The same people who will make excuses for Roseanne Barr’s call for the beheading of the rich — who say she’s a comedian and was just joking — also seem to be the same people to reject the idea that Rush Limbaugh is a satirist and take 100% of what he says seriously. Just sayin’.
Two separate but somewhat related articles that are worth reading. First, Amity Shlaes reminds us of Frederic Bastiat’s Broken Windows and their application to today’s economy (hat tip: Steven Hayward). An excerpt:
In the summer of 1850, just before going to Paris, Bastiat laid out the now-famous parable. Disaster happens. A thief breaks a man’s window, or a storm does. The man has to pay the glazier to fix it. The glazier spends his money at the store. When enough windows are smashed, voila: a visible benefit, new jobs for the glass industry.
True enough, noted Bastiat. The window replacement is what is seen. What about that which is not seen? “Since our citizen has spent six francs for one thing, he will not be able to spend them for another. It is not seen that if he had not had a windowpane to replace, he would have replaced, for example, his worn-out shoes or added another book to his library.”
The same holds for a government: when it repairs windows — cleans up hurricane damage — it is not using the same money for other causes that might be more worthy, such as reducing government debt or taxes.
“What Is Seen and What is Not Seen” was how Bastiat titled his essay. The corollary “not seen” today is all the businesses that can’t be started because of taxes or regulatory and legal uncertainty. The corporate-tax cut that the president proposed would benefit those unseen businesses or individuals.
The other article is the transcript of a speech that Representative Paul Ryan gave this morning at a Constitution Day celebration in Washington. The focus of his speech was on freedom and the importance of the Rule of Law. A brief excerpt:
Usually, our defense of the Constitution is presented as a defense of America’s founding principles and values, and rightfully so. But our constitutional system is not just a collection of principles; it embodies an approach to government with profound practical implications for both our freedom and our prosperity. When that system is threatened, both freedom and prosperity suffer.
Freedom is lost by degrees, and the deepest erosions usually take place during times of economic hardship, when those who favor expanding the sphere of government, abuse a crisis to persuade free citizens that they should trade in a little of their liberty for empty promises of greater economic security.
We all remember what Benjamin Franklin said about that trade – that those who would make it deserve neither liberty nor security. But in such cases, when liberty is lost, it is our fault as champions of the Constitution, for failing to mount a sufficiently persuasive and effective defense.
Ryan goes on to demonstrate several different ways that the rule of law has been attacked over the years. This speech is by far one of the most serious and consequential political speeches I have ever read. There is no doubt in my mind that Rep. Ryan should run for President (the sooner the better).
Be sure to read both articles.
We’ve spent the last few days imploring each other to never forget 9/11. But leave it to Vin Scully to put it in perspective. Like so many other things, he has a way of painting a picture with words and capturing the moment like no other broadcaster. This past Sunday, the Los Angeles Dodgers were in San Francisco to face the Giants. Scully paused following a pre-game 9/11 ceremony to reflect on the meaning of the anniversary:
“We had a lead, gray morning, slowly burning off to a brilliant sunrise, making you think of that beautiful day in New York 10 years ago, Sept. 11, 2001. Certainly a day in which God must have wept, wept over man’s inhumanity to man. A day of heroes and a day of horror … But it should also bring some honor for as we watch rising from the ashes of New York, like the Phoenix itself, the high-rises that will once again be a testimony to the heart and soul of this great country. I remember Ronald Reagan once said, ‘If we ever forgot that we were one nation under God, we will be one nation that goes under.’ And you might notice today, above all days, you will hear God’s name mentioned, and we hope, not in vain.”
You can read his entire remarks here as well as see a video of his first game following 9/11.
Hat tip: Hardball Talk
The 9/11 memorial services came and went yesterday, with the appropriate solemnity and words for those who lost loved one, and for the rest of us who, as Tom noted, were also affected by the terror attacks. I talked again with a couple of my kids of their memories of that day, and mine, and of a family member who watched it happen live from the roof of the building where he worked in downtown New York. I think it’s good, and cathartic, to relive that occasionally and really remember how strange and terrible it was.
But it’s September 12th today. It’s after. The past decade has been one of conflicting ideas of how our country has gone and should have gone following those events. Over the weekend, I read an article that got me thinking; we’ve actually done pretty well.
