A guest editorial (I get mail)
I'm either constipated, have a case of the summertime blues, or my pancreatic cysts are acting up again. Whatever, I don't feel much like writing this week; body chemistry affects mood, and I feel out of whack.
At any rate, I don't like dealing with racial politics, because I consider them irrelevant and hypocritical in today's world. "Playing the race card" is a cheap trick employed by liberals to divert public attention from Those People's real agenda, which is usually something nefarious and sinister. There was the notorious "beer summit" when more attention needed to be paid to the health care bill then under intense debate. (Hence one of my milder names for Bobama: "The Red Herring.") All last month, and still ongoing, racial politics are being played by our "post-racial" president and his myrmidons to keep us from fully realizing the impact of the "financial reform" bill that slipped through almost unnoticed in all the brouhaha about Black Panthers, the NAACP, and allegations of racism in the Tea Party movement.
So, without further bloviating on my part, here is a thoughtful and well-reasoned analysis from a Constant Reader. It's verbatim for content, with only a couple of buffs for style and one grammatical correction. There were some links, but not everything translates well directly from e-mail. (The recipients list and Hank's e-mail address are deleted for privacy.)
From:
Date: 03-Aug-10 7:38:15 PM
To:
Subject: NYT: Black Caucus Members Lied About Tea Party protestors
Actually, the editors at the Gray Lady didn't exactly use those words but that's what they meant. They just couldn't bring themselves to that level of frankness.
I find it extremely troubling to see allegedly Christian black American Congressman - who may have indeed suffered racial discrimination in the past - engage in such bald-faced lies in such a partisan, race-hustling manner in hopes of discrediting those politically opposed to Mr. Obama's radical, Neo-Marxist agenda ("from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.") - in this case the HealthScare Obamanation. And it comes as no surprise to those of us who have suffered the slings and arrows of militant liberals, unprincipled liberals are very adept at ending debates going badly for them by calling their political opposition (us) homophobes/bigots/racists/sexists blah, blah, blah. Right? It happens all the time. And in this sphere of the debate, with liberals it's "all race, all the time."
As I've stated before, on a private and individual level, the Marxist screed, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need", is simply a recapitulation of one facet of human charity. Sometimes people can extend a charitable hand even when it’s beyond their ability to give or when they aren't giving out of an abundance. In either case, there's nothing wrong for individuals to embrace Marx's charitable philosophy, but it does become wrong when under penalty of law governments adopt such a coercive "spread the wealth" philosophy, though Marx certainly wouldn't have seen it that way since the seeds of tyranny and despotism are strewn throughout his philosophy of government.
The taxation "charity" that is required by the government is nothing more than warmed-over tyranny and is anything but charity freely given. Unfortunately a lot of well-meaning liberal evangelicals have gone brain-dead regarding this distinction since they seem to believe Jesus taught that government should be in the business of "charity" when indeed charity begins and ends in the home - from one home to the next or from one home to the homeless. When Jesus was asked by his disciples who would feed the multitude, he did NOT say, "Get Caesar to feed them" or "Get the Pharisees to feed them." Rather Jesus said, "YOU feed them." And it's no mystery why the more arrogant liberal evangelicals have unrighteously condemned (to the applause of Christian-hating secular/liberal humanists) their conservative brethren for embracing the more biblical "hand-up" charity as opposed to the more corrupting "hand-out" tenet of liberal religionists' social gospel.
One of the most immoral propositions of our generation is the superficial contention that it is somehow a virtue to empower big government to levy ever higher levels of confiscatory taxes under the guise of "charity" in order to grow what is essentially a welfare plantation. After all, wouldn't that be the most "compassionate" thing to do for the poor and the homeless? NO! Human experience demonstrates that those kinds of political arrangements merely enslave the most vulnerable to a political thought or a political party which proposes such handouts from the public largesse. In reality, we are witnessing an institutional slavery that has given rise to third and fourth generation welfare families! Now that reality should tell any informed and honest person something about the alleged efficacy of such a political abomination which goes against everything an honest patriot of freedom understands about true liberty.
The most direct means of charity - one person to another or from a private philanthropic/religious institution to an individual - is the most moral and superior means by which to redress inequalities. The idea that government should involve itself in what is supposed to be the private affairs of its citizens in relation to their neighbors is not only an abuse of power but in fact can only lead to full-blown tyranny since bureaucracies can justify any government program under the pretense of "the public good" or "income redistribution." A government big enough to redistribute money is clearly a government big enough to take private wealth. A government big enough to build a welfare plantation, is a government that is too big! A government big enough to create a "right", is a government big enough to take away a right.
