Wrestling with God?

February 5, 2012 Leave a comment

Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011. God rest his free will.

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Out of fear of creating a post too long and drawn out (as it turned out to be) and one that no one may read I will try and summarize as best I can my take on the video posted below. Please view the video first. (You will need several cups of coffee.  Hold the scotch.)

*****

As you will see and hear in the video, Christopher Hitchens’ (Hitch) arguments for atheism (or against theism), after many dead-end asides, were centered on his aversion to having anyone telling anyone what to do.  His followers readily know that over the years Hitch has repeatedly taken umbrage on paper or in one-upmanship debates against totalitarianism and against any authoritarian person or religion having a say in his life or in the lives of others. For the record, William Lane Craig (marker 13:59) noted that Hitch despised and hated religion.

Hitch was certainly OK, though, with authoritarian imposition upon others if he felt the cause justified removing other authoritarian figures from the lives of those he thought were oppressed.  He, to the horror of the liberal elitists, aligned himself philosophically with G.W. Bush regarding the Iraq war and the war on terror against radical Islamists.

In the February 2012 issue of Vanity Fair, Salman Rushdie penned In Memoriam, Christopher Hitchens: 1949-2011. Rushdie wrote about Hitch’s return to the left:

“Paradoxically, it was God who saved Christopher Hitchens from the right. Nobody who detested God as viscerally, intelligently, originally, and comically as C. Hitchens could stay in the pocket of god-bothered American conservatism for long.  When he bared his fangs and went for God’s jugular, just as he had previously fanged Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa, and Bill Clinton, the resulting book, God is not great, carried Hitch away from the American right and back toward his natural, liberal, ungodly constituency.”

As a way of life Hitch sought to stand juxtaposed to the universal rule of law (his own conscience) in an antinomian position while at the same time declaring moral diatribes against religious and political authorities he considered too over arching in their imposition. He also liked to keep his conscience well inebriated and his roving moralist eye ever looking elsewhere ~ looking outside and not within ~ denial and pretense being typical liberal traits.

With atheistic cowardice and hubris, Hitch attacked Mother Teresa, a little old lady. He apparently wanted to feed his prurient desire to neutralize any authority figure (overt or implied) by trying to bring her down several notches in people’s eyes.  Why? He claimed she was pushing her authoritarian teachings onto the helpless. He accused her of hypocrisy in her dealings (an easy, self-serving claim for an atheist to make against any Christian). He may have felt threatened by her devotion to an unseen God and her ability to make things happen for others and doing so as a little old lady.

Why would a grown man verbally attack a helpless woman who indeed went about helping others who themselves were under the totalitarianism of poverty and squalor?  Maybe Hitch thought she wasn’t helpless. Maybe it was a direct attack against God. It certainly was an act of unmatched intelligential cowardice. To be sure Mother Teresa fought the unseen authorities of this world (the “powers of darkness”) by physically helping the outcast, the hungry and the hurting with an agape-powered love and not verbal hubris.

Hitch, on the other hand, fought the very public “seen” authorities of this world by aligning rhetorically with causes which he felt were important for him. He should have noted that he and Mother Teresa were fighting the same issue ~ human suffering at the hands of others (whether a dictator or a false religion) -from two different sides. Yet, he chose to denigrate Mother Teresa. I believe he did this because he felt threatened by her belief in the unseen God.

Hitch postures that Christians, especially Christian missionaries like Mother Teresa, are hypocrites who say things they know to be true and good but live disconnected lives apart from such truth – their deeds not matching match their words. This argument (?) against God was replayed in his use the La Rochefoucauld quote “hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue.” Yet, this hypocrisy argument folds in on itself if one were to hold any moral standard at all. Perhaps Hitch, a polymath, saw moral laws as “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.” (The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe)

Clearly Hitch’s excessive lifestyle (his immoderate drinking, smoking, etc. have been noted elsewhere) made his salacious attacks against God all the more the more forthcoming and lubricious.  His lifestyle had also proved his belief in nihilism – life is nothing if not suffering. So he apparently used a “get it while you can” justification to medicate the blows between verbal jousting contests.

His liquid lifestyle also spoke to the fact of Hitch’s drive for “freedom” from any limitation imposed on his person including by his own person – his physiology. He chose against himself again and again.  He did this while throwing the world a bone now and then, choosing willy-nilly causes to deflect away any personal soul-searching which might lead to accountability to any higher authority. (see marker 25: 5, If god does not exist then objective moral standards don’t exist – a self-satisfying argument.)

