Unborrowed Vision

I read an excellent piece in the Washington Post recently that put into print exactly what I had been thinking for months. The piece is called Why We’re Gloomier Than the Economy, and its by Neil Irwin. Check it out, and smile a little!

You can’t have your cake and eat it too, it is said. Apparently, no one ever told John McCain this particular pearl.

Ever since clinching the nomination, McCain has been hit by Democrats with allegations that his presidency would be nothing more than “Bush’s third term,” labeling him John McSame, and challenging people to find differences between the policies of the two Republicans. Looking only at the George Bush’s abysmal approval rating, McCain has spent a large portion of his time distancing himself from the President.

But in doing so, McCain is only digging himself into a hole. Infamously, Governor Mark Sanford was unable to show any significant differences between the economic polices of George Bush and John McCain.

Here’s what people are missing with this video: like it or not, George Bush has had some solid economic policies, especially in the areas of tax cuts and free trade. But they haven’t worked, you say. The economy is terrible, you say. You’re wrong. The economy is bad, but its not terrible– we’ve been much worse off. Take the Carter administration for example.

But the economy is declining, and thats because Bush has been far-from-perfect economically. Look, for example, at his federal spending record:

In February, Bush sent a 3.1 trillion dollar budget to congress: hardly conservative. Just yesterday, Bush authorized a bill that will send $48 billion American taxpayers’ dollars to Africa for AIDS relief. Over all, Bush has shown an utter reluctance to veto anything, much less spending, during his administration, which has made for an out of control federal deficit.

George W. Bush is proof that tax cuts alone are not enough– without tandem cuts in spending, they hurt, rather than help the economy. John McCain has stated this problem explicitly, and he says he will be fixing Bush’s error here.

This is the single, most important difference between Bush and McCain: and McCain never mentions it. Why does he think the American public is so dumb? We can understand that just because the two men have similarities, they aren’t the same; we aren’t two-year-olds. He’s gotten so wrapped up in distancing himself from the President that he’s become reluctant to defend what works, and as a result he’s drifting further and further left. Is it so hard to say: “Yes, George Bush supported it, but it is right.”?

John McCain is supposedly Mr. Straight Talk; so why can’t he look into a camera and tell me: “Look, George Bush and I have a lot in common, but in the places where we differ, it makes all the difference.” Now thats some straight talk I can get used to.

Here’s the bottom line: McCain and Bush are similar, very much so, but their similarities are good.  But McCain is obsessed with being a non-conformist, and in his attempt to distance himself from the President, he has ended up downplaying his strengths and playing up his weaknesses. Way to go, maverick.

Unions have been a blight on the American economy for over a century, stunting the productivity of the individual man, swallowing him in the dark blanket of collectivism. In recent years, the effect of unionization has been shown to have the worst outcome in the field of education. Unions stifle the development of children by bogging down taxpayers funds with money for expensive healthcare for union teachers– as well as other bits of nonsense. In Grand Rapids Michigan, one group, the Education Action Group, has stood up to the bullying tactics of Union bosses and employees; check out their video below explaining their fight.

During his world tour this week, Senator Barack Obama has been up to all sorts of trouble. Before heading to Germany to deliver a speech at Victory Square, he stopped at the Wailing Wall, where he took the opportunity to turn the holiest site in Jerusalem into a crass campaign stop, where he paused to look contemplative and to meet with rabbis– in front of a horde of media hounds which he brought along with him for the “event.” God was not amused.

Apparently, some of the local yokels in Jerusalem weren’t too happy either; one man shouted, “Obama, Jerusalem is not for sale!” as he passed by the myriad of campaign posters and literature that had been set up around the sacred West Wall prior to the Obamessiah’s momentous visit (source). It isn’t hard for me to believe that Obama would pull something like this– after all, in his eyes, God answers to him.

Later on, in Berlin, Senator Obama forgot (once again) that he isn’t JFK, as he delivered a speech in which he spoke of nothing but vague bromides and empty platitudes, to 200,000 screaming fans who have no idea who he is or what he stands for. Throughout the speech, Obama made veiled references to “tearing down walls,” invoking the memory of president Reagan’s memorable “tear down this wall” speech. If you’d like to hear the real thing, follow this link; if you’ve never heard it, its definitely worth a listen. You’ll get a chance to hear a real American president speak in Berlin.

