6. Departments of Education and Energy to be phased out/privatized
7. Fannie Mae,  Freddie Mac and TSA to be privatized
8. Community Re-investment Act repealed
9. Federal Reserve mandate to provide full employment repealed
10. All bureaucracies to be examined for initiating force thus violating rights
11. Eric Holder under investigation for crime of aiding and abetting public enemies (drug cartels) by arming them against american citizens
12. George Soros under investigation for ties to election fraud activities. 
13. (Bonus headlines)

•  NYT and WAPO losing more readers
• MSNBC bought by conservative publisher and revamped or shut down due to lack of viewers
• Well that’s it for this year’s hopeful headlines. You can add yours in the comments of course.

Tuesday’s 6/28 Detroit Free Press carries an op-ed by Leonard Pitts Jr a writer for the Miami Herald titled “Paying Taxes–a duty to your fellow Americans”. Mr Pitts has been preaching altruism especially government enforced altruism most of his journalistic life. I left the following comment at the online site: (more…)

It is amusing to see someone get excited about an IRS refund. He dances around and shouts, “I got $2,000! Partyyyyyy!!!”

Hey, you really screwed the government, huh?

Shmuck. The IRS loves to “give” you that money. Every refund represents a happy sheep.

It’s the First Law of Parasites: Don’t kill the host. That refund check is emotional fuel that keeps the producer working while the government bleeds him drop after drop, month after month…

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Barry Rubin argues that Obama is bringing disaster to the Middle East and US interests.

Michael Hurd explains Charlie Sheen.

Evan Sayet looks at how leftists portray themselves in movies and TV. I think the explanation is that the left accepts the mind-body dichotomy, which is as old as Plato. The moral ideal is altruism, they believe, but in the reality of the flawed world we live in, everyone is petty and selfish. Comics like Larry David understand that there is more comedy in cynicism than in the left’s moral ideal.

If you like Classic Rock, Gary Moore gets quite a tone on “Red House.”

Spending cuts in perspective.

This piece in the New York Times about pharmaceutical companies is depressing. Government intervention is destroying the drug industry. And it will only get worse:

The new law also contains a major threat to drug industry profits in a little-known section that would allow centralized price-setting. Beginning in 2015, an independent board appointed by the president could lower prices across the board in Medicare unless Congress acted each year to overrule it. Medicare pays more than 20 percent of the nation’s retail drug bills.

I had more respect for George Carlin before I read his autobiography, Last Words, than after. The more you get to know about the man, the less you like him.

He was irrational all his life. As a youth he was a juvenile delinquent. He had the bad luck to go to a progressive elementary school, which he calls wonderful, one of the first to experiment with John Dewey’s ideas. He started a lifelong pot habit as a child. He dropped out after ninth grade. He was kicked out of the Air Force. He and his wife were alcoholics in an abusive relationship (until, to their credit, they got sober with the help of AA). A great deal of his wealth was snorted up his nose. He evaded his financial affairs and ended up in 20 years of trouble with the IRS.

And he was perhaps the greatest stand-up comedian of all time. Go figure! He started back in the 1960′s wearing a suit and tie and doing very funny bits like the Indian Sergeant and Al Sleet the hippie weatherman.

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After the shooting in Tucson, the MSM speculated without evidence that the shooter was motivated by the extremist rhetoric of the right. So now that the media have called for a new tone of civility, everyone is nice and polite, right? Not quite:

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Spike Lee said, “the United States of America is the most violent country in the history of civilization.”

Actually, the opposite is true. If the USA is not the least violent country in history, then it’s one of them. This country was founded on the principle of individual rights, which is the means of shielding people from violence from the state. The history of the world before America is the history of unchecked violence from church and state wreaked upon anyone who got in their way.

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The argument from the left that harsh political rhetoric led to the violence in Arizona has been so roundly rebuked that I expect the MSM to drop it and move on to their next campaign. Charles Krauthammer wrote a good piece disposing of this dishonest nonsense.

Michael Medved, with whom I often disagree, made an interesting observation on his show, that these smears are aimed at recapturing women voters to the Democrat side. They have not been appealing to strictly logical thinkers among either sex, but hoping to establish a vague emotional connection linking murderous violence to the right. Those who are swayed by feelings without subjecting them to reason will be fooled — but then, those people will always fall victim to demagoguery.