Hitch detested dictatorships of all kinds and he did so while as a potentate of his own world. He would not bend the knee to anyone or to anything.  He would fight, as Salmon Rushdie recalled in the same Vanity Fair article remembering his friend, for anyone who was made to do so.  Hitch’s rebellion was against dictatorial authority of any kind and not just in the political and religious realm.  And he certainly rebelled against authority stated as codified truth – the Bible and the recorded history of the resurrection of Jesus.  His moral relativism, stated above, is characteristic of most atheists (and the “ungodly constituency”) since they affirm that no moral standard exists outside one’s self.

In the video Hitch asks the universal question posed to theism:  why would a God who was all powerful and good allow suffering?  My answer:  suffering comes out of created man’s free-will choices in a fallen world. God has allowed it for a time but not forever. Justice will be meted out and suffering will end.

He continues his disbelief:  “Why would God spend eons of time in creating a world that he could set up in a blink of an eye?” He went on to say that Christians are now co-opting evolution theory in accordance with the Creation argument, evolution being a position long held by atheists.  He “christens” this “tactic” or “style” of argument as “retrospective evidentialism” or as a “second thought.” (marker 37:40)

As a Christian theist I see no conflict whatsoever with science and creation.  I believe in theistic evolution-a finely tuned theistic universe, a personal cause of the universe and a theistic objective morality. As scientific evidence becomes available it should be used and not discarded.  Beyond scientific proofs, my own belief in God is vindicated every day because I, a rational human being, know that God exists. I continue to pursue Him actively and I submit to His authority. Hitch, on the other hand, fled from any such authority outside of himself and employed his own existentialist belief system where he felt safe from intrusion.

Also in the video, Hitch uses the Creationist argument of a literal seven days to say that we as Christians are basically lunatics to believe such things. Again, I see no conflict with a Creationist’s position of a literal seven days and the theory of relativity which could make thousands of millennia appear as seven literal days.

Hitch takes another jab at Christian theism by invoking his own god-like view point when questioning why God would do what Christian theists believe He did. He balks (and I’ll paraphrase):  “…the eons of time that God has created-evolved ~ that all of this fine tuning, mass extinction and randomness is the will of a Creator God (marker 40:21) and that all of this happened so that one very imperfect race of evolved primates might become Christian ~ all of this was “with us in view” is a curious kind of solipsism, a curious kind of self-centeredness.”  Hitch jests that he thought Christians were modest and humble, not self-centered with certain arrogance to the assumption that this “was all about us.” And, “The tremendous wastefulness of it, the tremendous cruelty of it, the tremendous caprice of it, the tremendous tinkering and incompetence of it, never mind at lease we’re here and we can be people of faith.” This projection from one who, with a free will, spoke from a self-centered and solipsistic core!

The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Creator, was always meant to bypass the wise of this earth: “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say, “He traps the wise in the snare of their own cleverness.”” (Apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church).   A priori rebellion coded as cleverness is found in the Mitochondrial DNA of man.

Apart from free-wheeling self-directed solipsism, there is a bounty of sound arguments for theism and William Lane Craig (WLC) highlights them artfully:  “No good argument that atheism is true, there are good arguments that theism is true ~ not via social questions or ethics (marker 16:00).

WLC philosophical arguments in quick notation:

Cosmological argument:  things exist, not nothing; the universe began to exist not infinite, not eternal ~ Big Bang Beginning, ex-nihilo, a cause by an UnCause beyond space and time;  David Hillburg ~ The infinite;  there must be a cause of creation. This Being must be uncaused, timeless, space unfathomable & personal and not abstract thought or object; The universe has begun to exist and is not infinite, not eternal (astrophysics concur); Past event are real, there must be Personal creator of the universe, transcendent intelligent mind

Teological argument:  (marker 20:00) finely tuned universe ~ mathematically constants (e.g., gravity) not determined by the laws of nature & the arbitrary conditions (entropy, balance between matter and antimatter); any change in these would be the end of life itself (the atomic weak force being altered)

Chance?  Odds are incomprehensibly great, life prohibiting universes are more probable

It follows logically by Design ~ intelligent argument, intelligent designer

Moral argument (marker 25: 15):  if god does not exist then objective moral standards don’t exist; if God exists then valid and binding; the morality that has emerged proves that god exists ~ via moral experience; we understand that there are things that are really wrong.