To this seductive proposition we must be vehemently opposed since it creates in those who support such despotism a self-righteous smugness, a fealty to corruptible government, and a captive class to this welfare plantation. Those who recklessly define even a part of their "compassion" by empowering government in this manner only deceive themselves since their "goodness" does not flow freely from their own resources but rather is predicated upon how much bureaucrats they've emboldened can remove from the backpockets of hard-working taxpayers who may even be conscientiously opposed to such a program - particularly a program or a power not clearly enumerated in the U.S. Constitution. After all, the Constitution was the People's means to limit government, not the other way around.
In effect, liberal/religious humanism has become a veritable religion that is turning our constitutional republic into their version of a theocracy by forcing everyone to contribute to a government passing around a collection plate in support of extra-constitutional powers and expecting everyone to contribute under the penalty of law. This state of affairs is neither "charity" nor "compassion". And it is precisely that kind of coercion to which the American founders were uniformly opposed - government collecting money under penalty of law for items other than pure government.
The Constitution clearly states the federal government is empowered to "promote the general welfare" of the People, and that only according to the powers clearly enumerated. The Constitution does NOT say the federal government is empowered to "provide welfare."
And you can quote me on this, dear reader.
Hank
STORY BELOW:
The New York Times Issues a Correction
August 3, 2010 - by Ed Driscoll
The Gray Lady slices up this year’s plastic turkey of a false meme:
The Political Times column last Sunday, about a generational divide over racial attitudes, erroneously linked one example of a racially charged statement to the Tea Party movement. While Tea Party supporters have been connected to a number of such statements, there is no evidence that epithets reportedly directed in March at Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, outside the Capitol, came from Tea Party members.[Emphasis added by author.]
Andrew Breitbart, who, as the president is wont to say, got in the MSM’s faces, and punched back twice as hard against these lies, responds:
• The Times is admitting that there is absolutely no evidence that any epithets were shouted at the Congressman by any member of the Tea Party.
• This correction demonstrates we have finally proven our point to the nation’s most eminent and influential liberal media organ: that Rep. Andre Carson lied when he told the AP that members of the Tea Party hurled the “N-word” 15 times during the March 20 health-care rally that took place at the U.S. Capitol.
• That’s great, as far as it goes – a thorough vindication of the Tea Party — but it doesn’t go far enough.
• It’s not enough for the Times to make a correction having let that calumny sit out there unrebuked for weeks and months and then, way after the fact, issue a correction.
• It’s not enough because the Times continues to imply that something racially charged might happened on the steps of the Capitol, when we have shown conclusively, via multiple videos of the moment in question, that nothing of the sort occurred.
Andrew adds:
It’s not enough because the Times correction is just the beginning. The same correction needs to come from every other major media outlet that blithely repeated this defamation, including the AP, the Washington Post, The Hill, and MSNBC – not just in their news columns, but in their editorials, op-ed and opinion columns and shows as well. Until then, there will be no closure, because the Tea Party will not stop in its pursuit of vindication until the same media effort that went into propagating this lie goes into dispelling it and giving the millions of Americans – 23% of whom are minorities, according to Gallup — their good name back.
Which media outlet is going to have the courage to air the exculpatory videos?
Which will be the first to admit that Congressman Carson lied about the events of that day? That he slandered the Tea Party and had his charges believed by a gullible press corps that did no reporting and pursued no corroboration from among the 400 people and the Capitol Police officers whom Carson claimed had witnessed the event?
Why? Because it didn’t “fit the narrative.’
We are not going to stop until, in our pursuit of justice for the falsely maligned Tea Party, the MSM airs the exculpatory evidence. And to air them is just to expose a massive government-crafted fraud, it shows the moral emptiness at the core of the media. Those videos are the elephant in the room.
What’s at the center of this national racial mess is a cynical political ploy created by President Obama and elected Democrats, and executed with the help of their media allies and activist groups like the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus, to gin up the base for 2010 and take the spotlight off a faltering economy, a bungled Gulf oil spill cleanup, a soaring national debt, and a deeply unpopular health care bill.
Which, as Hot Air notes, paraphrasing Gerald Seib in the Wall Street Journal, “Now it can be told: ObamaCare has little political benefit for the left.”
At any rate, I don't like dealing with racial politics, because I consider them irrelevant and hypocritical in today's world. "Playing the race card" is a cheap trick employed by liberals to divert public attention from Those People's real agenda, which is usually something nefarious and sinister. There was the notorious "beer summit" when more attention needed to be paid to the health care bill then under intense debate. (Hence one of my milder names for Bobama: "The Red Herring.") All last month, and still ongoing, racial politics are being played by our "post-racial" president and his myrmidons to keep us from fully realizing the impact of the "financial reform" bill that slipped through almost unnoticed in all the brouhaha about Black Panthers, the NAACP, and allegations of racism in the Tea Party movement.
