George W. Bush, for all his faults, recognized one very important fact about the world today, that the United Nations is a dog with no bite. From the sitting on their hands during the genocides in Serbia and Rwanda to their pitiful excuse for pressure on North Korea, the world’s evil dictators and terrorists can rest easy knowing that the UN has not been able to accomplish anything worthwhile in the modern era. Unfortunately, for them since Bush’s second term and for all of Obama’s present and probably future, the United States has placed the problems of nuclear proliferation on the UN’s table and, today, we reap some of the “benefits” of this soft approach. Today, Iran opened up its first nuclear power plant with the help of Russian engineers who claim that this plant can only be used for peaceful purposes (the Russian connection is something I’ll expose in later posts). This is a milestone for the Iranian nuclear weapons program, signaling that they are almost there. Now that Iranian scientists will have more firsthand knowledge and technical expertise when dealing with nuclear materials, with the UN’s stamp of approval of course, they will be even closer to producing a bomb… and to all those Iran apologists who claim that converting from energy production to nuclear bombs is very difficult, I have only to point out that prior to the Manhattan Project that produced our own nuclear weapons, we did not have a single nuclear plant and the effort only took a few years.

What this has to do with liberals is simple. It was the strong anti-war opposition of the Left during Bush and the strong pro-defeat attitudes of the Democrats in Washington who claimed that the war in Iraq was lost a few years ago, that soured the public mood and the political atmosphere when it came to questions of military intervention. I, for one, advocate minding one’s own business as much as possible, but not when existential threats to either our allies or ourselves emerge. Liberals don’t care about American security. The media has celebrated the current administrations actions when it comes to Iran, but the American people aren’t fooled. The clock is running out on the Iran issue and Obama’s government seems dead set on not letting anything stop Iran’s Islamic Republic from reaching their goals of nuclear-armed power. It is on issues like these that Obama’s love of Islam comes to the forefront. It is on issues like these the liberal’s tolerance of foreign dictators and terrorists comes to haunt us. The liberal agenda has only given extra time for America’s enemies to rearm and prepare their next attacks.

This inaction is intentional. This is part of the Obama agenda so eagerly embraced by the powers that be in our government. They (the media and far Leftists) saw how easy it was to convince the American public that our military policies were terrible, but they could only sell their case in the face of worsening conditions on the ground, by printing body counts in their headlines on a daily basis, and by smearing supporters of the war effort as hawks, imperialists, and just plain old bad people. In other words, the only way to disarm America is to make people want to disarm themselves. This cannot happen if it looks like the United States is winning, it cannot happen if the Taliban continue hiding in caves or if Iraqi insurgents are beaten back by the surge or if Iran is prevented from having nuclear weapons. Liberals point to a dangerous world as proof that we must retreat. They point to the devastation of nuclear weapons as proof that we must disarm, even if everyone one else is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. They want to mentally and physically disarm the American people so that we are more complacent, so that when they take away our Second Amendment rights we do nothing, so that they can keep the American public brain-dead simply accepting as truth their statements and the media’s “honest” reporting. It’s part of the plan. In this way, Iran’s rise as a nuclear power is part of domestic policy for the Democrats. The same Democrats that sat back and did nothing as the brave Iranian people rose up against their totalitarian rulers last year, only to watch them get massacred by the Islamic Republic’s goons. The same Democrats who branded Bush a failure in Iraq only to [implicitly] claim victory for themselves (if Bush’s gains hold) and withdraw during the Obama administration.

At this point in our history the goals of Global Islam and the liberal agenda coincide and will inexorably lead to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by our most dangerous enemies. Obama and his ilk are at peace with this fact because a world with strong enemies means that they can focus on dismantling America as opposed to protecting America. Notice that the advance of the welfare state occurred mainly under Democrat presidents and Congresses during the Cold War, a time when our enemies were strong. On the flip side, the revival of the conservative movement and the end of the entitlement mindset started after Reagan won the Cold War and our enemies were on the run. Freedom is closely linked to security, for only when we feel unsafe are we willing to surrender our freedoms. This is precisely the liberal left’s plan for all of us.

-AG

The condescending liberal media believes that a large portion of the American public is ignorant due to the recent poll indicating that almost 1 in 5 Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim. This attitude by the establishment media is not surprising since they’re angry over the fact that the American people don’t just swallow what’s on the news as pure fact. They are angry that Americans can think for themselves, especially when questions over Obama’s faith are so obvious. The apologists in the mainstream media have pretended that Obama is in fact a Christian without fully scrutinizing these claims, but the president’s actions speak for themselves. I believe and have believed that Obama is not being truthful when it comes to matters of personal faith and while I want to hold him to his word that he is a Christian, Obama seems to have a powerful affection for Islam and a thorough aversion to Christianity. This fact has not been lost on the American people and is the source of the idea that Obama is Muslim, but many in the mainstream media like to point at their ideological foes, at conservatives, independents, and anyone who does not simply accept as absolute truth the dicta of the so-called “progressive” ideology, and claim that it is misinformation by the “new media,” talk radio, and Republicans. This cannot be further from the truth, especially since the mainstream media is so named due to their omnipresence in American society. From the non-stop vilification of the regular folks who attend Tea Party rallies to the near-deafening insistence that the world’s woes are a direct result of previous conservative policies, the mainstream media has made misinformation into a veritable science. Regardless of the pro-Obama media’s assertions, the ultimate source of misconception over Obama’s faith is Obama’s actions when it comes to religion.

When I refer to Obama’s affection for Islam, I mean that Obama loves Islam, in the political sense of the word love. From the beginning of his candidacy, Obama has made it a point to highlight certain elements from his childhood for political gain and hide others. While mentioning his Indonesian upbringing as some sort of qualification on foreign policy issues, he does not mention the fact that he was registered at the schools he attended as a Muslim and therefore was subject to the Islamic religion class as were the other Muslim students (the majority, at least in the public school he attended). In other words, Obama sat through class being taught about Islam, Mohammed, and the Koran while in public he omits any mention of these experiences (though he writes a little about them in his books). Here is a video that talks about these things, it has been around for a while but it is as relevant as ever given today’s headlines:

He professes that the sound of the Muslim call to prayer is one of the “prettiest sounds on Earth,” and that his time in Indonesia was filled with fond memories. His love of Islam starts at an early age and only grows with time. From his immersion in the writings of Malcolm X aka Malik Shabazz, his association with an alleged member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and anti-Israel professor Rashid Khalidi, his shady links to Dr. Khalid al-Mansour who helped him get into Harvard, his apology speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, his deep bow to the king of Saudi Arabia, all the way to his recent comments giving a figurative nod to those wanting to build erect a mosque near Ground Zero, is it any wonder that so many Americans consider him a Muslim? According to the poll, 10% of Democrats think he is Muslim. His own party doubts his claims of being Christian, especially when one sees how Obama practices his supposed Christian faith.

In addition to the points made in the video above, about Obama’s view that Jesus Christ is not the savior of humanity, in an interview about his faith he artfully dodges a question about him always being a Christian, and I quote:

“[Interviewer]:
Have you always been a Christian?

OBAMA:
I was raised more by my mother and my mother was Christian.”

Since he did not answer the question, we can only speculate as to whether he was Muslim before and later converted, was Muslim and never converted, etc. The lack of clarity on the question of faith, made crystal clear by the recent White House statement that Obama “doesn’t wear it on his sleeve,” gives rational obervers the impression that he is not a Christian and if he is, then he is not a practicing one. His cancellation of the National Day of Prayer event at the White House further chips away at the Judeo-Christian heritage of this country. On the other hand, the president observed the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, hosting a dinner and delivering a statement. The question is, why ignore an interfaith national day of prayer while actively participating in a specific faith’s (Islam’s) start of their holy month?

This behavior by the president makes it unclear as to whether he is Christian or Muslim. Ultimately, his actions show such a strong affinity, such powerful affection for Islam, that regardless of his actual religious beliefs, we can continue to expect Barack Obama to favor Global Islam over the United States of America.

I close with a video from the infamous Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi where the dictator says same very troubling things about our current president, not limited to the fact that he is Muslim but that Obama’s plans are in fact more sinister than he lets on.

-AG

The passage of the Arizona immigration law and recent May Day protests have been weighing heavily on my mind. As a “Latino,” the circumstances of my heritage have no effect on my opinions with respect to this new law, though this may make many liberals very angry. They expect me to vote my skin color and forgo careful analysis. I am glad to disappoint them. As an American, I find this law to be somewhat worrisome. To start, the continual influx of illegal immigrants and the exploitation of our broken borders by international criminal elements may eventually lead to the collapse of the United States as a sovereign nation. This is not fear-mongering, this is fact. If we allow for an indefinite multitude of people to cross our borders and reside illegally in the US, then our country will collapse under the weight of the social and economic strain of their presence (I will get into this more in depth some other time). It is of paramount import that we, as a nation, get a grip on this problem before it is too late. That said, I worry over the possible consequences of the Arizona immigration law.

I am not one of those who immediately dismiss this as a machination of the xenophobic far right since I am keenly aware of the ticking time-bomb that the immigration problem poses. What I offer here are my thoughts and/or suggestions as to how best this law can serve the citizens of Arizona and ultimately all Americans. If the Arizona law leads to widespread civil rights violations and requires all citizens to carry proof of citizenship everywhere, then this law cannot stand. This is what opponents of the law, ranging from liberal to libertarian, charge that will come to be. I am not so sure. On the first count, racial profiling, one needs only to look at the demographic make-up of Arizona to realize that it would be practically impossible to implement such a policy. Arizona’s population is more than 30% of Latino origin which means that if the authorities decided to detain people on the basis of race then they would flood their police departments, sheriffs’ offices, and prisons with legal and illegal Latino-looking people. Not to mention that this practice would be wrong and would lead to a total breakdown of trust between the community and the authorities. This would be a nightmare scenario. When people say that racial profiling will be the norm, they can rest assured that the countless lawsuits brought against a racist police force will put an end to this law exceedingly quickly. This is why I do not think that Arizona will opt for a race-based rationale for determining “suspicion.”

The second count is more possible, but from my reading of the law it seems that Arizona citizens are not explicitly expected to carry around proof of citizenship at all times. Federal law already requires that non-citizens carry around proof of their legal status, so this law simply allows state authorities to enforce this law. The problem is with regular US citizens who are not required to carry such documents and whether or not they will be unreasonably searched. This problem is trickier. The only solution to such a problem is to concretely define what constitutes “reasonable suspicion” and to carefully train law enforcement so that they follow such criteria very, very closely. No police department will want to have to suspend or fire officers that violate citizen’s rights, not the mention the inevitable lawsuits that would immediately follow such a violation. On another note, a government requirement that we carry identification documents everywhere we go would be outright unamerican.

But these are all big ifs that depend on how the law is enforced. While these are probably the biggest negatives, the positives are immediately clear: giving law enforcement more tools in helping rein in illegal immigration, penalizing companies that hire illegal immigrants, and filling in where the federal government refuses to do its job. Just last Friday, a suspected drug trafficker shot an Arizona deputy with an AK-47 assault rifle. How did they get into the country with these weapons? Why should we keep our borders unguarded if this is the threat that exists? With Mexico’s drug war raging south of the border, it makes no sense to continue our present “porous-borders” policy for two reasons: 1) we are the primary market for the Mexican drug cartels and 2) this violence could easily spill over into the United States. We already see some of the effects of the Mexican drug war on our own soil, with Phoenix becoming the city with the second highest number of people kidnapped in the world behind (surprise!) Mexico City. As of yet, the actual drug violence seems to have kept mostly to itself in Mexico, but leaving the door wide open for them is not making us any safer.

The liberal response to the Arizona law was the usual high-pitched shrieking about the law’s supporters being xenophobes, racists, Nazis, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not surprisingly, the president had negative things to say about the law which is in itself ironic given that Arizona stood up specifically because Washington has repeatedly laid down when it comes to securing our borders. The reality is that everyone is hurt by illegal immigration, from the Hispanic communities that become havens for Latin American gangs to working people’s wages that are depressed by the large pool of unskilled laborers. We need a sane and orderly immigration policy so that when new, legal arrivals get here there will still exist an America where their dreams can come true.

-AG

For too long, it has been common knowledge in our society that leftist political philosophies contain within them the ingredients for an ideal state of affairs in the world. The perceived “humanism” and liberalism (in the classic sense) of the leftists emerged from the stark contrast between their ideas and that of the “establishment.” History is riddled with examples of how the “establishment” has wronged mankind, held back the spirit of progress, and led to countless atrocities. From religious wars to despotic rule to exploitative capitalism during the Industrial Revolution, the Old Order seemed to keep us all in a dark age where the few ruled over the many with an iron fist. In general, revolutionary forces tended to be “leftist” while Old Order proponents were called “rightist,” terms originating from the French Revolution. Yet as leftist philosophies matured in the 19th century and the vestiges of the Old Order of monarchies and all-powerful Churches subsided, the leftists started to refine their concepts and better define the future ideal societies they had in mind. This refinement led to schisms among the leftists and today we have socialists, communists, anarchists, social democrats, progressives, and so on. In the United States, the characterization of the Left as the progressive, common-man political ideology has firmly established it as the idealistic philosophy… but modern Leftism in America is very far from idealistic.

From its foundation, Leftism and Progressivism in the United States is an ideology that focuses on a peculiar type of equality: equality of outcome. In itself, this may seem to contain an idealistic character, but that is only on the surface. From matters of race to gender to economic status, the progressives wage war on any sort of inequality that they are conscious of. They aim to shatter distinctions in gender, reform public expression to make it more palatable for people of all backgrounds, institute racial and ethnic quotas to make the distribution of power, wealth, and influence more “equal,” and use government as a means of preventing any one individual or group from acquiring an “undue” share of wealth. Underlying this philosophy is the idea that man, when left to his devices, will always wage war on others, will always try to take from others, and must be told what is right and what is wrong. It is a philosophy that takes away from people the freedom to make their own decisions and empowers a central authority to redistribute all capital, be it economic or social, as it sees fit, all for the good of the whole. The progressive does not assume that people will act in the best interest of society on their own but rather that they will inherently do evil things and must be stopped. Leftism is pessimistic about the nature of humanity. To them, human beings are children who need constant supervision otherwise they will steal all of the other children’s toys and resort to bullying. This is evident in their approach to most social, political, and economic issues. They address gun violence with abolishing the right to bear arms. They address economic inequality by taking from those who earn and giving to those who do not. They insist on price controls, market intervention, strict regulation, and are almost religiously opposed to making profit of any kind. Given this reality, the fact that Leftism is regarded as the “idealistic” ideology seems to be more a matter of tradition than a matter of careful analysis.

In America, there is another political philosophy which takes a different approach to the question of how society should be arranged. Specifically, this philosophy says that society should not be explicitly arranged, just allowed to live and prosper in freedom. This philosophy is Conservatism. While not as extreme as libertarianism, which advocates for even less power to be given to the state, conservatism advocates a sort of middle way where there exists a government limited to a certain role. In the United States, the Constitution provides a political framework whereby the government can operate through the consent of the people. The underlying principle of conservatism is freedom… and ultimately that human beings can and should make decisions for themselves, be responsible for those decisions, and be entitled to the fruit of their labor without heavy government interference. This idea is revolutionary in modern-day America where the continual expansion of the size, scope, and power of government is the paradigm. Not only is this idea revolutionary but at its core it posits that human beings have the capacity to run their own lives. It is a philosophy that is optimistic about man, while at the same time being realistic about the need for some sort of agreed upon authority to enforce contracts and rules. It is an idealism based on real conditions. The equality that conservatism guarantees is equality of opportunity, not outcome, because to enforce a uniform outcome is to deny the right of a person to benefit from or be held responsible for his or her actions. Modern-day conservatism represents the hopes and dreams of all Americans, to be free, to be successful, to have a voice in our government. This is why conservatives emphasize respect for state’s rights and the separation of powers in government, because history has shown that central authority has the propensity to abuse power. This is why conservatives demand that judges be neutral arbiters of the law and not activist “re-interpreters” of the Constitution. This is why conservatives are opposed to increasing government interference in the economy and in our everyday lives. Conservatives are the new idealists. We believe that a better society is possible if we free the creative and productive powers of human beings. We do not merely believe that we should be free, we believe that we have the fundamental right to liberty. There is no limit to this right. It is absolute. And if we fall as a people in our exercise of this liberty, then we will learn and we will do better… and by iterations, our society will move forward, will improve, and our world will be better off for it.

