The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
UPDATED Democrats, Partisanship, Hate and PC: the Four Horsemen of the American Apocalypse
Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.
--Doris Lessing
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen
--Samuel Adams
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
--George Orwell
Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
--Benjamin Franklin
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
--Edmund Burke
I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.
--Thomas Jefferson (the first Democrat)
You see these dictators up on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. They're afraid of words and thought. ... They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words. ... A state of society where men may not speak their mind -- where children denounce their parents to the police -- where a businessman or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinion. Such a state of society cannot long endure if it is continually in contact with the healthy outside world.
--Winston Churchill
The short memories of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.
--Will Rogers
A good government is one "which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread that it has earned.
--Thomas Jefferson (the first Democrat)
Josef Stalin is alive and well--and roaming the halls of the US Capitol. I have been around the block a few times, and I am also pretty well read on history--I was a history minor in college--but in all my life I have never seen anything as vile or evil to resemble the people running the Congress and the Senate right now. For as long as I have been aware, Congress has been a contentious place, but until now I have never seen--in this country--one party in power put the entire nation in so much jeopardy, solely for the sake of consolidating its tenuous grasp on power.
Day after day, 24x7x365, I watch partisan mouthpieces like Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, John Murtha, and Nancy Pelosi parade to the microphones; and every day the mission is the same: character assassination, personal attacks, and non-stop sliming of dedicated public servants whose only crime is that they are members of the Bush Administration.
Take for example the recent effort by Democrat partisans to try their mightiest to set a "perjury trap" for members (any member) of President Bush's cabinet--not because there was any wrongdoing, but because they want to manufacture wrongdoing, a la Scooter Libby's poor memory about when he first told reporters about Valerie Plame.
The vitriol, the destructive nature of the incessant attacks against the President and his Cabinet by the rabid Democrat partisans has reached an unprecedented level in my lifetime. The only thing that is a common thread is the visceral hatred of all things Republican and all things Conservative by an extremely hostile majority party and an increasingly hostile media. They talk about "hate crimes"--for example some college student this past week was arrested and charged with a "hate crime" for dunking a Koran in a toilet, while on the other hand the National Endowment for the Arts pays a grant to an artist for placing a crucifix in a jar of piss! (If that isn't a double standard, what is?). But meanwhile our attention is distracted from the real hate crime going on in this country before the microphones of the House and Senate every single day. Hell, there is more hate: in one 30-minute Keith Olberman newscast; in one instance of the sniveling Chuck Schumer attributing non-existent "crimes" to an Attorney General with absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any wrongdoing; in one episode of Dick Durbin comparing American servicemen and women to Soviets operating Gulag labor camps; or in Ted Kennedy comparing the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler--one of the worst mass murderers in history--than there would be if several hundred college students dropping holy books of any and all religions into a toilet.
The whole circus surrounding the Attorney General and the President's personal lawyer and Chief of Staff is a perfect case in point. For those who did not study their high school civics lessons well, the President of the United States IS the Executive Branch. He hires and fires US Attorneys--Executive Branch employees all--at will; if the President wants to fire a US attorney for ANY reason, including political reasons, personal reasons, or just because the President doesn't like the tie he wore, it doesn't matter--the Constitution grants the President complete authority here. No oversight. But the Democrats--for political reasons ONLY--are spending millions of your taxpayer dollars on this Democrat Partisan Investigate-A-Palooza 2008, including "perjury traps" disguised as oversight hearings that forward this ridiculous notion that Presidents cannot hire and fire any Executive Branch employee for any reason whatsoever; or that the President's personal lawyer can be subpoenaed to tell the entire country every conversation and deliberation that goes into his decision making. We did not elect John Conyers President, we elected George Bush. Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal describes the situation:
The people in Congress KNOW that the War in Iraq is going well now--but despite press reports to the contrary, they deny this truth every single day. Instead they create a complete fiction and assasinate the character and/or motives of any who dare report an iota of good news from Iraq or Afghanistan (gasp!).
The truth is: there is no length to which the President could stoop that would satisfy these jackals. The Democrats would rather facilitate making America's defeat a self-fulfilling prophecy than to sit and do nothing as America succeeds--if it is on the Republicans' watch; and trust me the Democrats will continue to try and lose this War. And for a party which claims to be a party of the "common man"; from a party whose father is Thomas Jefferson--the man who is quoted above--what becomes clear is that the only men or women these politicians care about is themselves. Damn the country, damn the Republicans, and whoever else gets hurt in the process. And so the drumbeat of hate goes on.
But it goes even further: they want to control what you think and what you can and cannot say. And they have your children's undivided attention from K-12 and in Colleges too. When it comes to the mush that is put into your children's heads, it is the PC thought police in the Teacher's union that not only control it; they control it to such an extent that the schools are going to hell in a handbasket. No,the thought police were not merely a figment of Orwell's imagination. Orwell was with the Communists when they fought the Spanish Fascists; it was being around these people every day that opened his eyes to what Socialism is really about--and it was being among them which finally caused Orwell to renounce the Commies and write books exposing them for the frauds they were (and still are). Animal Farm is one of the best and most prophetic books ever written; Orwell clearly knew his topic. And the entire book appears to have been written about today's PC society and the Democrat party specifically.