With the headline “9/11: the decade since the September 11 attacks has been one to celebrate”, Richard Fenning (CEO of Control Risks, a firm advising on political, security and integrity risks), writing in the London Telegraph, reminds us that the past 10 years, while having its own set of concerns and political arguments, has actually been good for the US.
Al-Qaida and its affiliates continued to plan attacks. Some succeeded, others were frustrated by massive international counter-terrorism efforts. But we became conditioned to the inevitability of future attacks. This anxiety was used to justify forms of intelligence-gathering – extraordinary rendition, water-boarding – we had previously preferred not to know about.
Public support fractured. Moral clarity was partly replaced by cynicism in the West as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq became less about building shiny new nations and more about bringing our troops home with a modicum of dignity intact. Western opinion seemed to oscillate between aggressive defensiveness from the political right and hand-wringing contrition from the left. There seemed little space for consensus.
In the Muslim world, responses varied. In countries like Saudi Arabia, pragmatic support for the US remained firm, founded on shared animosity to Iran, and fear of local, radical Islamism. In Pakistan, the Afghan spillover ruptured fragile political stability, culminating in the killing of bin Laden by US Special Forces a few miles from a top military establishment. The prospect of an enduring peace between Israel and Palestine remains pretty much where it was ten years ago: nowhere.
But to everyone’s surprise – including a deflated al-Qaida – the decade ends with the ‘Arab spring’ dispatching rulers in Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya. Syria hangs in the balance. Theirs is an unfinished story in which unpredictability is the only certainty.
Fenning’s business is one of managing risk, so he obviously stresses those situations where things are shaky. But I would point out the good news:
There are still those out there that wish to harm us, and have succeeded, on occasion, to a very small extent. But we have emerged from this ordeal with, I think, a more sober view of the world and of our “untouchableness”. The realization of who the major enemy is has been understood to varying degrees by most people.
And the feared mass persecution of Muslims never materialized. There may have been an uptick in violence, and there are those now who (fairly or not) still regard Muslims in airports with additional scrutiny, but the fact remains that the trend worldwide is still that Christians are the ones most persecuted (75% of incidences in a recent report).
I believe we’ve taken this tragedy and turned it around. Granted, as fallible human beings, not all the lessons to be learned were, and not all the changes made were for the better. But in the big picture, I think we’ve done pretty good with the hand we were dealt in 2001.
And that’s worth remembering, too.
Got to catch up on the wrap-up. The past two weeks have been dizzying.
Warren Buffet said he’d be more than happy to pay more taxes. First of all, if he’d be that happy about it, there is absolutely nothing stopping him from just writing a check to the US Treasury. Second of all, he wouldn’t be fighting the IRS over unpaid taxes. How happy, really, do we think he’d be?
Evan Sayet is getting confused trying to keep track of all the different kinds of beliefs that cause the Left to label you "racist". The list keeps growing. (Note, this is a link to a Facebook post. If you don’t have an account, I don’t know if you’ll be able to see it.)
Another instance of where private, protected, Christian speech will get you suspended. (Note, this is too much even for the ACLU.)
You need an ID to get a job, fly on a plane, or buy liquor. But showing an ID to vote? Why, that’s a poll tax, says Rep. John Lewis (D-GA).
Planned Parenthood styles itself as a "family planning" service (at least, it does that when it’s trying to protect its government funding). But by their own numbers, 97.6% of pregnant women who went to PP in 2009 were sold an abortion. And that’s up from the year before. It’s an abortion mill, plain and simple. Follow the money. On top of that, would you consider "safe" a procedure that caused 28% of its patients to attempt suicide afterwards? Or one where patients had an 81% increase in mental health issues?
When the NY Times calls you liberally biased, you really need some self-examination. And yet this same "news" organization was chosen to moderate the recent Republican debate.
The government gives breaks from taxes and some laws based on religious affiliation. However, that determination seems to be getting rather politicized under Obama. When the National Labor Relations Board can decide if you’re "religious enough" (and claiming it based on specious authority), it’s chipping away at religious liberty.
The Washington Post’s "On Faith" section recently asked its contributors, "After millennia of religious studies, is it time for universities also embrace secular studies?" Richard Land, President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission answers with the obvious, "They already are."
A recent WikiLeaks document dump did not redact the names of informants to the US State Department. Now these people must fear for their lives. Is this what Assange supporters really want from their idol; pronouncing death sentences?