Historical fact (marker 27:40):  The resurrection of Jesus a historical fact not just a belief;  tomb discovered empty eyewitnesses;  individuals and groups saw Jesus, appearances to believers and unbelievers;  the original disciples believed in the resurrection and Jewish religion believed otherwise about when resurrection occurs; Christian die for the truth of the resurrection (marker 30:26)

Experiential knowledge:  The experience of God or claim to know that God exists – properly basic beliefs part of a system of beliefs including the belief of an external world;   Context of physical objects; grounded in our experience of God; God immediate reality

Hitch responds (marker 33:16):  arguments the same across religions ~ belief in God but differences; presuppositionalists (by faith) and the evidentialists a distinction without a difference.

As you will note Hitch’s arguments are all basically dismissive of Christian belief and are not evidentiary in favor of atheism; note his “rather sweet” dismissal of those who believe ~ that those of faith should have evidence.  (Hitch once again conveniently dismisses the facts of the resurrection and the improbability of causation by chance.)

Hitch: “We argue that is no plausible or convincing reason, certainly no evidential one to believe that there is such an entity…all observable phenomena is explicable (marker 42:00); I don’t believe that following the appropriate rituals…

“Even if this deity did exit it doesn’t prove that he cared about us…cared who we had sex with …care whether we lived or died… (marker 42:32)

“Miracles suspend the natural order ~ Christians want it both ways (“promiscuous”) (marker 44:00); The natural order – “It is miraculous without a doubt”

“I have to say that I appear as a skeptic, I doubt these things.” (marker 46:16)

“The theist says it must be true…”Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”;

“Too early in the study of biology…to make these claims.”

Perhaps Hitch, the verbal grappler, was as a sound and fury professional wrestler who was successfully agile at avoiding a real match-up with Truth. But now, the fight has ended, the match is over. All that’s left in the empty corner is a book ~  God is Not Great.   His last words?

Filed under Christianity, Creationism, essay, Human Interest, Life As I See It, Non-fiction, Short Piece, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Minimum Wage Or The Price We Pay For Stupid

February 4, 2012 Leave a comment

I have noticed a definite pattern emerging ever since before the 2008 election of BHO:  many voters have given up thinking and have decided to vote for the popular shills of humanism, otherwise known as the educated elite.

 BHO, the POTUS, is surrounded by Harvard grads, each of whom has been steeped in liberal mores taught by educators who have risen to the level of their incompetence (the Peter Principle).  I like what Tomas Sowell, economist, said about these professors:

 “Too often what are called “educated” people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings.  Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years.”[1]

And, Walter E. Williams:

“People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What’s more, they believe they’ve been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existed has had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others.”

In my estimation the American voter, though often degreed, has become less educated and intellectually apathetic. This voter has become a stage-one thinker – someone who finds some humanist value in a policy, votes for the person promoting it and doesn’t want to think any further about it, believing that they have done their good deed for the day.  Yet, the policy does not operate in isolation and, typically, havoc and damage control ensues when the policy is implemented. Our nation is left ever more crippled.  The Minimum Wage Law (MWL) is one prime example of this stage one thinking implemented and voted for by people who let others do their thinking.

Thomas Sowell in his excellent book the Thomas Sowell Reader, a compendium of his many newspaper articles and essays, wrote an article titled Minimum Wage Laws. Here are some of his thoughts from that article to ponder deeply before the next election:

 “By the simplest and most basic economics, a price artificially raised tends to cause more to be supplied and less to be demanded than when process are left to be determined by supply and demand in a free market.”[2]

 “The unemployed are made idle by wage rates artificially set above the level of their productivity.  Those who are idled in their youth are of course delayed in acquiring the job skills and experience which could make them more productive – therefore higher earner – later on.”[3]

 “Although most industrial societies have minimum wage laws, not all do.  Switzerland and Hong Kong have been among the exceptions – and both have had very low unemployment rates.”[4]