So when I hear people in positions of power explain to me and my fellow Americans that we need to be guided by the gentle hand of government bureaucrats, that our rights need to be limited for the common good, and that we cannot reap the rewards of our own sweat, I do not consider them idealistic in the least… I consider them despotic. Leftism has become, not a total repudiation of the Old Order tyranny, but as an alternative, more acceptable New Order tyranny. This is neither “progressive” nor ideal for any society. I hope that new idealistic souls will rise up and declare the old ideas over and done with. The sad part is that these idealists are attacked and portrayed as being part of that Old Order by the leftists, for they convince their followers in true Orwellian form that when we conservatives say “freedom” we mean slavery and when we say “individualism” we mean racism and class-ism. For the moment they control the major means of communication in our society, so revolution will be slower than we would like, but with new technology the message of optimism in our fellow man will breach the wall of disinformation that currently exists. To those conservatives out there who believe that we can live in a better world that is free, let everyone know that we are indeed the last idealists.

-AG

Since the passage of the Health Care Reform bill, my approach to political discussions has changed in a fundamental way: I no longer allow lies to prevail. My style though, like so many other styles, is unique. First of all, I’m not an overly nice guy, I mean “fake” nice smiling at everything people say. In other words, I’m not a politician. What I do emphasize is two things: respect and factual accuracy. These two basic approaches are devastating to the leftists who tend to base their arguments on gross distortions of the truth and emotional appeals. Here are some examples of how this has worked in practice:

- Discussing education with a teacher, one of her arguments for why education in this country is not doing as well as it should was that this “The US is committed to education for all children of all people to the limit of their capacity. This idea is unique, no other country has had either the vision or the resources to undertake this task.” Note: this is a teacher in charge of teaching our children. As many people know, most if not all industrialized countries in the world have a system of universal education at least from K to 12 with the same “vision,” in fact, all of the countries that rank ahead of ours have such a system. Without facts, this discussion would have been based on a false premise and I would have been at a disadvantage. This underscores the importance of independently researching topics that matter to us as a society. It also shows that our teachers need to be better educated before they infect our children with such drivel.

- Recently, I posted a comment on an article written by a conservative and received an email from a liberal who had a problem with what I wrote. He wrote: “I do not go the a website (i.e Huffington post) to read posts that I agree with….I do not need affirmation of my liberals beliefs…..unlike u dittoheads and Beck worshippers who only seek affirmation of your racist and narrow minded views.” We see here clearly that the liberal uses his oft-repeated accusations of racism and stupidity/ignorance laced with other assumptions. My reply was lengthy and so I won’t post it here, but to paraphrase I explained to him my multiracial background, the fact that I read articles from different perspectives, and I suggested that he practice more of that liberal “tolerance” that they preach before he starts accusing people of things he knows nothing of. At the bottom of my email I wrote “God bless you.” This final part was the most important for various reasons, first of all he seemed very very angry and possibly needed to be reminded that though we may disagree, we don’t have to be nasty. Second, the far Left gets even more incensed when conservatives wish them well or invoke God and I wondered if he was that type. If someone is an ideological enemy, it does not mean that they are our mortal enemy (though often the converse is true) therefore we must remember to retain civility in discussions since this is far more powerful that foaming at the mouth (as they tend to do). Respect your opponent and never underestimate him.

- Discussing an article by Newt Gingrich with a liberal, instead of debating the content of the article he went on attacking Gingrich personally, calling out bullet point after bullet point of why he is a terrible person. Here’s one of his gems:

“Considering that he cheated on his wife while she was dying of cancer at the exact same time he was trying to impeach Bill Clinton, I’m betting it’s that he’s a lying sack of shit.”

For those paying attention, this accusation is false (his marital problems took place more than a decade earlier) but that won’t stop this guy. Another interesting part is that he, in an episode of projection, called Gingrich’s article “intellectually dishonest.” My reply was “you attack the man not the message, THAT is intellectually dishonest… Shame on you for debating things outside this article.” Only after this, did the liberal realize that he was getting out of hand and promised to “tone it down.” Fortunately, we were eventually able to discuss the actual content only to have him misrepresent data and force me to, again, correct him. This is what many on the Left do, especially the more extreme ones, they choose to sidestep the argument completely in favor of pointing out something distasteful yet unrelated. Whenever you see someone opt for attacking a person or thing related to the topic instead of discussing policy head-on, it shows that either they cannot intelligently discuss policy or have opinions that are based on whether they personally like someone or something, as opposed to analyzing the benefits and risks of the policy in question. Having a clear head, pointing out when they are being cruel or dishonest, and having facts on hand is critical to refuting the near-constant barrage of disinformation that liberals spew during debates.

These are just some of my more recent encounters with the Left, all of them show the shallowness of their arguments and highlight the importance of both respect and factual accuracy when engaging them. On the national scene, this becomes more pressing… but I say that the conservative revolution must be from the bottom-up and in the microcosm that is our everyday lives we must make sure that we blast away the silly leftist ideas every chance we get, but do it with respect so that the liberal can back away with dignity. Who knows, we might even convince a few of them in the process.

-AG

I often read and listen to those whose view of the world revolves around some shadowy organization that is planning to… TAKE OVER THE WORLD! From those who claim that the Earth is under the control of Reptilians from an alternate universe to those that believe, more realistically, that an international cartel of bankers drives every human event with calculated precision, there are many, many, MANY different types of conspiracy theories out there. While I thoroughly enjoy reading and listening to their arguments, I subscribe to none simply because many of the claims are outright unbelievable and also because I believe that most of these can be reduced to a common factor. Let’s take the most popular one at the moment, one that fuels the anti-establishment, “libertarian” movement and has propelled Alex Jones and others as major figures in conspiracy-theory-circles: the insidious hand of international bankers is behind everything that happens in the world for the goal of securing a [cue dramatic music] NEW WORLD ORDER!

I have serious problems with these theories for a few reasons, one of them being that they attack every single action taken by banks and corporations and string together facts in very creative ways (I will get into this some other time). What I wish to talk about here is the paradoxical nature of the conspiracy theories, namely that if the entire world is run by international bankers through government control, propaganda, war, terrorism, false-flag attacks, etc. then how can we say that the very conspiracy ideas being espoused are not also a form of control? This is similar to the movie “The Matrix” where ultimately (spoiler alert!) Neo discovered that his very existence and his destiny, to lead humanity to freedom, was actually a planned part of the “matrix” of control. How can the conspiracy theory proponents assume that their ideas are somehow immune from the near-omnipotent puppet-masters? They can’t, at least not accurately. Where does this leave the conspiracy theorist, unsure even of his or her own immunity from the conspiracy? It leaves them where the rest of us are, trying to create a world that is more just and more free without absolute knowledge of everything. This is a good thing because instead of having to devote oneself to an exclusive model of reality, one can instead try to come up with solutions that cover all bases, solutions that make such conspiracies impossible.

Here is where an emphasis on establishing a free society comes in. So many of the conspiracies simply shatter once we start working towards a more free system. Just think, if we limit the power of government as described by the Constitution, the international bankers, corporations, satanists, aliens, etc. cannot control our people. One down. If we treat all people equally like human beings, not blacks, whites, browns, gays, etc. just people, then there can be no “divide-and-conquer” strategy by the masters of the universe. Two down. If we allow the existence of a free enterprise system where any company can compete in the market with any other without government intrusion, then the evil capitalist ruling class may find themselves under attack by smart businessmen and women with innovative products and services, banks included. Three down. If we start holding politicians and their respective parties accountable for not promoting all these things and start voting for candidates that make a real difference, thereby wresting political power from the entrenched “oligarchy,” then down goes the entire new world order. So why the need to believe in the hidden absolute power of the Bilderbergers, Trilateral Commission, and the like? There is no need. Believing in the irredeemable nastiness of bankers or CEO’s or a shadow government plays into the hands of one group, blindly supporting them plays into the hands of another, it seems that conspiracy theorists fall for the conspiracies just as much as everyone else. What Americans need is to realize that once government power is limited, the Constitution is adhered to, free competition is allowed to thrive, and people are treated as free, independent individuals, no power can subdue our liberty.

-AG

This strategy was suggested by CNN political reporter Candy Crowley on “The Joy Behar Show,” one of the many shows on CNN with a leftist bias. This is telling for it shows that the Left is not going to be gearing up for a policy fight, an ideas fight, but instead will opt for a name-calling match, something that they have excelled in for many years. On the same program, Huffington Post editor Roy Sekoff suggested that the Democrats try to throw the focus off of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democrat-controlled Congress and instead focus on Sarah Palin and “the lunatic fringe” in the Tea Party. Again we see the left grasping desperately as straws, trying to throw anything and everything at their political opponents while they use their majorities to impose their agenda. For the conservatives out there, be prepared for the onslaught, thicken your skin for the vile invectives to come, and polish your rhetorical guns for battle… here comes the crazy-conservative meme.

Think, for a moment, about how both Hollywood and the Mainstream Media has been fixated for more than a year now on Sarah Palin, slamming her day after day after day for being stupid, for being greedy, for being anything negative that they can think of. What is the motive behind this? She is not the leader of the Republican Party. She is not an elected official. She is currently simply a political contributor, an actor on the national stage, if you will, but this does not stop the media machine that plasters her name and face in articles, newspapers, blogs, etc. on a near daily basis. The reason behind this is clear, the Democrat strategy is to ridicule, attack, and tear down people personally instead of on a substantive basis. The same goes for the Tea Party movement which has been accused incessantly of being racist, homophobic, and insane by the mainstream media. Why not turn their cameras around and focus on the real internal dangers to America, the ones who are piling on national debt, the ones who are issuing mandates, increasing taxes, and taking over free enterprise piece by piece? Ultimately, Palin and the Tea Party have no official power in this country, yet. It is the Democrats who are currently wielding the sword of government and using it to get their way no matter the cost. There is absolutely no doubt that the mainstream media is in bed with the Left, pushing forward almost every policy that comes out of the crooked mouths of Obama and his cohorts.

This reality means that independent thinking Americans must look to the media with a skeptical eye. We must educate ourselves, in essence “arming” ourselves, so that we can navigate through the mass information being spewed by the Left’s mouthpieces. Most importantly, though, we must not be afraid of speaking truth to power. Many times throughout history, the people who spoke the truth were branded as crazy, and today’s America is, sadly, no different. So when the Lefties say “let’s just call them crazy extremists,” we will reply with truth. When they try to drown out opposition with cries of racism or homophobia with no proof, we will reply with truth. And when they try to distance themselves from their damaging acts against the American people, we will continue to reply with truth. It is of utmost importance to arm ourselves with knowledge, to recognize when the media says outright “we won’t debate substance, just call them crazy,” and to be able to explain our positions to others. Most Americans do not have the time or energy to invest in researching for themselves, they rely on soundbites from the mainstream media to form their opinions, this makes it harder for wisdom to prevail, but we must not let up. Ideas about freedom, responsibility, and opportunity are, in themselves, more powerful than the Leftist demands for collectivism, wealth redistribution, and perpetual dependence. It is the leftists who are the angry ones, the ones that tear down the bonds between our fellow citizens, the ones who try to pit one against the other and, after wreaking so much havoc, throw their hands up and say “ONLY GOVERNMENT can take care of us now.” We are the optimists, the ones who believe in human potential, in human achievement, and the ones who do not see color or religion or class… we just see human beings, friends… and if that makes us crazy, then lock us in the loony bin!

-AG

I was listening to Dr. Ron Paul’s speech at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference that took place in New Orleans this weekend and believe that the doctor misses a very important point when it comes to the question of socialism in America. Specifically, Paul said that Obama is not a socialist but is, in fact, a “corporatist.” He is wrong. He is wrong for the same reason that liberals who defend Obama and who also believe he is not socialist are wrong. The argument goes that the president has actually not done anything truly socialist and that he has only helped corporations and defended the status quo. This argument is fatally flawed, not because those that believe it are ignorant or stupid, but rather because the socialism of the 19th and 20th century is radically different from the socialism of the 21st century.

Those who do not have firsthand experience with communist totalitarianism tend not to understand the inner workings of the communist and socialist movement (unless they study it thoroughly). Socialism is not an American idea, it comes from abroad, and to only focus on socialism in a national sense makes it impossible to see how the threat is evolving and what it has in store for us. While socialism did not begin with Marx and Engels, it is mainly because of them that socialism becomes a truly dangerous idea as seen from its implementation in the former USSR, China, North Korea, etc. To understand the current manifestation of socialism in the world, we need look no further than to Latin America where we have the old socialist model suspended in time in Cuba and the new socialist models rising in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Ultimately, China is the only communist country that has made the transition from old-style socialism to modern socialism, the other ones have either discarded socialism/communism or have become mired in poverty. The new expression of socialism is no longer as explicit in its forms of control as in the past, for example nationalization of private enterprise is done piecemeal, rollback of freedoms is done in the name of fighting the United States, dissidents and political opponents are now actually charged with (usually fake or unjustified) crimes, propaganda is more sophisticated, and the centralization of economic, political, and social power in the hands of the government is masked. This brings me to Paul’s comments and to a something that has been circulating for some time now, the anti-corporatist sentiment.

Often in this blog, I refer to Corporate Socialism, which I believe is the brand of socialism that has emerged in the United States, but it is a brand that is not uniquely American. In other countries, where capitalism has been less developed, it was always easier for the socialists to simply nationalize the few companies that operated in their countries and create a government monopoly. In industrialized nations such a practice would be suicide and so, the only way for the socialists to create a government-run economy is through corporations themselves. This is the way in which the neo-socialists can masquerade as people who care about freedom and people who believe in the free market while being full-blown socialists. This type of socialist is what we have in Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. These are the types of socialists that are enacting “free market reforms” in China. And this is the type of socialist that we see in Barack Obama. The end result of corporate socialism is not a society where corporations rule, it is a society where the few corporations that are allowed to exist will be run by government directly… a government oligopoly. So when Paul says that Obama is not technically a socialist, he is wrong. He is a modern socialist. Obama has an extensive record of advocating for government-mandated wealth redistribution and during his presidency he has done just that: repeatedly taxing the rich, regulating private enterprise, funneling taxpayer money into big corporations, overseeing and enabling huge bank mergers while thousands of private banks are nationalized, expanding entitlement spending, taking over the health care system, and the list goes on. To call Obama a “corporatist” feeds into that anti-corporate sentiment that exist in America, a sentiment that was created by the Left. There exist many corporations in America, most of them being small businesses that get incorporated. These small businesses are increasingly going extinct because of Obama’s agenda. The problem in America is not the private corporations, it is the government that intervenes in the economy. Paul-ites point to the Federal Reserve and say “look, it’s not a government entity, but a private one” while ignoring the most important part: the power it has over monetary policy was given by government and is regulated by government. Had government simply created a central government bank, it would act exactly the same as the Federal Reserve. The label “private corporation” means nothing, the fact that the government has given it official power is everything. Same goes for “big corporations” which tend to be favored by the state. What would happen if the government stopped sponsoring these corporations? They would end up competing in the market like everyone else, subject to being “beaten” by smaller companies that offer better products. It is this type of free market competition that is stifled by an increasingly socialist government.

The facts on the ground get muddled by the rhetoric that gets thrown around. It is not the nameless Wall Street executive or faceless corporate boards that take away our freedoms, it is an overly powerful federal government. When the government enters the marketplace and favors one company over another, it is easy to blame the company, but it is actually the fault of the government. Notice how every regulation imposed by the government hurts businesses disproportionately, with the small businesses getting hurt the most and the larger corporations surviving. I say that this is not a mistake on the part of government, it is by design. Nor is the government a faceless organism, we know who the socialists are. They’re the ones who propose big government programs for every minor and not-so-minor problem in America. Right now, Obama is the standard-bearer of the Corporate Socialist movement. To call the president a corporate tool or dismiss the claims that he is socialist only helps the Left assert more control. Ron Paul should take another look at history and realize that the socialism of the past is slightly different from modern socialism in that nowadays the socialists use big corporations to advance their aims. Corporate Socialism is like the black widow, it copulates with big business until it gets what it wants, total control, and then turns around and eats its mate.

-AG

RNC Chairman Michael Steele has been under fire for most of his tenure as leader of the Republican Party and he attributes that to his race. This is ridiculous. If anything, the convenient fact that he became the face of the Republican party in January 2009, the start of the age of Obama, may have had more to do with race than the criticisms against him. Let’s be real for a moment, the Democrats are the ones who specialize in using the race card, they specialize in reducing an argument to an accusation of racism claiming that every legitimate policy argument against them masks violent hatred based on the color of one’s skin. And now we have chairmen Steele taking a page right out of the Democrats’ playbook, crying that the standards are too high, the margin of error too slim simply because he is not white. He should run into the Democrats’ arms where he can get sympathy because he is “different.” Now, for me and for all the conservatives I know, he is under fire specifically because he is not different, he has a job to do and that job is all that people care about. He has a tough job, I give him that, and the pressure is high because the GOP is down right now… what does he expect? Flower petals to fall from the sky when the press got wind of Republicans using donor dollars on strippers?