Civility Watch: New web-based video game lets you kill well-known Republicans. If a Republican is shot anytime soon, will the Left allow anyone to blame liberal incivility? (Hint: No.)
James Pethokoukis makes a strong case for the idea that what Obama did made the economy worse, not better.
In Obama’s jobs speech the other night, he claimed that all his spending would be paid for. No, sir, not based on your speech it won’t.
And finally, a thought on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. (Click for a larger picture.)
An interesting observation from Jack Dunphy (not his real name), a police officer in Los Angeles:
Cops tend to be conservatives, perhaps because they spend the bulk of their day dealing with the consequences of failed liberal policies. Whatever liberals you might find in the department can mostly be found, like the absent cubicle dweller discussed above, in bureaucratic assignments that keep them safely shielded from the hazards of actual police work, and from those pesky consequences.
Indeed.
There are all sorts of ways to measure the impact of natural disasters such as hurricanes or earthquakes but I had never heard of the Waffle House Index:
When a hurricane makes landfall, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency relies on a couple of metrics to assess its destructive power.
First, there is the well-known Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. Then there is what he calls the “Waffle House Index.”
Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on. Yellow means a limited menu, indicating power from a generator, at best, and low food supplies. Red means the restaurant is closed, a sign of severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.
“If you get there and the Waffle House is closed?” FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate has said. “That’s really bad. That’s where you go to work.”
As the article explains, Waffle House goes to great lengths to remain open all the time. They have what is arguably one of the best disaster plans I have ever seen.
Hats off to the folks at Waffle House for going to such tremendous lengths to make life a little more normal for those affected by disaster.
Here’s a reminder of why I started this semi-irregularly scheduled feature. When Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot, liberals fell all over themselves blaming conservative rhetoric, graphics with targets, and of course talk radio for supposedly creating the environment for such an assassination attempt. It was clear that they had contributed just as much, if not more, themselves prior to the shooting. "Civility Watch" came about to show how little they really would even take their own medicine. It’s been made clear, since then, that uncivil discourse is really only uncivil if it’s a Republican saying it.
The most recent cases in point: Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) told Tea Partiers that they can go "straight to hell". Now you know what they think of responsible spending. And liberal columnists, even those that have other issues with Waters, praise that outburst and wish for more, and excuse that incivility by saying, "They started it!" Yeah, right.
Also, Rep. Andre Carson (D-MI), a leader in the Congressional Black Caucus, claimed that Tea Partiers would “love to see us as second-class citizens” and “some of them in Congress right now of this tea party movement would love to see you and me … hanging on a tree.” This is not only incredibly over the top, but also has the added benefit (to him) of being believed simply because he said it, lacking a shred of proof or naming names. He can say it with impunity, and the audience just accepts it as The Truth.
The Left simply cannot sell themselves as the ones who are for civil discourse, at least to those who are truly paying attention.
New York’s Mayor Bloomberg had this to say about who will be allowed to be in the official memorial of the 10th anniversary of 9/11: "Everybody would like to participate, but the fact is that everyone cannot participate." An understandable position to take, except that, for they type of "everybody" he was referring to, he’s excluding over 80% of the country.
At a time when family and friends will gather at Ground Zero to commemorate the loss of thousands murdered in the nation’s worst terrorist attack, the remembrance likely will be even more painful for many.
Why?
Mayor Bloomberg says the city will not permit clergy – any clergy – to participate at the 10th anniversary of 9/11. No public prayer. Period. From the Mayor: "Everybody would like to participate, but the fact is that everyone cannot participate."
The fact is that the vast majority of the country is religious. By excluding any form of religion from the memorial is to be completely tone-deaf to the people of his own city and what their religion means to them, never mind the rest of the country. This is political correctness gone way too far, to where it becomes the tyranny of the minority. The even this memorializes touched people of all different faiths, and no faith at all. The memorial should be more representative of that, rather than just a "least common denominator" event.
Quick, hide those beams that were in the shape of a cross.
Guns: A year after a law was passed in Virginia allowing those with permits to carry concealed weapons into bars (i.e. "alcohol-serving businesses"), gun-related crime in bars actually declined slightly. They did not turn into the shooting galleries that were predicted. This didn’t make national news, of course, because it doesn’t fit the narrative. If it had gone up, I’m quite sure we’d have heard about it for days on the evening newscasts.