I could say it is going to get ugly, but when it comes to the Democrats--especially those in Congress and the media--it already is ugly; The ugliest I have ever seen since being alive, and just as ugly as I have read about it being just prior to the Civil War in the 1850's. The very fact that I feel compelled to write this is an after-effect of the hate-filled Democrats and what they are trying to do to my country.
It is only now as I pass through middle age that I can see why men in those days could bring themselves to leave home and to fight a bloody war to protect what they have; and I can now appreciate the anger they must have felt towards the people who would take all that away. Now, as then, the Union IS worth preserving and fighting for. Our men overseas know that. Most Republicans know it. I suspect even quite a few Democrats can see it. But for the Worst, Slimiest Congress in US History, working in concert with the minority party for the common good is a completely foreign concept. For them it is all black and white--a zero sum game, now. And when a party gets to the place where it cares more what happens to the Party than it does what happens to the Country, it is time for the Party to go.
UPDATE: My fellow "Wide-Awake," Xformed is on fire today. This captures my frustration as well as anything I have read recently. Something must be in the water, like blood in the water for sharks... it is "Shark Week" after all.
--Doris Lessing
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen
--Samuel Adams
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
--George Orwell
Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
--Benjamin Franklin
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
--Edmund Burke
I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.
--Thomas Jefferson (the first Democrat)
You see these dictators up on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. They're afraid of words and thought. ... They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words. ... A state of society where men may not speak their mind -- where children denounce their parents to the police -- where a businessman or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinion. Such a state of society cannot long endure if it is continually in contact with the healthy outside world.
--Winston Churchill
The short memories of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.
--Will Rogers
A good government is one "which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread that it has earned.
--Thomas Jefferson (the first Democrat)
Josef Stalin is alive and well--and roaming the halls of the US Capitol. I have been around the block a few times, and I am also pretty well read on history--I was a history minor in college--but in all my life I have never seen anything as vile or evil to resemble the people running the Congress and the Senate right now. For as long as I have been aware, Congress has been a contentious place, but until now I have never seen--in this country--one party in power put the entire nation in so much jeopardy, solely for the sake of consolidating its tenuous grasp on power.
Day after day, 24x7x365, I watch partisan mouthpieces like Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, John Murtha, and Nancy Pelosi parade to the microphones; and every day the mission is the same: character assassination, personal attacks, and non-stop sliming of dedicated public servants whose only crime is that they are members of the Bush Administration.
Take for example the recent effort by Democrat partisans to try their mightiest to set a "perjury trap" for members (any member) of President Bush's cabinet--not because there was any wrongdoing, but because they want to manufacture wrongdoing, a la Scooter Libby's poor memory about when he first told reporters about Valerie Plame.
The vitriol, the destructive nature of the incessant attacks against the President and his Cabinet by the rabid Democrat partisans has reached an unprecedented level in my lifetime. The only thing that is a common thread is the visceral hatred of all things Republican and all things Conservative by an extremely hostile majority party and an increasingly hostile media. They talk about "hate crimes"--for example some college student this past week was arrested and charged with a "hate crime" for dunking a Koran in a toilet, while on the other hand the National Endowment for the Arts pays a grant to an artist for placing a crucifix in a jar of piss! (If that isn't a double standard, what is?). But meanwhile our attention is distracted from the real hate crime going on in this country before the microphones of the House and Senate every single day. Hell, there is more hate: in one 30-minute Keith Olberman newscast; in one instance of the sniveling Chuck Schumer attributing non-existent "crimes" to an Attorney General with absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any wrongdoing; in one episode of Dick Durbin comparing American servicemen and women to Soviets operating Gulag labor camps; or in Ted Kennedy comparing the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler--one of the worst mass murderers in history--than there would be if several hundred college students dropping holy books of any and all religions into a toilet.