While it’s good that they did damage control, recovering the money from that event, an event that was not sanctioned by the RNC, it’s much more damaging when Steele comes out on ABC’s “Good Morning America” saying that his race is making his job harder. These statements make it clear that the RNC is trying to be like the DNC, to use race as a weapon, as an excuse. His missteps have been exceedingly plentiful and he should thank his lucky stars that Obama is around. Imagine how it would “look” if Michael Steele were fired during the age of Obama, the charges of racism from the Left would be deafening… but this is exactly the problem with America today. We are moving backward, to a place where race trumps qualification and merit. I want to be “progressive” in the sense that I want our society to progress to a point where we are all truly equal, where charges of racism are reserved for real-life racism, not for the appearance of racism.

The first political party in the United States to adhere to the principles of freedom and equality espoused by our founding fathers in our founding documents will save this nation from the ruinous path that we are on. If the Republican Party wants to be that party, then it must stop acting like the Democrats, it must start treating people like people, not as props. Steele is making himself a prop, a talking face constantly on television, on talk shows, an entertainer instead of a leader. He does not represent conservatism, especially when he utters nonsense and plays the race card. Once the Republicans embrace personal responsibility instead of an entitlement society, embrace individuals for their merit not their race, and embrace freedom instead of the endless expansion of a central government, they will become the majority party and they will truly represent what America is all about. A good first step toward this goal can be to ask for Steele’s resignation, not because he is black, but because he is not mobilizing voters, because there exists a vast movement of conservatives that are impatiently waiting for a champion of freedom and the Republican Party under his leadership has not heeded that call. Americans must treat each other fairly, no matter the color… the American Dream is the ability to benefit from one’s own hard work despite class, race, religion, or any social “distinction,” anything that undermines this is Un-American and brings us closer to tyranny.

-AG

I was recently thinking about history, as it relates to leaders and great political upheavals, and remembered one defining moment that made crystal clear to me how demagogues attain power.

It happened during the 50’s… something called “revolution” in the streets of Cuba, in the mountains, in the fields, everywhere. Cuban freedom-fighters sacrificed life and limb against a corrupt dictatorship, another oft-repeated chapter in Latin American history coming to an end. The story started like so many others in this hemisphere: a popular figure, a coup de’tat, a dictator, brutal repression of political enemies, and a revolution. There were many groups fighting for freedom, almost an entire nation up in arms fighting for democracy, but there was one group that stood out in the press, the “bearded ones” fighting for freedom in the mountains led by one Fidel Castro Ruz, a man who declared himself pro-democracy and anti-tyranny. He was the people’s hero, idolized by millions, saluted by the United States’ press as the George Washington of the island nation.

What he becomes is something born of nightmares, a relentless bloodthirsty machine of repression seeking to secure power through body counts, chasing down anyone who disagreed on this isolated island in the middle of the Caribbean. Were there signs of this prior to his betrayal of the Cuban people? Many ask this question and today we know the answer is “yes.” The lesson is visual… it happens in this video below at 0:44 or so. Take a look:

This one moment summarizes the lessons we can learn from that nation’s history. It is something that is seen in recent history… moments when a human being, flawed, ambitious, and arrogant, uses props to make himself seem supernatural. The example of a dove “spontaneously” landing on the shoulder of the Cuban butcher is just one… in the United States we have a different example. We have people hyperventilating and fainting over the sight of one peculiar politician. Here’s a compilation of people fainting:

We can assume that the dove landing on Fidel Castro’s shoulder was staged (or was guided by the hand of Satan). Can we say the same thing about Barack Obama’s fainting females? Or do we assume that people simply faint at the sight of him? Now that he has assumed power, where are the people short of breath?

Barack Obama was raised to the status of near-deity by the media and his handlers… but we have seen this story before. It was written in Cuba, in North Korea, and other countries like these where miracles have been ascribed to human leaders, especially brutal, murderous ones.

What I saw during the 2008 campaign was unlike anything I expected from my fellow Americans. A blindness, a hypnosis, a total lack of independent thought gripped millions of people disillusioned with the previous administration. It makes me wonder if it was all staged… if the statists put up this charismatic politician with ridiculous props, an adoring media, and a mountain of cash so that the American public would be taken for a ride. America did fall for it… but the shiny new-ness is now dull and reality is setting in. We are now a one-party state that issues mandates on individuals and ignores the will of the people.

Now that the Republicans are gaining traction from the Left’s overreach, I worry that they too will put up some shiny politician and try to pedal him/her to the American public so that they can continue their own big government agenda. Make no mistake that there exists a huge faction within the Republican ranks that is pro-big-gov’t though most of them masquerade as conservatives. As a good friend of mine said “beware of slick talking hucksters selling ‘ism.’” Our fight should not be necessarily for “liberalism” or “conservatism” but for freedom… and we must never forget that whenever politicians seem too good to be true, they absolutely are.

-AG

Due to the recent arrests of militia members in the Midwest, I find it necessary to comment on these events. For those who expect me to talk about how the militia movement is the single most dangerous threat to everyday Americans, sorry, I plan to be rational. There are many out there who have gone on a tear about how these “right wing extremists” are sprouting up all over the country, saying that the election of a non-white president is fueling the rise of these groups, pointing to a racist element, and in the process indicting the entire right side of the spectrum. I do not deny the fact that lately there have been a number of individuals who have lashed out against the government, some because they felt betrayed by the government, some that are clearly anti-government, some racist, and some that believe in world-wide conspiracy theories, but the truth is that there is no single common factor between these people… other than some anger against someone or something. Looking at the history of US, people from socialists to anarchists to fascists to just plain old crazies have made threats against the US government for centuries. Some have actually carried out attacks, some have been stopped and arrested, while most have just fizzled and died off.

Let’s take a good look at the Hutaree Christian militia group, which had 9 members arrested by the FBI. Some facts first: they sprung up during the Bush administration, it seems probably in 2007. Wikipedia notes that the group started in 2008, yet looking at their youtube.com account, one sees that the “hutaree” account joined youtube on Dec. 31, 2006. In fact, their first video posting of a training exercise was on March 31, 2007. Don’t trust Wikipedia, guys. Because of this, we can scratch off the election of Obama as the reason behind the organizing of this group.

Second, they are a self-described “Christian” survivalist group that is preparing for the arrival of the antichrist and not part of the larger militia movement in the United States such as the Michigan Militia. Prior to the arrest of Hutaree members, militia groups had rejected them and tried to keep their distance because of the central religious component of this group. So we see that they are not part of some larger movement in the US, just a relatively isolated phenomenon. Third, they were infiltrated by the FBI. This final fact proves the most crucial to understanding the threat that this group posed.

They are accused seditious conspiracy and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction for their alleged plot to kill police officers. The weapons of mass destruction were just home-made bombs and their seditious conspiracy was that they allegedly planned to wage war against the US government. The FBI seems to have recorded conversations of their plot… but there lies the rub. It seems that they did not have a specific plot, it also seems that they had no clue as to how to make bombs, in fact, the group had to be helped by the undercover FBI agent so that their explosives would be more effective. Their “bombs” were made from cardboard and had no shrapnel, just some explosive material. So the whole “weapons of mass destruction” thing seems a bit exaggerated. Here’s a video from CNN that shows that these guys were pretty incompetent:

It seems that without direct assistance from the FBI, the Hutaree would still be playing with guns out in the forests and making improvised fireworks. Now, that they discussed some terrible things is without a doubt true, there are recordings that they did talk about killing others. For that fact and since they had access to weapons, the FBI did their job in taking these guys down. There was potential, however limited, and planning, however limited, to commit crimes. I think that all Americans should denounce the use of violence as a political tool. I know I do and I know that all of my conservative friends do too. This event shows how important this dedication to our country, our core principles, and our freedom is. Those who wish to kill, for political motives, fellow Americans are not patriots… nor are they in the least Christian.

What this event does not show is that there is a widespread far-right violent movement out there conspiring to destroy the government… but this has not stopped the mainstream media from painting the right as extremists. From the Dept of Homeland Security report that characterized right-leaning people and veterans as potential terrorists to the near-constant demonization of the Tea Party movement, the mainstream media outlets and the government have been waging ideological war on the right. Imagine yourself a member of the right, in case you are not, or someone who attends Tea Party rallies where the call is for limited government and common sense, not for taking up arms against the state, not for killing anyone, not for hating anyone, not for racism of any form, and then when you turn on the television or pick up a newspaper, you see that the mainstream media has associated you with terrorism, with racism, with hatred, when in fact you only care about the future state of this great country. This would make anyone mad. This is why I sometimes take time out in my writings to make the clear distinction between your common everyday liberal American and the extreme leftists that I tend to criticize. I know that Joe six-pack liberals believe in many of the things that I believe in, we simply differ on what we think the best path is, on whether the government knows best or whether the government should let us make our own decisions and our own mistakes (in a nutshell). The mainstream media does not make this distinction most of the time. Take, for example, this article by Eugene Robinson, who writes for major newspapers and appears on television, where he links the Hutaree to conservatives. He writes “the vitriolic, anti-government hate speech that is spewed on talk radio every day – and, quite regularly, at Tea Party rallies – is calibrated not to inform but to incite.” There they go again. Without a clear example, with a blanket statement like this, the Left weaves a fantasy of how the “far right” incites violence. Yet nowhere in the Tea Party movement do you hear that people take up arms, go to the forests, and prepare for the antichrist. If we did hear this, it would be playing on loop on CNN and MSNBC for weeks. This has not happened.

This attempt at discrediting conservatives and libertarians does not stop or start with Robinson, it is a broad based attack that is delivered through shocking headlines designed to capture the attention of an increasing ADD (ADHD?) American public. From opinion articles on CNN to Keith Olbermann painting conservative bloggers as sympathizers of the Hutaree to Rachel Maddow talking about the connection between Republicans and “far right terrorists” to Paul Krugman in a New York Times article accusing Republicans of hinting at violence and being unreasonable and irrational, the list of how the mainstream media is painting conservatives as lunatics and terrorists is exhaustive.

I say that these people stop smearing and start presenting all of the sides of the issues. Every time that there is a shooting incident in the US or some militia movement I hear the media go on the offensive against anyone who believes in limited government or the Second Amendment. Every time one person says something negative about the president or the left they are smeared as racists, extremists, or morons. If politics has become polarized in this country it is because one group is painted as extremist while the other is upheld as the model of refined intellectualism.

While the Hutaree story was circulating and fears of homegrown terrorism were being whipped up, people were dying all over the country due to gang shootings, drug-related violence, and terrorists detonated bombs on subways in Russia. People are dying while the media sensationalizes and smears. This is a disgusting practice and it needs to end… until then the American public will continue to be victims of a skewed presentation of reality.

-AG

Let’s put aside political affiliation for the moment and look at the recent developments on Washington. The first one I would like to talk about is the fact that the day after Obama’s Health Care bill passed, Bart Stupak and his coalition of 10 pro-life representatives requested billions in earmarks. Remember that the “compromise” reached between the Democrat party and the Stupak 11 was for the president to issue an executive order banning the use of federal funds for abortion. Legally, executive orders cannot overturn laws passed by Congress, therefore, two posts ago, I accused the Democrats of bribing or threatening Stupak (and by implication, the group he represented). At the moment, people on the right are pointing at this as proof of said bribery… but I am not convinced. Looking at the numbers, some are lower than last years earmarks and some are higher, yet this does not seem like a sufficient enough bribe. In other words, health care bill or no health care bill, these congresspersons may have requested the same amount. Given the fact that the Democrats have the majority in both houses of Congress, there is no reason to believe that they would not have received these earmarks anyways. While the timing is suspect and any independent thinker can see the absurdity of the Stupak “compromise” (a non-legally binding executive order), if they were threatened it might be difficult to find out and if they were bought off then I think we should be looking at something more substantial than this. Possibly this is part of a series of small payoffs and if so, we must wait to see how much the total is. Regardless of political affiliation, the Stupak episode does indeed stink to high heaven… especially since the margin of victory was 7 votes and the bill was/is opposed by a significant majority of Americans.

Moving on to the what I consider to be a real dirty trick: Obama proposed opening areas off the east coast and potentially areas off the Alaskan coast for oil and gas drilling. Personally, I welcome this as an opportunity to become more energy independent as we have seen what reliance on Middle East oil can lead to. Regardless of the merits, we must take a look at what is happening in Washington and understand why Obama is proposing something that he adamantly opposed and ridiculed during his campaign. See video:

Of course, in politician fashion, he made some indications that he was willing to change his mind, trying not to lock himself into a position, but in speech after speech across the country he outlined in a professorial manner the reasons why he opposed offshore drilling. He even said that he would keep the moratorium in place around the country. This pleased his base. It pleased environmentalists. But now we see that Obama and McCain agreed on this major issue, they both wanted to expand offshore drilling… sometimes it makes me wonder if there are any real differences between these “establishment” Republicans and the Democrats… in many ways they agree (see: Obamacare/Romneycare). I think that they tend to agree, not because their ideologies are the same, but because they do not stick to their guns, they retreat on their own principles just for politics’ sake. And for those who thought that Obama was post-political I think by now they have woken up.

This concession to the Republicans on offshore drilling was something he talked about during the state of union address. In that same address, he talked about meeting with Republicans about health care so that they could reach a compromise on the bill. This is starting to look like a pattern. As I wrote before, it is clear that the president is using this concession as a political prop, something that he can point at and say “look, I tried to compromise with them, but they didn’t budge.” With the health care meeting, little to nothing was accomplished and the Democrats proceeded with their nuclear option: reconciliation. No Republican voted for it. Obscure Senate rules were used to pass the most sweeping non-budgetary legislation in years by a bare majority, something that Congress has never done before. Reconciliation has only been used to tweak the system, lower/raise taxes, extend or retract coverage, change qualifications and requirements for our old health care system, not ever for a top-to-bottom restructuring of one sixth of our economy, here is a list on page 9 showing that only budget related items were passed using reconciliation. The scope of this bill was too large and should not have been passed through reconciliation, which stifles debate and dissent.

Enough about that though. This new concession by the administration seems to be in the same spirit as the “GOP health care sit-down,” i.e. it is simply a political prop. This is the only way to explain this about-face by the president, who previously said that this would do little to end our dependence on foreign oil but now calls this decision necessary to ensure energy independence. Amazing. What will the administration use this prop for? Probably for a bill that is being worked on by Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that is a revision of the cap-and-trade bill. It’s a bill already being called Cap-and-Tax and is being heralded as a job-killer and another huge burden on American citizens because of higher energy costs and taxes. Its aim is to reduce carbon emissions by a significant percentage, but ultimately this will do little or nothing to curb emissions. Primarily because the United States is not the top air polluter, that crown belongs to China, and China will not sacrifice its quest for economic dominance by becoming more environmentally friendly. In fact, China refuses international monitoring of its carbon emissions and calls on the US to provide more money to combat climate change. The top Chinese climate negotiator has said “there was still uncertainty about the causes of global warming… there are still two different viewpoints in the scientific field,” which shows their reluctance in slowing their economic machine by cutting emissions.

Ultimately, this means that the Democrats are now on their way to asserting more power over the energy industry in this country which ultimately will lead to higher costs, put small companies out of business, and higher taxes. Do we want to live in a country where only the large oligopolies can survive because of excessive government taxation and regulation? Do we want to make small businesses a thing of the past? Obama has admitted on the record that his proposals would bankrupt the coal industry, which provides the majority of electricity in this country (see video here). This is too extreme. Too many jobs will be lost. All Americans must come together and choose a path that is not so destructive to America’s middle class. The health care bill already increases the burden on the middle class through mandates, higher taxes (there are a few tax cuts and many tax increases, here’s a list of some), and cuts in Medicare. The Cap-and-Trade 2.0 version is part of the second wave of attacks on the middle class.

Already, the political gears are turning and trying to secure the votes by any means necessary, including symbolic concessions such as the offshore drilling proposal. Our government is tightening the screws on America. The Democrats have gotten punch-drunk with power and have betrayed their promises to the American people in order to pass a more government-centric agenda. This was expected though. We must fight to stop them or our present and future generations will be stuck with a bill too large to pay and we will no longer be the greatest nation on Earth. We can’t let that happen.

-AG

It’s a little old, but I enjoyed this video very much. Enjoy.

-AG

I have not written lately because what is happening in America right now is terrifying. This week, the Congress passed the Democrat party’s health care reform bill, to summarize: it is a law that imposes mandates on Americans simply because they are alive, increases taxes, and sets out to control the entire health care system. The United States government has now nationalized wide swaths of the US economy and are encircling individual freedom. In the age of Obama, the United States has nationalized, bailed out, and set out to control the financial sector of the economy and this week they audaciously asserted their power by passing a law that requires Americans to purchase a product. They have gone after mortgages, money in general, cars, and our health. Everyday we surrender more to the federal government… and there seems to be no end in sight.

