The Savage Republican

Flat Earth, Round Earth.

I was talking to a very good friend this weekend and of course our talk ventured into politics. We are very like minded, but what's interesting is that in high school he was four hours away from going to Chicago in 1968 to protest at the Democratic Convention. And now, well, reminds me of the Churchillian quote about heart and brains, youth and maturity.
We talk often, and usually we are quite close in our feelings and outlook. But, he and I are also clear that there is no dialogue with the anti-liberty,collectivist, socialist left. Their worldview is that the government is the answer to everything. That the solution to all the problems visited upon us by ourselves (which usually is a response to another intrusive government program) or problems visited upon us by the government is ANOTHER government program.
Well, the truth is that they see the earth as flat. We see it as round. And therefore there is no common ground. Their worldview is diametrically opposed to ours. And all the reason, logic, history, truth is useless in arguing with these people. They have to have a "living" Constitution to be able to pull off their programs based upon their worldview. "You can not reason a man out of a position that he didn't reason himself into in the first place." -Jonathon Swift
Dr. Thomas Sowell has written a superb tome on these elitists called "The Vision of the Anointed-Self Congratulation as A Basis for Social Policy".
A brief review:

Sowell analyzes these "anointed" people and finds that they have several characteristics in common:

They are absolutely convinced of the righteousness of their views and policies even when mountains of empirical evidence point to the contrary.
Instead of attempting to understand opposing views (much less debate them), they use verbal sleight-of-hand to evade such views - and even try to denigrate and publicly discredit those who espouse them.
They have a tendency of hiding behind their "good intentions" when the policies put in place based on their vision blow up in their faces, asserting that things would have been "even worse" were it not for their "vision."
They view certain aspects of reality that do not conform to their vision as "problems" or even "crises" in need of "solutions," as opposed to systemic processes involving normal human interactions and economic trade-offs.
In explaining the rise of black single-parent homes since the 1960s, they refer to concepts such as "income distribution," crime, and the "legacy of slavery" in ways that fit ever-so-neatly with their vision, no matter what history, the real world, and opposing views say.

(The above is from http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/sowell3.html )
Compare what the anointed see the role of government as being as compared to what Bastiat wrote in the "The Law" ( http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html ) and you'll see that the left is flat earth, we are round earth.
As Dennis Prager said a few weeks back, the left sees the government as the instrument to ensure that life is fair and that outcomes are equal. We see the government is supposed to ensure liberty and justice.
Flat earth, round earth.

Where citizens fear the government....

There is a great quote from Jefferson "Where government fears the citizens, there is liberty. Where citizens fear the government, there is tyranny."
And, so now, we have the height of arrogance from those fine folks in Connecticut who stole land to give to someone else:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45851
Reminds me of the Chinese government that sends to the family of an executed citizen a bill for 35 cents for the cost of the 9mm bullet used for the execution.
Time to reset the trip odometer. Back to Concord Bridge!

If I were allowed to have my say

Tomorrow morning I, along with many other party activists, will be attending a Leadership Summit for the Minnesota Republican Party. Given what has happened in the last 10 months, I have several words that I would like to give to the Party Leadership. Since this is appearing to be a tightly controlled meeting, it is doubtful that I will get the opportunity to speak. HOWEVER if it were to happen, this is what I would like to say to the Governor and to Party Chairman...

Chairman Carey, Congressional District officers, BPOU Chairs and Deputy Chairs and fellow State Executive Committee members.

I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this morning. I have asked for this opportunity to address you on 2 issues. Both have to do with the state of the base. During last year’s campaign, I talked to numerous voters in our base who were sick to death of all of the voter/issue ID calls – calls from the State Party, the Bush Campaign and the RNC.

Then we had this last legislative special session. While I understand the need for the Governor to bargain and that in bargaining, we need to give up some ground, I do not understand the Governor’s insistence that this new cigarette tax is a “health impact fee”. Refusing to call this new tax anything except tax is ludicrous. This Clintonesque parsing of words ranks right up there with debating what the definition of “is” is (as took place during the Clinton Impeachment trials). Everyone in the state, from cigarette sellers, to smokers, to Minneapolis Star Tribune, to the DFL is calling this tax a tax. The Governor needs to get with reality and call a tax a tax and then he needs to come make amends with the base. His refusal (so far) to do so is angering the activist base all the more.

This same disgruntled activist base is now being “hit up” by the state party with fundraising calls. The only way that an angry base knows how to get the Party leadership’s attention, is to withhold funding. Having your fundraising callers argue with the fed up base who is not contributing (as happened on a fundraising call to MY house) makes them all the angrier.

My point here is this is, the base is upset. Ignoring why the base is upset endangers any possible gains we hope to make in 2006. For an ignored base will, come Election Day, elect to stay away from the polls.

I see I am not the only curious one

Dementee over at The Kool Aid Report (ok I allow myself some guilty pleasures and KAR is one of them - I'm a sucker for satire) reports here that Ms Rowley was asked some of the very same questions this morning on AM1500 KSTP that I raised in my previous post.

Colleen Rowley for Congress
The former FBI agent, Time co-person of the year and, seeker of anonymity, was on Rosenbaum and O’Connell today on KSTP-AM 1500. A caller asked a three part question:Do you agree with Cindy Sheehan that President Bush is the world’s biggest terrorist?Do you agree with her statement the Israel should get out of Palestine?Do you agree that it was an Israeli cabal that got the US into Iraq?The response to each began with, “I wouldn’t choose those words…”

You really should go to KAR to read the rest of the story. It is howlingly biting and wickedly truthful.