 “Higher costs for a given quantity and quality of labor tend to produce less employment, just as higher prices for other things tend to produce fewer sales. Moreover, higher costs in the form of mandated benefits have the same economic effect as higher costs in the form of minimum wage laws.  The explicit minimum wage rate understates the labor costs imposed by European governments, which also mandates various employer contributions to pension plans and health benefits, among other things.  Europe’s unemployment rates shot up when such government-mandated benefits to be for by employers grew sharply during the 1980 and 1990s.”[5]

 Average hourly compensation in Europe of manufacturing employees in the European Union countries in general is higher than in the United States or Japan.  So is unemployment.”[6]

 “Labor unions also benefit from minimum wage laws, are among the strongest proponents of such laws, even though their members typically make much more than minimum wage rate.”[7]

 “Just as businesses seek to have government impose tariffs on imported goods that compete with their products, so labor unions use minimum wage laws as tariffs to force up the price of non-union labor that competes with their members for jobs.”[8]

 “…when all is said and done, most empirical studies indicate that minimum wage laws reduce employment in general, and especially the employment of younger less skilled, and minority workers.”[9] (emphasis mine)

Thomas Sowell’s article is chock full of empirical information and common sense economics.  I could continue to quote many of his insightful words.  I’ll provide one more series of quotes about minorities and the implementation of MWLs the past century:

 “Again, it is necessary to note how price is a factor even in racial discrimination…It was only after a series of minimum wage escalations began that black male teenage unemployment not only skyrocketed but became more than double the unemployment rates among white male teenagers.”[10] (emphasis mine)

 Stage-one voting creates unemployment.  Obama, the educated One, Jesse Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus should know the facts.   But in ignoring the economic data they choose “navel-gazing, hand-wringing or self-dramatization” to preach a Liberal Utopia that will never arrive on this earth. MWLs produce the opposite effect, in fact!

 Don’t ignore the data. Read. Understand. Think beyond stage-one.  Uncle Sam needs You more than ever.

Again, Thomas Sowell:

 “People who cannot be bothered to learn both sides of the issues should not bother to vote.”[11]

 

[1] Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader, p. 401

[2] Ibid., p. 108

[3] Ibid., p. 108

[4] Ibid., p. 109

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., p.110

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., p.111

[10] Ibid., p. 115 & 117

[11] Ibid., p.397

Note:  Mitt Romney has come out in favor of auto-increasing the MWL.  I am voting Newt Gingrich in the Illinois GOP primary.

Update:  In a 02/07/2012 RCP article regarding Mitt Romney’s faux conservatism, Thomas Sowell said:

“Nor are such consequences of minimum wage laws peculiar to blacks or to the United States. In Western European countries whose social policies liberals consider more “advanced” than our own, including more generous minimum wage laws and other employer-mandated benefits, it has been common in even prosperous years for unemployment rates among young people to be 20 percent or higher.

The economic reason is not complicated. When you set minimum wage levels higher than many inexperienced young people are worth, they don’t get hired. It is not rocket science.

Milton Friedman explained all this, half a century ago, in his popular little book for non-economists, “Capitalism and Freedom.” So have many other people. If a presidential candidate who calls himself “conservative” has still not heard of these facts, that simply shows that you can call yourself anything you want to. “

Thoughts from Uncle Miltie:

Filed under 2012 election, Economics, Liberalism, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Herman Cain Endorses Newt Gingrich; The Beginning of the End for The Dem’s Plantation Politics

January 29, 2012 Leave a comment

We must de-centralize government and return the power to the states and more importantly to the individual. Obama, his czars and the entrenched government bureaucracies do NOT know what is best for you and me or for our “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

The video below is Herman Cain endorsing Newt Gingrich to be the Republican nominee for President.

Newt, after noting the differences between himself other nominee candidates and Barack Hussein Obama and after speaking about his first week’s agenda in the White House, speaks about “the spirit of Pioneering…the New Age of Exploration…big people and dreams…our problems are not the people, they are…

Filed under Conservatism, conservative, Culture, Political Commentary, Politics Tagged with , , ,

Just Say “No”

January 27, 2012 Leave a comment

Obama and the Dems want to bring everyone down to the same “bottom-feeder” level called “fair”.  In lieu of a good record to extol, Obama’s campaign plea is take more money from the so-called 1% and then to redistribute the money according to some vague notion of fairness to the 99%.  Obama is not about wealth creation.  Obama is about wealth redistribution.  Obama doesn’t want to make the pie bigger.  Obama wants to slice the pie into smaller slices. Obama and the Dems don’t create wealth, they syphon off wealth by all manner of taxation.  The Dems also build casinos or as I call them, shell games, to gain revenue money from the fools who happily play their life away hoping to “Win the Future”  (a Obama campaign mantra).  And with no money yet in hand Obama, the snake-oil salesman he is, makes financial promises to his base (e.g., college kids, unions, banks, etc.) and does so without regard for the taxpayer who would foot the bill.