When I was watching the video of Obama’s speech, I couldn’t help notice that throughout the oration, the junior Senator would occasionally pause and giggle a little. I can’t say I know what he was thinking in those moments, but I definitely have a guess: he was probably thinking how hilarious it was that he could get away with so much presumptuousness, having so little experience, and only his charm to back him up.

Drudge is reporting this afternoon that the New York Times editorial staff has rejected an op-ed written by John McCain. An instance of clear media bias, the piece was written in response to Obama’s editorial, “My Plan for Iraq.” In a small attempt to thwart the disgusting incompetence and slanted journalism of the NYT, I have posted McCain’s full editorial, released by the campaign to CNN, below. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City, actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war– only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

I’m currently hanging around the Defending the American Dream Summit in Austin, Texas; I’ve been passing the time talking to a cute LP spokeswoman and checking out some of the other booths. It seems that there’s a lot of support for John McCain around here– that’s a bandwagon I cannot in good conscience jump on.

Don’t be deceived by the man’s hawkish patriotic stump speeches, he’s a liberal; there have been plenty of militaristic liberals in recent history (Castro, Mao, Stalin), so I don’t understand why this throws people off so much.

McCain-Feingold and McCain-Kennedy are two of the most leftist legislative moves that I can think of off the top of my head. Indeed, McCain is to the left of most Democrats on immigration and campaign finance reform. Not to mention his shameful stance on gun rights and welfare. The man is simply not a conservative. Its pitiful that we have him as our smaller-government alternative to Barack Obama.

Both these two men are Marxists; one of them is pretending not to be. Anybody who believes in public education is a Marxist; anyone who supports the existence of the IRS to any extent is a Marxist; anyone who supports the existence of the Federal Communications Commission, the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, etc. is a Marxist. Anyone who believes that the roads should be publicly owned is a Marxist. Period.

I cannot bring myself to support John McCain.

The war in Iraq– the unfortunate war, as I like to call it, has been going on for 5 years. It is now necessary to ask: Why are we there? What is the duty of the United States’ military in Iraq?

Months ago, when leaders of the 25th Infantry Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team returned home from Iraq, they did so seeking advice. But not military advice. Not advice on how to gain the respect of their troops; not advice on how to better prepare their men for the horrors of combat. No, they wanted the counsel of the mayor of Honolulu, Mufi Hannemann, on how to manage a large municipality. Why would US military officers, whose only charge is to defeat an enemy and protect American lives, need advice on how to run a municipality?

Because the brigade, according to Lt. Col. J.B. Vowell, the deputy commander, will be helping the Iraqi government build new infrastructure for the Iraqi people. Bridges, electricity, sewage centers, water pumps, all free labor for Iraq, courtesy of the US military.

The men and women fighting in Iraq have their hands tied, unable to respond with force if attacked by a civilian. If a man throws a molotov cocktail at US troops, they are not allowed to engage their enemy. Why? Why are we doing this? Because our government’s policy towards Iraq has been consistently altruistic.

As George Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address, “We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the liberty of strangers.” In other words, we are not masters, we are slaves. George Bush’s foreign policy calls on young Americans to spill their blood, not for the sake of American security, but for the security of those who hate us, who would see us dead.

If we’re going to be in a war in the Mideast, we need to be fighting our enemy, not building their sewers; no responsibility to the enemy or to the Iraqi people. Our government has no place spending billions of American taxpayers dollars to a largely anti-western people who hate us. This needs to end. America needs to take its gloves off.

Fight the war. Crush the enemy. Leave.

Since starting this blog, I’ve blogged about environmentalism a little more than I’d like to.

There are other issues out there; issues that are more pressing, that affect our country and our world much more directly– like Iran’s nuclear program, or the fact that they’ve been launching test missiles capable of striking Israel. But so often I choose to write about the Environmentalist Movement over other things for a very specific reason, which is:

The choice to accept environmentalism or not is the choice between industry and inactivity, civilization and primitivism, comfortability and suffering; it is the choice between life and death. Many may disagree with this claim, citing the good intentions of the environmentalists: taking care of the earth couldn’t be bad, could it? After all, not all environmentalists are nut jobs like Eric Pianka, a noted ecologist who wants to kill off 90% of human life; most are in fact quite moderate, and simply believe that humans have a responsibility to look after the earth.