Politics: First Ed Schultz and MSNBC selectively quote Gov. Rick Perry to make it sound like he’s being racist against the President. Seems you can’t say the word "black" in any context without it being called "racist". Then, MSNBC’s newest talker, Al Sharpton, takes the smear and, ironically, calls Gov. Perry divisive and ugly for saying something he didn’t ever say! Say what you want about Fox News, but if you don’t see far, far worse bias on the part of MSNBC, you’re just not paying as close attention as you think you are.
The Economy: The US may have lost it’s AAA rating from Standard and Poor’s, but on that same day, Ohio’s rating went up. Republican Governor John Kasich has presided over newly-balanced budgets, an 8.6% unemployment rate, and a steadily improving economy, coming back from the recession quicker than the Feds. This was done with reducing the size of government and rewarding job-creators.
And speaking of the economy (click for a larger version):
There have been more casualties in Afghanistan under less than 3 years of Obama than we did under 8 years of Bush. Additionally, in the first 3 years of the Iraq war, we had fewer casualties than two and a half under Obama. This is not to criticize Obama for these deaths; that’s what happen in war. But Reason magazine notes that this raises 2 questions. "First, where are the antiwar protests? And second, where is the press?" The "anti-war" protestors are, as I’ve said before, more anti-Bush (or anti-Republican) than anything else. And the press are tied up trying to dig up dirt on Sarah Palin. It’s a full-time job, y’know.
Unions hand-picked 6 of the most vulnerable Republican state senate districts to target for recall. They just needed 3 wins to take control. They could only manage 2. Granted, recall elections have been notoriously difficult to win over the years, but if Democrats and the unions that sponsor them can’t get their base energized over their own referendum on alleged "anti-worker" sentiment in hand-picked districts, that doesn’t say much about how the public views them.
Atheists seem to believe that if humanity would just get rid of this archaic religion thing, violence would drop and peace would reign. Just ask Richard Dawkins, Chris Hitchens, or even John Lennon. Yeah, well, how did that work in the Soviet Union, where atheism was essentially the national religion? Or in Europe today, especially Britain, where religion is on the decline?
And speaking of ideas not working, how’s that gun ban in Britain working out for those store owners in the middle of the riots?
Remember the spontaneous "You lie!" outburst by Rep. Joe Wilson of S. Carolina during an address by President Obama about his health care bill? Joe said that after Obama said, "There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally." Well guess what? Turns out Joe was right.
Why do we need voter ID laws? To keep this from happening; overenfranchised Democratic voters. And how about this bit of irony: "While NAACP President Benjamin Jealous lashed out at new state laws requiring photo ID for voting, an NAACP executive sits in prison, sentenced for carrying out a massive voter fraud scheme."
Dale Franks of Questions & Observations has some great points about our economic situation. A couple of paragraphs, from one post talking about the hole we’re in:
And don’t come back at me with some lame "Our GDP:Debt ratio was 120% at the end of WWII" silliness. Yes it was. And you know how we fixed it? We cut Federal spending from $92 billion in 1945 to $38 billion in 1949. For 2011, 40% of the federal budget was financed with borrowed money: We’ll spend $3.818 trillion, of which $1.645 trillion is borrowed. If we funded only defense, Medicare/Medicaid, and Social Security, and interest on the debt, we’d still have a deficit of $673 billion. Just to balance the budget this year—forget paying off any debt—we’d have to cut an additional ~25% from Health, Defense, and Pensions. Follow the link and download the CSV file, open it up in Excel, and run the numbers yourself. The magic number to balance the budget this year is the revenue of $2.174 trillion.
That’s $2 trillion this year, not over 10 years.
And from another post, noting that tax increases alone, even historic tax increases and an incredibly rosy set of other assumptions, aren’t going to do it. Spending cuts, substantial cuts, must happen.
In order to pay off this year’s share of the $61.6 trillion in unfunded liabilities, the government will have to collect $4.261 trillion in revenues. With an estimated 2011 GDP of $14.922 trillion, that comes to 28.6% of GDP. If we assume government revenues rise to the historical average, the we’ll need the government to take 31.6% of GDP in tax revenues. Happily, because we’re assuming a 3% rise in GDP and revenues for every year over the next 30 years, that percentage will decline slightly every year, until, in 2041, we’ll only need to collect 20.5% of GDP in tax revenues to pay off the last installment, assuming, again, 14.8% of GDP covers the operation of government. If we go back to the 17.8% figure, then we’ll have to collect 23.5% of GDP in revenues.