So, without further bloviating on my part, here is a thoughtful and well-reasoned analysis from a Constant Reader. It's verbatim for content, with only a couple of buffs for style and one grammatical correction. There were some links, but not everything translates well directly from e-mail. (The recipients list and Hank's e-mail address are deleted for privacy.)
From:
Date: 03-Aug-10 7:38:15 PM
To:
Subject: NYT: Black Caucus Members Lied About Tea Party protestors
Actually, the editors at the Gray Lady didn't exactly use those words but that's what they meant. They just couldn't bring themselves to that level of frankness.
I find it extremely troubling to see allegedly Christian black American Congressman - who may have indeed suffered racial discrimination in the past - engage in such bald-faced lies in such a partisan, race-hustling manner in hopes of discrediting those politically opposed to Mr. Obama's radical, Neo-Marxist agenda ("from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.") - in this case the HealthScare Obamanation. And it comes as no surprise to those of us who have suffered the slings and arrows of militant liberals, unprincipled liberals are very adept at ending debates going badly for them by calling their political opposition (us) homophobes/bigots/racists/sexists blah, blah, blah. Right? It happens all the time. And in this sphere of the debate, with liberals it's "all race, all the time."
As I've stated before, on a private and individual level, the Marxist screed, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need", is simply a recapitulation of one facet of human charity. Sometimes people can extend a charitable hand even when it’s beyond their ability to give or when they aren't giving out of an abundance. In either case, there's nothing wrong for individuals to embrace Marx's charitable philosophy, but it does become wrong when under penalty of law governments adopt such a coercive "spread the wealth" philosophy, though Marx certainly wouldn't have seen it that way since the seeds of tyranny and despotism are strewn throughout his philosophy of government.
The taxation "charity" that is required by the government is nothing more than warmed-over tyranny and is anything but charity freely given. Unfortunately a lot of well-meaning liberal evangelicals have gone brain-dead regarding this distinction since they seem to believe Jesus taught that government should be in the business of "charity" when indeed charity begins and ends in the home - from one home to the next or from one home to the homeless. When Jesus was asked by his disciples who would feed the multitude, he did NOT say, "Get Caesar to feed them" or "Get the Pharisees to feed them." Rather Jesus said, "YOU feed them." And it's no mystery why the more arrogant liberal evangelicals have unrighteously condemned (to the applause of Christian-hating secular/liberal humanists) their conservative brethren for embracing the more biblical "hand-up" charity as opposed to the more corrupting "hand-out" tenet of liberal religionists' social gospel.
One of the most immoral propositions of our generation is the superficial contention that it is somehow a virtue to empower big government to levy ever higher levels of confiscatory taxes under the guise of "charity" in order to grow what is essentially a welfare plantation. After all, wouldn't that be the most "compassionate" thing to do for the poor and the homeless? NO! Human experience demonstrates that those kinds of political arrangements merely enslave the most vulnerable to a political thought or a political party which proposes such handouts from the public largesse. In reality, we are witnessing an institutional slavery that has given rise to third and fourth generation welfare families! Now that reality should tell any informed and honest person something about the alleged efficacy of such a political abomination which goes against everything an honest patriot of freedom understands about true liberty.
The most direct means of charity - one person to another or from a private philanthropic/religious institution to an individual - is the most moral and superior means by which to redress inequalities. The idea that government should involve itself in what is supposed to be the private affairs of its citizens in relation to their neighbors is not only an abuse of power but in fact can only lead to full-blown tyranny since bureaucracies can justify any government program under the pretense of "the public good" or "income redistribution." A government big enough to redistribute money is clearly a government big enough to take private wealth. A government big enough to build a welfare plantation, is a government that is too big! A government big enough to create a "right", is a government big enough to take away a right.
To this seductive proposition we must be vehemently opposed since it creates in those who support such despotism a self-righteous smugness, a fealty to corruptible government, and a captive class to this welfare plantation. Those who recklessly define even a part of their "compassion" by empowering government in this manner only deceive themselves since their "goodness" does not flow freely from their own resources but rather is predicated upon how much bureaucrats they've emboldened can remove from the backpockets of hard-working taxpayers who may even be conscientiously opposed to such a program - particularly a program or a power not clearly enumerated in the U.S. Constitution. After all, the Constitution was the People's means to limit government, not the other way around.
In effect, liberal/religious humanism has become a veritable religion that is turning our constitutional republic into their version of a theocracy by forcing everyone to contribute to a government passing around a collection plate in support of extra-constitutional powers and expecting everyone to contribute under the penalty of law. This state of affairs is neither "charity" nor "compassion". And it is precisely that kind of coercion to which the American founders were uniformly opposed - government collecting money under penalty of law for items other than pure government.