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Watch this interesting little film on the conformity of belief.

I think it gets at something profound and important: people’s beliefs conform to the group in which they are raised. The filmmaker notes the importance of speaking out if you hold a minority opinion and are surrounded by a majority in error.

The worst thing about public education might be the way it forges a conformity of opinion. Students go through 12 years of brainwashing in political correctness. The ideals of the New Left — egalitarianism, the welfare state, multiculturalism, environmentalism, moral relativism, etc. — are taught not as opinions or one side of the argument, but as the cultural norm to which students are expected to conform.

The antidote to the poison of conformist thinking is independent thinking. The more people are encouraged to look at reality and think and judge for themselves, the better. It’s a good idea to get young people reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, the most powerful portrait of the virtue of independence I have read.

Terry Savage, in a column on a lemonade stand encounter, argues that this experience “sum up what’s wrong with U.S.” I would suggest that she’s correct in her evaluation but dead wrong in the source of her consternation.

The children running the lemonade stand in question were giving away their product for free to all comers. Savage, flush with indignation, contradicts her companion’s statement that this represented the “spirit of giving”:

“No!” I exclaimed from the back seat. “That’s not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They’re giving away their parents’ things—the lemonade, cups, candy. It’s not theirs to give.”

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Morgan Freeman has made a truly insightful comment on racism.
He is absolutely correct.

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In my darker moments, when my view of the future dims at the latest “hell in a hand basket” news story, I worry about the sort of a world my children will grow up into. We strive to foster in them an abiding sense of curiosity and wonder about the world. We raise them as independent, ambitious little girls and boy. But all around us we see parents who coddle their children, turning them into wilting violets or, alternatively, domineering masters of their households. By all accounts, my kids should have an incredible advantage in whatever they choose to do with their lives. Knowing themselves and letting reality be their guide, the world should be open to whatever they dare to dream.

Then I read something like this story out of San Diego and I feel like I am setting them up for a life of strife, struggle, and obstacles. There will always be some petty bureaucrat or administrator who will try to stub out their spirit when they show some spark or initiative. This little boy, who committed a “crime” but without “criminal intent,” had to surrender his innocent science project to a bomb squad while he and his fellow students were first put in lockdown and then evacuated. I’m sure he won’t make that “mistake” again.

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Obama’s response to his Nobel Prize was the best thing I’ve heard from him. He recognizes that it was awarded too soon & reflects no serious achievement.  Though his speech changes nothing, & is surely politic, he has, at least, put his award in a relatively sensible context (excluding his absurd mention of climate change). Obama sees that he has not earned the prize by the principles Alfred Nobel defined.

In fact Obama sees that his prize only means that he stands for the hope of peace.

This view, of the Far Left Nobel Committee, is as appalling as it is unsurprising.  Does the Nobel Committee see Obama’s wishes as sufficient reason for his award?  Sure, Obama wants peace, but even he knows he has not succeeded in achieving what peace requires.  His wish for that achievement means nothing.

As the expression goes, “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride“.  Does the Nobel Committee hope to give Obama a horse, (more…)

Amy Mossoff at The Little Things has a post titled “These children are not my future” in which she links to a post at Scribbit. The ladies are fed up with teenagers going door to door selling stuff, mostly magazines, by appealing to the customer’s altruism. They pitch their need instead of their product which annoys a lot of people including me.

“I’m working my way through college, could you help me by purchasing…” is one I’ve heard a couple of times. I wanted to tell him that he can make more money at Burger King than soliciting D2D but I was so sure it was a scam that I just said “NO thanks” and closed the door. Others like “My class is trying to raise money for such and such so would you buy some of this (candy or whatever)? are getting more common. I want to step outside and say “Listen, if you want to make money then sell your product not your needs. You have to present your product as a value to the customer that will improve his life in some way. Never ever try to sell your product on the grounds that it will make the customer feel noble and virtuous.” Then again, I don’t think some of these kids would understand my words.

