Giving Back Cold War Gains

Brooksville, FL - In 1993, Bill Clinton joked, “Gosh, I miss the Cold War.” And, he explained, somberly: “We had an intellectually coherent thing. The American people knew what the rules were.”

Such Cold War nostalgia vexed many conservatives. It seemed to us that the Cold War consensus had broken down with the Vietnam War. Clinton himself didn’t much like that Cold War endeavor, which is one reason he worked so assiduously to avoid serving in it. A young John Kerry did serve, but he also threw away his medals and denounced his fellow servicemen as war criminals. Jimmy Carter, meanwhile, had proclaimed that he had no “inordinate fear of Communism,” suggesting that those who disagreed with him did.

The Handcuffs We Willingly Wear

“I’m not naive about my country. My country is definitely not always right; my country has at times been terribly wrong. But I know this about Americans: We don’t set out to kill innocent people. We don’t cheer when innocent people die.

The people who did this to us are monsters; the people who cheered them have hate-sickened minds. One reason they can cheer is that they know we would never do to them what their heroes did to us, even though we could, a thousand times worse. They know that when we hunt down the monsters, we will try hard not to harm the innocent. Those are the handcuffs we willingly wear, because for all our flaws, we are a decent people.” – Dave Barry, September 13, 2001.

That excerpt from a Dave Barry column just following the September 11 attacks is something I have quoted often throughout the years and today it seems more relevant than ever. 

The Rooted and the Rootless

Brooksville, FL - Does Barry Obama understand the people he leads? Do his aides?

These may seem cheeky questions to ask of a team that just won the presidency. But there is something in their cool, insouciant, blase demeanor, in the face of insults to their country, that suggests there yet exists a chasm — between them and us.

Now, the change since the 1960s in the character of the nation has been great. The moral and social sappers spawned by that decade have done their work well. But Middle America yet remains a blood-and-soil, family-and-faith, God-and-country kind of nation.

We are not Europe — yet.

My Appology to Perez Hilton

Brooksville, FL - Good afternoon, Perez. I’m sorry I haven’t yet taken the time to write you in response to your little flap with Miss California. I’ve been down in South Carolina spending the last few days with a beautiful woman who is opposed to gay marriage. I hope that doesn’t offend you. In Hollywood, that’s called bigotry. In South Carolina, it’s called “normal.”

Obama: The Grand Strategy

Washington, DC - Unified theory of Obamaism, final installment:

In the service of his ultimate mission — the leveling of social inequalities — President Obama offers a tripartite social democratic agenda: nationalized health care, federalized education (ultimately guaranteed through college) and a cash-cow carbon tax (or its equivalent) to subsidize the other two.

Problem is, the math doesn’t add up. Not even a carbon tax would pay for Obama’s vastly expanded welfare state. Nor will Midwest Democrats stand for a tax that would devastate their already crumbling region.

What is obviously required is entitlement reform, meaning Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. That’s where the real money is — trillions saved that could not only fund hugely expensive health and education programs but also restore budgetary balance.

The Honoring of Ignorance

Brooksville, FL - Hopefully most readers have had a chance to see comedian Jay Leno’s occasional foray into the streets, where he interviews young people, many of whom are in college. He asks the simplest of questions, such as “Who is our nation’s founding father?” or “Who is the vice president of the United States?”

Often the interviewees stare into the camera and identify our nation’s first president as “Abraham Lincoln,” or the current vice president as “Clinton.”

Increasingly — disturbingly — this kind of certifiable ignorance is worn as a badge of honor.

Tea Parties: “Calling All Racists!”

Brooksville, FL - Did you know that only racists turned out for the recent nationwide “tea parties”?!

“Let’s be very honest about what this is about,” actress/comedian Janeane Garofalo said on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show. “It’s not about bashing Democrats. It’s not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about. They don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks.”

100 Days under the heel of Marxism

Brooksville, FL - We continue to live smack dab in the middle of a “Twilight Zone” episode.

Every new revelation about the Obama Administration comes with the familiar musical notes of the Rod Serling TV classic ringing in my head: “Do-dee-do-do, do-dee-do-do…”

I know the mainstream media is frantically trying to cover for this train wreck, but are Americans paying attention?

Compassionate Liberalism

Washington, DC - Monday morning the government braced for austerity, as the government understands that. Having sent Congress a $3.5 trillion budget, the president signaled in advance — perhaps so his Cabinet members could steel themselves for the new asceticism — that at the first meeting of his Cabinet he would direct the 15 heads of departments to find economies totaling $100 million, which is about 13 minutes of federal spending, and 0.0029 percent — about a quarter of one-hundredth of 1 percent — of $3.5 trillion.

If the Department of Agriculture sliced the entire $100 million, that would be equal to 0.1 percent of its fiscal 2008 budget.

Lost in Political Space

Brooksville, FL - Sen. John McCain’s daughter and his presidential campaign manager think they’ve figured out why McCain lost the 2008 election and what Republicans must do to win in the future. They need to be more like Democrats.

Steve Schmidt and Meghan McCain delivered their analyses in separate speeches to the Log Cabin Republicans, whose stated mission “is to work within the Republican Party to advocate equal rights for all Americans, including gays and lesbians.”

Schmidt said he believes that a political party should not take or argue a position on same-sex marriage based on religious grounds.