The pending CD2 race

A lot has been said (in recent weeks) about the sad story of Cindy Sheehan and the direction that her grief has taken her. I am not going to add to this. Instead, I am going to write about the decision that Colleen Rowley (FBI whistleblower and CD 2 DFL candidate) made to call up another Gold Star Mother (DFL State Senator Becky Lowry a woman that she had never met before) and said "Let's go to Crawford to support Cindy Sheehan". Ms. Rowley is running against incumbent Congressman (and REAL war hero) John Kline.

I have some questions for Ms. Rowley that I would like her to answer, if she wants to be my representative. You say you are going to Crawford to support Ms. Sheehan, does that mean that you support Ms. Sheehan when she says "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for."? Do you support Ms. Sheehan when she says that George W. Bush "killed" her son? Do you agree with her characterizing convicted terrorist lawyer Lynne Smith as "my Atticus Finch"? Do you agree with her saying that the sitting President should be impeached for "war crimes"?

Think carefully about your answers Ms. Crowley. The 2nd Congressional District is a fairly red district and your answers could make a big difference in what your chances for getting elected in 2006 are.

A picture and a thousand words

Now, don't we ALL feel so much safer with TSA on the job?
From the article http://businessreform.com/article.php?articleID=11440&ofid=81

Making a mountain out of a molehill?

Jed Babbin is filling in for Hugh Hewitt this evening. He spent quite a bit of time talking about this story filed by the AP this afternoon. Jed was making a big deal out of this story, saying that implies that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts may be racist based on the town he "grew up in". A caller to the program said that he re-read the story 3 times while waiting to talk to Jed and thought that Jed was crazy. I went back and re-read the story myself, for I got some of the same things (as Mr. Babbin did) out of the story myself. I will let you, dear readers decide for yourself.

"Like many towns across America, the exclusive lakefront community where Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. grew up during the racially turbulent 1960s and '70s once banned the sale of homes to nonwhites and Jews. "

That is the beginning of the story. The article continues:

"Just three miles from the nearly all-white community of Long Beach, two days of looting and vandalism erupted when Roberts was 15, barely intruding on the Mayberry-like community that was largely insulated from the racial strife of that era."

Mayberry like community????? I grew up in the Chicago area and this part of Indiana is hardly rural South Carolina.

"It was here that the 50-year-old Roberts lived from elementary school until he went away to Harvard in 1973, and that decade — as well as the rest of his life — is receiving intense scrutiny as the Senate gears up for its Sept. 6 confirmation hearings on President Bush' s first Supreme Court nominee.

Roberts' criticism of racial "quotas" in some documents from his work as a White House lawyer has alarmed civil rights groups and some Democrats, who say he may be a partisan for conservative causes. Other memos from his time in the Reagan Justice Department portray an attorney who urged his bosses to restrict affirmative action and Title IX sex discrimination lawsuits.

It is hard to know how much Roberts' upbringing in this northern Indiana community on the shores of Lake Michigan influenced his views. Some say the fact that there were riots and restrictions on home ownership is not relevant at all."

OK - this is where (I think) Mr. Babbin is getting his inference. I understand that a parent can (and does) have influence on a young person, but that does not mean that they stay that way. For example, your humble writer. My family used to joke about Norman Lear having a camera in our home. Why you may ask? My father WAS Archie Bunker! Given that he grew up as a Mexican in Colorado and faced some pretty nasty discrimination of his own, that puzzled me growing up. Now does that mean that I am equally racist or does that mean my father is still Archie Bunker like? No and no! In my case, I could not see the logic of my father's position, so I rejected it. In his case, he finally realized that his actions were not right as well.

"The family purchased land a few blocks from the beach in 1966 and built an unassuming tri-level house. The Roberts property did not include a racially restrictive covenant, according to LaPorte County deed records, and the restrictions had begun fading away by then.
Other homes built decades earlier in the town had covenants. Deeds on file from the 1940s in Long Beach ban the sale or lease of houses to "any person who is not a Caucasian gentile."
The covenants date to the community's early days in the 1920s as a summer getaway for Chicagoans.
"Every time you would go to an area you would find there were restrictions against a certain type," said Phyllis Waters, who moved to Long Beach in 1958 and bought Century 21 Long Beach Real Estate in 1967. "What they didn't like, they'd restrict."
Fern Eddy Schultz, the county historian, said the covenants were common for property near Lake Michigan. "They didn't want particular people to have homes around the lake areas," Schultz said.
Covenants have gotten attention in the past. President Bush purchased a house in 1988 in Dallas with a covenant restricting blacks from buying the property. His staff said Bush was unaware of the deed restriction, which was void under Texas law, when he purchased the home.
In Long Beach, nearly all residents were white when Roberts was growing up, a makeup that has changed little in four decades. Today, nearly 98 percent of the town's 1,500 residents are white."

OK - shall we talk about the covenant restrictions at Hyannis Port????? What is the racial make-up of Hyannis Port? Just to name one....

The article goes on further, but what I posted above is the jist of the story. Please follow the link, read the whole story and decide for yourself. Is the AP trying to infer that John Roberts is a racist based on where he was raised, and isn't that a racist assumption in and of itself????

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Saturday, August 20, 2005