Such people are not evil, but they are misguided. They accept the two basic premises of environmentalism: that the environment is good because it is the environment, and that the smallest human interference in the natural ecological structure is a desirable goal. The logical conclusion of these premises, of course, is that human activity must be restricted as much as possible in order to prevent such interference. If you accept these premises, chances are good that you would not be in favor of a mass culling of the human population. The danger is that men like Pianka also accept them, and they desire to see their logical ends carried out. Since you’ve already accepted their premises, they can use the power of guilt to get you to accept a gradually more oppressive environmental policy. Case in point:

Yesterday, the leaders at the G8 Summit agreed to cut their countries’ carbon emissions by 50% by 2050, a radically anti-industrial move that will dismember the economy and stunt the standard of living for the global population. No one can claim that such an act was motivated by anything other than a hatred for mankind. Last week, a measure was put up for conideration in the British Parliament that would institute a personal cap-and-trade policy for every resident of England. Was this act considered because its proponents love the earth, or because they hate humanity? You be the judge.

With the basic premises of environmentalism so common today, it won’t be long before such cap-and-trade proposals are made in the United States. Do you really believe that such a measure would be beyond the scope of a Barack Obama environmental policy? Maybe not now, but what about four years from now? This is why the environmentalism issue is so important to me.

But there is another reason I frequently choose environmentalism over other topics. Throughout history, the war against man’s productive faculty has been waged under the banner of countless different names and movements; tribalism, monarchism, feudalism– more recently communism, socialism, and fascism– and of course, there’s always been the monstrosity that is organized religion. All of these have been a part of an overarching war on Individualism and a hatred of humanity; environmentalism is no exception here– it is merely the newest leader in the same war, the latest manifestation of the same hatred. However, environmentalism is different from its ideological ancestors in one, very important way.

In the past, movements that sought to destroy humanity (the modern ones anyway) have disguised their hatred for man’s virtues, proclaiming them to be the immoral while holding up their own standards as the moral alternative. With the broad base of society accepting altruism, their unpracticeable moral code, they guilted people into embracing their own self-destruction in the name of the love of mankind. Environmentalism is different because it makes no attempt to disguise its contempt for humanity.

Now, I won’t run through my whole spiel on environmentalism again because I’ve already blogged on it and have stated my opposition to it in as clear terms as I can, both here and in other places. But I will say this:

Barack Obama supporters are starting to creep me out in a serious way. You know the ones; chanting his name, crying during his speeches, fainting during his speeches, screaming “I love you!” as he passes.

Jesse Jackson, Jr. had this to say about Obama’s Nomination clinch:

“I cried all night. I’m going to be crying for the next four years,” he said. “What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation’s political history. … The event itself is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance.” (italics mine)

Michael Morse, a teen columnist for TeenLink, a newspaper aimed at young people in South Florida, went to an Obama rally and shared his experience:

The crowd immediately ceased the roar when Obama approached the mic, eager to hear whatever the man has to say… I can’t believe the man whose speeches I watch on YouTube everyday is so close to me. His speeches give an aura of immortality that belies the fact that he’s a living breathing human.

Its very upsetting to hear this kind of thing from someone my age; it bears a frightening similarity to Hitler’s level of popularity in Nazi Germany, where he was elevated to a sort of demi-god status. This is especially concerning, considering Obama’s support for compulsory national service for American high-school, middle-school and college-age students, which is (if you accept my earlier analogy) more than a little similar the imfamous Hitler Youth, Hitler’s version of compulsory national service.

Obama’s supporters seem to have forgotten that Barack Obama is just a man– and less than a man, hes just a politician. Worse still, he isn’t even a good politician. Its been said over and over again, but Obama is all fluff and no substance. One struggles to find anything material on his webpage, aside from one, large PDF ominously titled, “THE BLUEPRINT FOR CHANGE” (caps his, not mine).

Time columnist Joe Klein knows what I’m talking about:

Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.

Have you seen Obama’s website? Its creepy! On the main part of the site there’s a Kids for Obama page, where kids are given 10 ways in which they can get involved, encouraging children to host Obama-themed sleepovers and parties, to get a pen pal to talk to about Obama, among other things. If you sign up, you can set up your own little facebook right there on his homepage, give all your information, and join other Obamunists to celebrate his birthday, hold Obama-themed spa parties, book clubs, and any other kind of get-together you could think of– all in Obama’s holy name.

Worst of all, though, is Camp Obama, a four day training camp paid for by the Obama campaign, which teaches Obama supporters to learn more about how Barack Obama is a great and wise leader.

Hitler and Barack Obama have too much in common for me to not feel uneasy going into election season. Gun control, socialized healthcare, compulsory national service, an anti-market economic position, all on top of a creepy, cult-like leader worship by supporters. Thats five too many similarities.