Who is telling these youngsters to sell like this? Their parents? School teachers? Does the promotional material for the product advocate this? Or are they just given a product and told ‘Here, go sell this’ without any guidance? Have they been so badly indoctrinated with altruism that they cannot comprehend the idea of appealing to some one’s self interest but must appeal to their guilt feelings? I’m not talking about elementary school kids on charitable fund raisers who really don’t understand the concepts of selling. I’m referring to teenagers who should know something about offering a value.

Anyway I recommend reading both posts at both sites.

Yes, he is in the twilight of life, but he is my father.  More importantly, for 61 years he has been my mother’s lifelong love.  They went through WW2, they immigrated to a Canadian farm from S. England.  Dad pursued several means of employment to provide a comfortable living while raising three boys.

On Monday, Aug 17th, he stumbled, fell, and broke his elbow.  An ambulance took him to the local hospital.  There the emergency doctor told Dad they could NOT set his arm.  He would have to be taken to a larger hospital (a half-hour’s drive), when there was an opening in the Orthopaedic Surgeon’s schedule.

Dad was to wait, in the local hospital’s bed, numb with morphine.  Imagine —uncertain days of pain, medicated fog and dysfunction, imposed upon you because Universal Health Care could not ‘fit you in’?  My mother lay awake, alone, for two nights, sharing his discomfort, and fearing his death, until that opening appeared on Wed Aug 19th.

An ambulance van drove Dad to the scheduled appointment with the Orthopod.   “We’re sorry, an emergency came up”.  The window of opportunity had closed.  At least Dad was now at the hospital where the Orthopod worked.

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ARCTV has a 2min. video by Yaron Brook on the subject of sacrifice vs trade. While this subject needs a lot more coverage in today’s culture, Mr. Brook as usual, nails the essentials.
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I know this is a few days old but I think it’s noteworthy anyway. The newest burden you will be asked to carry is provided by the Sec. of Commerce Gary Locke who says that Americans must be made to pay for some of the carbon emissions of–the Chinese! Read the WSJ blog article here. You see, the Chinese factories are making lots of inexpensive products that make our lives better, so we are the cause of their CO2 emissions.
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An alert relative sent to me a link to this story. Evidently, Nashville Tenn. is experiencing new record lows for July. They didn’t mention his name but Al Gore lives in the Nashville area. Love it.

In Podcast 71 Leonard Peikoff briefly discusses his upcoming book on the DIM Hypothesis. From the explanation of his lecture series on DIM:

Dr. Peikoff’s forthcoming book, The DIM Hypothesis, identifies three different modes of integration, i.e., of interrelating concretes, such as individual percepts, facts, choices, etc. As Dr. Peikoff explains: “My thesis is that the dominant trends in every key area can be defined by their leaders’ policy toward integration. They are against it (Disintegration, D); they are for it, if it conforms to reality (Integration, I); they are for it, if it conforms to a superior reality (Misintegration, M).” The book demonstrates the power of these three modes in shaping Western culture and history.

The book looks to be a bombshell. In his podcast Dr. Peikoff says it explains how religion is “the root of all evil from the beginning.”

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ARCTV has posted John Ridpath’s speech on Patrick Henry in honor of Independence Day. I recommend it highly. The speech is entertaining and, more important, it reminds us that the American Revolutionaries stood on the principle of individual liberty. There were timid souls back then, moderates, as there always are. It took a a man of integrity and oratorical genius to steel their resolve. Henry persuaded people that there could be no compromise, that war was the only proper course of action.

I could write a paean to America today. I could discuss the exceptional nature of the United States in a world fraught with tyranny and force or lament the unheeded wisdom of the Founding Fathers in this trying time. Those are the things that politicians around the country will be doing today, co-opting the occasion in the verbal equivalent of a flag lapel pin.

But I won’t. To me, the Fourth of July is like Valentine’s Day or New Year’s Day: a day when everyone celebrates something they should be doing year-round but aren’t. Reserving your energies and efforts to honor your values for a single day every year is actually a moral travesty. America is the greatest nation on earth and has been since its inception 233 years ago.

We here at The New Clarion love America. And we show that love (almost) daily when we chronicle and expose the distance we as a nation have strayed from where we ought to be. It is right and just to be patriotic for the United States and there’s no reason to limit it to just one day a year.