After destroying America’s financial future his first term with bailouts to his cronies and the passing of Obamacare, Obama now seeks a second term to continue the pillaging process.  Obama is hell-bent on wiping the American slate clean with a rag he calls “Hope” and then spray painting his own perverse ideological graffiti, “Change”, on the walls of history. For Obama and his posse the U.S. Constitution is just another authority to hold in contempt. This is Obama as Ludicrous, a political class gangsta member from Chicago with the same old denigrating street  rap – “I’m for me and my crew. The rest can go to f___ themselves.

Think about this.  Do you really want someone defining fairness?  Do you really want someone to pick and chose who wins and who loses?  Do you really think that government will stop private property encroachment (taxes) with the 1%? Once you give government the rights to your pocketbook (healthcare included) you lose complete control of it regardless of your democratic representation.

 Now for social gospel junkies, this type of ideology is nowhere near Christianity – robbing Peter to pay Paul.  For the voter, this socialist ideology is nothing other than giving him a false hope of security wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper. It certainly smells like day-old fish.

 True conservatives like myself want everyone to have an opportunity to succeed, to rise up to a new level called “personal success.”  Think about this:  if your money is being taxed away to feed a socialist’s irrational vision than you have less money to provide for your family, less money to build a successful business, less money for charity. Government becomes the focus of your life – not God, family, friends or the needy.

 A vote for Obama will bring you and your family down to a new low and will suck the life out of our nation.  His re-election would move our country from constitutionalism to despotism. If you vote for that you deserve it.

This next presidential election we must not put our votes out to the “hope and change” pasture. We must think and choose wisely.  Just say “No” to the stupor inducing drug called socialism and its street-corner salesman Obama.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)

illionoiswithnewt_TheNewtGingrichRecord

Filed under Life As I See It, Political Commentary, Politics Tagged with , , , , , ,

The first snow of the year fell last night

January 21, 2012 Leave a comment

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first snow of the year fell last night

– speckled opacity,  sifted talc – dusting the frigid day’s ice.

Hoary halo-ed street lights assembled for white-caked cars carrying the store-bound in search of milk and diapers.

****

Today, old women worry in picture windows,

But children, out in droves, charge willy-nilly,

Nature’s imposed accumulation yielding to youth.

*****

Later, the plow man may show us the way “Through the white and drifting snow”.

He never seems to come, though, before I want to go.

I’ll not hold my frosty breath for him.

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© Jennifer A Johnson, 2018, All Rights Reserved

Filed under Christmas, Poems, Poetry, poetry, Writing Tagged with , , , ,

Results Oriented: Newt

January 15, 2012 Leave a comment

At the age of thirteen I began working as a clerk in a store.  I have since been able to provide for myself and my kids through the lessons learned at that early age.  Work ethic update:  Jan. 16th, 2012 SC debate:

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The SuperPacked Candidate Will Stop Dragging My Heart Around

January 13, 2012 Leave a comment

While the talking and tweeting heads split hairs over differences in GOP candidates I thought I might throw together the perfect Amalgamated Candidate, a conservative lingua franca Candidate made up of the salutary features of the current nominee field and a personally favored write-in.  The Amalgamated Candidate, synthesized with the DNA of Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan, categorically rejects Obamic progressivism, Carter Malaise-ism, Soros Europeanization-ism, the Left’s Holier-than-thou-ism, etc. and has…

 …the looks and hair of Mitt Romney (this Mad Men ad model coupled with George W. Bush–ian business experience are the “electabilty factors so desirable to a Washington insider and puppeteer like Karl Rove);

 …Newt Gingrich’s intellectual prowess, his track record which is proven and his savvy in the political realm;

 …Rick Santorum’s heart for family values;

 …Jon Huntsman’s knowledge of the Chinese born of his ambassadorship and his ability to speak Chinese;

 …Ron Paul’s unequivocal passion for the Constitution and for smaller unobtrusive government;

 …Rick Perry’s devotion to God and to civic duty.