Either way, for the next 30 years, we need to collect substantially higher tax revenues than we have collected at any time in the nation’s history, and we have to do it every year for 30 years.
The point being, this is probably not possible, economically or politically. This is how bad our situation is, and how much action we need to take now on spending.
And yet, who gets blamed for trying to bring sanity back to the budget? (Click for a larger version.)
Public Photography is “suspicious” and “antisocial behavior”
At least, it seems to be in the UK where a photographer was arrested for the crime of taking photos, on a public street, of a Christmas celebration. Video here.
I suppose if the photographer wanted to be left alone by the UK police he should have taken to looting, ransacking, and destroying downtown shopping establishments.
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But, we’re okay taking photographs here in the US, right?
Not in Long Beach, California, where the police department seems to think they have the right to detain photographers they deem to be taking photographs “with no apparent esthetic value.”
I suppose the new LBPD motto is to “protect and serve… and provide art criticism.”
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While the riots in London and its environs may have started as a peaceful vigil to protest the shooting of an alleged drug dealer, a certain sort of folk were glad to join in and ramp it up for their own purposes. Let’s ask a few of these concerned citizens why they are rampaging and looting, shall we?
You sir, why are you stealing electronics from the local shop?
And you, ma’am, what is the purpose of all this?
Now, the first fellow, who’s trying to get his taxes back, as he says, might sound to you like some Tea Partier here in the States. However, no Tea Partier thinks that those taxes should be extracted directly from the shelves of local businesses. It’s local businesses that Tea Partiers are trying to support as the real source of economic growth. So no, this is not really a conservative position being taken. It’s more of a narcissistic opportunism at work.
At least the ladies in the second video are being more honest about their motivations. They’re getting back at the rich, "showing the rich we do what we want". Ah, well this will show ’em, eh? And their definition of "rich" seems to mean anyone who owns a business, hence the open season on any business anywhere; national chain or local shop.
Going after evil corporations, getting back at the rich… Hmm, which political philosophy have I heard these sentiments from? And further, can we blame those who put forth that political philosophy for these riots, much like a shooting a few months ago was also blamed on some political philosophy? There’s actually a real, spoken connection this time, as opposed to an assumed connection before. I expect Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz to castigate the Left, er, whatever that political philosophy might be. If, that is, they want to be taken seriously.
Ah, the civil discourse of the Left.
Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.
Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.
“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”
Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists.”
This is the very type of rhetoric that conservatives were accused of, supposedly leading to the shooting of Gabriel Giffords. Ironically, while Biden was describing Republicans has having a "gun to their heads", Giffords showed up for the first time since the shooting. A rather foolish turn of a phrase, especially on that day.
The Left would rather point the finger at entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and be willfully ignorant of eliminationist rhetoric at the highest levels of government, especially when it’s their guys holding those positions. Hopefully, the public will remember this the next time liberals try to portray conservatives as the sole owner of uncivil discourse.
On Sunday evening, I was following the hashtag "#compromise" on Twitter. Folks who were begging, pleading, pontificating and yelling at their elected representatives for a debt ceiling compromise used that tag on their posts. "Get it done!", some whined. "#compromise #compromise #compromise #compromise", some less articulate folks said, trying to bring the point home. Last night, after a compromise was reached, the hashtagged messaged now complained loudly about the particular deal that was worked out, some following VP Biden’s "terrorist" rhetoric. So the true colors came out. "Compromise", to the Left, means "do it my way, or you’re a terrorist!"
You may want to bookmark this link to my "Civility Watch" entries for the future. The Left has often leveled the "hate speech" charge at conservatives to blame them for some event that has happened. It’ll happen again.
Part 5: Becoming Truly Relevant And Truly Counter-Cultural
We Must Never Stop Evangelizing
If you’ve read the first 4 parts of this series, and have made it to this final post, I thank you. Hopefully, whether or not you fully agree with my argument, you have at least taken a hard look at the issues I’ve been discussing. However, if past experiences I’ve had in attempting to discuss this topic are any indication, then I fear that those fully entrenched in the pragmatic approach of evangelical capitalism – those truly in need of hearing my arguments – will have already left the conversation. If that has occurred, then it is unfortunate, because I believe that this issue is critical to how we, as evangelicals, conduct our lives in the 21st century.