The whole circus surrounding the Attorney General and the President's personal lawyer and Chief of Staff is a perfect case in point. For those who did not study their high school civics lessons well, the President of the United States IS the Executive Branch. He hires and fires US Attorneys--Executive Branch employees all--at will; if the President wants to fire a US attorney for ANY reason, including political reasons, personal reasons, or just because the President doesn't like the tie he wore, it doesn't matter--the Constitution grants the President complete authority here. No oversight. But the Democrats--for political reasons ONLY--are spending millions of your taxpayer dollars on this Democrat Partisan Investigate-A-Palooza 2008, including "perjury traps" disguised as oversight hearings that forward this ridiculous notion that Presidents cannot hire and fire any Executive Branch employee for any reason whatsoever; or that the President's personal lawyer can be subpoenaed to tell the entire country every conversation and deliberation that goes into his decision making. We did not elect John Conyers President, we elected George Bush. Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal describes the situation:
Let's remember how we got here. Democrats latched on to the firings in hopes of building some case that the White House had engaged in cronyism and cover-up. The Justice Department, in the spirit of cooperation, turned over 8,500 documents and made available a parade of officials for public testimony. Mr. Conyers and his counterpart at Senate Judiciary, Patrick Leahy, found nothing. So they then demanded the White House turn over privileged communications and submit high-ranking officials to public questioning. Mr. Bush invoked executive privilege, and Mr. Conyers went to Defcon contempt.To be plain spoken about it: political correctness is killing this country. And all it is is Stalinism in disguise: they want to silence talk radio, they want to shut down Fox News. And they want America to LOSE the war: no matter what the harm that would befall millions of Iraqis, no matter how much damage it would do to America's national security, no matter how many armies of new terrorists our withdrawl would engender, no matter what message that would send to our Allies about the trustworthiness of America's "word". Why do they want us to lose? For one reason and one reason only: more political power. For a Republican Administration to fail--even if the rest of the good ship America goes down with it--is preferable to the loss on one single House or Senate seat.
This is a constitutional issue, but you don't have to be Robert Bork to get your head around it. The Founders created three separate (but equal) branches of government. The Constitution gave each their own powers, while also supplying checks to prevent the branches from encroaching on each other.
Congress gave itself the right to issue criminal contempt citations long ago, and bully for it, but there's nothing in legal history to suggest that in this case it has the right to apply that power to the president or his subordinates. It'd be one thing if Mr. Conyers had proved beyond doubt that a crime had been committed. He hasn't. Instead, this is a straightforward battle between Mr. Bush's claim of executive privilege and Congress's claim of oversight. Both sides, in theory, have a legitimate case.
So the idea that Congress now gets to win this battle by simply declaring the other side criminal is bizarre. Under that twisted logic, Mr. Bush has just as much right to grant himself a similar power and hold Mr. Conyers in criminal contempt for interfering in executive-branch business. This is not, obviously, a very grown-up way of settling constitutional disputes.
The people in Congress KNOW that the War in Iraq is going well now--but despite press reports to the contrary, they deny this truth every single day. Instead they create a complete fiction and assasinate the character and/or motives of any who dare report an iota of good news from Iraq or Afghanistan (gasp!).
The truth is: there is no length to which the President could stoop that would satisfy these jackals. The Democrats would rather facilitate making America's defeat a self-fulfilling prophecy than to sit and do nothing as America succeeds--if it is on the Republicans' watch; and trust me the Democrats will continue to try and lose this War. And for a party which claims to be a party of the "common man"; from a party whose father is Thomas Jefferson--the man who is quoted above--what becomes clear is that the only men or women these politicians care about is themselves. Damn the country, damn the Republicans, and whoever else gets hurt in the process. And so the drumbeat of hate goes on.
But it goes even further: they want to control what you think and what you can and cannot say. And they have your children's undivided attention from K-12 and in Colleges too. When it comes to the mush that is put into your children's heads, it is the PC thought police in the Teacher's union that not only control it; they control it to such an extent that the schools are going to hell in a handbasket. No,the thought police were not merely a figment of Orwell's imagination. Orwell was with the Communists when they fought the Spanish Fascists; it was being around these people every day that opened his eyes to what Socialism is really about--and it was being among them which finally caused Orwell to renounce the Commies and write books exposing them for the frauds they were (and still are). Animal Farm is one of the best and most prophetic books ever written; Orwell clearly knew his topic. And the entire book appears to have been written about today's PC society and the Democrat party specifically.
I could say it is going to get ugly, but when it comes to the Democrats--especially those in Congress and the media--it already is ugly; The ugliest I have ever seen since being alive, and just as ugly as I have read about it being just prior to the Civil War in the 1850's. The very fact that I feel compelled to write this is an after-effect of the hate-filled Democrats and what they are trying to do to my country.
It is only now as I pass through middle age that I can see why men in those days could bring themselves to leave home and to fight a bloody war to protect what they have; and I can now appreciate the anger they must have felt towards the people who would take all that away. Now, as then, the Union IS worth preserving and fighting for. Our men overseas know that. Most Republicans know it. I suspect even quite a few Democrats can see it. But for the Worst, Slimiest Congress in US History, working in concert with the minority party for the common good is a completely foreign concept. For them it is all black and white--a zero sum game, now. And when a party gets to the place where it cares more what happens to the Party than it does what happens to the Country, it is time for the Party to go.
UPDATE: My fellow "Wide-Awake," Xformed is on fire today. This captures my frustration as well as anything I have read recently. Something must be in the water, like blood in the water for sharks... it is "Shark Week" after all.
Labels: Defeatocrats, Democrat Sabotage, Hearts and Minds, PC, Thought Police