The way that the Democrats rammed this down the throats of Americans was shameful. They lied. They cheated. They bribed. A prime example is when congressman Bart Stupak, who was leading a group of anti-abortion Democrats to vote against the bill, hammered out a compromise with the president which would require Obama to issue an executive order banning the use of federal funds for abortion. Everyone everywhere knows that the executive order has no legal weight, so what is it that really made Stupak change his mind? In my opinion, they bought him. That, or they threatened him. Either way, through stick or carrot they herded the donkeys to vote on a bill that is so terrible, so dangerous to freedom that I believe that America’s superpower status will soon be over because of it.

There are many terrible parts of this new law, the individual mandates being one of them, but there is another part that is equally dangerous to our Republic. The law establishes something called the “Independent Medicare Advisory Board… a 15-person board of independent experts chosen by the president, confirmed by the Senate, and empowered to cut through congressional gridlock.” By design, it seems to be part of the executive branch and it answers only to the president (at least in terms of appointment). The powers of this board are near-absolute when it comes to health care (the government administered portion of it) because they make decisions that Congress cannot revise, ignore, or overrule. This means that the executive branch can now pass laws and reforms that Congress cannot easily overturn, a complete reversal of the ideas that our government was founded on. This board IS the death panel, ladies and gentlemen. These are the rationers, the people who determine which treatments are good and which are bad, and the people in charge of cutting Medicare which will inevitably come to cover a huge percentage, if not the majority, of Americans in the near future.

Now imagine if you live in an impoverished part of Latin America… wouldn’t the idea of emigrating to the United States, where not only can you possibly get a job doing some sort of menial labor but you also get FREE health care courtesy of the US taxpayer? In fact, wouldn’t public housing and public health care be an incentive for people to remain in poverty, especially in the US where poverty is nowhere near as bad as poverty in many places around the world? The US nanny-state that today exists will make immigration a bigger issue and will only perpetuate poverty. This is exactly what the Left wants.

So while the lefties of America are cheering over the passage of the health care takeover bill, most regular Americans feel like they have lost something valuable. They are right. We have lost some of our freedom. Losing that freedom gives many a feeling of emptiness, a feeling of emptiness that comes from realizing that tyranny continues tearing away at America, a feeling of emptiness that I share with those many. Despite that feeling, or rather because of that feeling, we as Americans cannot let up, we must push forward. The vote is still our most powerful weapon, even if in this instance our vote seemed to count for nothing. We can vote them all out. We must. The very existence of our free Republic depends on it. I don’t merely mean the Democrats, I now reserve special ire for the big government Republicans who during Bush inflated government and betrayed our trust. It was the big government Republicans who set the stage for today’s events, for the sheepishness of our people, for the demagoguery of Obamism that we are now subject to. I’m sick of it. It is high time for a renewed revolution in this country, one of ideas… the left’s utopic ideals are the mask of tyranny, the lemmings follow these ideas, and off the cliff we go… the real revolutionaries of today are the ones with common sense, the ones who believe in freedom, the ones who have the guts to stand up to these self-righteous, pompous fools who point their fingers at you, commanding you to buy their product of choice, to stop driving cars because it angers the “earth-spirit,” to not make so much money because it’s bad, to give up your paycheck for the welfare of some lazy leech, to hold your tongue because someone, somewhere might be offended somehow, to give terrorists more rights, to not be Christian while saying that Islam is just misunderstood, to not protest their agenda or else you’re a racist. I say we need these real revolutionaries to stand up and take our country back.

Peering into the abyss, the progressives’ agenda for America, for too long is dangerous and shortly after the health care vote I prayed that no one would take these feelings of powerlessness and turn them into acts of violence. We cannot afford that in our great country. That’s what these Leftists want, to push Americans into a corner and then have us react so that they can finally use our reaction as an excuse to take away the last bit of freedom we have. Don’t give them the pleasure. Vote them out. Call them out on their treasonous, incompetent ideas. Do not shy away from a discussion in public anymore. Speak truth to power. Don’t back down. They’ll call us racist. They’ll call us paid mercenaries. They’ll call us stupid. They’ll call us anything they can think of… but our Republic is dying. You don’t want to think back and regret not speaking up when the time came, and trust me, the time has come.

-AG

People new to this site or who are not familiar with communism in practice may not like some of my claims about big government and the leftist agenda in America… but this is probably because the idea of what government should be has never been fully thought through by regular folks out there. I mean, when times are good, when we are not being killed by enemies and our economy is humming along, no one really pays attention to politics… only when times are tough do we have a majority that start having real, hard opinions on what is happening in our country, but by the time they do start thinking critically, people start worrying about what the government should do and not questioning what the role of government should be. This is the most important question.

Ultimately, citizens must decide on how much government is best. Conservatives, true conservatives, believe that a society where government simply serves as an arbiter, as a protector of rights, contracts, and provider of national security is the best model. This belief stems from our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, that provided our nation more than two hundred years ago with one of the most effective and free forms of government ever conceived. Mistakes were made along the way and mistakes are being made as we speak, but essentially, the dream of America is what made this country great and what, God willing, will make this country even greater in the future. Conservatives answer the question of the role of government by putting faith in a balanced idea of freedom and responsibility, faith in free market competition, and faith in the first principles upon which our nation was founded.

Other nations have answered this question differently. The extreme examples are the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and Cuba. Of these countries, most of them have teetered on the verge of starvation, one collapsed without a shot being fired, and one is growing because they have embraced a limited free market model. This is the (sadly) enduring legacy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the architects of the idea of communism, i.e. absolute central government power.

The modern liberals, since FDR, answer the question of government’s role in a similar fashion. They believe that the government should be placed in charge of things beyond what government was initially intended for and this belief makes them think of themselves as “progressives“… in charge of progress. They find disparity, in any sense, unnerving and therefore see government as the only vehicle to address such disparity. The answer to pressing needs, for liberals, tends to be “more government,” with the idea behind such a belief being: if it’s important, then government should be taking care of it. This is the liberal opinion of what government’s role is. Motivations and ulterior motives aside, I believe, as do conservatives in general, that such an approach puts us on the road to a more centrally planned society… a repudiation of the American Dream.

The idea of liberty is one that most Americans believe in. Most liberals I talk to are more put off by the “social issues” espoused by the right than the ideas of fiscal responsibility or limited role of government… but I often ask these liberals if we should ignore American culture outright? Is that the nature of our republic? To ignore the beliefs of a people and deny them their right to be heard? Whether the issue is abortion rights or prayer in school, shouldn’t American citizens get a say in these types of decisions? Theocracy is as terrible as communism and true conservatives do not believe in that type of society. Right now, with the leftward swing of government, conservatism is experiencing a sort of revival, a revival that does not necessarily include socially-based politics. This is a good thing. Politics should focus more on the political than on the spiritual especially because our founding fathers erred on the side of liberty rather than the side of morality when they thought up our great system. This also applies to the left, meaning we should not impose a particular secular moral code on America either. People can choose for themselves. Conservatives are reclaiming their political power in the wake of the leftist takeover of Washington and this is something that should be cheered by all parts of the political spectrum… if successful, conservatives will hold Republicans accountable for their mismanagement and for their complicity in the culture of corruption that engulfs both parties. Conservatives believe that the solution lies in reducing the scope and size of government, for if there is nothing for the special interests to pay for, no one will get paid off. Those that would nudge us in the direction of a Big Nanny State bring us dangerously closer to a society where government gives and government takes at its own discretion, where personal freedom gets taxed, mandated, and regulated, and where people start to lose the American spirit… this I call socialism, a society based on the collective that stamps out the individual, and those who advocate for “spreading the wealth around” I call socialists. It may seem extreme to those who think that socialism represents only those dictatorships with the goose-stepping military marches and large statues of stern-looking demagogues, but in truth many of those systems were put into place by people who thought that government was the answer for all their problems… until their own governments got so out of control that it became the problem. Socialism starts somewhere… and that somewhere is the minds of everyday Americans who place more trust in a central earthly authority than in the power and endless potential of human freedom.

-AG

As I wrote before, conservatives, in general, do not believe in violently attacking one’s own country to make a point. Our weapon is the vote. That said, the media quite handily linked Joseph Stack and the Tea Party movement, trying desperately to discredit this conservative revival. After reading his “manifesto” it becomes clear that he was a disturbed man and in fact quoted the Communist Manifesto at the end of his own… “right-wing” he was not. To make my point here is a self-described Maoist who can personally relate to Joseph Stack:

Funny how at the end, the narrator talks about a certain “series of events that precipitate change” that take place in third world countries, I assume that he refers to violent communist revolutions. Interesting how far left-wing communists (I know I am being redundant) stand by a man described by the media as a right-wing terrorist… one begins to wonder if the mainstream media is misleading the public on purpose or if this is just incompetence on their part. I lean toward the former explanation.

-AG

Nice little video with uncanny relevance to our present times:

-AG

What is the conservative plan for all entitelement programs? That is the multi-trillion dollar question that should be posed to Republicans and anyone else claiming to be conservative. How do we change a system that has come to define America since the days of Lyndon Johnson? This is no easy task and leftists throughout the country point to the GOP’s lack of clarity on the issue as proof that conservatives have no ideas and are not pragmatic. Just a couple of days ago, Paul Krugman offered his opinion of the GOP strategy in an op-ed which was, in a few words, to bankrupt entitlement programs by starving the government of revenue instead of actually cutting programs. I don’t like what he is saying… but he seems to be somewhat correct, at least with respect to the GOP’s past behavior. The Republican Party does not have a good fiscal record, that’s a sad fact. The bright side is that with the new resurgence of the conservative movement it may finally be possible to push through real change in Washington, and by “change” I do not mean more activism on the part of government but rather less government activity.

I look to people like Ron Paul, even though I disagree with the man, who advocate for spending cuts across the board and at the same time his message really resonates with the youth. This makes me realize that advocating for a rollback of government may not be as politically costly as many politicians think. So here I outline a few suggestions for those running for office to consider, nay, to actually advocate:

- Use the stimulus funds to pay down the debt and stop the bailouts. This is a concrete policy that is almost unanimously agreed upon.

- Let people keep more of the money that they earn. Common sense.

- No government issued mandates about what people must buy or pay for.

- Allow for competition of health insurers across state lines. Competition keeps prices reasonable.

- Cut waste and fight fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, and other entitlements, thereby actually cutting spending.

- Tort reform.

- No more short-term, gimmicky cash-for-anything programs or stimuli that only shift future demand to the present and have little long-term benefit while costing the taxpayer.

- Eliminate government agencies and programs that cost more than they help (most of them?).

- Reform the great Ponzi scheme known as Social Security by pushing back the retirement age (Americans are living longer now than when initially passed), allow for some form of privatization (only in a non-capitalist society can we say “allow” for privatization), and reform amount of benefits people will receive.

- Stop engaging in endless nation-building around the world.

These are just some ideas that would do a great deal in helping scale back the size and cost of government. In one form or another, I have heard of many of these come from the mouths of politicians but no one has acted on them. It is high time that conservatives in public office had the courage to take on the government, not just by trimming it but by reversing course completely. The liberals of the past have saddled our current generation with an awesome burden by creating absurd programs that use today’s workers’ incomes to pay for today’s retirees and today’s sick. This has made it politically unfeasible to untangle this mess and make a system where people can actually take care of themselves in the future, as opposed to having the government do so. Taking average rates of return on investments, the money that people pay for social security if invested soundly could have left retirees with much more money than they end up receiving from social security. But no, the government and the leftists do not trust people with their own money and so they take it from them and give them their two loaves of bread. The liberal motto: let them eat cake! The only way to change all of this is to cut, cut, and cut some more. The government is becoming more and more intrusive in the daily lives of citizens, somehow believing that throughout the years each successive generation is less able to take care of themselves… this is what progressives call “progress?”

Our media and our culture has eroded our trust in the ability of the market to offer goods and services to Americans… yet somehow nearly everyone has a cell phone, and not the cheap cell phones but rather the most expensive gadgets that can balance a checkbook, print out a copy of War and Peace, and cook a steak with plans costing more than one hundred dollars. Kids have this stuff yet we worry that people can’t afford health care? The only reason that they can afford phones, cars, and big-screen, ultra-thin plasma TV’s is because the free market allows companies to offer the products without government restrictions. Why are Americans distrustful of the free market when it comes to certain products? The “track record” of free markets with respect to health care has been horribly tainted by government control… in fact, the “track record” is not that of the free market, but rather it is the track record of what happens when we allow government to interfere with the markets. This is no invisible hand argument because there is nothing invisible about my Blackberry, my IBM computer, my Xbox, and my Ford truck. Conservatives politicians would do well to remember this… for only then will they have the moral clarity to confront the real problem with our modern government: there’s too much of it.

-AG

As expected, the Democrats’ assault on the free market is not letting up. Recently, his eminence Barack Obama unveiled plans to control the rates that insurance companies can charge as part of his new revamped health care initiative. This, of course, will reverberate through the entire health care system, pushing quality down across the board while allowing the government to control one sixth of the economy. The winners are the government and those big companies that are opportunistic enough to go along with the Democrat neo-monarchists, to quote Romney, who run this country. This is an acceleration of the new Socialist model in America, the one that uses corporations to monopolize power in the hands of the state, by enacting price controls, individual mandates, small business mandates, penalty fees, higher taxes, and larger bureaucracy. All this big government control in one fell swoop. Of course, the Democrats want to frame this recent proposal in populist terms, saying that recent rate hikes by certain insurance companies show that they need to be regulated, especially in light of the current recession. So here’s the logic: in order to alleviate the suffering caused by government intrusion into the economy through interest rate manipulation and government pressure on lending institutions we need another, stronger dose of government intrusion. Make sense? This comes from the Harvard law professor, the “Spock” (as our media christened him)… from the community organizer turned president. This man is either grossly incompetent for failing to understand the causes of our problems or exceedingly brilliant for pushing us along the road to socialism at a breakneck pace. Either reason is enough to throw this man out before he finishes destroying America.

-AG

The words “right-wing” and “power,” in the same sentence, have bad connotations in our left-wing media dominated society… but I use it because the terms have been hijacked, and I want to take them back. To channel Mao somewhat: “Right-wing power grows out of the voting booth.” This is an important message for both right and left, that the only weapon that we, in the United States of America at this time in history as citizens, have is our right to vote. That’s it. Those who advocate for revolutionary action, insurgent action, or any homicidal action against Americans are enemies of the political right in this country. This is a non-thinly-veiled denunciation of the recent actions of a sociopath who flew his plane into an IRS building because of his hatred of the agency. At least these are the motivations that the media reported. What the media did not report was that said suicide bomber railed against both the government and against capitalism in general. The hodgepodge of socialist and anti-government ideas that were sprinkled into his “manifesto” showed that he was just mad at life in general and did not know how to cope. But the media’s knee-jerk leftist reaction immediately painted this man as a right-wing extremist and they then released exposés on right-wing violence over the years. They displayed about a handful of examples over the last few years, but at least they got their message out: “right-wing extremism is out of control.” This is, of course, a tactic that the Left has used for decades, sometimes with reason, most of the time in order to smear the right. Groups that focus on racism are not right-wing nor are groups that advocate violence against some Americans for the sake of other Americans, by very definition these groups espouse an ideology that promotes one group over another. The right believes in freedom for all, not just for the few. Many of these supposed “right-wing” groups call themselves “national socialist parties” and believe that the government is run by business interests, particularly Jewish in origin. Historically, conservatives want to conserve the integral institutions of our free society and discard the unconstitutional parts… one of these basic institutions in our society is the right to vote and to supplant the right to vote with the right to engage in violence runs contrary to what “right-wing politics” is all about.

So when the media uses non-conservatives and non-libertarians as the models of “right-wing” ideas, they are willfully trying to confuse Americans, especially those Americans who want to believe that Timothy McVeighs are organizing death squads across America. Those who undermine right-wing power in America, a positive force for change, are those use their bullhorns, newspapers, and television shows to spread disinformation about what type of people are actually engaging in violence. Furthermore, it is obvious that those people who consider themselves as right-wing and also engage in violence undermine the cause, primarily because they do not understand the cause. The vote is our weapon. Let’s be clear and condemn these people in specific terms, those that run around calling themselves neo-Nazis, or try to incite open race or class warfare, or try to use violent revolution as a means of changing society ARE NOT “right-wing,” they are LEFT-WING. Glorifying dictatorships is leftist, espousing violent revolution against our Republic is leftist, and the belief in the implicit superiority of one group over another is leftist. Furthermore, the best way to destroy freedom in America is by giving the government a perfect excuse, i.e. embracing violence, to become dictatorial. The government seems well-inclined to do so, just think back to the DHS report (initiated during the Bush administration and released during the Obama administration) that classified veterans and “right-wing” groups as potential terrorists.