The Constitution clearly states the federal government is empowered to "promote the general welfare" of the People, and that only according to the powers clearly enumerated. The Constitution does NOT say the federal government is empowered to "provide welfare."
And you can quote me on this, dear reader.
Hank
STORY BELOW:
The New York Times Issues a Correction
August 3, 2010 - by Ed Driscoll
The Gray Lady slices up this year’s plastic turkey of a false meme:
The Political Times column last Sunday, about a generational divide over racial attitudes, erroneously linked one example of a racially charged statement to the Tea Party movement. While Tea Party supporters have been connected to a number of such statements, there is no evidence that epithets reportedly directed in March at Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, outside the Capitol, came from Tea Party members.[Emphasis added by author.]
Andrew Breitbart, who, as the president is wont to say, got in the MSM’s faces, and punched back twice as hard against these lies, responds:
• The Times is admitting that there is absolutely no evidence that any epithets were shouted at the Congressman by any member of the Tea Party.
• This correction demonstrates we have finally proven our point to the nation’s most eminent and influential liberal media organ: that Rep. Andre Carson lied when he told the AP that members of the Tea Party hurled the “N-word” 15 times during the March 20 health-care rally that took place at the U.S. Capitol.
• That’s great, as far as it goes – a thorough vindication of the Tea Party — but it doesn’t go far enough.
• It’s not enough for the Times to make a correction having let that calumny sit out there unrebuked for weeks and months and then, way after the fact, issue a correction.
• It’s not enough because the Times continues to imply that something racially charged might happened on the steps of the Capitol, when we have shown conclusively, via multiple videos of the moment in question, that nothing of the sort occurred.
Andrew adds:
It’s not enough because the Times correction is just the beginning. The same correction needs to come from every other major media outlet that blithely repeated this defamation, including the AP, the Washington Post, The Hill, and MSNBC – not just in their news columns, but in their editorials, op-ed and opinion columns and shows as well. Until then, there will be no closure, because the Tea Party will not stop in its pursuit of vindication until the same media effort that went into propagating this lie goes into dispelling it and giving the millions of Americans – 23% of whom are minorities, according to Gallup — their good name back.
Which media outlet is going to have the courage to air the exculpatory videos?
Which will be the first to admit that Congressman Carson lied about the events of that day? That he slandered the Tea Party and had his charges believed by a gullible press corps that did no reporting and pursued no corroboration from among the 400 people and the Capitol Police officers whom Carson claimed had witnessed the event?
Why? Because it didn’t “fit the narrative.’
We are not going to stop until, in our pursuit of justice for the falsely maligned Tea Party, the MSM airs the exculpatory evidence. And to air them is just to expose a massive government-crafted fraud, it shows the moral emptiness at the core of the media. Those videos are the elephant in the room.
What’s at the center of this national racial mess is a cynical political ploy created by President Obama and elected Democrats, and executed with the help of their media allies and activist groups like the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus, to gin up the base for 2010 and take the spotlight off a faltering economy, a bungled Gulf oil spill cleanup, a soaring national debt, and a deeply unpopular health care bill.
Which, as Hot Air notes, paraphrasing Gerald Seib in the Wall Street Journal, “Now it can be told: ObamaCare has little political benefit for the left.”
posted by Robert at 1:30 AM
3 Comments:
I'd already received the original email, but your commentary was new to me.
Hey Possum,
I'm the same way lately. Don't feel much like posting these days. Maybe it had something to do with re-installing Windows at least (2) times in as many weeks (and as it turns out, I probably didn't have to do that... sigh). Or maybe it's just the heat. Feel better my friend.
Hawkeye: When I upgraded last spring, my computer guru was able to clone my hard drive, and the OS with all its bells and whistles went in basically unmolested. I'm rigorous about dumping old e-mails and temporary files, not signing onto every gizmo that pops up onscreen, defragmenting every time I light HAL-9000 up, and never opening attachments, even if the e-mail is from someone I trust. (If I can't preview it, it goes down the "memory hole" when the weekly housecleaning rolls around.) I cringe when anyone offers a "major upgrade" to any of my heretofore functional programs, but sometimes I grit my teeth and accept them. Has your job search come to an end?
Jack: Ayn Rand pointed out years ago that recipients of charity inevitably develop contempt for those who sustain them. Re-reading Hank's comments, I'd add that her solution was the rational one: offer charity with dignity, by offering opportunity to earn lifestyle change; not by offering handouts.
My optimism about November is shot to hell, as Congress may already be marginalized as a functional arm of government. Aside from the subjective depression, I feel out of whack, and hope I don't have to go for another round of chemo or radiation. My soon-to-be-denied quarterly check-up will tell the tale. Once the death panels list me, I'm a done duck, because I smoke.
(Everyone smokes in Hell.)
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