 All of the above embodied with Sarah Palin’s moxy and love for America.

Am I missing anyone/anything?

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I Support the Man of Action: Part One

January 9, 2012 Leave a comment

WLS-890 AM, Sunday afternoon:  On my way to the grocery store I turned on the car radio.  Phil Ponce, a Chicago television journalist for WTTW, was filling in for one of his sons, either Anthony or Dan, during their Sunday afternoon radio broadcast. I believe the Ponce Brother’s program was also substituting for Bob Brinker’s Money Talk (a favorite program of mine) that afternoon. As I tuned in Anthony or Dan was mentioning how that most of the callers were favoring Newt Gingrich as the GOP nominee.

 The Ponces, father and son, then took another call, a female caller who mentioned her age of 59.  She talked (I’ll paraphrase) about how the country needs to be taken back. Phil Ponce mentioned that many callers had said the same thing.  He then asked her what she meant by that. In brief she said that many of the laws and the Constitution itself that we as a nation have in place are simply disregarded by the people in power, especially by President Obama and his administration.

 In talking about her childhood she recalled how that we as a nation knew what the laws were and that they were not subject to arbitrary change by those in power as they are now. She said no country is perfect or has it easy but our nation was a light shining on a hill (a Reagan reference) but is now it is dimming in that capacity.

 That is what I heard. Her exact words…if the show’s podcast or transcript becomes available I will post it.

 Also, as I found out later, during the same broadcast and prior to my turning the radio on, Illinois Senator Mark Kirk surprised the Ponces by calling in.  Phil Ponce recounted how he had jokingly suggested that the illinois Senator call in to talk about his choice for a GOP candidate. Senator Kirk did call in and said that he was backing Romney.  This is too bad.

 About two weeks ago I wrote an e-mail to Senator Kirk asking him to back Newt Gingrich.  I did this when I heard that Kirk was coming out for Romney.  Romney, I believe, will be in over his head.  But if Romney becomes the GOP nominee Romney would still be a much better choice than Obama, Obama and his multiple czars who are responsible to no one but the president. 

By bypassing our elected representatives in Congress and appointing these czars Obama showed flagrant disrespect for America, her Constitution and our elected representatives. Also, Obama’s appointment of Eric Holder as AG was meant as a slap in the face of the American system of justice (e.g., Holder’s ignoring the Black Panther’s intimidation of voters).

************* 

I am backing Newt Gingrich for President. 

In a recent web-column for The Detroit News economist Thomas Sowell talks about the need for a man of action to lead this country:

 Many Americans are already saying that they can hardly recognize the country they grew up in. We have already started down the path that has led Western European nations to the brink of financial disaster. … 

While the televised debates are what gave Newt Gingrich’s candidacy a big boost, concrete accomplishments when in office are the real test. Gingrich engineered the first Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 40 years — followed by the first balanced budget in 40 years. The media called it “the Clinton surplus” but all spending bills start in the House of Representatives, and Gingrich was Speaker of the House.…

In a world where we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available, the question is whether Newt Gingrich is better than Barack Obama — and better than Mitt Romney.

Romney is a smooth talker, but what did he actually accomplish as governor of Massachusetts, compared to what Gingrich accomplished as Speaker of the House? When you don’t accomplish much, you don’t ruffle many feathers. But is that what we want?

Can you name one important positive thing that Romney accomplished as governor of Massachusetts? Can anyone? Does a candidate who represents the bland leading the bland increase the chances of victory in November 2012? A lot of candidates like that have lost, from Thomas E. Dewey to John McCain.

Illinois must vote for Newt in the Illinois primary on March 24, 2012.  We need a man of action who has a sincere appreciation of American history, the Constitution, American values and actual success with the political process.  I encourage you to vote for the Statesman Newt Gingrich to be the GOP nominee for president. Let’s stop the pious baloney.

Filed under Life As I See It, Political Commentary, Politics, short piece, Writing Tagged with , , ,

European Vacation Part III

January 7, 2012 Leave a comment

I have an answer for those who would like to see America become like Europe:  take a slow boat to Europe.