Conservatives and libertarians constantly, constantly, constantly argue for the cause of liberty and limited government. The media distorts this, and those who know people who are on the political right or are rightists themselves recognize the media’s virulent leftism… but this makes sense, media is a business that wants more customers, so it makes sense that they adopt a strategy that focuses on “the masses” and not on the individual. They like controversy, they like to frame issues in a way that sells more newspapers or gets more viewers, and most importantly they oppose political philosophies that encourage people to think for themselves: right-wing ideas. Do I want to censor the media? Never. What I dislike is the monopolization of information, therefore I encourage people to find alternative media, to read blogs (like this one), and to educate their children well. Having free, independent thinkers is the best way to ensure the survival of our country… especially because they swell the ranks of the right-wing. Take that, lefty media!

-AG

I was discussing today with my father the conversation I had with the libertarian and the liberal a few days back and it took the usual turn with him accusing the liberals in America of being communists. For those of you who do not have Cuban parents, it may be a bit difficult to understand that everything gets related back to their experiences (actually traumas) back in Cuba under socialism, you know, the system that gets praise from Michael Moore for providing “free” education and “free” health care (and free oppression) for all.

I like listening to older Cubans (and younger ones too) speak with absolute clarity about American politics, for the movie we are watching they have seen before… but there is a small flaw in their thinking: ideas are mired in specific experiences and not fully applicable to our situation in the US. People who experienced communism/socialism in other countries have heard this rhetoric and have seen these actions before, so they know it is communism/socialism… they know what it is, but they don’t really know why… and the why is the important part. So, in the midst of the conversation, I asked who and what he thought was the reason behind it all, behind our movement towards a government-run society? His answer was a smattering of leftist personalities and can be summed up by saying the far left wing of the Democrat party. In a sense, I agree that this is part the who… but then again it is the why that matters. So I presented my argument, that went something like this:

There are three types of people who move this leftist “conspiracy” forward: the idealistic useful idiots, the power-hungry communists, and the corporate opportunists. As an aside, the term “useful idiots” while attributed to Lenin was also used amongst the underground anti-Castro movement within Cuba to deride those who actively participated in the organized mobs, in the “chivaton” culture (ratting out your neighbors for “thought crimes” against the regime, amongst other things), and those involved with the general repressive machinery of the state. I found this interesting.

Anyways, back to the three classes of Leftists. The first group is the easiest to describe for it includes those people who truly believe that the poor masses of people cannot make decisions for themselves and need a big government to run their lives for them. These are the people who believe that inherently man is evil, egotistical, and ignorant and that they need to be reformed and re-educated so that they will be happy living in a collectivist state. It is elitism that comes from their belief that “they” know best what is good for us. These people are everywhere in society and help push along this agenda. We can refer to them as “progressives.”

The second class of people that I believe drive this agenda furiously are the power-hungry communists, but unfortunately, communists is not a good term to use, because the actors in this class have different motives for advocating the mass redistribution of wealth. This group of people are the ones who actually set the agenda for the progressive movement, the type of people that make their way onto some sort of Glenn Beck list of pinkos. Most of the people who have met and shaken hands with Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or any of these other sociopaths are included. The reason that simply meeting these people is indicative of their aspirations and worldview is straightforward: once you come into physical contact with evil, you know that they are evil. There is no way that the people who meet mass murderers somehow believe that they are innocent; I cannot believe that people are so stupid; I cannot believe that Sean Penn and his ilk have not seen that cold evil in the eyes of their “role models.” Those who actively support evil people, including Jimmy Carter, are part of this “conspiracy” not merely because they believe that only a well-engineered society, from top down, is the answer for humanity but because they want to be the vehicles for that change… they want history to record their names as the leaders of this abomination they call “progress.” In the name of progress they link any and every social cause they can think of, from climate change to immigration to the anti-war movement to gay “rights” to animal rights, etc. but in almost each and every case, they require that the state interfere in society and advocate some form of wealth redistribution. By state interference I refer to government-engineering of everything from economy to culture, that citizens can no longer choose for themselves but must be told what to think, what to believe, and what how much they can make. In the Cuban case, and the Venezuelan case, and the countless other cases, the oppressor was clearly identified as Castro, as Chavez, as Stalin, etc. but in America it is not so clear cut. This is probably part of the plan, so that we cannot ascribe this philosophy to ONE individual or one specific group, because it would be too easy for freedom-loving people to attack that one group and that one individual… just look at what concerned citizens have been able to reveal about ACORN. I ultimately wonder if they have conferences among the top actors, coordinating their plays in a dark room somewhere, setting the media talking points, planning how to generate crises and how they will take advantage of them. These are the power-hungry communists.

The third group is integral for the success of socialist agenda… but in a contradictory way. The Left in America has realized, since the days of the Soviet Union, that bucks are more powerful than bombs. The only way to introduce socialism into the United States is to do it by degrees and in a system that was once a free market economy, it cannot be done without business. So what we have in America is a government that takes capitalism and perverts it beyond recognition while still calling it capitalism. So when it was the Democrat-run government that flooded Wall Street with easy money, the Leftists did not hesitate in blaming the free market system for the crisis. So when it was the Democrat-run government that inflated the pockets of “fat cat” bankers, the Leftists did not hesitate in pointing their crooked, accusing fingers at banks for paying out huge bonuses. People do not understand that the Left’s war on the free market comes from two sides: the anti-business front and the pro-business front. The anti-business front is the open strategy, the one that they are proud of, the one where they raise taxes, fees, increase unnecessary regulations, and the like… of course, all of the penalties that they impose on business trickle down to the consumers who pay higher prices and have poorer quality. The pro-business front is the one where they favor some big corporations over small business, giving them implicit government guarantees, giving them preferential treatment, and giving them bailouts… this, until recently, was more secret than their anti-business policies. What is deceiving about their “pro-business” policies is the fact that they do not in fact promote capitalism, they handicap capitalism by marrying big business with government and giving a ridiculously unfair advantage to the “connected” companies. This is not capitalism. In capitalism, it is competition, supply and demand, and innovation that keep the economy humming and prices fair. In corporate socialism, the current system in America, the government picks and chooses the winners and loser and distorts the markets. This is part of the plan. The Leftists aspire to establish a society where the state controls all of the means of production, but since this cannot be accomplished through direct government action, they settle for propping up a few choice corporations. Once small business has been destroyed and few firms control all industries, then the government with step in and take control of these de facto monopolies. In the meantime, businessmen stand to make a fortune by cooperating with the Leftist pro-government policies. They raid the US budget, courtesy of the US taxpayer and the Leftists who hold the purse strings. Once government has grown large enough, they will have Scrooge McDuck-like vaults of money back at home and will be in positions of power in the newly established government-run monopolies. Who wins at the end? Pro-leftist businessmen and the power-hungry communists.

Unfortunately, the decentralization of the Leftist power structure makes it harder to fight them. For example, tearing down Al Gore will do nothing to stop the train, especially while George Soros is pumping hundreds of millions into that very cause. There are too many people who stand to benefit from the violent financial rape of the US taxpayer… and every day more are lining up for a piece of the action. It disgusts me. Government is out of control… taxes only go up. Locally, property values have plummeted while property tax rates have gone up across the nation. Imagine that, while the net worth of citizens falls, the government decides to tax them more, thousands more… so much for “tax cuts.” In the meantime, government bailouts have held gas prices at the same level (due to depreciating dollar and despite lower demand), car prices are comparable to years past, and home prices are still inflated. Corporate Socialism is in full effect and the current administration and Congress are cementing its position in our society. The triumvirate of forces that is pushing America into socialism can only be stopped by limiting the power of government and voting out the useful idiots who are making this all possible. This shows that the complexity of the problem in the United States cannot be summed up by saying “they are all communists,” some are communists, some are fools, and some are opportunists and the why stems from a combination of idealistic stupidity, thirst for power, and plain-old greed. It is telling that many of us would prefer the existence of some cohesive communist bloc under the guidance of some Castro figure instead of the spider web of special interests and groups that work towards the enslavement of the American citizen, because at least in the former case, we know who we need to stop… in our current system, it is not so clear. That’s why we need to reject their ENTIRE program for America and get back to rational policies based on our founding principles.

-AG

Many people believe that the Soviet Revolution took place in October and in a sense it did, according to the calendar that Russia was using at the time… but according to our calendar, the Gregorian calendar, the Soviet Revolution started in early November. So it was not all that surprising to us who follow the spectre of communism throughout history that 91 years later, in November 2008, another supposed “revolution” took place in America, a revolution of “spreading the wealth around.” The difference between Russia of its time and the United States in our time is that the latter country has a long tradition of freedom and we are, by our very nature, believers in the potential of the individual, not the power of the state.

That said, it is a relief to see that the cult of personality and the leftist hijack of America that started in 2008 (some say much earlier than that) began to subside in 2009. By 2010, a string of political defeats and the loss of the most left-leaning of our states to conservatives made it evident that the Imperial Democrats in control of Washington could no longer impose their agenda on their American people without consequences… at least not in the open. They forgot that, for now, we still have a Republican form of government where representatives govern with the consent of the people. So the Leftists shifted their strategy from more direct, accelerated socialism to slower bourgeois socialism (as described by Marx) where they will say that they are not anti-freedom, anti-business, anti-life, but in fact want to make this world better by sharing more of our resources without destroying free markets too much. The difference is mere tone and possibly the understanding that total transformation of American society, away from religion, away from personal responsibility, away from critical thinking, is still some ways off.

The change in strategy became evident during the Chairman’s State of the Union Address, something that, in itself, demonstrated the power of the everyman in America, the fact that our opinions still mattered, and I loved it. But now we fall into another stage of the battle…

People may not be cognizant of the fact that Waterloo did not occur when Napoleon was cornered militarily, he chose that time and place for battle… and he caught the powers of Europe somewhat by surprise (at least before they could mobilize). Obama’s Waterloo seems to be following a similar track. By Waterloo, I refer not to his signature legislative proposal, as did DeMint, the one that will force Americans to surrender yet another percentage of their income for health care coverage they may already have or may not need, but to the general battle being waged today in America between those who believe that overgrown government is the single worst part of “the problem” and those who believe that overgrown government is “the only solution.” The SOTU address gives us the blueprint for the Democrats’ future actions. The Chairman’s recent actions give us further clues. Specifically, I refer to the President’s new-found penchant for bipartisanship, something conspicuously absent during the first 365 days of one-party rule. Not only must we question their motives, we must assume the worst. Why assume the worst? Simple: these guys don’t play fair, from releasing a report that labeled military veterans as potential “right-wing” terrorists, labeling all tea party activists as extremists, brokering deals and bribes behind closed doors on legislation that affects all Americans, ramming bills through Congress without honestly working towards a bipartisan solution, the demonization of the ONE non-liberally biased news network on cable (FOX), and the non-stop barrage of insults hurled against any and every non-leftist personality, specifically Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, Bush, McCain, Hannity, and the list goes on. Like I said, they don’t play fair. Instead of debating ideas, they smear, slander, and ridicule members of the other team, where the “other team” is anyone who is not on their team. Back to the bipartisanship issue…

With the 2010 campaign cycle upon us, Democrats retiring left and right, and a mobilized conservative and independent base, the Democrat party is scared. Now that they have failed to pass their bills in Congress and cannot simply push their agenda forward with the same vigor, they must either retreat or double down and fight. The Chairman seems intent on pursuing a fight rather than retreating. For that fact alone, he should be respected as a formidable opponent (of America?). What this means is that the Democrats may finally be willing to debate policy and not merely spew rhetoric and dismiss opposition. Of course, we expect their form of “debate” to be simply a PR war against opposing viewpoints. This may be their best idea yet, especially considering that the party that is associated with conservatives is the Republican party… and unfortunately, they may not be up to the task of truly leading. Just think back on the Bush years, when he handed out “stimulus” checks across the board like some triumphant guerrilla revolutionary who just toppled some oligarchy, that ain’t conservative. That stimulus, like the current stimulus, was a band-aid that was violently ripped off during the recession. Government only prolongs the pain. Year after year increases in deficit spending under Republican rule wasn’t conservative either (though some of it was absolutely necessary given our life or death struggle against terror). Republicans lost their way and failed to listen to the voters, their conservative base, and committed some major errors. They have not yet fully embraced the Tea Party movement and continue to toe the line on some issues. While today’s Republicans seem united in their opposition to the Democrats’ government takeover agenda, it is unclear if they are simply pandering to an outraged American public or if they truly will turn this country around once given power. Hence the talk of secession. Hence the talk of third parties. Hence the increased disaffection amongst all voters against both parties.

On their own, the Republicans will fail miserably and end up handing the Democrats even more power than before… if the Republicans can wake up for a second, just one second, and turn to the people, the American people, for support by advocating for a more rational approach, for less powerful government, for more empowered people, for a saner tax code, and for a balanced government that listens to the people, then a Republican victory is all but guaranteed in the next 500 elections. The young rebels of today flock to Ron Paul, a seventy-something year old Republican doctor whose message is clear: more freedom and more responsibility in government, but the Republicans have failed to see this. Around the country, minorities and majorities are tired of having to bubble in their race or ethnicity or social status when every citizen of the United States is an American and almost all are proud of it… but the Republicans have failed to see this. Today Americans of all stripes want to return to the sanity of a society where people are both free and responsible for themselves without an overwhelmingly powerful government in charge of everyone’s affairs but Republicans have failed to see this. They still toe the line, they still are afraid to speak truth to power for fear of offending some interest group out there whose existence is based solely on attacking the idea of freedom. Republicans were successful in aligning themselves with the anti-socialist sentiment of America, but that is not enough. Now Republicans must fight for the American people or be cast into the shadows of a Washington more akin to the Kremlin of old than Independence Hall on that fateful summer of 1787. This is the newest challenge that we face and the only way to affect it directly is to support the more conservative candidates of the Republican party. This alone will prompt those moderate Republicans willing to compromise American values and principles for the sake of having their names on shiny new pieces of legislation or in exchange for money, bribes, favors, or any of those corrupting elements ever-so-present in our government today to think twice. For the moderates, I say keep them if they advance the cause of freedom, but throw them out the moment they start to stink of Arlen Benedict Specter. Many of them already need showers.

Waterloo has just begun in earnest and the would-be emperor of our Republic will try to splinter our forces and drive the Republicans back into the sea. All the Republicans need to do is earn the right to be defended by the people, to earn our votes before the Imperial Democrat war machine pummels them into irrelevance. To do this they simply need to embrace the movement across America, fight the good fight for our freedom, and we the people will do the rest to ensure that our star spangled banner yet waves over the land of the free and the home of the brave.

-AG

Lately, I have been reading about and listening to the speeches of Malcolm X. I especially liked the Spike Lee movie where Denzel Washington does a fantastic job of portraying Malcolm or, as he comes to rename himself, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. I find that looking into historical figures like this helps understand the present so much more, specifically it helps identify the great divide between African-American values and regular American values. There is in fact a difference and there are reasons for that difference. To get some of the painful facts out of the way: the history of people of African origin in the United States was terrible… but I claim, in the strongest of terms, that slavery was, is, and always will be unconstitutional. This means that our founding fathers behaved unconstitutionally, but man is flawed. Man may, in his soul, know what is right and say what is right but ultimately sin. America was such a man. I know that many of you know what I refer to. Our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights were revolutionary for their time and in our modern time as well, but its application was not universal. It took a long time, but we have come to fix this problem, or at least we have made great progress. Which brings me back to Malcolm X, a person that president Obama says influenced him.

Before I continue, I will again make clear that the author of this post (myself) is not “white” in the racial sense. No one in my family participated in the history of the United States until the communist takeover of Cuba, prior to that my ancestors came from Italy, Africa, Spain, and other parts of the world. I do not feel that tinge of “guilt,” something liberals exploit, for the racism and slavery of the past, so in a sense, I consider myself free of the historical “baggage” that often clouds judgment on racial matters and racial history.

Hearing the emotion behind Malcolm X’s speeches and the ideas that he spewed made me realize that African-Americans today have inherited an ideology that is very different from what non-African-Americans believe in. From libertarians to conservatives to liberals to socialists, the narrative of how society got the way it is varies, and all of them vary from the “traditional” African-American point of view. The black point of view is based in reality. It comes from the fact that they were betrayed by the wielders of power in the United States, by the judges and public servants who did not carefully read the words “all men are created equal” (men in the universal sense, i.e. “humanity"). This betrayal justifiably turned many African-Americans against the system… but oddly enough, while Malcolm X was considered one of the most radical of his time, he in fact did hold up the founding documents of our country as being excellent ideals, ideals that America failed to live up to. To those who find it uncomfortable to point out any social/racial/anything-else-ial differences between Americans (I am in this camp), I remind you that it was Americans in times past that treated an entire race of people as “different,” so in essence we are now paying for the sins of our fathers. The sense of betrayal and alienation is what has defined the African-American experience of the past and it explains the anti-white, reverse racist, anti-American speech that we sometimes hear from people like Jeremiah Wright and his ilk. This is why the world-view of African-Americans sometimes tilts leftward, because to be a conservative to them implies conserving the status quo of yesterday, a status quo that not one of them wants to return to. They sometimes idolize the murderers of the world, the Castros, the Che Guevaras, and the Maos, simply because they represent the idea of destroying an old order in the name of “the people"… but this is not universal, in fact, almost every African-American that I have come to know personally (all 2 of them… just kidding, I’m friends with a lot) recognizes that these people were monsters. It is the inherited ideology of the African-American community, an ideology stemming from the rejection of explicit racism, that has triumphed in the black community. This is the problem and recognizing the problem helps address it better.

Some of Malcolm X’s ideas were genius, while some bordered on insane. He eventually softens his tone (slightly) but throughout his career believed that blacks must fight for their freedom. By using words like “black nationalism,” which brought to mind images of violent revolutions against colonizers in Africa and Latin America, and words like “by any means necessary” he was advocating violence… though he did say only in self-defense. We can understand this, though not necessarily agree, given the context of the times. The ideas that I did like, ideas that seem to have been lost, was that he believed that the black community must earn respect before they are given respect, that they must build themselves up first in order to gain the freedom that they desired. The loss of this lesson is tragic and the fact that many only remember the radical part of Malcolm’s message only worsens the problem.

Now, the realities that brought about the black community’s ideology have been swept away… but the ideology endures. Today, America is haunted by the spectre of old racism and old discrimination with the media on a witch hunt trying to find the most racially insensitive gaffes or comments, trying to highlight the difference between the races as much as possible. On the “establishment” side, this must change if we are ever to advance as a people, an American people. The near-constant identity politics played by the Left only make it less possible for us to be one united country. On the “black community” side, these old ideologies must be re-evaluated. Look at countries like Cuba, where supposedly the working man and the black man was freed, and try to count the number of black leaders in their parliament… better yet, black people should visit Cuba, where they will be frisked for simply walking into hotels (because Cubans themselves are not allowed to go to certain hotels, and most Cubans are black or mixed). The black community should take a good look around their neighborhoods and ask themselves whether the years of pandering by the Left has benefited them at all. For decades the Democrats controlled Congress and the presidency, are the results there? The black community should consider what would happen if they stopped referring to themselves as black or African-American, many already have experienced that liberation. One does not need to be trapped by history or by the color of one’s skin in modern America, for human rights apply to all humans. The inherited ideology needs to change because times have changed. Leftist policies restrict the rights of all and make permanent the problems of yesterday and today. The black leaders of yesterday were a product of their environment, but I find that the black “leaders” of today are actually the products of the reality of the pre-civil-rights era. Time to modernize. True conservatives value the humanity and the rights of all people, those who claim to be conservative and do not are not conservatives. The Constitution is the great equalizer and is a shield for all Americans. Conservatives often think that African-American leaders are anti-American, the case is that these leaders are stuck in old battles against white hooded monsters and have trouble accepting the progress that has been made. They will say things that hurt all Americans, like that 9-11 was deserved, like that white people engineered AIDS for the eradication of gays and blacks, and other conspiracy theories… these things only further divide us. These leaders seem to benefit most from the division of races rather than their unity. It is time to discard the old ideologies and come to realize that we are indeed all the same and we must fight for freedom together or lose it together. There can be no other way.

-AG

Recently, I was engaged in spirited conversation with two other individuals of different political philosophies. One was libertarian and one was leftist. I, of course, am a right-wing extremist. All the participants were college-educated and tended to back up their views with facts, hence it was an excellent discussion and it helped reveal to me what my colleagues think about the world and politics. At first, the conversation was between myself and the libertarian essentially talking about how we both agreed on the reduction of the size and power of the state and essentially giving more power to the people, aka “freedom.” Eventually, I moved on to a serious point of disagreement that I have with libertarians, the foreign policy issue. While I do believe that the United States would do better to stay out of the affairs of other countries, the reality we are presented with does not allow this. In a globalized economy, with a network of necessary alliances, the United States faces threats that it must confront… dare I say, even preemptively. In my part of town, I am bold to say these things… but too many times have I seen children fall into drugs because of parents’ live and let live attitudes, too many times have I seen known criminal havens allowed to thrive because of this very same “tolerance.” All politics is local and these things I have come to know locally have made me realize that sometimes the adage “no man is an island” rings true and what happens in a faraway country reverberates across the world. My family witnessed the mobilization of troops and nuclear missiles, pointed at the United States while their dear dictator begged Nikita Krushchev to launch a first nuclear strike against America. Why was that dictator in power? Because the world stood back and watched, saying “oh, that’s just internal Cuban politics.” Also because a president was hesitant to do what was necessary to stop a madman… the thousands upon thousands of Latin Americans who died at the hands of the Communist guerrilla movement were done a great disservice back then. Sometimes regime change can mean the world.

Of course, the libertarian and I disagreed on this salient point and I respect that. I respect it moreover because the opinion of not entangling ourselves in foreign affairs is not a new idea, but one that came from the founding fathers. But even then, in our early years, America’s leaders (when real leaders existed) understood that whenever European powers flexed their muscle in the Western Hemisphere, our own backyard, we could not sit idly by. And history shows that we did not. I could go on, but the interesting part was yet to come. Eventually, the leftist would join our conversation and he said, in a nutshell, that all of society’s woes were the fault of big evil corporations. In fact, he used those very words: evil corporations. He cited examples of certain companies that were monopolistic or oligopolies and played that old class-warfare game with us. At one point he asks me, “do you like it that these corporations are making record profits while wages remain stagnant?” While bashing companies, he described a glorified version of government, that he admits does not exist, that essentially is a dispassionate servant of the people. On this point, we mostly agreed, except that I pointed out that the excessive concentration of power in any body, government especially, is A) corrupting, B) inefficient and C) against democracy. He disagreed of course. The corporate-bashing seemed to be common ground for the libertarian and the lefty, where they both agreed that they were behind some of the more insidious things in our society. The difference was that every time that the libertarian mentioned anything negative about corporations, he actually did not mention the corporations the liberal was interested in hearing about. The libertarian mentioned the corruption of unions, particularly the teacher’s union, and of ACORN. The liberal jumped up and said “see, yet another corporation that is hurting society.” The problem with the liberal’s arguments is the fact that he believes that free will must be tamed, compensation must be limited, and that once a person becomes rich they can no longer have any civic participation. Specifically, he grew outraged over the recent Supreme Court decision over corporate contributions to campaigns. I rebutted that corporations have been funneling money to politicians with or without that restriction and furthermore that taking away the right of an association of people from contributing to political campaigns or causes seems to run contrary to the first amendment. I remind my reader(s) that our founding fathers were not mere paupers. Rich does not equal evil.

The most enlightening part of the conversation was the full-blown absurd notion that contracts, especially complicated contracts, were in themselves evil. I said that made absolutely no sense… yet he continued. He said that it was the banks, the mortgage brokers, the credit card companies, and any other corporation that issues contracts with fine print, especially excessive fine print, that were the cause of so much misery in this country and the world. What would the solution to this be? To allow people who claim to not understand contracts to get out of them? To ban excessive fine print? Who decides what’s excessive and what’s necessary? He railed against phone plans, Apple, farming contracts, adjustable-rate mortgages, etc. Now that I think about it, I am surprised I was even listening to him. Of course, the solution to all this is to READ THE CONTRACT. I do it, why can’t other people? His response was that we were intelligent but most people aren’t. Indeed, no elitism there (note sarcasm). People need to take responsibility for their own lives, what sort of advanced society would have to dumb down contracts for its citizens? I rebutted by saying this and also that this shows the importance of education in general and that the state needs to get out of the education game and let in private education or at least have higher standards, something that the teachers unions absolutely oppose. The lefty’s comments should not have surprised me, they truly and firmly believe that the vast majority of people cannot and should not be responsible for themselves and that they absolutely NEED a big nanny-government to chew their food for them and wipe their butts. This was not a foaming at the mouth commie I was talking to, this was an intelligent person who embodies the sort of sheep, educated sheep, that follow the Mao Tse Tungs into the abyss. Absolutely shocking.

Ultimately, the lefty believes that the world was now under the control of multinational corporations that have reduced us all to slaves (indentured servants) and that freedom was endangered if not extinct. I cannot dispute that there are huge corporation out there, nor do I want to dispute that. As of yet, the McDonalds conglomerate has not infringed on my God-given rights as a human being, so why must I declare war on them? Or restrict their activities? If I have a problem with them, as the libertarian pointed out, we can simply boycott them… and in all truth, I don’t really like McDonalds. These corporations out there are not the bogeymen, the true enemy of freedom is an overgrown state. Only an overgrown government can issue edicts like the upcoming healthcare individual mandates that will only benefit corporations and the state alike. Only an overgrown government can subsidize one business or business practice and create market bubbles that ultimately burst and wreak havoc. Strictly speaking, would we be in this recession if the government and the Federal Reserve did not adopt a loose monetary policy for political reasons? Of course not. Would the housing market still be nearly frozen if the government would not have been so generous with the banks? Of course not. Would the cost of health insurance be so high if we allowed for competition across state lines? Probably not. At the end of the conversation, I pointed out that the solution to the problem, even the exaggerated “corporations are taking over the world” problem, is to limit the size and power of government and allow for an open free market that fosters competition and innovation. Without an ultra-powerful federal government, “evil corporations” could no longer be evil because they would be restricted to following laws, respecting contracts, and competing in the market. Most importantly, without an ultra-powerful federal government, we will finally unleash the power of American innovation and have a more free country. The libertarians seem to like the sound of what liberals say, but at least have a firm grasp of what being free means… I found it odd that the libertarian would take sides against corporations, but then again, he did see them as part of the big government nexus that is chipping away at our freedom. The libertarian ended up not being anti-business per se but did believe that special interests from all sides make the situation worse. He is right, but what this shows that in the larger national discourse, a lot of people who believe in freedom, responsibility, and limited government somehow are convinced by the Left that it’s the corporations that we need to destroy. For conservatives to win this battle for the hearts and minds of independents, we must emphasize the importance of taking responsibility for oneself and the centrality of American freedom… because what the Left offers as a solution is a complete government takeover of every aspect of society to ensure that their brand of “fairness” is the order of the day.

It was a fun discussion.

-AG

With the rise of the Left in American politics, the Democrat powers-that-be have been passing record-breaking spending bills and trying to pass bills that put the federal government in direct control of free enterprise. Freedom has been taking a beating. From the Robin Hood budgets, which skew tax credits away from the people who pay the most taxes and give them to people who do not pay any taxes, to the Health Care Deform bill that burdens the American public with mandates, fees, additional taxes, and more government intrusion into daily life, the American Dream is being replaced by a Leftist scheme of American Dependency. When voters tried to send the president a message via Democrat upsets in three states (including, bastion of the Left, Massachusetts), he responded with empty rhetoric and promises that were broken before he even made them. On terror, he refuses to treat Al Qaeda like the enemy, instead insisting on giving them civil rights and having us think of them as mere criminals. In the meantime, the Taliban and Al Qaeda are embolden by the administration’s dithering and weakness on all matters national security (see Christmas Underwear Bomber and Afghanistan escalating violence). Right now, the state of the union is in dire shape… the results of one-party big-government rule have made America less prosperous and less safe.

Here I will quickly address the causes of the recession to those who are new to this blog, to everyone else you guys can skip this paragraph. From Clinton to Bush, the federal government’s emphasis on home ownership and low interest rates set the stage for a housing bubble. First of all, we needed the housing bubble, at least some of it, to get out of the post-Clinton and post-911 recession. For those that do not remember, recovery during that time was steady and sustained. Unemployment was low, consumption was high, the markets were healthy, etc. Nowadays, the Democrats and the Left are trying to rewrite history, calling the Bush decade a “lost decade” because wages were stagnant… if this was a lost decade, I would like to get lost in it again. It was only when the Federal Reserve failed to apply the brakes early on (a reason why the Fed may be bad for the economy, it’s a type of central planning), only when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were being offered preferable rates for the issuance of bad loans by the government and the Fed, only when government policies interfered with the free market that the housing bubble got out of control. Does anyone seriously think that any of the banks that went out of business wanted to go out of business? The federal government’s interference in the free market is the direct and ultimate cause of the recession, it built the first ten floors of the house of cards that came tumbling down. Big-government Democrats and big-government Republicans alike were to blame for letting the government monster grow out of control. Moving on…

Now, we are at a crossroads. This year, the entire weight of voter ire will fall on those candidates closely linked with the shenanigans in Washington, both past and present. The solution to our problems comes not from increasing government size but from creating smart government, a government that is efficient, a government that is large enough to take care of necessities (like defense) but small enough so that it does not swallow the free market system whole. More importantly, we need a government that both unleashes American creativity (iPads anyone?) and does not help create an under-achieving underclass by subsidizing failure, e.g. excessive welfare, excessively extending unemployment benefits, etc. This reality has not been lost on voters who have been mobilizing via the Tea Party movement, a truly grassroots sort of Mom-and-Pop “uprising” that is being demonized by Democrats as being extremists, a laughable claim once one sees videos of older ladies and gentlemen advocating for less government, less taxes, and more common sense. Die-hard rebels indeed. While the conditions exist for a reversal of the big-government policies that got us here in the first place, what does not seem to exist is a viable alternative to the Imperial Democrat party. The Republican party has not fielded many attractive candidates and time is short. We would do well to remember that Obama was being groomed in 2004, during John Kerry’s campaign, and that Hillary Clinton was expected to run and win for years. During my time rummaging through news articles, blogs, and personal contacts, I know of a lot of local politicians who seem promising, but no one of national stature or who seems interested in the top spot which will be open in 2012. The Republicans I do see are a lot of these old-establishment types who contributed to the growth of the state and helped bring us here. Ultimately, some of these younger candidates, the ones with little to no experience, need to step up to the plate and let themselves be known. Otherwise, we will be condemned to another four years of this insanity. So I ask anyone and everyone out there, where are the viable candidates that can challenge Obama?

-AG

The 2010 State of the Union address was amazing. Hearing Obama speak made me realize that every single criticism of the president, from both left and right, is absolutely, positively justified. I was amazed by how he could lie, distort, and lie some more throughout the entire speech. The content was pure garbage, but its deeper significance, evident in how his tone changed from ultra-lefty to faux-populist and how he tried to pander to nearly every group out there, was that the American people’s call for sanity has finally shaken him up. I was amazed about how deftly he betrayed his leftist comrades by calling for spending freezes and offshore drilling (I thought McCain and Palin lost the election?) and, with equal agility, fired shots at the Constitution (the Supreme Court’s recent first amendment ruling) and called for more government intervention. It was a speech whose content only pleased the mindless minions whose mouths water whenever they see the first non-fully-white president in American history flanked by teleprompters deliver a speech punctuated with his trademark halting pauses. It is these non-color-blind liberals who would apply the death penalty on anyone who criticizes their Dear Leader if they could. In the words of MLK, Jr. I, and most other sane Americans, judge him by the content of his character not the color of his skin… and, I will also add, by the merits of his actions: more government, more debt, more unemployment, higher taxes, and less security. Only true sheep can honestly believe that a one-year record like this constitutes change, hope, or progress in any way. Even his supporters must admit that he has a lot of work to do if he is to live up the standards that he set for himself.

For everyone else, this speech was an insult. It reminded me of the orchestrated speeches given by dictators throughout history, the Lenins and Castros, whose every word was applauded by their one-party government officials/lackeys while their nations fell apart. For the Left, Obama promised little on his signature policy initiative, health care reform, and his promises to halt government spending and emphasis on lowering taxes only infuriated the big-state-lefties. For the Right, Obama’s pandering was seen as just that, calling his redistributionist policies “tax cuts” was like twisting the knife, the promise to be more bipartisan after breaking that promise multiple times fell on deaf ears, and attack after attack on the free market system, disguised as populist rhetoric against banks, revealed that distinctive Marxist underbelly of this administration. For centrists, who tend to be more fiscally conservative and socially “liberal,” do not know what to believe, the actions of the past year, with unprecedented government growth, bailouts (things they disliked about W. Bush), and broken promises about public finance for his campaign, about the “closure” of Gitmo within the year, about changing the culture of Washington, or his words now, similar to his words back then. The magic of words only last so long, just ask Hitler, Chavez, and Mao, who, after having immense popular support, secured their power through the brutal repression of their respective populations. The right knew this from the beginning and so the resistance to the mass-hypnosis of the presidential campaign was rooted in an understanding of history and gave rise to comparisons to the Nazis and the Soviets… the Left tried to spin this as being a manifestation of racism, but their logic is faulty, if racists glorify racism then why would they compare the Obamania to the Nazi regime, the epitome of racism of the last century? Regardless, the Left likes to use racism as a political attack instead of addressing why people are unhappy, the redistributionist rhetoric/actions, the anti-Americanism (yes, anti-Americanism) of going on worldwide apologizing-and-bowing tours, etc. etc. Today, America is more vigilant than ever, because we see that the administration has finally realized that Obama’s words have failed and, historically, repression is the next step. I personally doubt that he will take such drastic action, he is a weak leader, he is sly, he is calculating, he is profoundly cold, and he does not have the mettle to be a revolutionary… but there are forces and influences around him that believe that this is the moment to make America a socialist utopia and that this opportunity cannot be squandered.