 If you are young and hold a useless degree (liberal arts, gender studies, “identity” studies, African-American studies, etc) and are jobless in spite of Obama’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 than take your worthless piece of paper and flee to the cafes of Paris or Rome.  Spend your Recovery summers and winters, springs and autumns in Europe.  Become one of Europe’s intellectual elites. Better yet, become the vagabond that you have always dreamed of becoming– just you, nature and Kumbaya.  Become the insipid whiner who decries American liberty for having too much opportunity and too much choice and not enough government programs making choices for you.

 If you are seeking European style health care then the perfect answer for you would be to relocate yourself and your citizenship to a European country.  After all, America, having paid for the defense of Europe during WWII to the tune of 80 plus billion dollars and with thousands of American lives, allowed European nations to turn their swords into plowshares, their guns into socialized medicine. America effectively paid for the implementation of Germany’s health care system. And, doesn’t America still have a military base in Germany protecting German interests as well as American interests, freeing up German defense dollars for healthcare?

 Socialist Europe is held up as a model of “just behavior”; but the Left forgets that for seventy-five years America defended Europe from the Communist threat, and bore the cost, which would have bankrupted Europe, and which, in the event, bankrupted Communism.  The Left looks at the peace of Europe since World War II and forgets that it was not only ensured, but created by American military strength and determination (and funded by the Marshall plan, which is to say, by a surplus of American industrial wealth.) And now the Left has elected a President who thinks it good to go to Europe and apologize for our “arrogance”, who proclaims the benefits of appeasement both at home and around the world.[1]

 Coming out of a decisive victory made possible by America, the Marshall plan funneled huge amounts of money into the rebuilding of European nations devastated by the Third Reich. America paid a steep price to free Europe from her enemies. Europe responded by turning inward and to pampering herself with socialized health care.  The facts now reveal, though, that under European style socialized health care you will get a small bang for your Euro in Europe, unless of course you are really looking for legalized drugs.

 And, if you are looking for top-down centralized government and the chance to really all-out criticize and complain about America then Europe is the place for you. Over there, in the Elysian Fields where there is “blessed” life after life in your despised America, you can rail against the Yanks for being so greedy, so selfish, so uncaring, so hard-working and so American.  Forget about WWII. Forget about the fact that America is the most charitable nation on earth (a common good interventionism) and a strong defender of liberty against totalitarianism. And forget, too, that millions of people left their homelands for the chance at American prosperity and for the freedoms of speech, religion and choice.

I believe the incredible wealth of this country will allow it to survive quite awhile on its hundred years of production and upon its natural resources and historic culture of productivity.

But the Change which Obama’s rhetoric referred to preceded and will follow him, accelerated by him and his policies, accepted by a drugged populace and supine press.  It is the unfortunate descent of a productive nation into socialism, which, as I understand it, is robbing Peter to pay Paul.  I don’t think it’s any more complex than that.[2]

 In Europe, give in to your to your passions and to your righteous anger.  Go riot in the French streets about banal differences in French cinema. Find your mojo among the militant Left Euro-Sophists. Stir your Café Americano pensively, smoke your Marlboros and sit around in distressed blue jeans chatting smugly with others of your herd about your almost extinct planet and the need to create a global warming franchise like Al Gore has done.  You have earned it.

  A vagabond status of passive living is so incredibly ‘60s.  Peace and love baby.  Go for it.  Experience the experience. Become one with the world. Find yourself.  COEXIST with yourself in Europe and please leave America to the Americans.

 If you are looking for “Hope” and “Change” look no farther: America’s promise of liberty, opportunity and choice is filled with “Hope”.  To be sure, American hope is born out of character which is born out of perseverance through trial, through hard work and yes, through suffering and not out of European-like nanny state programs which enable sloth, intemperance, envy and even despair.

 “Change” comes when you begin to fully appropriate America’s “Hope.”  “Change,” thus, begins and ends with you, right here, right now.  Or, board the next boat to parts unknown.

[1] David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On Dismantling of American Culture (New York:  Penguin Books:  Sentinel, 2011, http://davidmamet.com/) 44.

[2] Ibid, 64

Filed under essay, Life As I See It, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, social commentary, Writing Tagged with , , , ,

The Obvious: Live Free or Die

January 2, 2012 Leave a comment

Gregariously, and without mincing words into politically correct mush, Mark Steyn tells Americans what they will be in store for if our political ship is not course-corrected in 2012. (There are four parts.)

Filed under 2012 election, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

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