I loved the State of the Union because it further emboldened me (to civic participation). The speech was a rhetorical retreat, a concession that he cannot act so socialistic in the open, and an affirmation of the fact that the Democrats’ string of defeats is sending Washington a message. So far, this year has been quite positive for independent-minded Americans but we are still under the thumb of an Imperial Democrat government in Washington that is trying to disregard the will of regular Americans. We Americans still have at our disposal a powerful weapon, our vote, and while they can try to ignore us, they cannot ignore the fact that we can throw them out of power… forever.

-AG

Wow. Truly amazing. After increasing spending across the board to historically high levels with very little to show for it, president Obama has announced a spending freeze on some discretionary spending to be put into effect in 2011. Obama is hoping that this will boost his approval rating among center and right voters, but for me, this move only means one thing: Scott Brown and the Tea Party movement have scored their a huge tangible win against the government, at least in the government’s rhetoric. Why else is Obama pretending to be a born-again fiscal conservative after all this time? Go Scott! Do we think that Obama will keep this promise, of course not. He did not even live up to his “first act as president” promise of closing Gitmo within the year, even with vast left-wing support. Ultra fail. Just like when he mentioned tort reform, received a standing ovation, and then scrapped it as soon as we weren’t looking, I expect Obama to find ways to increase spending despite his announced “freeze.” Remember, lefty liberals do not believe in “freezes,” they believe in “warming” and they also believe in spending money faster than the machines can print the stuff. Don’t believe me? Just watch as White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein practically begs (especially near the end) Rachel Maddow to support the president on this and how she rips the administration for trying to save money:

Very fun to watch. Maddow, veteran of the failed Air America experiment (they are filing for bankruptcy, in case you haven’t heard), is the quintessential leftist in this clip, accusing the Obama administration of taking a “big right turn” for trying to cut excessive spending. Crazy. I can see it now: Obama clinging to his guns (Biden’s biceps) and his religion (Reverend Wright-ism). If anything, this goes to show that the Left is more interested in making excessive spending more excessive as long as it is the government that’s doing it.

For the rest of us, this goes to show that this administration is trying to govern by the polls, the anti-Bush who reads the polls in order to know what’s in his “heart.” What does move mountains is bucking expectations, electing conservatives in liberal states, and voting against the socialist machine. They are trying to pivot now first by appearing populist by going after the banks, then by appearing centrist by announcing tax credits for the middle class, and now appearing fiscally conservative by claiming that he will freeze discretionary spending. None of this is real, it’s just for show. Expect the far left to lob grenades at Obama for his transgressions against Keynesianism and Leninism. Grab some popcorn, turn on MSNBC, and just watch the fireworks fly this week. It’ll be an early Fourth of July… and as an added bonus, all their infighting and failures may just end up making America more free!

-AG

If you’re a far left liberal that is. If you’re a regular American citizen, more invested in pragmatism than ideology, Obama has certainly put us on the road to tremendous change. The White House has defended its chang-y agenda, saying things like “we’ve seen is a dramatic difference in terms of how the United States is perceived around the world.” Yes indeed, now our enemies think we are weak and our allies worry about our resolve. They say that Obama laid “a foundation for keeping America safe and making us a partner around the world,” comments made less than a month after the terror attack by the would-be underwear bomber, the suicide bombing of the CIA in Afghanistan, and the brazen Taliban attack on Afghanistan’s capital city. Security we can believe in.

Obama making friends with our “ally” Pakistan

Economically, despite spending trillions of taxpayer dollars, unemployment marches on, small businesses continue to go out of business, and the national debt is soaring. Not enough change? Not if you’re Dean, Kucinich, or the leftist anti-war fringe who have blasted Obama for not going far enough with his promise of change. I said this before, and I’ll say it again: “In Obama, we got exactly what he promised us: redistribution of wealth, weakness abroad, and more government intrusion.” The left, the rabid left that believes that this is their chance to somehow create a society where Marxism, environmentalism, defeatism, and atheism are the foundational principles is unhappy with Obama for not pushing harder, for not ordering the National Guard to arrest Congress for not passing his bills, for not outlawing opposition parties. The truth is that Obama is much smarter than the far far left gives him credit for because a too sudden move towards socialism and American people will revolt, so instead the president is giving us socialism by increments. The question should not be whether Obama has brought change to America, he has, but rather if the change he has brought has helped or hurt our country. Just recently, the answer to that question was given by Massachusetts and that answer will echo throughout the country later this year.

-AG

I was thinking the other day that far left liberals in this country have an odd view of the world, as if they completely rebelled against the things that they were taught as children. This is a general statement of course and is completely subjective, taken from my own experiences when I was a young child and the lessons that I was taught. I understand that there are many differences in the way that people are raised, but in general there are some values that are pretty widespread, dare I say universal, in this country. Let’s call these American values. I will enumerate some and give their leftist liberal counterparts.

“Work hard and you will be successful.” This was something that my parents instilled in me from a very young age and it applies to nearly everything in life. This was not a conservative viewpoint nor a political ideology, but a truism gleaned from experience… experiences such as the struggle against communism in Cuba where, despite having family members imprisoned for political reasons, my family earned a living, became educated, practiced their faith in defiance of the state, and ultimately came to this country against huge odds. What is interesting is that the leftist point of view is almost the polar opposite of this: “without government help, you can’t make it.” Just glossing through the Democrat party’s platform one reads thing like “giving people jobs,” “giving people health care,” and even a part where they say that they will “help” those who, and I quote, “no matter how hard they work - are seeing prices go up more than their incomes.” I always thought that the can-do spirit was part of the American character, not the idea that there is an upper bound to our success, a bound that only government can help you break through. Is it any wonder that conservatives sometimes brand liberals as un-patriotic or un-American when the left’s values are so out of sync with American values?

“Be your own boss” and “work in what you love.” These, to me, are related lessons that my family taught me. It affirms that one should seek independence, if possible, and that one should enjoy their vocation. It extols the virtues of owning a business, especially in an area that one loves. The leftists on the other hand believe that good jobs do not come from the independence of the citizen but rather through organizing unions to challenge companies. Don’t believe me? Just check out the “Good Jobs with Good Pay” section where, instead of talking about how entrepreneurship and innovation can spur job growth and good wages, they talk about ensuring the rights of unions. Their section on entrepreneurship was vague and probably the shortest in the whole document. This is because the leftists believe that “companies are evil.” No longer are businessmen considered “successful,” they are considered greedy and heartless… all of them. Democrats somehow believe that unions “pull people out of poverty” and “create a stronger middle class,” when in reality unions produce nothing, it is the entrepreneurs and a company’s employees that produce things, create wealth, and drive the economy. Unions only suck up membership fees from workers and make unrealistic demands of companies, making demands that do not reflect economic realities; just look at the auto industry. Furthermore, why is being a unionized worker the ideal status for Americans? Do we grow up thinking “man, when I grow up I want to be a SEIU member?” I, personally, am all for unions, I simply worry when they become big machines that usurp the rights of workers, instead of help protect them.

“Be responsible.” So simple and so true. It applies to everything, from the idea that one should not force others to take care of you (if possible) to facing the consequences of ones actions. Needless to say, the left finds this value to be complete nonsense. From their positions on health care to immigration to taxes, the left promotes a society where the few are responsible for the many. No longer is health a personal matter, all taxpayers, especially the wealthy, must contribute in order to “give” it to all. No longer is illegally crossing into the United States a crime according to the left, they say we must provide a path to citizenship… in essence rewarding them for doing something illegal. No longer are merit and actions important in our society, but rather the color of your skin or minority status influences decisions as varied as university acceptance or getting a job. The Democrats advocate the idea of “we will take care of you,” and whenever some political leader does not act like a nanny, they say that they are not doing their job, they are not taking care of you. Personally, I don’t want to be taken care of. I stand on my own two feet. I am an American and I will not be treated as a child. Sadly, not everyone shares this sentiment.

Just perusing through the Democrat platform, one finds a value system that seems alien and divorced from the American value system, as I was taught. To be fair, the document does say things like promoting competitiveness and the hard work is good and things like that, but these words ring hollow when you look at their entire agenda. Their brief mention of small businesses is drowned out by their tax schemes, emphasis on union power, and rich versus poor rhetoric. Their talk of the American dream is silenced by their insistence that only government can lead to a comfortable life, that no personal effort can achieve prosperity. They talk of “giving” Americans everything instead of letting Americans get it themselves, instead of freeing Americans… and dishonestly ignore the fact that in order to “give” something, the government must “take” something away, because the government produces nothing. There are many more examples of the disconnect between the far left and Americans in general, I simply outlined a few here. What I honestly believe is that regular Joe liberals do not agree with this stuff. I believe that they care about those who cannot do for themselves and worry that without some sort of safety net too many people will fail, many conservatives believe this too but they do not hold the opinion that government is the only answer. These regular Joe liberals ultimately flock to the party that seems to represent these views, when in fact the Democrat party has been hijacked by the far left and care only for power. If conservatives are to make a dent in the power and size of government, then we must make inroads among these regular liberals because many of them actually do share the American values that the Democrat party disdains.

-AG

After appointing banking industry insider Tim Geithner to manage the executive branch’s response to the economic crisis, the banks made out like bandits. Free market values were thrown out the window as trillions of dollars were simply handed to the financial industry in order to save them from almost certain collapse… courtesy of the US taxpayer, especially future ones. The result was expected, decline in the dollar, skewed market reality, and banks were saved. By saved I do not mean that they simply did not die, I mean that they got bigger, their bonuses got huger, and instead of using the money to rebuild the economy, they simply invested it in the market making record profits. I also do not mean that all banks were saved, the smaller ones continue to die to this day, only to be gobbled up by larger banks or nationalized by the federal government. In essence, Geithner, the bank guy, saved the banks. Not surprising.

What did surprise people was that Obama, the “agent of change,” seemed to be more and more in bed with Wall Street. The market has dramatically improved over the last year, primarily because the big market movers have been drafting off highly-public government bailouts and “stimuli,” but this has not “trickled down,” in fact, the bailouts and cash continue to “trickle up” under the Obama regime. Simultaneously, while Democrats have done their best to concentrate taxpayer dollars in the hands of government-regulated enterprises (as banks are), the American people have grown unhappy with the direction of the country. The charge that Republicans benefit big business disproportionately has been muted by the Democrats’ blatant redistribution of wealth from bottom to top. The victory of Republican Scott Brown in heavily liberal Massachusetts made it clear that the people were unhappy. Lucky for the Democrats, they had a plan ready all along.

Even the Lefties are sick of Obama’s bailouts

For months, Obama has been blasting “fat-cat bankers” for their arrogance (pot calling the kettle black) and struck a populist tone. This is a sharp change from most of last year, during which Obama was “spreading the wealth” as he promised. He even recently said that they would tax the banks in order to make back the money that they lost from the bailouts… of course, banks would simply pass on these extra taxes onto the consumer, making it so that we, the taxpayers, would end up paying ourselves back. But forget logic, let’s get back to populism. Now Obama says that he wants to enact stricter regulations on the financial industry, adopting the so-called “Volcker Rule” that aims to separate the investment and commercial banking operations of financial firms, including the provision and I quote: “banks will no longer be allowed to own, invest or sponsor hedge funds, private equity funds or proprietary trading operations for their own profit unrelated to serving their customers.” He railed against banks taking advantage of the taxpayer safety net that they enjoy… a safety net that the president eagerly employed in his quest to save the banks. He railed against the excess and abuse of greedy banks… without mentioning that it was the federal government that enabled, encouraged, and ultimately rewarded such excess and abuse. In sum, after building up the banks, handing them taxpayer dollars without oversight, and placing bank industry insiders as managers of the “recovery” efforts, he made banks the scapegoats… bashing Bush can only take you so far.

If you think that this was not the plan from the beginning, you are fooling yourself. Obama and his minions made it priority one to inflate the banking industry and then make them out to be the villains so that the Democrats could continue with their principal argument: capitalism is a failure and socialism is the only way. Some people say that the Volcker Rule will prevent any crash like this from occurring in the future, that may be so, but what we sacrifice is the growth of the American economy and any hopes of a recovery from this recession. The Volcker Rule may plunge us into a near-permanent recession. The reasons are abundantly clear. If banks cannot use the market to diversify their portfolios and reduce their risk, then they will be even more reluctant to make risky loans. This means fewer mortgages, which means that the real estate market does not recover. No real estate recovery means no construction jobs, fewer mortgage brokers, fewer real estate agents, more renters, less home ownership, slowed economic growth, etc. etc. etc. Obama is making the smart political bet that breaking up Wall Street will resonate with voters, I think he is right… but the intended consequence is not merely votes, it’s cutting the American economy off at the knees and making the most important sectors of the economy even more dependent on the federal government. Along with the fascistic health care proposals, the federal government will have almost total control over the American people.

Volcker and Obama

While I am no friend of the financial industry, I do understand that banks are a business. I, as a bank customer, would like my bank to be prosperous. The better they do, the better we all do. Do I care about their bonuses? Normally no, except in this case they are using taxpayer dollars, but what do we expect to happen if the government hands over the taxpayers’ wallets? What is most important to me is the health of the free market economy and what is being suggested by the administration is a direct attack on both the free markets and the economy in general. The real culprit behind the recession is not the fact that banks took risks, this is expected of them. The real culprit was the fact that these risks were under-priced, in other words, people were investing in things that they knew nothing of for unrealistic prices. If any regulations are to be enacted, they should focus on the cause, not focus on restructuring an entire industry and putting them under more direct control of the state. All we need is accurate valuation of securities, more transparency, and less of a government guarantee. The Volcker Rule seems to try to accomplish all these things while knee-capping the economy. This is because the Democrats have an ulterior motive, just like with health care reform, instead of a plan that is straightforward, e.g. reducing costs, tort reform, fixing the pre-existing conditions issue, we get a convoluted mixture of cuts to medicare, higher taxes, benefits that kick in after several years, company and individual mandates. and more government bureaucracy. This is the Volcker Rule, another way to impose a Democrat agenda in the guise of “fixing” a problem.

The Republicans should get on the ball and propose some common sense moves. Want more transparency? Pass legislation requiring full disclosure of what financial products are comprised of. Want the price of securities to reflect risk? Pass legislation that requires rating agencies to be fully capable of rating new financial products. Want less of a government guarantee? Require capital reserves on certain types of high risk assets or simply don’t bail out these firms like we did. The answers are not so difficult and do not require a top-down restructuring of the American economy… it seems like every time a Democrat tinkers with the economy, we get closer and closer to full-fledged communism.

-AG

John Edward’s, the two America’s, class warfare demagogue who sips chardonnay in his mansion while publicly asserting that he is the poor people’s candidate, is a master when it comes to media relations. No, I am not referring to his $400 dollar haircuts and parading his cancer-stricken wife in front of the cameras during his hopelessly failed presidential campaign, I am actually referring to the way the he leaked the news to the media that he did indeed father a love child with his mistress and was going to support the child financially. Of course, to remind the folks out there, Edwards was cheating and fathering love children while his wife was battling cancer. True class.

While everyone already knows that the Democrat presidential candidate is a hypocrite and a liar and an adulterer and a leftist and other more colorful words, what impressed me (yes, impressed) is how he timed his admission. He waited until the “Great Scott!” MA senate race, a race that had everyone’s attention in a headlock, to release the news. In a turn of more good fortune for him the distracting news kept piling on, unemployment numbers were higher than expected, the Dow tumbled more than 200 points on news of financial regulations overhaul, Obama’s one-year catastro-versary was taking place, and most importantly, the Haiti earthquake news was still on front pages. You may think of me as being callous for saying that he was waiting for disasters and whatnot to reveal the news, but ponder this: how long has he known about the love child, especially after he actively covered it up during his campaign? It is known that he has been sending money for about a year now, so why wait until the news was dominated by these events to admit it? The answer is clear: so that very few would notice. We should all take notice of the games that these politicians play with the media, timing is everything… and for a Democrat who decided to run for president at the same time Obama AND Hillary were, a Democrat who timed his affair for the period that has wife was fighting cancer and during a presidential campaign, this time he got the timing just right.

-AG

Update: I also forgot to mention that Edwards made this admission right before his aide, Andrew Young, was scheduled to give an interview describing how Edwards instructed him to fake a DNA test saying that he was not the father of the child. Like I said, Edwards’ timing is artful. This clip is also artful:

I am on a bunch of lefty mailing lists just so I can see what these nuts are up to. Here’s one that I received recently that I found to be pretty interesting; it’s from the Howard Dean group Democracy for America:

“DFA Member-

In case you haven’t heard yet, something scary is happening in Florida. Tea Party extremists have forced out the state Republican chair and are now free to nominate the most right-wing candidates imaginable to public office across the state.

We must not allow these extremists the power or legitimacy that comes with elected office.


That is why DFA is bringing some of the best political talent in the country to train Florida candidates and activists in 2010 to make sure progressives have the tools to win.

This is a critical year in Florida politics. There are huge statewide races with national implications as well as local races that hit close to home.

You may be disappointed by some so-called Democrats in Washington and, believe me, I am too. But the solution isn’t to throw up our hands and cede our country to extremists. The solution is to elect better Democrats, everywhere. And it starts in Florida. Join us.

Thanks for all you do.” [bold added for emphasis]

You’re welcome.

This email had three instances of “extremists,” one instance of “scary,” and one instance of “right-wing.” I’m panicking already! This is the type of fear mongering that is circulating among liberals who probably do not know any better about the Tea Party movement. As for the Florida issue, the state GOP chairman seemed to be mismanaging funds and he was making some bad calls. If only the RNC would do the same and rein in Mikey.

What I find most amusing is that at the end of the email, they admit that even though the Democrats that were just elected were doing a bad job, they should go and elect more of them! Apparently, the big government agenda put forward by the Obama-Reid-Pelosi triumvirate does not go far enough. Spending trillions is not enough, we must spend QUADRILLIONS!!! Oh Dean, what a clown.

The sad part is that they consider me an extremist… I, who pay taxes, contribute to society, vote and sometimes put my simple, honest opinions on a hidden away blog on the inter-tube-webs… oh and I forgot my most subversive act: thinking! Sometimes I hope we would all be a little more extremist.

-AG

Congratulations to all Americans out there that were and are opposed to the current health care proposals which are, without a doubt, one of the most intrusive and expensive government programs ever conceived in our country: the supermajority is no more! The election of non-Democrat Scott Brown in Massachusetts, that great state, has restored my faith in our system and has shown Americans of all stripes that the most revolutionary weapon in our arsenal, as citizens, is our vote. The Democrats have been running wild in Washington and have acted as if they did not have to answer to the American people… this year let’s show them that they are wrong. While we may rejoice right now, a word of caution: the Obamas, Reids, and Pelosis came to power because of a Republican party that committed treason against conservatism and if conservatives are not wary, this cycle will simply repeat. Conservatives must make sure to vote for candidates that make the conservative case clearly and with common sense. The far left has been winning the media war for years, it’s time we reverse this trend by being smart about our choices. Party voting hasn’t gotten us very far. We must make the most principled votes possible. It’s now up to the Scott Brown’s of today and the Scott Brown’s to come to show America how a conservative should lead and why conservatism is the best way to preserve freedom, expand opportunity, and usher in prosperity… the far left fringe will put every obstacle in our way, but we must persevere.

-AG

In the bluest of blue states, red is gaining traction. I have only recently been following the Massachusetts Senate race between Scott Brown ® and Martha Coakley (D), mainly because I expected a quick victory for the most liberal candidate. Apparently, conventional wisdom is being bucked as we speak. Scott Brown took a lead in the polls, ever so slim, and Coakley, the expected winner, may just snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The surprising thing is that Coakley’s failure is being seen as… well… surprising. To put it nicely: she’s a moron and a puppet of the Left. Just running a cursory search of things she has said and done reveal what is expected from the Democrats: utter detachment from reality. Here’s some clips:

Ironically, the Taliban just launched a brazen attack on the capital city of Afghanistan yesterday. I wonder what alternate reality she lives in…

Here’s a beautiful quote from a lobbyist attending one of Coakley’s fundraisers recently, something that runs contrary to the whole “party of the people” image due to the presence of health care industry lobbyists and the impact this election would have on the health care reform bill:

Indeed, change we can all believe in. Of course, being initiated into the Imperial Democrats’ den of corruption, kickbacks, and culture of bribery is not too surprising to intelligent folks out there, but we aren’t talking about those people, we are talking about those who have been indoctrinated in far Left propaganda for years and blindly follow any ass running for office, pun intended. If these were not enough reasons, Brown skillfully puts together an ad criticizing Coakley for pinning all of her foreign policy experience on her sister who lives abroad. Craziness indeed.

Here’s some more fun where she talks about how she wants to create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and her saying that America will always have open borders.

The rest of Coakley’s incompetence is right there, in her own words, on television, and on the internet. Amid a recession she parrots the Obama line about raising taxes. While America begs Washington to change or re-do the health care reform bill, hers is the vote that will make it all possible, saddling her state with an even greater economic burden. The list goes on…

The other side of story is one that concerns me the most. Whether MA goes red or blue does not matter too much. Like the election after Bush which benefited the Left, widespread disaffection with the party in power and an empowered conservative base make Republican gains in this state more possible than before. Unfortunately, the person we have running for office is automatically getting rewarded for not being a Democrat… when the reality is that he may be more moderate than most conservatives would like. Without a doubt, if I could, I would vote for him, at least for the chance to save our country from the ravages of Obama’s health care fascism, but what I worry about is how much we are willing to compromise. In how many other states will we be forced to choose between a Democrat government on steroids and a Republican who will sell out? We will always tell ourselves, “yeah, just this time, because it really counts,” but when won’t it “really count?” Conservatives must draw a line when it comes to supporting liberals in elephants’ clothing and be willing to stay in the minority if the Republicans keep advocating “moderation” (especially in the fiscal sense). As a general rule of thumb, I think that conservatives, tactically, should vote for moderate Republicans in blue states and more conservative ones in purple and red states… otherwise, the cycle of big government Republican and big government Democrat will just keep repeating.

In the interest of fairness, I will post one of Coakley’s attack ads against Brown. Here she viciously attacks him for being…. REPUBLICAN!! Oh the horror.

What’s funny about this ad is that it is wrong on the facts and it misspelled the name of her state… not a good move. Furthermore, it’s a very weak attack even by far leftist standards… a picture of Bush and Cheney? Really? Looks like it’s straight out of the hope-and-change express’s playbook. All in all, it is still possible that she may win and if she does then Massachusetts will have definitely been [refer to title].

-AG

Minorities, you can’t make it on your own! This is the message constantly spewed by the Left. Their “reasons” are simple: racism is keeping you down, class-ism is keeping you down, sexism is keeping you down, etc. etc. With these blunt rhetorical instruments they brand Republicans and everyone on the Right as being the bigots, the rich robber-barons, the abusers of poor minorities. Reality is much more nuanced (to use one of their favorite words) than they make it out to be. Bigots exist on all sides and we have good reason to reject their views, in the words of honest Abe, a Republican: “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Unfortunately, this message of unity, that we are all Americans regardless of what state, race, heritage, gender, “social group,” or religion, is something that the Left has not heard and indeed, it is a message that liberals have rejected. Name something that can be termed a social identity group and you will find a liberal group that identifies with it. What is most amazing about the Left is that, after helping erect barriers between so-called identity groups, they turn around and call the Right bigoted and prejudiced. It is political jujitsu that has been taking place for a long time and it is very effective. At the end of the day though, the liberals who profess these lofty ideals of “helping” minorities rise above (the majority I presume) while instead helping create subcultures and cultural enclaves where these very minorities get stuck, are in fact more racist and classist and sexist than the conservatives they criticize.

Case in point are the recently revealed comments by Senate Majority Leader and Democrat Harry Reid who, during the campaign, said that Barack Obama could win the presidency because he is “light-skinned” and has “no Negro dialect”. Of course, Obama immediately forgave Reid’s comments saying he knows Reid’s heart, yet when Professor Gates was arrested last year, Obama immediately brought into question whether or not the police officers were being racist. Clearly, Democrats get a pass on racism. Even the vice-president’s comments about Indian-Americans and seven-elevens were simply taken as being a gaffe, almost silly in its portrayal. At the same time, regular Americans are scrutinized, Don Imus gets fired, Bill O’Reilly criticized for his characterization of a Black restaurant, and social differences are used as a wedge and charges of racism are used as a bludgeon by the Democrats. I am not saying that disparaging remarks about people based on social/physical similarities should be tolerated, I am saying that the standard must apply to all. Sadly, this will not change anytime soon, for American liberalism stands on the “two America’s” argument, on the “majority vs minority” argument, and on the idea that the majority is bigoted/backward and need to “progress” with “progressive” policies. Racism is as integral today to the Democratic Party as it was in the 1800’s. Only when we absolutely rejects the divisionism that has existed and continues to exist today because of racism, gender-ism, etc. can we, as a society, move forward. Just look nearby, at Latin America, where women have shattered “the glass ceiling” with no formal “women’s empowerment movement” (see: Bachelet of Chile and Cristina Fernández of Argentina) and minorities have become presidents (see: Peru’s former president Fujimori who was of Japanese descent) to see that probably the greatest impediment to “minority empowerment” is the fact that liberals have been simply using minorities as political pawns instead of actually helping them. To move forward we need to stop seeing any differences between Americans, but with liberals constantly reminding us of how racist we are, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy for us, how can we?

-AG

The best defense is a good offense… so goes the adage. This is something learned early by the previous administration due to the terrible events of September 2001. It was trial by fire. The lesson was clear: evil exists in the world and must be confronted before they kill any more innocents here at home. What followed was an “offense-first” foreign policy that led us to where we are now in the world. Many Americans rejected this seemingly bellicose behavior on the part of our country, particularly liberals but many people on the right as well, but they failed to remember the reasons we needed to be proactive, as opposed to reactive. Whether or not there was an overreach on the part of the administration is for history to judge, but what is indisputable is that 9-11 taught us something about the world… but now, it appears that America has forgotten the lesson.

The current administration, in its efforts to be seen as the anti-Bush, has decided that the best policy for America is to play defense, to react. So far, most of what has happened with respect to the war on terror has been a reaction, not an action. Take, for example, the plans to surge in Afghanistan, this was equal parts a political move (to appear centrist and satisfy a campaign promise) and a reaction to increased casualties. Or North Korea’s provocations, which led to more (ineffectual) sanctions. Or the recent Christmas would-be bomber which prompted the administration to review security and “improve” measures. All reactions to the enemy. At the same time we have our troops in Iraq retreating back to our bases, the highest casualty rate to date in Afghanistan, and a resurgent Al Qaeda, all due to the actions or inaction of the administration. In reacting to everything, we are giving the enemy the chance to act and, fortunately, only the technical incompetence of the terrorists themselves has kept us safe in the age of Obama… but our luck can only protect against so much. We need to get back on offense. While playing offense may be offensive to some, it kept the bombs off our planes, it kept Al Qaeda cowering in their caves, and it kept America safe. The price we paid in blood, treasure, and international “likeability” was needed to ensure that those who dreamed of a renewed Caliphate stretching from Spain to Indonesia never got the chance to make those dreams reality. America was, and is, the only thing standing in the way of extremists willing to commit the mass murder of innocents simply to send a message. Playing defense just makes our job that much harder.

-AG

Saturday morning, an effigy of Obama was hanged in Plains, Georgia above a sign in honor of former President Jimmy Carter. The Secret Service is now investigating the incident. See video:

This is not the first time something like this has happened. In October 2008, during the presidential campaign, two students, whose names were graciously made public by the mainstream media, hung an effigy of Obama in response to the hanging of Sarah Palin in effigy. The students were arrested and charged. See video:

In Lexington, Kentucky, where the effigy was hung, there was a crowded forum of city, university, and community leaders that discussed this event and they unanimously condemned this act.

Now, let’s get back to reality for a moment. First of all, I think that it is in poor taste to hang an effigy of an elected leader or a candidate. That’s what the radicals do abroad and we should not be emulating them. Second, the above outrage and coverage by the media over these “acts” directed against Obama is something unique because during President Bush’s terms we had similar events that received little to no coverage. Bush’s effigy has been burned in celebration of Obama’s inauguration in Washington DC:

Burned at the stake in Alaska:

Pelted with shoes in DC:

The list goes on, but these are the more recent ones. The recurrent soundtrack to all of these events is laughter. The recurrent setting is America. The recurrent reaction from the media is little to none. Have we, as a country, decided that the symbolic destruction of one political figure is comical but doing it to another is absolutely wrong? I have not been able to find any reports that anyone was arrested for destroying, faux killing, or defacing a Bush effigy… while Obama effigy “hangers” have been sent to jail and are actively being pursued. Whether or not one agrees with the policies of one of our elected officials, is it right to hang or set ablaze effigies of them? I think it has gotten pretty ugly out there on both sides, but unfortunately the imbalanced media rarely shows the lefties gleefully setting fire to a doll of a “Republican” president, they specialize in generating outrage over the defacing of dolls of Democrats. Hanging effigies of Obama does little to advance the conservative cause, those who do it do conservatives a disservice. Hanging and burning effigies is something that the Left does, let them keep it. The difficult thing is when leftists hang effigies of leftists and blame it on the right… the only thing conservatives can do is consistently denounce these tactics. Conservatives’ principal weapon must be the vote and the only way to win votes is to win over hearts and minds. Faux executions of politicians may not be the best way of doing that.

-AG

This happened a few days ago, but I have not had a chance to comment. The Danish newspaper Politiken published an editorial that proclaims Obama to be, “of course,” greater than Jesus. This is not so surprising when you take into account the infatuation that Europeans and the media in general have with Barack Hussein Obama, but I find that comparing him to Jesus Christ right after Christmas is a low-blow. While it is perfectly within their right to say such blasphemy, it goes to show that the mass-hypnotic effect of the president has not yet faded completely. Comparing him to Him is not all that new (see previous post), but in this case the Danish newspaper takes it one step further, going from “like” to “greater” (greater as in “Akbar“). While I enjoy the fact that people around the world admire a (supposed) American, what bothers me is that we, Western Civilization, are still willing to characterize our leaders as deities instead of progressing to a stage of practical realism. Is human development supposed to move in the direction of less reason or more? Why does this not worry everyone?

-AG

A lot of persons of the elitist mentality deride toughness… so foolish they are. Elitism in America exists and existed because of individuals who shaped history after the events of December 7th, 1941 and September 11th, 2001 (to name a few). In each of these events, while led by two completely different persons, America did not choose to whimper in a corner but instead to harness American power in order to extinguish evil. Elitists see history differently, probably because elitists find it amusing or enlightening to twist the historical narrative to fit their own mind-set. This does not make this type of person more enlightened, it makes this type of person akin to the high school all-star athlete who ends up serving drinks at a bar: wasted potential. I see it constantly, at reunions with old friends and with people whose style is eloquent but whose content in vacuous. What I marvel at, in the midst of listening to their diatribes against the right, is their ability to use specious arguments and a smattering of facts, ill-interpreted, that make Dali look like a realist. What I take away every time is that true “enlightenment” comes not from the arrogance of believing oneself so clever, so wise, or so insightful but rather from having a true understanding of what matters and what one actually knows. I strive for that latter while elitists blindly thrive in the former.

Toughness, on the other hand, holds its nose up to no one. Toughness sees a necessity and pursues a course of action, be it perfect or imperfect, vigorously. That is not to say that many times ignorance does not accompany toughness, but toughness itself, what I term that visceral “gut” reaction that makes us stand up to an enemy or to bite our tongues in preparation for some necessary torture, is pure and beneficial to man. Without it, the Spartans who held back the Persian Empire, glorified in history books and Hollywood alike, would not have safeguarded Western Civilization. Without it, those who resisted the Nazi war machine would have succumbed to it and we would be celebrating our new years with book burnings and lynchings of “undesirables.” So when I hear people say that such toughness is a quality that leaders should not have, I fear for my country. To imagine a world run by Chamberlains, waving pieces of paper while enemies polish their bayonets, fills me with dismay… yet this is precisely what they want. Idealists, unfortunately for all of us, do not elect Chamberlains anymore, they elect Lenins, who argue for peace but deliver national holocausts. Therefore, let us not sue for an end to American toughness, for there exist two great evils that emerge upon its extinction: the vultures who await our moment of weakness and the parasites who promise us utopian dreams but end up sucking us dry. For all of history, only toughness has kept them at bay. In the future, we will need no less to guide us forward… which makes those who cherish toughness, in my eyes, wiser than those who disparage it.

-AG